GOP White House Candidates' Yucca Stance Roils Other GOP Leaders

"Republican lawmakers from South Carolina and Washington state, which hold tons of nuclear waste, are none too pleased that leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination are backing President Barack Obama's decision to shutter a central dump designed to store their waste."

"When Obama cut out funding for the long-planned Yucca Mountain waste repository near Las Vegas in 2009, Republicans accused him of playing politics in a bid to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his tough Nevada re-election race.

The Yucca site has been extremely unpopular in Nevada since Congress in 2002 authorized building a huge storage vault beneath the mountain as the nation's central nuclear waste dump.

Now GOP White House aspirants eager to win votes in Nevada's Jan. 14 Republican presidential caucus have come out against Yucca, just like Obama and Reid."

James Rosen reports for McClatchy Newspapers October 20, 2011.

SEE ALSO:

"Judge Halts Uranium-Mining Plans in Colorado Over Environmental Issues" (Denver Post)