Tennessee U.S. Senate Candidate Willing To Sacrifice Senate Majority Leader Over Nuclear Power
Posted on May 16, 2008 at 7:02 amDemocratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Padgett is apparently not afraid to take maverick stances and buck his own party when he needs to. According to Joe Lance, Padgett believes in nuclear power and also believes in taking on the Democratic Majority Leader in order to create workable plans for its expansion:
He also indicated a preference to keep nuclear power at the forefront of our ongoing plans—and not a little distaste for Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s efforts to keep radioactive by-products from being deposited under Yucca Mountain. “This issue is bigger than Harry Reid; it’s the nation. If it takes the (elimination) of a man of my own party [from the Senate],” he flatly declared, “then we don’t have a choice.”
Yucca Mountain, a ridge line in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Nevada, is located in a desert on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada opposes the Yucca Mountain Repository, a U.S. Department of Energy deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other radioactive waste, which sits on the land. Since he has become Majority Leader, Reid has used his considerable power to block any progress in nuclear waste storage at the Repository.
Mike Padgett, a former Knox County Clerk, is running against Former Tennessee Democratic Party Chair Bob Tuke and five other candidates in the Democratic primary in order to face off against Senator Lamar Alexander in the fall.
UPDATE: The Padgett campaign issues a clarifying statement on the candidate’s views regarding Yucca Mountain and Senator Harry Reid:
“Nuclear power is but one of our energy options, and it shouldn’t be ruled out as long as it is economical and safe, U.S. Senate Candidate Mike Padgett said Friday.
“But a big part of the safety question is how to dispose of the waste, and I don’t feel like Yucca Mountain should be off the table,” Padgett said. “I respectfully disagree with Leader Harry Reid on this, but that is a far cry from calling for his head.
“As we try to do what’s best for the American people, there’s always room for respectful debate among Democrats, and I look forward to being part of that debate and to working with Senator Reid.”
UPDATE II: Joe Lance posts video of the comments in question.
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Comments
22 Responses to “Tennessee U.S. Senate Candidate Willing To Sacrifice Senate Majority Leader Over Nuclear Power”
The waste would be safe in Nevada, but they could and should reclaim and recycle and reuse. The Greens hate anything that might work and help the planet, because it doesn’t force us to be 3rd world.
Ehh. I have a feeling Padgett would be singing quite a different tune if the proposal was to put that garbage in Tennessee. One can hardly blame Reid for wanting to keep it out of his home state; whether or not it’s good for the nation, he’s there to represent Nevada.
If his duties as Senator from Nevada force him to hamstring his own party, then he should negotiate with his party for another position. Feinstein would be a better Majority Leader anyway.
Ah, Reid is in the Senate …
The House of Represenatives represent the states … the Senate does not …
Jon: I take issue with your example. Tennessee has a wet climate and sits on porous limestone, and the Tennessee river flows into the Mississippi. *No-one* downriver of TN, or using the port of New Orleans, or living in the Gulf Coast should want nuclear waste in that state. By contrast much of Nevada sits in a basin, which is solid rock, and doesn’t have water - and if it did have water it would be stuck there.
Nuclear waste in Tennessee hurts the whole of Middle America. Nuclear waste in Nevada hurts nobody, except Nevadans, and humans shouldn’t be living in that desert anyway. The main reason so many people do live there, is because they’ve legalised a lot of nasty stuff that drives down property values in respectable states. Nevada is already a toxic waste dump, in a moral sense. Personally I think they should fill Reid’s back yard with technetium-99…
“”Ah, Reid is in the Senate …
The House of Represenatives represent the states … the Senate does not …”
You must have been typing fast. You have it backwards, the Senate represents the States - recall that originally Senators were elected by the state legislature, not popular elections. The House is closer to the people.
Ah, Jeff,
As it was originally set up, the Representatives were to be the voice of the people, and the Senators were to be the voice of the states.
Since the Civil War, there has been so little in the way of serious discussion of “states rights” that in effect, the Senate also represents the people, they just have rather large districts.
No red,
Each Senator represents him or herself, and the fact that nearly all of them are serious narcissists is a main problem with Congress and part of why they make horrible Presidents.
Directly electing Senators was one of the earliest and most damaging “progressive” reforms of the 20th century.
Re: Clarification
‘After being put back in my place by Reid,
I will now revert to being a good subservient
of the top-down Democratic Party.’
‘Long live Ted Kennedy. Long live Ted Kennedy.’
David Ross,
Ah, yes, “Diane Feinstein”.
Google that one. Just because she isn’t featured on 60 Minutes and in the NY Times doesn’t mean you can’t look up and read about the Democrats you vote for.
Have you noticed that Before the War Between The States, the common refference to our country was “These United States” and after the war, it is “The United States”.
All part of the plan…
Please, please sacrifice Reid, preferably over a stone altar. Maybe a close examination of his entrails will divine the reasons he’s worked with the Bush administration to further undermine what little democracy we have left in this country.
Reader’s Notes for the Sarcasm-Impaired: Please do not misinterpret this post as a call for violence. It’s an ironic reference to the ancient religious practice of sacrificing animals to read the future in their entrails.
There is enough room underground in NV to safely store spent fuel until we either develop a safe and reliable means of shooting it into the sun or reusing it in another means. Most of this material is alpha emitters, but the general public is too poorly educated to know that these radioactive particles only pose a real health hazard if you eat them or breath them in.
The general public is not just uninformed, they are intentionally misinformed. Don’t you recall the qwild-eyed punditry and the greens decrying the “nuclear power plants” and “leaking radiation dangers” back in the 80’s?
The general public was never given a chance to understand the true risks from nuclear power in a reasoned comparison to existing power sources becaues reasoned discourse does not sell newspapers & TV nor does it buy votes!
So here we are - 30 years later, crying about the high cost of fuel because we were too stupid/scared/ignorant to utilize the best power-generating technology known to mankind!
Rich is spot on about the 17th Amendment.
India is committing to Thorium nuclear reactors in a big way. They are safer (reaction slows and stops when external power is pulled) and can consume waste products from uranium and plutonium reactors.
David Ross — “take issue” all you want. The advisability or lack thereof of putting nuclear waste in any given location is utterly beside my point, which is merely that Reid has to represent the people that elect him.
There is no need to bury spent nuclear fuel. Nor is there any need to ‘recycle’ it (a process that has proven economically absurd wherever it has been attempted). The proper solution for the forseeable future is to simply seal the spent fuel in armored ‘dry casks’ and leave it on the surface. This is cheap, simple, safe, and forecloses no future options.
Perhaps, in a century or two, the advanced technology of that distant age will enable nuclear fuel to be effectively and safely reprocessed. Or maybe we’ll dispose of it by flinging it into space. Waiting until then will actually save us money over any of the other options.
:”David Ross — “take issue” all you want. The advisability or lack thereof of putting nuclear waste in any given location is utterly beside my point, which is merely that Reid has to represent the people that elect him.”
No, he has to Represent all the people in his district.
Yucca Mountain was chosen after literally years of research and site investigations. I’ve read the previous comments for any hint of engineering expertise; there doesn’t appear to be any here, so here’s how things really worked:
Jimmy Carter prohibited in situ vitrification of radioactive waste. That is a process whereby contaminated materials or spent fuel is pulverized and then encased in a glass matrix and then put inside a stainless steel case for storage or transports. This method makes the material impervious to environmental spills. It makes it easy to store, or to transport, in any weather or climate.
Mr. Carter, who badly needed points, acceded to the Greens and Luddites demands that this process be prohibited in favor of ONE repository…
… because in an atmosphere of technical ignorance, NIMBY allowed him to garner Eco votes and to parcel out sweet deals to contractors in the new field of “hazardous waste disposal” since by Federal Law there was now no cheap, safe way to handle the byproducts of nuclear research or power generation.
Nevada LOBBIED to win the site.
An army of mostly-unionized construction workers worked seven days a week year round to build the damn thing over almost a decade. That’s a whole lot of money landing on the tables in Vegas, or in merchants tills, isn’t it? Where was Harry Reid there? I know, I know, busy getting his family rich in real estate. Trick question, yes…
“…was to put that garbage in Tennessee…”
What, you’ve never heard about Oak Ridge Laboratories and the degrading storage in place there? Check it out. It’s one of the reasons (along with the Hanford Reservation tanks that are going to fail in the next few years) that Yucca was arrived at.
I’d like to have Utah be the repository, simply because we’d tax the hell out of it and make a killing. And it would be safer than building another petroleum refinery or coal mine by several orders of magnitude.
Luddites and Greens. We’ll all be reading by candle light if they have their way. And Reid just pulled a Carter, no more, no less, hastening forward the day our economy finally grinds to a halt for lack of energy.
O! Whatever will be done!
[…] Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nevada) strong opposition over the years to the idea. Padgett then made comments, as recounted by Lance, that seemed to express a willingness to see Reid’s ouster, if need […]
Utah would actually be a better place to put it. There are some sites there that are a bit more geologically suitable. Probably not going to happen though.
The Yucca Mountain site isn’t perfect, but I’d say it’s good enough. It takes about a thousand years for what little rainwater there is to reach the aquifers beneath the site, and the only potential harm of radiation reaching the aquifers is the groundwater in Armagossa Valley, which has a large number of farms, would likely become tainted. Not a whole lot out there, though,and nuclear testing already left a large amount of radiation throughout the middle portion of the state, anyway.
There is a danger of an earthquake hitting the site, though, as a fault line traverses it. A couple of years ago I’d have thought the risk relatively minor, but increasing geologic activity throughout Nevada is destroying that assessment. However, the site is designed to be isolated from the fault to prevent damage, so it may not be a big deal.
David Ross: Spoken like a person who has never been to Nevada. Nuff said. I grew up in Nevada, and I support the nuclear repository and I don’t support Reid, but your spiel only reveals your complete ignorance about the state and its history.
Regolith said:
“David Ross: Spoken like a person who has never been to Nevada. Nuff said. I grew up in Nevada, and I support the nuclear repository and I don’t support Reid, but your spiel only reveals your complete ignorance about the state and its history.”
And he’s not the only one. I support Yucca Mountain and think that the government should pay each resident $5,000 tax free a year for the privilege of using our state.
Also, if this state is filled with moral filth, maybe that’s because you all keep coming out here to indulge in it….