Consider at the time that then-Rep. Jim Wright, a Texan, was speaker of the House, and then-Rep. Tom Foley of Washington was its majority leader. Also fighting against Nevada was then-Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon, whose state shares the Columbia River with Washington.
Science is irrelevant.
Nevada politicians have spent the past 11 years trying to halt implementation of the federal law. They say there could be transportation accidents or terrorist attacks before the nuclear waste even gets to the dump site. Plans have been to transport the waste through 43 states by road and rail using thousands of casks. The Russian town of Chernobyl was contaminated by a nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986. Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, accused the federal government of seeking to lower safe environmental standards to obtain a repository license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.