Show Yucca Mountain remains Nuclear waste choice Ralph Los Angeles Times Henry Williams a Indian from Bishop drove an hour south to a meeting hall to o deliver his tribes tribe's verdict on the contested federal plan to bury nuclear waste inside Nevadas Nevada's Yucca Mountain about 16 miles from the California borderI border I am here to speak for my family he told a public hearing last week held by federal government We have been here for thousands of years Our spirits in inthis inthis inthis this area are totally against this The federal plan federal plan to bury nuclear waste at a dump in Yucca Mountain hasi has encountered i f d O one setback after another in the courts It in much fuch of the West It looks like it is in deep political trouble in Congress And a number of presidential candidates have attacked the dump But the wheels of the US U.S. Energy Department bureaucracy are still going through the exacting legal steps to get a license for Yucca Mountain where it wants to bury 70 metric tons of spent commercial fuel and nuclear weapons waste In the 1 ast week the department has held a series of public hearings on two environmental impact statements a process required under federal law At the hearing in Hawthorne Nev only four local people showed up greeted by 30 or so federal employees and contractors bus ed in from Las Vegas About 55 people showed up for a meeting in Reno Nev A bigger turnout is expected in Las Vegas on Monday and in Washington DC D.C. on Wednesday The only hearing in California was held Thursday in Lone Pine part of Inyo County whose eastern border can be seen from the crest rest of Yucca Mountain A few dozen area residents showed up including a local book publisher several American Indians some retirees a few nuclear anti-nuclear activists and a lot of people in cowboy boots and worn blue jeans We are putting a burden on future generations to watch and care for this waste longer than man has been on this Earth said Roger Rasche a retired proof reader from Lone Pine I hope future generations will be forgiving The best place for the nuclear waste would be under Washington DC D.C. because any y- y accident would be less devastating to the environment Asked about public opposition to the dump Ward Sproat the Energy Departments Department's director of civilian radioactive waste vash waste management said in an ah an interview I wouldn't r expect anything less T This is program has been around a along along along long time and it has a lot lot of history j Government scientists insist there is no chance any radioactivity could leak for years land fand that the dump will be safe for hundreds of thousands of years after that J I IThe The hearing also focused on another aspect of the plan getting the waste waste to the dump f 1 The plan calls for truck and rail shipments of waste about 12 percent of which probably would move through California The he majority would come come from out of state l largely on Interstate 40 and then j jup up the steep El El EI Cajon ajon mountain pass in hv in San Bernardino either on railor rail railor railor or by truck |