Democrats say GOP platform pushes Yucca Mountain project

Democrats say Republican John Ensign may be speaking out against Yucca Mountain but that his party's platform is behind it all the way.

Ensign told delegates to the national GOP convention in Philadelphia Monday he will fight every step of the way to prevent high-level nuclear waste from coming to Nevada. He promised to work with the new president to find a different and better way to store or dispose of nuclear waste if elected.

State Democratic Party officials said Tuesday, however, that the Republican platform "condemns the Clinton Administration for not moving fast enough to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain."

That platform plank says, "Nuclear plants are choking on waste because the current administration breached its contract to remove it - and then vetoed bipartisan legislation to store it at a safe, permanent repository for which taxpayers have already paid $7 billion."

"John Ensign is obviously too busy reading from the special interest playbook to pay attention to platforms or bills, even when they threaten to turn our state into a nuclear dumping ground," said State Democratic Party Chairman Rory Reid.