GOP lawmakers up to their ears in nuclear waste not happy with their candidates Yucca position

[NNN0LHI]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016583096_yucca23.html

GOP candidates anger Republicans supporting Nevada nuclear-waste site

Originally published Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 4:16 PM

By James Rosen and Rob Hotakainen

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers from Washington state and South Carolina, which hold tons of nuclear waste, are none too pleased that leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination are backing President Obama's decision to shutter a central dump designed to store their waste.

When Obama cut funding for the long-planned Yucca Mountain waste repository near Las Vegas in 2009, Republicans accused him of playing politics in a bid to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his tough 2010 Nevada re-election race.

The Yucca site has been extremely unpopular in Nevada since Congress in 2002 authorized building a huge storage vault beneath the mountain as the nation's central nuclear-waste dump.

[Old and In the Way]

1. Wants the problem here?

Don't Republicans want state control of their energy decisions? If it's utility generated nuclear waste, let South Carolina and Washington fund the costs to deal with it. Why should non-nuclear generating states have to pay for this? I know that nuclear power is wholesaled to the grid, but I think the decision to build nuclear power plants remains the domain of the individual state and it's kind of funny to see the Republican Party want a federal solution (and federal tax dollars) to deal with this.