Congressional tour of closed Yucca site costs taxpayers $15,000

As reported by the Las Vegas Review Journal, on the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, three congressional proponents of the cancelled Yucca Mountain dumpsite for high-level radioactive waste decided to take a 30 yard stroll down a tunnel, at a cost of $15,000 to U.S. taxpayers. The visit, intended to help resurrect the project, lasted less than an hour. If revived and taken full scale, the pricetag for the Yucca Mountain dump's construction and operation would top $100 billion, according to the Dept. of Energy. Since the 1980s, over $8 billion of ratepayer money, and more than $3 billion of taxpayer money, has been wasted at the controversial hole in the Nevada desert. Republican U.S. Representative John Shimkus, chair of the subcommittee on energy and the economy, led the tour. He hales from Illinois, the state with more high-level radioactive waste than any other. (Another ironic Yucca-Chernobyl connection -- President Clinton in 2000 vetoed a congressional attempt to open the dump, dubbed the Mobile Chernobyl bill, on the 14th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, almost to the exact minute of the explosion.) An archive of Yucca news coverage dating back to 2002 can be viewed at the website of the Las Vegas Review Journal.