White House is 'done with Yucca'

ST. GEORGE - The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site is finished, according to the White House, after administration officials announced a 15-person commission to find alternatives Friday.

The administration appointed former Rep. Lee Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft to run the commission, which includes scientists, industry representatives and former lawmakers. The commission is given 18 months to produce an interim report on better ways to store spent nuclear rods, with final results due within 24 months.

"Expanding our Nation's capacity to generate clean nuclear energy is crucial to our ability to combat climate change, enhance security, and increase economic prosperity," President Barack Obama wrote in a letter to the Department of Energy. "My Administration is undertaking substantial steps to expand the safe, secure, and responsible use of nuclear energy."

Yucca Mountain has been pegged as the nation's first permanent nuclear waste repository for more than 20 years, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Nevada lawmakers strongly oppose using the site, located about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. President Obama has said he doesn't see Yucca Mountain as a viable option, and White House energy adviser Carol Browner said the White House is "done with Yucca."

The move could eliminate several concerns for Southern Utah residents, such as the transportation of the waste through Utah, and possible fallout from any accidents at a location so nearby, but some local "Downwinders," those who were affected by nuclear testing in the 1950s and '60s with increased rates of cancers and other serious diseases, remain cynical about any efforts by government regarding nuclear energy.

"A lot of us are still licking our wounds over the fact that they thought so little of us to test these nuclear bombs over our heads when we were babies or little children," said Michele Thomas, St. George, who was officially declared a Downwinder when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 - the same type of cancer found in Japanese women in Nagasaki and Hiroshima after the World War II bombings.

Thomas called the commission a political move to stall any real decisions, and said the issue won't be solved by simply moving the waste to a different site - maybe even a site like the EnergySolutions facility outside Salt Lake City.

"Once you're a Downwinder and you've spent your whole life, decades, fighting to stay alive, you don't wish this on anyone," she said.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Program has approved payments of almost $700 million in monetary compensation to almost 14,000 people who were found to have suffered.

Still, the move away from Yucca as a plan is an important step, and something positive for Southern Utah residents, said Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, whose father Scott Matheson, Utah's former governor, died of a rare form of cancer suspected to be fallout-related.

"I'm glad they're looking for alternatives beyond Yucca, because it was a flawed concept in a lot of ways, not the least of which was that the transportation risk was never evaluated," Jim Matheson said. "The site risk was, but not the transportation risk. That's really the big issue for Utah, because about 90-95 percent of this waste, if it were to go to Yucca, would come through Utah."

Vanessa Pierce, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL Utah), said the Yucca site was chosen as a political answer to larger states looking for a place to store the waste.

"It became known as the 'Screw Nevada Bill,'" she said.

Pierce said industry leaders would generally now support a hardened on-site storage system, which would buy more time - a hundred years or more - for technology to discover a way to better deal with the waste. In the meantime, the commission is unlikely to find a permanent solution.

"There has been $100 billion spent to try and find ways to deal with spent nuclear rods, all over the world," Pierce said. "All the commission can do is kick the can down the road."