Political cartoon by Tom EngelhardtThe President-Elect Donald J. Trump parade of bad nuclear ideas has already begun. Bloomberg News reports that "Trump advisors eye reviving Nevada nuclear waste dump."
Over the past 30 years, since the "Screw Nevada bill" of 1987 was initially rammed through Congress, more than a thousand environmental, environmental justice, and public interest groups, representing every state in the union, have successfully staved off the proposal to open a national high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, located on Western Shoshone Indian land.
In 2009-2010, President Obama declared the Yucca dump "unworkable" -- although scientifically unsuitable and environmentally unjust would have been better -- and wisely cancelled the project. U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), long-serving U.S. Senate Democratic Leader, devoted his career to de-funding and blocking the Yucca dump.
But both Obama and Reid are leaving office in January. The likes of U.S. Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI) and John Shimkus (R-IL), on the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee, have long sought to revive the Yucca dump, on behalf of the lobbyists from the nuclear power industry. Now the President-Elect Trump administration seems amenable to "screwing Nevada," all over again, despite the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future's clear recommendation that radioactive waste dump siting must be "consent-based."