Mar 9 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Keith Rogers Las Vegas Review-Journal



The man who led Nevada's charge against the Yucca Mountain Project for more than 20 years says he's surprised that the Department of Energy took action on its own to withdraw its license request to build a nuclear waste repository in the ridge, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"I have to admit that side of it is kind of a surprise," Bob Loux, former executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said after DOE filed a motion last week to withdraw its construction application from a nuclear licensing board.

"I could see DOE getting defeated in the licensing proceedings given the number of contentions that Nevada submitted and were accepted. I never thought they'd come from a licensing proceeding with a license."

 After working for the state for 32 years, including 23 at the helm of the Nuclear Projects Agency, Loux resigned in September 2008 amid controversy over giving himself and his staff unauthorized pay raises.

He later offered to pay the state more than $29,000 in salary overpayments in exchange for the withdrawal of an ethics complaint against him, but the Ethics Commission rejected the proposal.

Then in March 2009, the Ethics Commission decided in a 3-2 vote to drop the charges, ruling that he didn't break state ethics laws because the governor, not the Legislature, determines his salary and those of his staff. Since then, Loux said, he has been working on a book and playing golf.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Loux said he is "gratified to know that the work we've done over the years has really paid off."

"There is a real lessen for people facing large government projects," he said. "Commitment will pay off in the end, and you really can fight city hall."

Though the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Construction Authorization Board has not decided yet on accepting DOE's motion to withdraw the license application , Loux noted that the Yucca Mountain Project is similar to two other multibillion-dollar government projects that were canceled. Congress terminated the Clinch River Breeder Reactor in Tennessee in 1983 and the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas in 1993.

"Once they head down the path of no funding, they never recover," Loux said.

He said he thinks that nuclear regulators will accept DOE's motion to kill the Yucca Mountain Project and that the federal government, with the help of the Obama administration's commission, will look outside Nevada to solve the nation's nuclear waste disposal problem.

"There is no reason to believe there are any more suitable sites in Nevada. This is the third-most earthquake-prone state," Loux said.

He said there were too many obstacles with at Yucca Mountain. Besides earthquake faults and volcanic activity, there were problems with transportation such as securing water rights to build a railroad from Caliente to the mountain and potential problems with decaying waste seeping into the water table.

Finding another nuclear waste site and gaining acceptance in another state is going to be difficult.

"You may experience a lot of these things where ever you go," he said. "Unless everybody agrees the site is good ... you're just being a guinea pig for the nuclear industry."

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