LAS VEGAS -- A congressional report that questions the government's progress on Yucca Mountain not only confirms that building a nuclear waste dump in Nevada is a bad idea but also shows that the Energy Department is desperate, Sen. Harry Reid said yesterday.
"They are just bound and determined to push Yucca Mountain down the throats of the American people. The Department of Energy should be ashamed of itself," Reid, D-Nev., said.
Reid made his comments during a break in a public meeting to discuss the proposed repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Reid and state and county officials met to talk about the preliminary results of a county study detailing the economic and social impact of building the dump.
On Friday, a draft report by the General Accounting Office recommended that the Bush administration indefinitely postpone a decision on whether to build a nuclear waste dump in Nevada.
The report said it may be years before some of the technical issues are worked out.
The report also concluded that the Energy Department is not ready to make a site recommendation on a waste dump. Yucca Mountain is the only site being studied as a possible repository for the nation's 77,000 tons of nuclear waste.
In a letter to the GAO, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham called the report's conclusions "fatally flawed."
"How can he, in the face of what's going on here, write that letter? I think it's foolishness on his part," Reid, the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, said yesterday. "They have gotten so desperate they're not willing to look ahead five years."
