Wheels Down at Harry Reid International: Las Vegas Airport Renamed for Yucca-Slaying Senator
Starting this week, travelers arriving in Las Vegas will land at an airport named for the U.S. senator arguably responsible for the demise of the nation’s only potential nuclear waste repository.
During a Tuesday ceremony at the airport formerly known as McCarran, the facility was officially renamed for former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). In a statement Tuesday, Reid said that the renaming was “the greatest of honors.”
“Home means Nevada, and for me, the airport long ago became synonymous with home,” Reid said.
My statement following the Harry Reid International Airport Renaming Ceremony pic.twitter.com/GK3Np4kWdh
— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) December 14, 2021
Reid, who retired from Congress in 2017 after a 30-year tenure, is famously known for his opposition to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nye County, Nev. The former senator successfully lobbied then-President Barack Obama in 2010 to pull the site’s license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and cut its funding. A successor to the moribund federal repository has yet to emerge.
The Clark County Commission agreed to a proposal to change McCarran’s name in February. The airport was previously named for former Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nev.), who represented the Silver State from 1933 to 1954. County Commissioner Tick Segerblom (D), who tried to rename the airport while serving as a state senator in 2017, called attention to the late McCarran’s politics, which he said at the time were “textbook white nationalism.”
“Las Vegas’s main airport was named McCarran to honor his work establishing the U.S. Air Force and to commemorate his role in passing important airline regulations,” Segerblom said in a platform statement on his website. “But we can’t ignore the darker aspects of the man’s legacy.”
Obituary: Phillip “Phill” Bradbury (1937-2021)
Phillip Bradbury, a nuclear engineer who worked on cleanup at Three Mile Island’s Unit 1, passed away earlier this month, according to an obituary published this week.
Bradbury, who died in his home Dec. 1, was responsible for design selection and construction of the defueling system used for Bechtel National’s cleanup work at Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 following the 1979 meltdown of the plant’s Unit 2 reactor, according to the obituary published in the Knoxville News Sentinel Dec. 10.
Most recently, Bradbury was vice president of government and site operations for British Nuclear Fuels in Washington from 1991 until his retirement in 2000. Before that, he was vice president of Bechtel National’s environmental and nuclear fuel cycle businesses in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Bradbury, who was born in the U.K., emigrated to the U.S. in 1970 to work at Westinghouse. He held a Bachelor’s degree in theoretical physics from Queen Mary College, London University and Master’s level studies in math and physics.
