I’ve been meaning to write about this for a little while. I just needed a push, I guess.
Last May, I spent a few days in Lincoln County on the eastern side of Nevada. There aren’t many people out there, but there are several places deemed interesting enough and beautiful enough to be named state parks in a pretty small area. In fact, I think there are five in Lincoln County, which is a lot. The towns you’ll know out there are Caliente, Alamo, Pioche, and Panaca.
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I stayed one night in Alamo and two in Caliente while we were taping The Nevada Passage. I got to know the towns just a tiny bit, but I got to know the landscape around there pretty well. One of the days we taped in Rainbow Canyon, which is south of Caliente. It’s basically a road, a river, and a set of railroad tracks. The walls are pretty steep, and we taped rock climbing there. Caliente has one pretty signature building, and it’s a railroad dept. The depot is pretty cool-looking, really. The tracks that run down Rainbow Canyon are the same tracks that at one time made Caliente a town requiring a fancy railroad depot.
That’s when it hit me. Lincoln County is the home of just about all the people who work in Nevada’s famed Area 51. While I was there I heard Little League games at night, and I thought about how alive this tiny little town seemed. Well, that’s probably because there are a lot of working people there. They have to drive quite a ways every day to get to the gates of the secret base in the middle of the desert, but they all live in this area. That makes it a pretty active little place.
The railroad tracks run from the east (Utah) and turn south in Caliente. From what I can tell on the map, they’re the only ones in the area that come directly from the east. Their southern turn takes them to Las Vegas. That makes them pretty busy. We saw several trains moving in each direction while we spent about three hours taping the rock climbing in Rainbow Canyon. I’d call that a pretty busy stretch of rail.
What really hit me that day was that this, this stretch of rail, was the same rail that would be carrying nuclear waste from all over the country to Yucca Mountain. With the amount of traffic already keeping this active, and the location of it, it all it home for me. Prior to spending any time out there, I never thought about where it would really be coming from or where it would actually wind up. Yucca Mountain, which is always described as “90 miles northeast of Las Vegas,” was a southern Nevada thing. Nevada is a pretty big place. So it wasn’t an issue that I would ever really see or care much about. But ever since that day, I have thought about it a lot when hearing of Yucca Mountain.
Today, I got an email from Assemblyman Ty Cobb. I had signed up for his email newsletter some time ago, so I was included along with everyone else who had. Longtime readers of this site will remember that Ty Cobb faced a pretty dirty campaign against him in 2006. But he survived it and went on to re-election in 2008. I have met Ty one time, very briefly, since that ordeal. In fact, it was so brief that I was on my way out of a function and only stopped to introduce myself and be on my way.
Anyway, the email is a brief survey about Yucca Mountain and what Ty Cobb is apparently advocating in the Assembly. That would be to accept Yucca Mountain as the permanent repository for the nation’s nuclear waste and cease all opposition to that same thing. According to the questions, it costs Nevada about $10 million annually to fight the project, and we could likely receive a lot of money from both the Federal government and other states by accepting the project. None of this is really that new. When I was in college in 1993 I was at a meeting where they brought this same idea up. It never got traction, probably because of the reason I’m hesitant to it. Transportation of the waste is a pretty scary proposition, right?
Except I also have in my head this idea about a professor at UNR who was developing shipping containers for the waste. The only reason I cared about reading the clippings I saw posted on the walls at Mackay Science where I saw them was that he was the father of a couple of kids who went to school with my kids. We had sat with this guy at a few parties and chatted about this and that, but I had no idea what he did. After seeing those, I knew. And the articles that were posted made it seem like there was no way in hell the waste could possibly leak out of them in the event of a catastrophic trainwreck. I walked away thinking that what this guy did was pretty cool and could mean boatloads of money for Nevada, but the politics were in the way. They still seem to be.
So I answered the email survey (something I pretty much never do). I answered it honestly. I said that I pleased with Ty Cobb’s leadership and that I greatly respected his principled stand for all things conservative. I believe his philosophy that there has to actually be a real opposition party is the correct one. I also said I disagreed with some of his principles. I’m not opposed to new taxes, but they better be taxes that help in the long run and don’t just get us out of our current troubles. When asked about Yucca Mountain, I basically said I could be swayed to allow the dump to be placed here, but that I now was very aware of what that meant. Without the perfect plan to ship and store the waste, there are real people we would be affecting. It’s something that I wonder if a Reno assemblyman realizes, just as I failed to realize it before taking a trip that most Reno residents would never have the need to take.
Hopefully, Ty Cobb will read what I said and consider it carefully. Hopefully you have. I would love to know what you think about Yucca Mountain. I understand that a large number of you will have a reaction that says no way no how. But I also wonder if you’ve really thought about it. What if it could bring us out of our economic troubles? What if the shipping really was safe? Would that change your mind? Why or why not? Conversely, what if it’s a really bad idea? Have you ever thought about how it affects the people of Nevada? Whichever side you happen to see yourself on now, it could always do us good to have a grasp of what we’re battling. Let’s think about that. I’d love to hear from you.
Comments
Ann Onn wrote:
I don’t have a strong opinion on Yucca Mountain. I don’t like the idea of having waste hauled to our state and stored here, but the federal government did make a promise to accept the fuel and it has to go somewhere. There’s risk involved with either fighting it (and possibly losing some benefits of accepting it) or accepting it (and possibly being cheated out of the benefits we thought we’d get or being damaged by the waste).
However, is this still a relevant issue? There is reportedly no money in the new Obama budget for Yucca Mountain (other than a small amount to keep the application active and avoid being sued by the nuclear energy companies), and Harry Reid has declared it dead. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said the same thing last week. I know, we’ve been hearing that for decades.
http://www.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009903060430
Mar 12, 05:42 PM
Ryan Jerz wrote:
I saw that Obama hadn’t included funding for Yucca a little bit ago, and I thought about mentioning it. I didn’t because I started thinking that it might not matter. With the person who could effectively become the Republican Assembly leader (I know he’s not and I know that’s a bit of a stretch, but he is the leading conservative) pushing to rethink it, it could very well wind up on the table with the next budget. I think with the federal government, an unpopular item (nuclear waste), pressure from states, and pressure from lobbyists, Yucca might never be dead. And the possibility remains that it shouldn’t be dead.
Mar 12, 09:13 PM
Ron wrote:
I took the tour of Yucca Mt. a couple of years ago. They’re at the point where there isn’t much left to study. I got the impression that the issue is going to come to a head pretty soon. You’re right to focus on the transportation. Even if they go ahead with the Yucca storage facility, there are a lot of power plants on the east coast that would have to ship the stuff across the country. There would be a lot of towns with a lot of angry people along the way.
One of the funny things on the tour was there is a flat spot on top of the mountain where it’s possible to land a helicopter. The scientists refer to it as Harry Reid International Airport. There’s going to be a big push to get Reid out of the way, for this and many other reasons. I think Yucca Mt. is going to be a big issue in 2010.
Mar 13, 06:31 PM
The Anon Guy wrote:
At some point somebody has to make a decision. Is it any wonder we have such budget deficits if we pour billions of tax dollars into a project that might sit empty because of tens of millions of tax dollars fighting it. The waste needs to be somewhere and, wherever it is there will be an outcry over “not in my backyard.”
On a side note, don’t you find it rich how all the Disney crowd (Richard, not Walt) tried to paint Cobb as some kind of liberal in hiding and so on back in 2006. Turned out Cobb’s got more conservative stones than the CobbGobbler ever dreamed of.
Mar 13, 07:01 PM
Ryan Jerz wrote:
“Don’t you find it rich how all the Disney crowd (Richard, not Walt) tried to paint Cobb as some kind of liberal in hiding and so on back in 2006. Turned out Cobb’s got more conservative stones than the CobbGobbler ever dreamed of.”
THIS.
How unbelievably perfect is that statement? I think Disney was even praising him last session or sometime in 2007. For better or worse, Cobb seems to be taking over the badly bruised party. People with genuinely conservative ideals are down with him, and it will work to his advantage simply because there just aren’t a lot of undamaged conservatives in a pretty conservative state. He’s got ambition, I think, and there might not be enough in his way in the next few election cycles to stop him.
Mar 13, 08:05 PM
Elisa wrote:
I was on Nevada Newsmakers with Bruce Breslow (who now heads the nuclear office) – he says there never was some pot of money at the federal level tied to the nuclear waste project. New president or no – this wouldn’t solve our economic woes.
Here’s the fascinating thing about all of the rest of your questions: right now, Nevada takes in a huge amount of toxic and mixed waste (meaning toxic and nuclear). It’s not making us rich. We’re already taking on the risk of transportation (safe or unsafe) of this waste.
State leadership, in my view, would be to take a look at what’s happening in Nevada now and ask: is it properly regulated? (And can you properly regulate if you don’t really believe in government – as some of the GOP wing of the GOP folks are proud to proclaim?) Maybe we should allow the counties receiving this stuff to have more home rule – so they can adequately protect themselves … and make money through taxes and fees? Do these counties have the expertise to really handle all of this?
Federal leadership should be addressing the issue of nuclear waste realistically. Americans should be concerned were storing tons of nuclear waste in facilities (in much larger population centers) that weren’t really designed for long range storage.
Mar 16, 08:17 AM
Robert Payne wrote:
Think about what you have learned and experienced in 30+ years of your life. Imagine what you would know and see if you lived for 10,000+ years.
It is so unfortunate to look at how much money we have wasted bickering over this and think what good it could have done being applied to research that seeks to use all the energy contained in so-called spent fuel rods.
I find it horribly amusing how fast and easily Nevada citizens can change their perspectives when money becomes the issue. “Oh know, we are in an economic downturn, and for so long gambling was funding my unnatural state of being where I never had to pay my the very own infrastructure that I rely on every day and take such great pride in. Why don’t we transport highly toxic nuclear waste into our state, so I can continue to pay less taxes?”
The other part of this issue that bothers me is that it potentially takes the pressure off of other states to deal with their issues of storage, and they have no real incentive to seek alternative forms of energy. I’ll give you an example.
In my neighborhood the citizens have determined that we need two days of trash pickup. They haul their giant loaded trashcans to the street and the trucks come and take it away. The ones that require two days never bother to recycle anything. Myself and others that do recycle, however, only need one day of trash pickup, and even then my trashcan is hardly ever even half full. Think if these people had (or even wanted) to recycle? Or thought about what they bought, used, and threw away?
The point is so many people don’t deal with issues unless they have to. Sad but true.
Do I think that there will be some horrible nuclear disaster at Yucca Mountain? Probably not. Do I think there are containers safe enough for interstate transportation? Yes. But do I think humans are fallible? Yes. And fundamentally I think it is wrong for the state of Nevada to make money as a dumping ground while simultaneously perpetuating a broken system.
Mar 19, 07:11 AM
Commenting is closed for this article.
Today, I got an email from Assemblyman Ty Cobb. I had signed up for his email newsletter some time ago, so I was included along with everyone else who had. Longtime readers of this site will remember that Ty Cobb faced a pretty dirty campaign against him in 2006. But he survived it and went on to re-election in 2008. I have met Ty one time, very briefly, since that ordeal. In fact, it was so brief that I was on my way out of a function and only stopped to introduce myself and be on my way.
Ryan Jerz is an all-around good guy who shoots photos and video, builds websites, and works in athletics at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received a Masters Degree in 2007 from the University of Nevada, Reno's Reynolds School of Journalism.