Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is among a growing list of presidential candidates voicing opposition to disposal of nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
“Trump is proposing to send our nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain,” Sanders tweeted on May 16. “That would be a disaster. We must stop building new nuclear power plants, and find a real solution to our existing nuclear waste problem.”
His Twitter message was accompanied by a two-minute video highlighting potential dangers of the selected site about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The location is on top of an aquifer in a seismically active region, according to the video, which features a representative of the Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone, which is headquartered near Yucca Mountain in Elko, Nev.
“What’s gonna happen when we have this poison in this mountain?” Mary Gibson says in the video, which also features a clip of President Donald Trump making comments in Nevada last October suggesting his administration would consider other options for a waste repository.
The White House has in the last three budget cycles requested funding to resume licensing for the disposal site which the Obama administration halted in 2010. For the upcoming fiscal 2020, the Department of Energy, the license applicant, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the adjudicator, would together receive about $150 million for the work.
In campaign stops in Nevada and in other venues, a number of candidates for the Democratic Party nomination for president have already questioned or said they outright oppose sending waste to Nevada. They include Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)., Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D).
The senators are all co-sponsors to legislation from Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) that would require local and state consent for any nuclear waste disposal site.
