Nuclear Industry Offers Nevada Hush Money [1]
Submitted by Diane Farsetta [2] on
"We all knew it would come to this, didn't we?" a Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial asks, of a new offer by the Nuclear Energy Institute [3] (NEI) to pay Nevada to accept nuclear waste at the controversial Yucca Mountain [4] storage facility. NEI's offer is $25 million per year, which would double "once the first waste shipment arrives." After calling Yucca Mountain a "boondoggle," with "audit after audit" revealing "glaring flaws in the scientific models created to demonstrate the project's long-term viability," the newspaper slams NEI's offer as too low. "The standard for paying off a state's population was set by the Alaska Permanent Fund [5], which collects fees and taxes from oil and mineral exploration and production and offers qualifying residents an annual dividend," it states. This year, Alaska residents received more than $1,100 each; NEI's offer translates to a measly $10 per Nevada resident. In other news, a new poll [6] paid for by NEI and conducted by a former NEI employee [7] found that "nearly seven of 10 Americans favor nuclear energy and 68 percent support building a new reactor at the existing nuclear power plant closest to where they live."