Take a look at this campaign video from Barack Obama:
It’s a message for Nevada, home of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility. The facility, yet to be completed, is currently 20 years behind schedule and $32 billion over budget.
The thing is, while ‘If you don’t want nuclear waste here, you don’t want John McCain here’ is being put to Nevadans, what about everybody else? If Nevada doesn’t want the waste, why should anybody else take it? The message of that video is surely ‘If you don't want nuclear waste here, you don't want it anywhere...’.
McCain, who doesn’t want nuclear waste passing through his home state of Arizona but is fine with the idea of it going to Nevada. Does he think Nevadans have a resistance to radiation that Arizonans don’t have?
Obama, doesn’t want the waste going to Nevada. He’s written of wanting to abandon the Yucca Mountain project. He’s also against his own state, Illinois, become a nuclear waste depository. He says in the short-term the waste needs to be stored on-site where it is being produced, and then research needed to find a better solution. More wishful thinking. As there is no better solution on the horizon would not it be smarter to just ’stop’ producing more waste?
Aren’t those nuclear states entitled to say, ‘If you don’t want nuclear waste here, you don’t want Barack Obama here’?