After Decades of Bipartisan Efforts to Keep Yucca Mountain Closed, Cody Whipple Begs for More Nuclear Waste in Nevada

“Can there be disasters? Of course … But those are a long time ago, and everybody’s learned from them” – Whipple

As Nevada’s senators and Congressman Steven Horsford fight to finally shut the door on Yucca Mountain, candidate Cody Whipple is throwing it back open. After decades of bipartisan opposition that successfully kept the project from moving forward and putting Nevadans at risk, Whipple is arguing Nevada should welcome the nation’s nuclear waste, despite the fact that transporting nuclear waste is dangerous to the health of the workers who do it and pose a deadly risk. NV-04 voters have spent decades rejecting Yucca Mountain, making clear they do not want Nevada to be the nation’s nuclear waste dump.

Nevada Independent: Nevada congressional candidate is pro-Yucca Mountain

Key points:

For nearly 40 years, the U.S. government has considered just one place for permanently burying radioactive waste: Yucca Mountain, a ridge 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Opponents had concerns about the project, many of them around transporting radioactive material to the site.

Thanks to staunch opposition from Nevada lawmakers — including the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and former Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) — Yucca Mountain has never come to fruition. This year, President Donald Trump’s administration took steps to move past it, while Nevada’s senators introduced a bill that would repeal the law that made Yucca Mountain a nuclear repository in the first place.

But one congressional candidate wants to put Yucca Mountain back on the table.

According to audio from an August campaign event obtained exclusively by The Indy, rancher and small-business owner Cody Whipple (R) said, “As far as Congressional District 4 … Nye County, Lincoln County, we’ve all been pro-Yucca Mountain for a very long time. I think what happened to the state of Nevada is when they tagged it a ‘dump’ and ‘not great science,’ we really lost out on an opportunity. I mean, right now, Tennessee and Utah are begging the nuclear industry to bring that to them.”

Whipple reiterated the idea that Yucca Mountain has a messaging problem, noting improvements in nuclear reprocessing technology. In his view, bringing spent fuel rods to Yucca Mountain would be safer than the status quo, in which they are stored at the surface next to power plants, creating easy targets for terrorists.

“Can there be disasters?” Whipple asked. “Of course. … But those are a long time ago, and everybody’s learned from them.”

With Whipple on the ballot, voters can once again signal where they stand.

Read full story here

###

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.