GOP candidates’ Yucca stance could be liability in South Carolina

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) warned the Republican presidential candidates Thursday that their stance on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository could be a liability in South Carolina, a key early primary state.

Duncan took to the House floor Thursday to bash the candidates for saying at a recent debate that the long-planned and long-delayed nuclear waste repository should not be built in Nevada because people there oppose it.

“I was deeply disappointed when the presidential candidates were recently asked about Yucca Mountain,” Duncan said. “I was astonished that these good folks would echo the failed rhetoric of Sen. Harry Reid.”

Reid, the Senate majority leader from Nevada, is a longtime opponent of the Yucca Mountain project, which Congress selected as the country’s nuclear waste storage site in 1987.

After years of delay, the Obama administration abandoned the project, infuriating many Republicans, who said the decision was politically motivated.

But GOP hopefuls Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Ron Paul broke with many Republicans in Congress at a Nevada debate last month by opposing Yucca Mountain.

“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 governor of Massachusetts, said during the debate, which was held in Las Vegas.

Nevada is an early-voting state in the GOP nominating process and will be an important swing state in the general election.

Duncan warned that the GOP candidates could face a backlash in South Carolina for their opposition to Yucca Mountain. South Carolina is home to the Savannah River Site, which is temporarily storing radioactive waste.

“I would remind all the presidential candidates of the federal government's promise to construct a long-term storage facility for the legacy weapons materials temporarily being stored in South Carolina,” Duncan said. “And I would remind them that this is the law of the land.”

“I suspect that many South Carolina voters, including myself, will expect to hear the presidential candidates' plan to solve this problem during their next visit to the Palmetto State.”