By Rich Vosepka
Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a self-described betting man, said Tuesday he doesn't like the odds for transporting nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Used nuclear fuel from reactors and other waste from around the country would be shipped to a spot about 90 miles from Las Vegas under the plan, which President Bush supports as the country's permanent solution to waste storage.

"I don't know that you could do anything 96,000 times and not have something go wrong," Goodman said, referring to the number of nuclear shipments expected to reach Nevada.

Goodman's not making book on where a disaster could happen, but he said it could be in any of the 43 states the shipments are expected to cross.

"This is not Nevada's problem, this is the nation's problem," he said, standing among other Nevada politicians and Utah leaders who oppose Yucca Mountain.

Supporters of the plan, including Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of nuclear utilities, have said that waste shipments have been traversing the nation's roads and rails for years, all without incident.

But history is no comfort to some in Utah, who lived downwind from nuclear bomb tests in Nevada during the 1950s.

"We believed our government, and they lied to us," said Rep. Jim Matheson, a Utah Democrat. At the time, government officials told those living in southern Utah, downwind from the tests, that there was no danger. Today, the government is making restitution payments to those "downwinders" for radiation exposure suffered after the tests.

Matheson views Yucca Mountain nuclear storage in the same light.

"It isn't about the science. It's about the East Coast dumping its waste on the West," Matheson said.

Scott Northard, director of nuclear asset management for Xcel Energy, said earlier that having a single spot for waste storage is safer and less expensive than monitoring the stuff at scattered locations.

But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday the Yucca Mountain plan is no permanent solution. Underground storage tunnels will be full by 2036, and hauling the waste across country is a crap shoot.

"The best thing to do is leave it where it is in dry-cask storage," Reid said. "It will be safe, safe for 100 years. Science can come up with something to do with it in the next 100 years."

Reid said he also opposes a plan by a Utah American Indian tribe to temporarily store waste on its reservation while Yucca Mountain is built.

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and the state's two U.S. senators, Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, have been adamant in their opposition to storing waste — even temporarily — on Utah's Skull Valley Band of Goshutes Reservation, but none of the three Republicans has broken ranks with President Bush on the Yucca Mountain plan.

Mayor Goodman of Las Vegas, meanwhile, says he will arrest the driver of any vehicle carrying nuclear waste through his town.

May 29, 2002

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