WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Harry Reid and Richard Bryan today panned a letter from Texas Governor George W. Bush on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository as a "cynical and politically motivated" attempt to fool Nevadans into believing that, as President, he would stand up for their health and safety.

"Nevadans should view this letter for what it really is, a cynical attempt by George W. Bush to stop his precipitous decline in the Nevada polls. The real truth is that Governor Bush's own party, financed by the greedy nuclear power industry, has pulled out all the stops in their efforts to bury Nevada in nuclear waste. Senator Pete Domenici has promised an interim storage site within six months of a Republican administration and George W. Bush hasn't answered the real question at hand: would he veto legislation to lower the health and safety standards at Yucca Mountain? Al Gore and Bill Clinton have already vetoed it once and Al Gore has promised Nevadans that he would veto again if it were sent to his desk."

"Governor Bush, ever the artful dodger when it comes to nuclear waste, has failed to answer the question. The question remains, whether or not he would veto legislation that would compromise the health and safety of hundreds of thousands of Nevadans. Either he is clearly misinformed or he is being disingenuous. Every attempt to store high-level nuclear waste on an interim basis in Nevada has focused on the Nevada Test Site not Yucca Mountain. So once again, Governor Bush has ducked the issue," said Senator Bryan.

This year, Reid and Bryan teamed up to defeat a Republican led attempt to pass nuclear waste legislation by a veto-proof margin. On April 26th President Clinton and Vice President Gore vetoed the legislation which would have allowed the Nuclear Regulatory Administration to set the health and safety standards at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. On August 15th Al Gore reiterated his commitment, that as President, he would veto the bill if it passed Congress.

"[t]he Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments of 1999 would undermine existing procedures designed to ensure that this material is disposed of in a sufficiently safe and secure way," said Vice President Gore in an August 15 letter to Senator Reid. "I would like to repeat my opposition to this legislation and to promise you that as President I would veto such legislation if it were sent to me. One of the most serious concerns I have about this legislation is that it would limit the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to use its existing authority to protect public health and the environment. Compromising the role of the EPA in a matter so vital would be quite simply unacceptable."