Critics question Magwood's Yucca stance

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- The Obama administration's nomination of Bill Magwood to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission signals backtracking on waste disposal issues, critics say.

The naming of Magwood, a longtime advocate of moving forward with the federal government's stalled plans to site a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, doesn't square with President Barack Obama's stated opposition to establishing the facility, opponents told Wednesday's Las Vegas Sun.

"There are a lot of people who wish someone else would have been nominated," Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, a consortium of anti-Yucca groups, told the newspaper.

"They absolutely need to ask him about his positions on Yucca (at his confirmation hearing)," added Bruce Breslow, executive director of Gov. Jim Gibbons' Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "He needs to address that. And they should ask about any comments he's made about the nuclear industry, either pro or con."

But spokesmen for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Obama told the Sun that Magwood has changed his thinking on Yucca Mountain and won't go against the administration's vow to prevent it from becoming the nation's most radioactive waste storage site.