Word: nevadas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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California 59% Arizona 37% Nevada...
...view from the top of Yucca Mountain in Nevada sweeps down past hillsides tangled with creosote bush to the rocky, sun-baked desert floor, with Las Vegas about 90 miles to the southeast. The proximity to that city is a problem for Nevadans--and perhaps for the future of nuclear power in this country--because the Federal Government wants to bury inside Yucca Mountain the most toxic garbage that humankind has produced: 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste generated by America's 103 nuclear power plants. A thousand feet below the mountain's peak, a tunneling machine called...
That makes Nevadans angry and afraid. They are worried that radioactivity from the underground storage facility could eventually leak, contaminating nearby groundwater. They have protested with lawsuits, letter-writing campaigns and public demonstrations near the site in Nevada where nuclear devices were once exploded. Yet they have been powerless to block the project. Nevada has long been the Federal Government's atomic playground (928 nuclear bombs were detonated at the Nevada Test Site from 1951 to 1992), and the state's politicians haven't had any clout in Washington...
...them does. Last May, Nevada's Democratic Senator Harry Reid succeeded in persuading Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords to bolt the Republican Party. Jeffords' switch gave Democrats control of the Senate--and promoted Reid from minority to majority whip, a perch he is currently trying to use to block the Bush Administration from putting the nuclear dump in his state. "This is wrong what they're trying to do," insists Reid. Last May, majority leader Tom Daschle flew to Las Vegas to speak at a fund raiser for Reid. "As long as we're in the majority," Daschle vowed, "[the Yucca...
...construction of new nuclear power plants (the technology now supplies about 20% of the nation's electricity), but that won't happen unless the industry finds a place to store the spent fuel rods now being held in temporary facilities at plants across the country. The state of Nevada can veto Bush's decision, but the veto can be overridden if both houses of Congress pass resolutions approving the site. And that's where Reid has a chance...