SEISMIC SHIFT: SENATOR PUSHES NEW MEXICO -- NOT YUCCA MT. -- AS ALTERNATE SITE FOR NATION’S HIGH LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP

(Washington D.C. – April 9, 2008) Congresswoman Shelley Berkley today issued the following statement in response to Senator Pete Domenici’s (R-NM) call for a look at New Mexico as an alternate site for burying nuclear waste now thought to be headed to Yucca Mountain. Domenici’s statement that salt domes in New Mexico could be used in place of Yucca Mountain to store high level nuclear waste came this afternoon during a Senate hearing on funding for the proposed repository 90 minutes outside Las Vegas. Also testifying at the hearing was Ward Sproat, Director of the Energy Department’s nuclear waste office. In his remarks, Sproat called for a $100 million increase in funding for Yucca Mountain over the previous year. The Congresswoman’s statement on the hearing is as follows:

“Senator Domenici today dropped a bombshell on the DOE when he said we should be looking at New Mexico as an alternative to Nevada for high level nuclear waste disposal. The myth that Yucca Mountain is the only place we can store this radioactive waste has been shattered by the senior Senator from New Mexico. He calls Yucca Mountain a box canyon because its failures cannot be overcome, including an $80 billion price tag and the risk to 50 million Americans from decades of nuclear waste shipments to Nevada.

“Ward Sproat’s testimony is a swan song for President Bush’s plan to turn Nevada into a nuclear waste dump. His comments cement the fact that the only waste piling up at Yucca Mountain are the billions of dollars that have been spent on this hole in the Nevada desert.

“Although Senator Craig is wrong to continue targeting Nevada, he is right when he admits that reprocessing waste going forward does not eliminate our nation’s waste problem. Unfortunately under this administration, all roads lead back to Yucca Mountain and that is why I will continue fighting to see that funding is cut for this $80 billion mountain of radioactive pork.

“Experts agree that we can safely leave waste at the plants where it is produced, in secure dry-cask storage, for the next 100 years. On-site storage avoids the risks of transporting this toxic garbage, not once, but possibly multiple times, and leaves open the option to end Yucca Mountain while we look for real solutions to this problem.

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