Nearly twenty-five years and fifty billion dollars since its conception as the burial mound for America’s nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain continues to cause controversy. While some cast doubt on the project’s scientific feasibility or its possible environmental consequences, Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) and other Nevada representatives have taken a different tact; kill the boondoggle’s mascot, Yucca Mountain Johnny.

Though he looks like a member of the Village People, Yucca Mountain Johnny is just your average miner out to educate the children about nuclear waste. Through the Department of Energy’s Youth Zone website or by visiting Nevada’s public schools ‘in person,’ Johnny explains why 77,000 tons of radioactive junk needs to be trucked through the state and stuffed in a butte.

Rep. Berkley, who once called Yucca Mountain Johnny, “the Department of Energy’s Joe Camel,” tried to add an addendum to a $30 million energy bill barring the DOE from funding the Youth Zone section of its website. The addition failed, 271-147.

Yucca Mountain is scheduled to open in 2017, nineteen years late.

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See Also: Big Problems at Nuclear Pantex,How To Build A Nuclear Bomb,Nuclear States Run Amok,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Goodman on Thursday, September 7th, 2006 at 11:10 am and is filed under Environment, Social Change, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.