Democracy in Peril

By Steve Sebelius

POTS AND KETTLES: Yucca Mountain is an issue so slathered with rhetorical excess, it takes jackhammers, high-pressure hoses and a healthy dose of sulfuric acid to chip away the hyperbole and get down to the real issue.

And very often, it's our own Nevada congressional delegation ladling on additional coats of over-the-top bloviation.

Sometimes it works, such as the infamous nickname for the bill that designated Nevada as the state in which to bury nuclear waste: "Screw Nevada." Or former Sen. Richard Bryan's famous "mobile Chernobyl" tagline for trains and trucks carrying waste across the country. Even former Sen. Chic Hecht's "nuclear suppository" made for good theater.

But it doesn't always work.

Take Friday, for example, when Rep. Jon Porter attended a hearing in Las Vegas that focused on the dangers of shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. It's the kind of hearing tailor-made for anti-Yucca remarks.

At one point, Porter was questioning an official from the Energy Department. Why, he asked the man, would the government continue planning to send nuclear waste to Nevada while the state has a lawsuit pending in court?

Because, the official replied simply, Congress passed a law that ordered the government to ship nuclear waste to Nevada.

Okay, then. Doesn't Porter look silly? Because the fact is, Congress DID pass a law ordering the Energy Department to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. And to expect anyone in the national bureaucracy to put everything on hold because of litigation is silly.

But instead of retreating to lick his wounds, Porter pressed on: Let's put the rhetoric aside, he said sternly.

The rhetoric? What rhetoric? The old "we're-just-doing-what-Congress-told-us-to-do" rhetoric? Yeah, that gets them every time. What a crack-up.

In fact, it was Porter who was trying to use rhetoric to bludgeon the Energy Department, and a canny bureaucrat wasn't going to take it. In the end, it was Porter who came out on the losing end of this rhetorical skirmish.

The fact is, Yucca Mountain is bad for Nevada. The dump is geologically questionable, we're told to hope that steel casks won't leak for 10,000 years, and every shipment is an accident or terrorist incident waiting to happen.

Of course, the government isn't going to stop planning for transportation because of the state's lawsuit. But the dump is years away at the earliest, and shipments won't start until long after Nevada's case has been heard and decided.

Perhaps in the interim, we can put aside the rhetoric--proffered by Porter and other Republicans--that President Bush just has a disagreement with Nevada on Yucca Mountain, which explains why he's the man who finally signed off on sending nuclear waste here. And that means he's the man most immediately responsible for the planned shipments that Porter finds so objectionable. Instead, why not elect someone who actually agrees with us, and opposes Yucca? Someone like Sen. John Kerry?

And that's no rhetoric.