Turn your attention to Yucca Mountain

While the nation's attention is fixated on the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico there is a much less heralded fiasco known as Yucca Mountain. Located in Nevada, this site for the storage of nuclear waste from the generation of electricity, has been desperately needed for a long time. Current storage arrangements are only temporary.

After approximately a 23 year of planning development and construction, at huge cost, the whole project has been abandoned. Additionally the government is on the hook for huge outlays because of its prior guarantees to the utility companies.

It's like building a transcontinental railroad only to discover near completion that one of the key states won't allow the trains to transverse their territory. Was the abandonment largely a political one, resulting from the clout Harry Reid, the Nevada senator and senate majority leader? Who is responsible? In any case there needs to be a thorough investigation of the faulty process that has led to this huge white elephant.

"If we build it they will come" may apply to baseball fields, it does not work for nuclear waste storage. The adage "good enough for government work" is more applicable in this case. The taxpayers will foot the bill for this mistake. You can't even blame it on BP.

James Mooney

Arlington Heights