Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, known for waffling on issues large and small, made a definite commitment when he was in Las Vegas on Sunday.
"Rest assured Nevada," Kerry said. "If I am president of the United States, Yucca Mountain will not be a repository."
This was nothing like the "sound science" folderol that both George W. Bush and Al Gore issued four years ago. Although Bush has taken the heat - and rightly so, for it was his decision to go ahead with nuclear-waste storage at Yucca Mountain - the statements issued by both candidates at the time were so similar as to be indistinguishable.
Now Kerry has stepped forward with a promise. It echoed an opinion article for the Las Vegas Review-Journal in which he wrote: "It's a shame that the Bush administration has put the financial interests of the nuclear industry above the health and safety of DOE workers and Nevadans. I believe there is a better way to secure Nevada's health, environmental and financial well-being. That includes putting a stop to the dump once and for all."
The skeptics among us believe it's all political posturing, designed to win votes in a state that usually is barely a blip on presidential contenders' radar screens. But after the close call of 2000, Nevada's electoral votes might just matter after all.
Of course it's political posturing. Isn't that what Yucca Mountain has become? For all the science that has, indeed, gone on in the tunnel beneath the Nevada desert and in the laboratories designing casks to last longer than recorded human history, the decisions ultimately are made by politicians in Congress and the White House.
We'd rather those politicians gave us clear choices than dwell in the gray areas of contingency and circumstance. Between Bush and Kerry on the issue of Yucca Mountain, we have that choice.
Kerry hasn't exactly said what he would do with the nuclear waste.
That might be an issue residents of states producing and storing the waste want to explore with the candidate.
