Bush defends nuclear waste move

LAS VEGAS — President Bush on Thursday defended his decision to use Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump, an unpopular move in a swing state that he won four years ago.

"I said I would make a decision based upon science, not politics. I said I would listen to the scientists, those involved with determining whether or not this project could move forward in a safe manner and that's exactly what I did," Bush told supporters in this city 90 miles southeast of the proposed waste site.

Bush accused Democratic Sen. John Kerry of pandering to Nevada voters by playing both sides of the issue, part of a broader effort to cast the Massachusetts senator as someone who bends to political winds.

"He says he's strongly against Yucca here in Nevada, but he voted for it several times," Bush claimed.

That is not exactly true. Each time Kerry has faced the simple choice of voting whether or not to send waste to Yucca Mountain, he has voted against it. But he has voted for some measures that had provisions to allow nuclear dumps there. Some 16 years ago, Kerry voted for an overall budget bill that included a provision favoring nuclear waste in Nevada.

Kerry visited Las Vegas earlier this week and said that Bush broke a campaign promise to ensure science and not politics determined his decision whether to ship waste to Yucca Mountain.

Dozens of scientific studies remain incomplete and a recent federal appeals court ruling raised questions about whether the waste repository will be built, or at least meet its target of 2010 to begin operation.

Bush said he was pleased to "allow this process to be appealed to the courts and to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

"I will stand by the decision of the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," Bush said.

Bush's visit here was his second in two months. Though Nevada has only five electoral votes — a tiny slice of the 270 needed to win the presidency — it has become a hotly contested prize in an election that is so close.

A poll of likely Nevada voters in late July showed the race essentially tied.

From Nevada, Bush jetted to Santa Monica, Calif. for a Republican National Committee fund raiser, his 12th visit to California. He has not been there in five months, a measure of the pessimism in Bush's camp about winning California's 55 electoral votes.