Obama may put end to Yucca waste site

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- Opponents of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository said they're hopeful President-elect Barack Obama will put an end to the project.

Obama, as well as the other Democrats who ran for president, publicly opposed storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste at the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review-Journal said Monday.

"After spending billions of dollars on the Yucca Mountain Project, there are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there," Obama told the newspaper last year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has long opposed the nuclear waste site.

"Were it any other time, and if Harry Reid was not there as majority leader, I would have written (Obama's campaign statements) off as rhetoric," Bob Loux of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects told the newspaper. "But since Reid is there and how strongly he feels about Yucca -- and any legislative agenda the president will want, will come through Reid -- he is in reasonably good shape to make sure Obama makes good."