Unfortunately it started off with politics and never got better. In what became known as the “Screw Nevada” bill, congressmen from other states did an end run around the technical selection process and made Yucca Mountain the sole candidate for nuclear waste storage. Young Sen. Harry Reid didn’t forget, and served his revenge cold.
“This was raw, naked politics.”
That’s how Richard Bryan remembers his time as Nevada governor in 1987 when Congress acted to designate Yucca Mountain as the only place scientists would study as a burial site for the nation’s deadliest nuclear waste.