Joe Biden
Biden is a longtime opponent of building a federal nuclear repository facility at Yucca Mountain, which is about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. In 2002, after voting in the Senate against using Yucca as a depository site, he issued a statement explaining his vote, saying he didn’t think it was safe to ship 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste through at least 43 states, including his home state of Delaware. Biden has said the safety concerns include numerous fault line problems at Yucca. He also has said the waste should be stored at the plants that produce it..… more. | Other issues | Bio

Hillary Clinton
Clinton has been an opponent, saying at an October Senate hearing that “Yucca Mountain is not a safe place to store spent fuel from our nation’s nuclear reactors.” She has said the fault lines and seismic activity in the area makes it unsafe. She said the containers that the waste would be stored in would have to be trusted not to rust for hundreds of thousands of years. She said the country does need to find a solution for storing nuclear waste, but Yucca Mountain is not the answer. Until a better solution is made, the country needs to make sure the waste is stored safely at the existing reactor sites. Clinton also voted in 2002 against a Senate bill that called for a nuclear dump at Yucca.… more. | Other issues | Bio

Chris Dodd
Sen. Chris Dodd has supported making Yucca Mountain the nation’s nuclear waste repository, but as a Democratic Presidential candidate, Dodd is not in favor of such a move. A speech dated July 9, 2002 and posted on Dodd’s Senate Web site indicated his approval and plan to vote in favor of President Bush’s 2002 proposal to make Yucca Mountain a national nuclear waste repository. Within Dodd’s speech, he made clear that his vote to move forward with Yucca Mountain was not one that gave a free ticket for Congress to transport the waste, but instead was one that ensured that the proposal received sufficient scientific research. But amidst Sen. Hillary Clinton’s July 2007 prompt for a Senate hearing regarding Yucca Mountain, Dodd solidified his position as an anti-Yucca Mountain presidential candidate at the opening of his Las Vegas campaign headquarters… more. | Other issues | Bio

John Edwards
In 2002, Edwards voted in favor of the Senate bill that would set up the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which would be 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. That’s not surprising, because Edwards’ home state of North Carolina has five nuclear reactors and is one of the top U.S. nuclear power producers. However, Edwards has changed his stand since 2002. He now opposes shipping nuclear waste across the country to Nevada. He also opposes building any new nuclear power plants and says U.S. energy needs should be met with renewable energy sources… more. | Other issues | Bio

Mike Gravel
As an Alaska senator in 1972, Mike Gravel opposed forging ahead with nuclear energy because of the limited amount of knowledge that both the government and the scientific community had on the affects that nuclear waste could produce.  Gravel has not been in Congress since the late 1970s in order to vote on any of the initiatives that have propelled Yucca Mountain to the nation’s forefront in nuclear waste storage.… more. | Other issues | Bio

Dennis Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich not only opposes making Yucca Mountain the nation’s nuclear waste storage site, he opposes all forms of nuclear energy and if elected president would phase out nuclear power plants. Kucinich stated on his Web site that nuclear energy poses more of a threat to the U.S. than nuclear weapons. Since being elected into the House of Representatives in 1997, Kucinich has never voted in favor of Yucca Mountain proposals. While on the city council in Ohio and as a mayor of Cleveland, Kucinich railed against the building of both nuclear power plants and nuclear waste storage sites in the state. Kucinich is instead in favor of renewable energy sources that will not pollute or cause harm to the environment or people.… more. | Other issues | Bio

Barack Obama
Obama, whose home state of Illinois has 11 nuclear power facilities, said it might seem to be in the best interests of his state to ship out the nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. However, the risks of transporting nuclear waste to another state poses an uncertain risk. Because a large amount of the spent fuel would likely travel by rail, it’s a serious concern for Chicago, which serves as the transportation hub of the country. Also, because Nevada elected officials have not wavered in their opposition, it could mean billions of more dollars are spent on the project without any results. For those reasons, Obama is opposed to making Yucca a permanent nuclear waste repository. He said a solution could be to find another state willing to serve as a repository, or finding regional repositories. “In short, the selection of Yucca Mountain has failed, the time for debate on this site is over, and it is time to start exploring new alternatives for safe, long-term solutions based on sound science.”… more. | Other issues | Bio

Bill Richardson
Since October, 2007, Richardson has fallen under scrutiny for his 20-year relationship with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository proposal. A Denver Post article in October 2007 reported that while Richardson was in Congress, he voted for the “Screw Nevada bill” in 1987 that coupled defense and health care measures into the narrowing of possible nuclear waste dump sites from three to one - the one being Yucca Mountain. But on the local television show, “Face to Face with Jon Ralston” in October, 2007, Richardson claimed that while serving as energy secretary for the Clinton administration, he fought on the side of Nevada regarding Yucca Mountain, and ensured that the government’s decision to dump nuclear waste on Nevada’s mountain would be purely scientific instead of political. During his campaign, Richardson has said that he would not open Yucca Mountain up, but instead he would use the site for research to help solve the nuclear waste problem, and on the Las Vegas CNN Democratic Presidential debates in November, Richardson reaffirmed this position. Perhaps where Richardson finds himself under the most scrutiny is his Democratic Presidential campaign’s anti-Yucca Mountain stance versus what critics say was his blatant refusal to halt or delay the process while he had the means… more. | Other issues | Bio

Las Vegas Sun new media managing editor Dave Toplikar and interns Jenna Kohler and April Corbin contributed to this report.