MUTH'S TRUTHS 08/16/2013

YUCCA LIVES!

For years, Nevadans have generally only heard one side of the Yucca Mountain story – the side our elite political class, led by Sen. Harry Reid, and most of the mainstream media want us to hear. 

As such, despite a court ruling this week reviving the Yucca Mountain licensing process by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Nevadans pretty much were led to believe that when Reid said the ruling was meaningless, it was. 

But many folks outside of Nevada have a decidedly different interpretation.  Here’s one by columnist Kim Strassel that appeared in today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal…

POTOMAC WATCH

Harry Reid's Yucca Bluff

Despite the senator's obstructionism, the Nevada nuclear waste facility has a chance of going forward

(Kim Strassel) - According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository in his home state of Nevada is dead, dead, dead, and no amount of huffing from the judiciary changes that. Don't believe it.

The D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals this week delivered a scathing rebuke to the Obama administration, ordering it to restart work on the Yucca licensing process. Mr. Reid went into full spin mode, declaring that the order "means nothing," because he has guaranteed the project has "no money." "The place is locked up, it's padlocked," he declared. "Nothing is happening with Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is an afterthought."

This is bluster, even if the media swallowed it whole. Make no mistake, Mr. Reid has for years single-handedly thwarted Congress's will to create a deep storage facility for spent fuel in Nevada. It was Mr. Reid who used his perch on the Senate Appropriations Committee to routinely cut back Yucca money. It was Mr. Reid who in 2004 held up Bush nominees until his handpicked aide—Gregory Jaczko—was installed at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005

It was Mr. Reid who in 2009 demanded President Obama elevate Mr. Jaczko to chief of the NRC, where his puppet would go on to withhold and manipulate information about Yucca (according to an inspector general report), bully staff, and unilaterally run the place. When Mr. Jaczko last year resigned in disgrace, Mr. Reid installed as chief another anti-Yucca partisan, Allison Macfarlane, and he has used his Senate power to deny the project money.

Such has been one senator's ability to render the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 30 years of work, and $15 billion of federal funds, moot.

Mr. Reid's goal now is to continue the impression that any further efforts on Yucca are futile. In fact, the court ruling has the potential to get this project back on track. That is, if a bipartisan Congress uses this moment to finally break Mr. Reid's obstructionism.

Mr. Jaczko shut down the Yucca process in October 2010, a month before NRC staff was due to release its all-important safety evaluation. The timing was deliberate, and desperate.

Years in the making, the safety report will answer the question necessary for the project to proceed: Does Yucca comply with the law's requirement that a waste facility be safe for one million years? Congressional staff who have seen a redacted report tell me the staff's answer is yes.

Mr. Reid is determined to keep this report from going public, since he knows it could dramatically increase the pressure—in particular from Congress—to move forward with Yucca. This is Mr. Reid's first problem.

The NRC keeps claiming its $11.1 million in Yucca funds isn't enough to complete the licensing project. True. But a House staffer tells me that NRC staff has indicated it could finish the safety review in six to eight months, and at a cost of about $6.5 million. So there is more than enough money to get that crucial document into the public debate, if Congress holds Ms. Macfarlane to her legal obligations.

Congress has the tools. All five NRC commissioners are on record promising to honor the D.C. Circuit ruling. More important, Congress has a willing ally in the NRC staff, which remains furious that the Jaczko-Reid duo tanked years of its work. NRC staffers have publicly called on Congress to help get their product to the public, and they can surely be enlisted now in a campaign to finish the safety review.

Following that review, the Yucca process turns to adjudicating Nevada's objections. That would indeed be costly. Then again, funding for Yucca is not a problem. The nuclear industry annually pays into a fund that today totals about $28 billion. All Congress needs to do is appropriate the money.

And this is Mr. Reid's second problem: There is huge support to do just that. The House in July voted overwhelmingly—335 to 81—to block Nevadan Joe Heck's attempt to strip from an appropriations bill $25 million for Yucca. A whopping 118 Democrats voted with Republicans, including Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer and Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn.

Things are of course different in the Senate, where Mr. Reid long has let his colleagues know that their own priorities live or die based on their allegiance to his Yucca cause. Mr. Reid will undoubtedly lean on California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who runs energy and water appropriations, and he may also try to slip an anti-Yucca provision into any end-year budget deal.

Yet House Republicans aren't without leverage in that fight over the budget and debt ceiling. If they choose to make Yucca—and adherence to the law—a priority, they'd be well in their rights to demand routine Yucca funding. No doubt many Democrats would be happy to use a broader budget deal as an excuse to finally buck Mr. Reid's one-man opposition to this vital project.

Mr. Reid isn't the nation's nuclear regulator, and he isn't a law unto himself. The D.C. Circuit court has given Congress a new chance to remind him of that.

CANDIDATE 101 TRAINING WORKSHOP

I’ll be conducting a FREE Candidate 101 Workshop in Carson City, Nevada on Monday night, September 9 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.  Candidates, prospective candidates, campaign volunteers, campaign managers, party leaders and grassroots activist will all find this entry-level workshop extremely beneficial.  You’ll discover…

• 15 “Muth’s Truths” about running a campaign – including how to deal with the “liberal” media
• 17 things to do BEFORE launching your campaign
• The 10 worst mistakes of losing candidates (and how you can avoid them!)
• The 20 questions you better be able to answer before asking for a single vote or a single dollar

To register to attend, go to: http://citizenoutreach.org/workshop/

Seating is extremely limited, so register TODAY.  The exact location of the workshop will be provided once you complete the online registration form