John McCain Reveals He’s a Nuclear Power NIMBY

I don't believe him, he seems to just want to win new votes with it.

Solar power puts the nuclear waste a nice, safe 93 million miles away.

Why did McCain smirk when he said that Bush carried Nevada in the last election? Is he trying to turn this into a political issue?

McCain in my opinion has fallen from grace, he used to be a maverick who would stand up to the polluters, but now he has fallen in line with general GOP thinking and Bush administration policy.

Now, this is one sentiment I don't get. I'd be perfectly happy living right on top of Yucca Mountain, and definitely all right living along the route waste would travel on.

The legal maximum exposure to radiation that someone near a nuclear waste disposal site is a fraction of 1 millirem per year, truly an insignificant number by any realistic medical evaluation. A dental x-ray is ten times higher dose. And for years while we have been transporting certain high-level nuclear wastes to the WIPP, the people in the area have realized it is perfectly safe. There have been no accidents, and everything has gone according to plan.

But somehow, with radiation facts tend to give way to panic and fear. McCain could have actually turned this mishap into an opportunity if he'd thought fast enough. He could have said, "We shouldn't be throwing this nuclear waste away at all. We should be reprocessing it to make our nuclear power more efficient, thereby reducing the amount of high level waste by over 90%. Our new reactors should be modern designs, including fast breeder reactors, so that even most of the low- and mid- level wastes burn up and become non-radioactive by the time the fuel leaves the reactor."

Nuclear power will not be cost-efficient in the forseeable future, when you figure in the cost of insuring against risk.

I don't plan on voting for Mr. McCain this fall, but I don't think Treehugger's analysis of this interview was fair. John McCain did answer "no" to the question about whether or not he was comfortable with nuclear waste traveling through Arizona, but he goes on to say that it can be made safe and that we can either leave it laying around various parts of the country or secure it in a single location. Based on the whole statement, body language, inflection and phrasing I think he was trying to say that he would be okay with this waste going through his state and thought the interviewer was saying would you be UNcomfortable...

Picking up on an ambiguous soundbyte and turning it into a headline is the same tactic that eco-skeptics use to "disprove" things like global warming, and I think it hurts Treehugger's credibility. I angers me when I see this done to Obama, and I think both candidate deserve fair coverage so that we can vote on the issues and facts, not innuendos.

How significantly more informed are Obama's policies? Does anyone have a side-by-side comparison for easy consumption?

i agree with commenters frank and anthony. McCain could be "nervous" of transporting the "waste" in which really from what i have heard/read recently waste is the wrong term, it makes is sound like something that can never be made useful again, which it can, so i propose we find a better term for it. Usually you only have to house the material for around 50 years and it is a lot more safe having more the 99.9% of the peak radiation diminished and at that point it can be processed and the bulk of what is left is reusable fuel. There is still some left over but it is no where near as bad as the media has portrayed, the largest problem are the over reactionary laws that were propagated during the Chernobyl and and even worse the grossly overreaction of 3 Mile Island... in the later nothing happened. around 5 people were directly exposed and of those one was injured and the system protected itself just as it was supposed to, it overrode the errors that the human operators made, Chernobyl was an older style unit that did not have those safeguards and once again it was human error and only 5 people died from direct exposure. So with the loss of life from direct exposure divided by the years nuclear plants have been in service that give us about 1 death per decade almost, where as with coal it is, i think around 1-2 per year and as far as from the fallout, you will have to include the people that have died from black lung and the radiation of the crap that is put in the air from the coal plants which is more dangerous then nuclear waste. nuclear is still safer and cleaner, all around. If you try and compare it to solar and wind then there are really not statics but you would have to include people falling from maintaining and installing which if there was 1 per decade would lead to be pretty safe.
-=tbn=-

in response to Anthony's comment:

"The legal maximum exposure to radiation that someone near a nuclear waste disposal site is a fraction of 1 millirem per year, truly an insignificant number by any realistic medical evaluation. A dental x-ray is ten times higher dose. And for years while we have been transporting certain high-level nuclear wastes to the WIPP, the people in the area have realized it is perfectly safe. There have been no accidents, and everything has gone according to plan."

No accidents when it comes to our nuclear past huh? Are you serious or just seriously misinformed? This statement may be true to some extent, but I would ask you to investigate what is happening on the Navajo Indian Reservation, among others where our government mined uranium for years, and failed to adhere to promises it made to the people who live there, promises that said everything would be made safe. This is a promise our gov. knows about and is still failing to address to this day, to prevent radiation exposure to the original inhabitants of the land you call yours. I would love for people like you, proponents of the most destructive and dangerous human experiment ever, to go live in places like this, on radioactive land, in radioactive houses and have your children play in radioactive dirt., dealing with all the health detriments it causes in these populations. I seriously doubt, though i could be wrong, that you would offer the same conclusions you do now. This problem is not a relic of the past either, and yet, while we know about it, it "can be made safe" still nothing is done. Why is that?

Both McCain and Obama will say anything they think will get them elected. Once elected they will say or do anything they think will get them re-elected. What they say now has abosolutely no bearing on how they may act once in office. You can only be sure that government power (and therefore corporate influence on government) will continue to grow with both of them, because it is in their personal interest to do so.

If you want real control over how these issues are addressed, you need to support reducing the size and power of the worst polluter (government) and support the Libertarian Party.

Yeah, I have to agree it sounds like their was some miscommunication here. McCain seems to be answering the question as if it were "UN"comfortable. I would hazard a guess that this is the case.

I'm not so worried about the transport of waste as much as the storing and disposal of it. In addition, the fact that another 3-mile Island or Chernobyl can happen scares me. I think the oil crisis of late is a great kick in the can and will force Americans to finally adopt or at least to take serious thought on energy alternatives. Cheaper solar panels for all!!!

I have to agree with some of the other commentators. Mccain obviously misheard the interviewer asking "would he be uncomfortable with transporting waste through arizona."To which he replied. "No I would not, no I would not." Its fairly dishonest to run a headline with him misspeaking especially omitting the rest of the sentence. I am not a fan of Mccain but pulling fox news style report tricks is no way to critique him.

I think that Anthony at the top that if we where to make things more effiecient then nuclear power/waste wouldn't be a problem. I also think that if McCain is so for nuclear power he should be willing to let it come through his home state. Until McCain really shows his support for nuclear power than I won't vote for him on that front. Until we can show that we can safely store and transport nuclear waste than we should not use more than we are now. I do believe that nuclear power would be a great alternative energy source but only when we know it won't hurt the environment and the people. I don't think that nuclear power is off the table and I think that McCain needs to grow a backbone and learn to face the facts and deal with the problems. Namely how America knows that he is willing to place nuclear waste in the middle of the Nevada desert but he won't risk his own precious life and let it through his state. Yes it is dangerous. Accidents happen but he needs to realize that without that risk nuclear power isn't a possiblity and he can toss the idea in the trash. We need alternative energies and nuclear power is the way to go but not with McCain.