Obama camp pushes back on Yucca
Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2008 3:39 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan
In a conference call, the Obama campaign pushed back on attack ads by the Clinton campaign that questioned the candidate’s opposition to Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump, a designation most state residents strongly oppose.
Nevada State Sen. Steven Horsford called the attacks "text-book Washington politics" and promised that Obama's campaign would vigorously respond to any attacks made against Obama and his record on nuclear power.
The ad by the Clinton campaign accused Obama of having close ties to the nuclear power industry.
"And Barack Obama? The Las Vegas Review Journal said Obama was -- quote "hip deep in financial ties" to one of America's biggest Yucca mountain promoters... nuclear giant Exelon," the ad says.
According to a release by the Clinton campaign, Exelon employees have donated over $269,100 to Obama's federal campaigns and over $194,750 in 2008. Exelon has spent millions of dollars on lobbying the federal government on nuclear waste management.
However, Bob Fullerson, the former director of Citizen Alert which helped turn Nevada into an anti-dumping state for nuclear waste, claimed the attacks on Obama's record were unfair.
"It's completely ludicrous and disingenuous to say that he is soft on Yucca Mountain," Fullerson said on the conference call.
But Obama does support the expansion of nuclear power plants, if there is better technology to handle nuclear waste. He was the only candidate to take that position at the Democratic debate this past Tuesday in Las Vegas. The issue of nuclear waste and power is a prickly one for the candidate, since Illinois is one of the largest generators of nuclear waste in the country.
Obama's campaign released a fact sheet today quoting Obama saying that he believes every state should handle their own nuclear waste, rather than shipping it outside their own borders. Obama also joined fellow Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin in writing a letter in 2006 to Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) that said no regional nuclear waste sites should be created without local populations having veto power over the site.
Horsford said the Obama campaign would respond to the attack by Clinton, but wasn't able to expand on how the campaign planned to respond -- whether it be through direct mail, radio or television ads.
