Monday, Jan. 24, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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President Joe Biden has repeatedly assured Nevadans that he’s against dumping high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, including when his administration recently committed to a policy not to ship high-level waste to any state without its consent.
But in light of the news that the administration recently transported low-level waste from a nuclear cleanup site in Idaho to the Nevada National Security Site, Biden should double down on his promise on Yucca Mountain by discontinuing shipments of any radioactive waste whatsoever to Nevada.
Prompted by a protest letter from Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reported last week that it had carted 13,625 cubic meters of materials to the Nevada site. That equates to nearly 3.5 million gallons of waste — enough to fill five Olympic-sized swimming pools. Low-level or not, that’s an alarming amount of radioactive material coming into our state.
Credit Titus for being vigilant on the issue and raising a red flag after hearing about the shipment. She’s long been at the forefront of Nevada’s decades-long fight against leaders in the federal government and other states who would force their nuclear waste on us.
Opposing these shipments is the right thing to do for the health and well-being of Nevadans. Storage of nuclear waste in our state threatens precious groundwater supplies, creates a risk of airborne release of radioactive materials, and leaves Nevadans vulnerable to accidents involving transportation of waste.
Let’s not forget that just six years ago, there was an explosion and fire at a closed radioactive waste dump near Beatty, caused when rainwater seeped into metal barrels buried on the site. The dump, which was filled from 1970 to 1992, contains contaminated tools, protective clothing and other low-level radioactive materials in 22 trenches up to 800 feet long and 50 feet deep. Fortunately, no one was injured during the blast and fire, and officials reported there was no release of radiation, but the incident spotlighted the risk of storing nuclear waste.
Now we learn that Nevada has once again been saddled with a huge shipment of waste.
This is where Nevada needs Biden to step up and impose a blanket moratorium on shipments to Nevada. He certainly understands the risk of high-level materials: As a candidate for president, he acknowledged the “incredibly dangerous” risks of transporting that waste and the possibility of seismic activity that could lead to materials leaking into groundwater or being released into the air.
Then, in committing to consent-based siting for any high-level nuclear waste repository, Biden again demonstrated that he had Nevadans’ backs.
Now it’s time for Biden to listen to the unanimous voices of Nevada’s elected leaders, including Titus, who want to put an end to shipments of all levels.
After all, we have no nuclear power plants here. We don’t build nuclear weapons. We spent decades being America’s nuclear bombing range, and suffered the health and environment ramifications that came with the explosions of hundreds of nuclear devices just 100 miles away from Las Vegas.
For entirely justifiable reasons, we’ve had it with the feds shoving waste down our throats, and we learned long ago not to trust the Washington bureaucracy on this issue. Who can forget the secret shipment of a half metric ton of weapons-grade plutonium to Nevada by the previous presidential administration? And why would we have any faith in the DOE when it acknowledged in a 2021 court settlement that it had made 10 non-permitted shipments of materials to Nevada between 2013 and 2018? Worse yet, the feds admitted in that settlement that it had mislabeled and mischaracterized the waste involved as low-level.
Enough. Mr. Biden, do what’s right for Nevadans and call a full halt to waste shipments. As Titus stated effectively in her letter to the DOE, “Nevada is not America’s dumping ground.”
