Nevadan Republican U.S. Senate candidate has supported high-level radioactive waste dumping, and even reprocessing, at Yucca Mountain

[Aerial photo of Yucca Mountain, Nevada in Newe Sogobia, the Western Shoshone homeland.]

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, Sam Brown advocated for disposing of irradiated nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as well as reprocessing it there. The article includes an audio recording of Brown’s 2022 comments. He is the likely Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate race this year in Nevada.

Yucca Mountain, Nevada is located on Western Shoshone Indian lands, according to the “peace and friendship” Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, signed by the U.S. government. The Western Shoshone do not want high-level radioactive waste dumped or reprocessed there.

Neither does the State of Nevada.

Likewise, more than a thousand environmental groups from across the Lower 48, and beyond, oppose the Yucca dump. This includes the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.

Brown’s Democratic opponent in the U.S. Senate race, incumbent Jacky Rosen, has long opposed the Yucca dump, alongside almost the entirety of Nevada’s bipartisan congressional delegation, for many long years.

To learn more about the resistance to the Yucca dump, see NIRS’s archived website Yucca Mountain section, Beyond Nuclear’s archived website Yucca Mountain section, and Beyond Nuclear’s current website Yucca Mountain section.