Not in my back yard.
Nevadans have been accused of taking a NIMBY stance with regard to nuclear-waste storage at Yucca Mountain -- put down, derided, accused of being less than patriotic, of endangering the nation's security.
Sorry. Not true. Won't hold water.
We, as Nevadans, vow to store every bit of nuclear-power waste we produce. Swear to God and the Department of Energy.
It's those other people's crap we don't want.
We're not the NIMBYs. They are.
Around the country, there are 103 nuclear power plants. Not one of them is in Nevada.
There are 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel being stored around the nation. None of it is in Nevada.
So who's saying "Not in my back yard"? Lots of people -- all of them then adding, "So let's put it in Nevada's back yard."
On Wednesday, columnist Duane D. Freese wrote for a Web site named Tech Central Station that the federal government appeared ready to "give the green light" to opening Yucca Mountain for storage.
"The decision by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will likely outrage environmental groups and key Nevada politicians who have vigorously fought the opening of the facility for years. It won't be the last word on the issue, by any means," Freese wrote.
"But don't let the howls of protest that emanate from green circles fool you. The decision to open Yucca Mountain in Nevada is a good one and comes not a moment too soon," he added.
Well, it's not just the green circles who are howling. But it's worth noting the main reason Yucca Mountain was chosen is precisely because nobody else wants it.
Bunch of NIMBYs.
The folks griping that Nevada won't willingly bend over and take their radioactive waste also tend to blame Sen. Harry Reid for "playing politics" in keeping it out.
Thanks, Harry.
It's not like politics didn't lead to the "Screw Nevada" bill that designated Yucca Mountain as the sole place to study for nuclear waste in the first place.
A New Republic article from November does a nice job of summing up how we got where we are.
Since the 1950s, a variety of ideas have been raised -- dumping canisters in the sea, freezing them in Arctic ice, firing them into space. Even the possibility of recycling nuclear waste -- what a concept.
But the conclusion of Congress in 1982 was to bury the waste underground. The Department of Energy was to begin looking for sites under what the New Republic called a "wary regional compromise" to place one nuclear dump in the East and one in the West.
"The fragile deal quickly fell apart," wrote Michael Crowley. "In the early 1980s, for instance, when then-Democratic Sen. John Stennis discovered that a storage site was being considered in Mississippi, he convened a special committee hearing to berate Energy Department officials.
"According to nuclear waste specialist Robert Alvarez, who attended the hearing, it turned out that the site that so upset Stennis was located near property owned by his sister. The plan was abandoned."
I guess that would be a NIMSBY. Not in my sister's back yard.
The search for a site then moved to Texas, Washington and Nevada in the West. In the East, where the thought was to store the waste in granite deposits, the DOE looked at Maine and New Hampshire.
So Maine Sen. George Mitchell pushed for an amendment in 1987 barring even the consideration of storage of nuclear waste in granite, according to Crowley.
That made it a NIMGY argument. Not in Maine's granite yard.
Quick to follow were then-House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas and his successor Tom Foley of Washington.
NIMTY and NIMWY, if you're keeping track.
"The result was legislation, crafted with what The New York Times called 'stunning abruptness' and tucked into a $600 billion budget bill, that singled out Nevada's barren Yucca Mountain as the only site the government could consider," summarized Crowley.
They were, no doubt, thinking of some new definitions of NIMBY. Nevada Isn't My Back Yard. Nevada Is Mostly Bumbling Yokels.
Since then, Reid and former Sen. Richard Bryan led the way in trying to thwart the Yucca Mountain project at every turn. As it became increasingly clear Yucca Mountain was going to be recommended, no matter the geologic issues, the campaign turned to alerting cities along the routes all that nuclear waste may be shipped.
Some suggest Nevadans should quit fighting nuclear waste. Lie back and enjoy it, they say. But I haven't heard anybody offering their states instead.
So if they want to call us NIMBYs, let 'em. It can be our slogan, because we'll know what it really stands for.
Not In a Million Bleepin' Years.
Barry Smith is managing editor of the Nevada Appeal.
