JACKSON, Miss.–Convinced that someone high up in Mississippi government is making a case to the feds to put a nuclear waste dump in Mississippi, Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley has written a letter to Pres. Obama, saying your state will not tolerate it.
Presley has accused someone, though he did not name who, of “playing footsie with the federal government”, and telling people in the Energy Dept. that Mississippi was interested in becoming a replacement for the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada, which Mississippi funded in part, and which is no longer being developed.
Presley said in a news release that as late as May 26, Assistant Sec. of Nuclear Energy Peter Lyons was quoted as calling Mississippi “one of the most public potential hosts to express interest in taking high-level waste”.
Last year, Gov. Bryant insisted that there were no such plans being made and that the possibility of storing spent nuclear rods had been discussed, and that it was nothing on the scale of storing nuclear waste on the scale of Yucca Mountain, as suggested by Presley.
Nevertheless, Presley has maintained that someone in state government is misinforming the feds about Mississippi nuclear policy.
“I think it is very important for everyone from the White House to our Congressional Delegation and the bureaucrats in the Energy Department to know that this agency stands unified against any efforts to make Mississippi America’s nuclear waste dump,” he said. “It is obvious from the statements of Sec. (Ernest) Moniz and Mr. Lyons that there is an effort to at least consider our state for the siting. I want them to know where our agency stands.”
He prided in his letter to Obama a detailed list of resolutions passed by the PSC against nuclear storage.
“I find it strange that the Dept. of Energy continues to push this idea of Mississippi as the alternative site for Yucca Mountain, Nevada. They need to know that the Public Service Commission is against that harebrained scheme.”
News Mississippi has obtained a copy of the letter sent to Obama. In it, Presley also asks for $80 million of your money back that the state has paid in since the 1980s to fund the development of Yucca Mountain.
LINK: Related Article: /nuclear-waste-in-miss-job-creation-or-making-the-state-a-dump/
