Harry Reid has used his clout to help stop the Yucca Mountain project. Reid loss could reopen nuke debate

Opponents of a Nevada nuclear waste dump thought they’d finally managed to kill the Yucca Mountain project. Then came Sharron Angle.

The tea party-backed Republican stands a good chance at ousting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has spent much of his career fighting the nuclear repository. And without a senior Nevada lawmaker in position to fend off Yucca’s supporters, the project could have new life.


A Yucca kick-start would be welcome news to the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear lawmakers who see the lack of a long-term repository as a roadblock for what they foresee as a U.S. nuclear renaissance.

Nuclear power has become a central tenet of congressional Republicans’ energy agenda; senators like John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander say expanding the power source will help to cut dependence on foreign oil and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Democrats and the Obama administration have shown a willingness to compromise on the issue, and nuclear is posed to be a focal point of energy talks next year on Capitol Hill if Republicans make major electoral gains.

Reid often takes credit for killing the multibillion-dollar Yucca project by leading efforts to starve its funding and prodding the Obama administration to explore alternative sites. But Congress is full of powerful lawmakers eager to restart the project, and Yucca opponents fear that the rest of the Nevada delegation won’t be strong enough to fend them off if Reid loses.

“The idea of losing Senator Reid for those people that are opposed to Yucca Mountain being the national repository is devastating,” said Rep. Shelley Berkley, who could be the only Democrat in Nevada's congressional delegation next year.

“We’ve been fighting this for so long and people have become so accustomed to it that I don’t think they realize how important Senator Reid has been to stopping it," she added.

In 1987, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act – known to Nevadans as the “Screw Nevada” bill – to identify Yucca as the nation’s nuclear waste repository. Reid first joined the U.S. Senate that same year, and he’s fought against the project ever since.

Nevada’s other senator, Republican John Ensign, is also opposed to the repository, but he resigned from his leadership position last year after his extramarital with a former campaign aide became public. “He’s at this point castrated,” Democratic State Rep. Richard Segerblom said of Ensign.

More unusual for the Nevada delegation is that Angle has signaled that she’d be open to using the site to reprocess spent nuclear waste in order to kick-start the Silver State’s economy.

"I've always voted against making Nevada the nuclear waste dump of the nation," Angle said at her mid-October debate with Reid, adding, "We need to quit demonizing the nuclear energy industry."

Even if she wanted to completely stop the repository, Angle would enter the Senate near the bottom of the totem pole and likely wouldn’t have the clout to play much defense against her colleagues.

Yucca proponents are already eyeing the possibilities if Reid doesn’t return next year.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the likely chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee next year, said Reid has “been able to put the kibosh on the nuclear industry" over the past few years.

“If he’s not there, we're going to be able to look at not only reprocessing, but also Yucca, then that’s a much more favorable treatment to a non-greenhouse gas emitting industry that needs to be part of the mix," Upton said.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) – who stands to be the next House speaker – has signaled that the project could be revived under his watch.

Most Republicans have supported the Yucca repository but it hasn’t been finished because “it’s not politically correct," Boehner said in August, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. “We've invested tens of billions of dollars in a storage facility that's as safe as anything we're going to find.”

More than 20 years of study and at least $9 billion in taxpayer cash have already gone into the project and the nuclear industry and utility commissioners want the long-term certainty that comes with knowing where the waste will go.

“Moving forward with a better waste management solution is one more thing that can help accelerate the ‘Nuclear Renaissance,” said James Connaughton, executive vice president of public policy at Constellation Energy Group Inc. and former environmental adviser to President George W. Bush.

“The dogmatic resistance to Yucca as the place where [long-term storage] can occur has been an impediment to the revival of that vision," he added.

South Carolina and Washington are among those suing the Energy Department in a federal court to cease the dismantling of the Yucca site. And in July, a bipartisan group of more than 90 lawmakers urged DOE to immediately halt actions to dismantle the site until the legal action was resolved.

But President Barack Obama isn’t showing any signs of relenting on the issue, and the administration signaled it would continue to oppose the site even if Reid loses his election.

Obama – who won Nevada in 2008 – campaigned on a promise to close the Yucca site. His administration drained funding to the project and set up a “blue ribbon commission” to find alternative storage sites. DOE has also petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withdraw Yucca’s license application, which would terminate the project for good.

“The science has advanced substantially in the past 30 years, and we believe there are better options than Yucca Mountain,” for the long-term storage of nuclear waste, said Heather Zichal, the president's deputy assistant for energy and climate.

But Yucca critics say it’s not certain that the administration’s opposition would be as unyielding without Reid around, and they worry that Obama might not veto legislation funding Yucca should Congress approve it.

Even if the administration sticks to its promise, it’s unclear what would happen when the next president comes along.

“If Obama were to lose in 2012, whoever comes in is not going to be nearly as friendly to Nevada, you can assume,” said Jon Ralston, a political columnist at the Las Vegas Sun. If Reid’s gone, “then what happens?”

But Reid and the White House aren’t the only impediments to Yucca surging ahead. Other lawmakers are wary of the project and it will likely be tough to justify spending the billions needed on the project during an economic downturn.

A Yucca resurgence is “not necessarily a slam dunk” if Nevada loses seniority in Congress, said Mark Menezes, an industry lawyer at Hunton & Williams and former GOP staffer to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “There are still skeptics galore on the Hill with respect to nuclear power.”

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.