The Department of Energy expected 70 people to attend a Las Vegas hearing on environmental impacts of burying highly radioactive wastes at Yucca Mountain. Instead, more than 400 spent over 12 hours Tuesday telling the DOE to keep 77,000 tons of highly radioactive wastes out of Nevada. Yucca Mountain is the only place being studied to become the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository. If it passes scientific muster, it would open by 2010. Howard Hughes Corp. Vice President Tom Warden noted that the DOE failed to look at the economic impacts on the Las Vegas Valley from building a nuclear dump nearby.
Tourism is a choice industry.
People choose to come here or they choose not to come. We believe the economic impact is real. Nuclear Projects Director Bob Loux said. For Berkley, who is serving her first term in the House, the issue loomed large only after she got to Washington. Then came a congressional fight last year over temporary storage of nuclear waste in Nevada.