NYE COUNTY, NEV. EMPHASIZES LOCAL CONSENT FOR YUCCA MOUNTAIN TO DOE

Local officials in Nye County, Nevada, home of the Yucca Mountain site, reaffirmed support for the repository in a letter sent Tuesday to Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. The move comes after the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future called for a consent-based approach to siting a nuclear waste facility in a community. “We are calling the BRC’s bluff,” Nye County Commissioner Gary Hollis told RW Monitor yesterday. “They wanted a willing community, we got it.” The letter from the Nye County Board of Commissioners includes resolutions from Nye County made over the last decade supporting Yucca, while noting that opposition for the repository has come largely at the state level. The letter asks DOE to meet with Nye County “to initiate the cooperative negotiation process the BRC recommends. We want to explore and define potential incentives, and move this urgently needed program forward as promptly as possible. … Let us start the dialogue now. We do not need to wait.”