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10/22/2004:

"Bush faces nuclear fallout in Nevada over £60bn mountain of radioactive waste"

by Dan Glaister
Roadworks slow progress along the strip in Las Vegas. In the distance, poking between the mock Eiffel Tower and the mock pyramid at Luxor, cranes stand out against the autumn sky, building the next phase of America's seemingly permanent boom town.

But 95 miles north-east of this city, the powerhouse of Nevada with 36 million visitors a year, lies another construction site.

Yucca Mountain, projected to cost around $60bn (£32.8bn), has been chosen by the Bush administration to be the nation's nuclear waste repository, set to hold the existing 40,000 tons of waste produced to date by the country's nuclear power stations.

"This material is the deadliest substance known to mankind," said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a local group that has campaigned against the repository. "It's one million times more radioactive when it comes out of the reactor core than when it went in."

In February 2002, just over a year after taking office, President Bush recommended the Yucca Mountain site to Congress. But many voters remembered that, as a candidate in September 2000, Mr Bush promised not to approve the site until it had been "deemed scientifically safe", a formulation that is credited with helping him win the state.

Full Article: Guardian UK