Listen up Nevada: McCain-Palin plan to go nuclear on you

The Las Vegas strip won't be the only thing glowing in Nevada if McCain-Palin get elected. McCain has enthusiastically supported the controversial Yucca Mountain Repository project, which would store radioactive waste in Nevada, although you'd never know it by listening to Sarah Palin campaigning in Nevada this weekend.

After mispronouncing the word "nuclear" twice during her interview with Charlie Gibson (George Bush anyone?), Palin dropped the word and the topic from her stump speech in Reno and Carson City, Nevada on Saturday. Given the McCain campaign's penchant for pandering to whatever audience they're speaking to, it shouldn't come as a surprise.

At nearly every campaign stop to date, Palin has boasted about McCain's plan to expand nuclear (pronounced new-cle-ur for the phonetically disadvantaged, like Palin and Bush) energy, including storage and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. However, she dropped the line from her speech while stumping in Nevada where the topic is wildly unpopular.

John McCain's position on nuclear power and the Yucca Mountain site is crystal clear - and not likely to win him any new votes in Nevada. He said he wouldn't be comfortable with nuclear waste going through Arizona on its way to Yucca Mountain, but thinks Yucca Mountain is a suitable site. Watch the clip:

His other statements on Yucca Mountain include:

• In 2002, when final approval was assured after 20 years of debate, McCain told his home-state newspaper, The Arizona Republic, that the Nevada dump site would help the federal government resolve “one of the most important environmental, health and public safety issues for the American people.”
• Just over a year ago, he was described as adopting a mocking tone when he told the Deseret News in Utah: “Oh, you have to travel through states ... I am for Yucca Mountain. I’m for storage facilities. It’s a lot better than sitting outside power plants all over America.”
• Less than three weeks ago, Reuters ran a piece that said McCain “supports the Yucca Mountain storage facility and believes opposition to it is harmful to U.S. interests.” And the piece quoted one of his advisers as saying, “The political opposition to the Yucca Mountain storage facility is harmful to the U.S. interest and the facility should be completed, opened and utilized.”

In their never-ending quest to dissuade voters from their real positions, Palin and McCain figure if they don't talk about nuclear energy in Nevada, they will detract voters from the learning they support a radioactive dump in their state. Don't let them fool you Nevada!