Between 1987 and 2002, the United States Senate held 20 key roll call votes related to the designation of Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the location for the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository. During that period, conflict over the issue became increasingly structured by party. At first glance, the highly technical issue of nuclear waste disposal has no obvious partisan dimension. But, linking theories of party government with recent studies of message politics and issue ownership, we show that individual motives – geographic and electoral – tell only part of the evolving story of Yucca Mountain. A complete explanation of senators' behavior on the issue of nuclear waste disposal must incorporate collective (in this case partisan) motives as well.
As mentioned in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Maps post, the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility project in Nye County, Nevada was halted or postponed due to disputes among U.S. Senators, the President, members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, etc. Moscardelli and Lawrence (2007) examine an interesting political and geographic perspective as to why this project was controversial and widely debated. “In an effort to understand the process by which issues become more partisan over time, we investigate the changing partisan political geography of the nuclear waste disposal issue in the Senate” (Moscardelli and Becker 56). One potential point of partisanship – and evolving perceptions among senators such as Tom Daschle (Democrat, SD) – that is explained involves Democrats supporting the efforts of Harry Reid (D, NV) to prevent a nuclear waste disposal facility in Nevada. Initially, 21 Democrats such as Alan Cranston (CA) and Robert Byrd (WV) strived to “defeat a Reid amendment that would have made health and safety the primary criteria for site selection” (ibid. 57). Given that Harry Reid lives one county away from the proposed site, the close proximity of his home and district provides a possible explanation to what I would call the “geography of opposition” to the Nevada disposal project.
In later years, “…Senate Democrats came to believe there was a collective benefit to be gained from [their party] being perceived as the party dedicated to keeping high-level nuclear waste out of Nevada (56). The authors comment that – based on empirical data from Wright and Schaffner (2002) – the polarized structure of voting in Congress may be partially due to each party wanting to adopt assertive positions on “new issues” in order to persuade more people to affiliate with its party (59). Moscardelli and Lawrence makes an interesting argument that Democrats framed this nuclear disposal site issue into a broader environmental (and environmental justice) issue that Democrats and others would be especially concerned about. This argument hints as to how an issue such as determining the Yucca Mountain disposal site’s fate can become a partisan issue within several years. On the other side of the Senate aisle, some or most Republicans were opposed to Harry Reid’s efforts – especially Senators with ties to the nuclear industry. In fact, their opposition was unified against Reid’s opposition since the disposal site was proposed in the 1980s. As a possible implication for Republicans’ positive relationship with the nuclear power industry, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) donated $554,047 to Republicans, versus $212,197 to Democrats (62).
Moscardelli and Becker’s scholarly article was peer-reviewed and contained citations – mainly from news media organizations (Boston Globe; Las Vegas Review-Journal; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; New York Times), journals (American Journal of Political Science; CQ Weekly; British Journal of Political Science; Journal of Politics), and authors of books printed by academic publishers (CQ Press; John Hopkins University Press; Ohio State University Press; University of California Press; University of Chicago Press; Westview Press). Therefore, their citations are from arguably respectable media sources as well as authors of peer-reviewed works. Their concluded associations between multiple variables (party, party leader, casks originating in states, NEI contributions, etc.) were supported by their empirical data analysis – in which most of the p-values are less than or equal to 0.05, meaning these are statistically significant associations and correlations to make. In particular, the authors “used OLS [ordinary least squares] to estimate models of “Reid Support Scores” for the 1987-2000 period, and a separate logistic regression model of the single, decisive veto-override vote cast in the 107th Congress” (67).
Citation — Literary Resource
Moscardelli, Vincent G., and Lawrence A. Becker. 2007. "Not on Your (Half) Life: The Partisan Geography of Nuclear Waste Disposal." Congress & the Presidency 34 (1).
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