Obama Ad Slams McCain on Yucca Mountain

In a new television ad for the state of Nevada, the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama criticized John McCain’s support of opening up Yucca Mountain as storage facility for nuclear waste. The ad hit McCain hard saying that he supports nuclear waste in Nevada, but not in his own backyard of Arizona.

Here is the ad:

Tucker Bounds of the McCain campaign said, “Apparently Barack Obama is also taking a vacation from the facts, ignoring his own votes in support of the Yucca Mountain project. Either Barack Obama is too inexperienced to understand that his votes on the floor of the United States Senate are recorded for Americans to review, or he’s simply showing incredible hypocrisy.”

So, who is telling the truth? The official Obama position is that he has always opposed opening up Yucca Mountain. In a letter written to Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Chairman of the Committee on Environmental and Public Works Barbara Boxer, Obama said, “Because of these safety issues and the unwavering opposition from the people of Nevada and their elected officials, there is strong reason to believe that many more billions of dollars could be expended on Yucca Mountain without any significant progress in moving towards a permanent solution to the problem of where to store spent nuclear fuel. For these reasons, I believe that it is no longer a sustainable federal policy for Yucca Mountain to be considered as a permanent repository. ”

Notice how the McCain camp doesn’t bother to mention their candidate’s position favoring the opening of Yucca. Instead, they chose to spread more distortions about Obama. For the residents of Nevada, Yucca is a big issue, but it should be a bigger issue to voters everywhere. There are several inherent dangers involved in shipping nuclear waste across the country. Plus, the Department of Energy released a new estimate that the cost of the Yucca Mountain project has increased 67% to $96.2 billion. I think McCain support of such a risky proposal demonstrates McCain’s poor judgment, and why he should not be our next president.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association