Jun 17 - Las Vegas Review - Journal

Despite the Energy Department's action this month to seek a license to build the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a Review-Journal poll has found that a majority of Nevada voters feel the same way they did four years ago: Continue to fight the project instead of making a deal in exchange for accepting it.

The poll of 625 registered Nevada voters came a week after DOE submitted its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 3. The poll found 58 percent of respondents still want to fight the government over the Yucca Mountain Project while 33 percent want to make a deal to let it go forward.

That's roughly the same result as four years ago, when a poll by the same company, Mason-Dixon Polling and Research of Washington, D.C., found 55 percent of the participants wanted the state to continue fighting while 38 percent favored making a deal.

The latest poll, based on telephone interviews, has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percentage points.

"I would comfortably say it represents no change in public opinion in Nevada on Yucca Mountain," Mason-Dixon's managing partner Brad Coker said Thursday. "The numbers are holding steady."

In 1990, a Review-Journal poll showed that only 23 percent wanted to deal. But 12 years later, in January 2002 the figure rose to 33 percent.

Six months later, in July 2002 after the Senate voted to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, over-riding then-Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto, 43 percent of those who responded to Mason-Dixon interviewers favored negotiations. That spike tapered down to 38 percent in 2004 and then returned this year to 33 percent.

Nevadans have been consistent in opposing the Yucca project in part because no deal ever has been put before them, said Mark Peplowski, a political science professor at the College of Southern Nevada.

"There are no hard numbers to talk about, so there is no real reason for people to change their stand against it."

At the same time, Peplowski said, "all they are hearing is a media furor about how bad it is and that the government is trying to shove it down their throats."

But in the mid-1990s, academics at the University of Nevada, Reno, conducted a poll commissioned by the Department of Energy to determine if Nevadans had a price to accept nuclear waste and if so what would it be.

Citizens were asked variously whether they would take the repository in exchange for $2,000 or $5,000 in federal income tax credits, or $50 million a year to the state, or targeted funding for education or infrastructure.

"The best we got is a third of Nevadans who would cut a deal," said UNR professor Eric Herzik, the same percentage in other polls.

"I had a feeling that people just don't want it and can't be bought," Herzik said. On the other hand, "they may not know what their price is."

In a related question in this month's poll, 45 percent of the respondents said a presidential candidate's stance on Yucca Mountain will have no influence on how they vote in November's election.

Only 14 percent said a presidential candidate's stance on the nuclear waste issue would have a major influence on their voting, while 38 percent said it would have some influence.

Coker said other issues such as a candidate's stand on the economy, the war in Iraq, gasoline prices and national security and terrorism prevail in most voter's minds over a localized environmental issue such as the Yucca Mountain Project.

"Obama voters are going to vote for Obama for reasons other than Yucca Mountain and same for McCain," Coker said, referring to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

"There's not going to be a big number of voters who are going to be influenced in a major way (by Yucca Mountain), but there will be some. At the end of the day, it could be a net positive for Obama" among Nevada voters, Coker said .

Results from a Review-Journal poll that were released a month before President Bush was re-elected in 2004 showed only 3 percent of respondents thought Yucca Mountain was the most important issue in deciding their presidential vote.

"Yucca Mountain wasn't a big enough issue that didn't cost Bush the state," Coker said. "It didn't prevent him from carrying Nevada in 2004, and they didn't take it out on any of the Republicans who ran in 2004."

Former Nevada Gov. Robert List, who was a former consultant to the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute and who now represents four rural counties in the licensing matter, said the voter influence survey "is a very telling question."

"This is not a major mover of voters. For most people today, the issues of economy and jobs and home foreclosures, education and crime and water and a whole array of issues ... are far more significant" than Yucca Mountain.

In the latest poll, most of the respondents who favored fighting Yucca Mountain were Democrats, 74 percent, or were women, 69 percent, or were from Clark County, 63 percent.

"I find it very interesting that the opposition is centered in Las Vegas and heaviest among women and Democrats," List said. "By contrast, it's interesting the people in rural Nevada who are closest to the project and are along the rail line that would serve the project want to see us deal for benefits."

The poll found that 55 percent of respondents from rural areas felt Nevada should try to deal for money or benefits.

But Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said submittal of the license application means the time for dealing is done. Loux is a longtime opponent of DOE's plans for entombing 77,000 tons of nuclear waste in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"We're in for the long haul," Loux said about the state's continued opposition to what Nevada officials call "the dump."

"I think everything is the same. People are still opposed and will fight. We're beyond the point in time where making a deal could happen."

Allen Benson, a Department of Energy spokesman for the Yucca Mountain Project in Las Vegas, said making a deal now "is something the state would have to discuss with Congress, and that's a decision Congress would have to make."

Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault contributed to this report. Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.

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