Senator Tom Harkin says his recent vote against using Yucca Mountain as a storage ground for nuclear waste was not a flip-flop on the issue. Critics say Harkin voted in favor of the Yucca site when he was running for the democratic presidential nomination in 1992.Harkin says he voted in ’92 to review the site to see if it was geologically secure. He says 10 years later it’s not clear that Yucca Mountain is geologically secure and that the transportation of the wastes is secure. Harkin says there’s a misconception among the public that all the waste produced in the U-S would be sent to the Yucca site. He says the choice is whether to leave 75-percent of the waster where it is now, and ship the remaining waste to Yucca Mountain. Harkin says the current storage facilities can hold the waste another 150 to 200 years. He says the U-S needs to look at all options before moving ahead with the Yucca Mountain site.
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