Romney: Nevada ‘ought to have the final say’ on Yucca nuclear waste dump

GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney said Tuesday that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada should not be built in the state because people there oppose it.

Romney, who along with Herman Cain is at the head of the GOP field, drew cheers at a debate when stating the federal government should not “jam it down their throat.”

“If Nevada says ‘look we don’t want it,’ then let other states make bids and say ‘hey look, we will take it, here is a geological site that we have evaluated, here is the compensation we want for taking it,” Romney, the former Massachusets governor, said at the Las Vegas debate.

Nevada’s plan for a mid-January caucus makes it a crucial early contest in the nomination battle, and the Yucca Mountain plan has been a much-debate issue there for years. 

Candidates Ron Paul and Rick Perry also said Tuesday that the state should be able to reject the long-delayed high-level nuclear waste repository.

Nevada congressional representatives, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), oppose Yucca, but it's nonetheless a politically tricky issue in the GOP contest.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nuclear power industry and many congressional Republicans back construction of a waste repositiory at Yucca Mountain, which Congress selected as the site for deep geologic waste storage in 1987.

House Republicans have attacked the Obama administration's efforts to abandon Yucca project.

Romney said power companies should compensate a state that wants to house a geologic nuclear waste repository.

“Let the free market work, and on that basis the places that are geologically safe according to science and where the people say the deal is a good one will decide where we put this stuff. That is the right course for America,” Romney said to cheers.

Paul, a Texas congressman, called it a states’ right issue.

“I approach it from a state’s right position. What right do 49 states have to punish one state and say we are going to put our garbage in your state. I think that’s wrong,” Paul said to loud cheers and applause.

Perry, the Texas governor who has been slipping in the polls, agreed that states should be able to decide, adding “some state out there will see the economic issue and they will have it in their state.”

But former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia), while stopping short of a full-throated Yucca endorsement, suggested going forward with Yucca is a good policy.

He said the current storage of nuclear waste at reactor sites around the country is “vastly more dangerous” than building a centralized, deep geologic repository.

Asked if Yucca is the way to go, he replied, “I am not a scientist,” but added: “We have to find some method of finding a geologically stable place, and most geologists believe that in fact Yucca Mountain is that place.”

Andrew Restuccia contributed

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