let's hope so!

Will Obama starve the beast? Reid thinks so

Washington — Barack Obama pledged during his campaign to oppose the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. Today, as his nominee for energy secretary, Steven Chu, goes to the Senate for his confirmation hearing, he is expected to begin elaborating on the future of the project.

Opponents of the dump, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, expect this is the beginning of the end for Yucca Mountain.

“Barack Obama will get rid of Yucca Mountain,” Reid said last month in an interview with the Sun.

Obama will “put his fingerprints on it fairly early,” Reid said. “I don’t think there’s too much we need to do legislatively.” Left unsaid by Reid was the reality that he might not have the votes to shut down the project outright if he tried to do so.

Rather, Reid believes the project can be severely crippled through budget cuts he and Obama will make in coming weeks.

Obama’s home state of Illinois is in dire need of a permanent storage site. It has more spent nuclear fuel stored temporarily than any other state. But Obama visited Nevada 20 times on the campaign trail and Nevada helped elect him to the White House.

Reid’s ability to curtail or kill Yucca will surely be a centerpiece of his own reelection campaign in 2010, which already uses the slogan that as majority leader, Reid can deliver for Nevada like no one else can.

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