Local business leaders may get an earful on Yucca Mountain and related issues in the weeks ahead from the SRS Community Reuse Organization (SRSCRO).

J. David Jameson, president and CEO of the Greater Aiken Chamber of Commerce, was among several speakers at a press conference held in the North Augusta Municipal Center Monday announcing a publicity drive focusing on the issue of nuclear waste and whether the federal government will honor its pledge not to use the Savannah River Site as a permanent depository.

Yucca Mountain, over the past two decades, has undergone intense study en route to being assessed as America's best place for permanent storage of nuclear waste. The south-central Nevada site, however, has reportedly been removed from consideration, sparking a dispute over the future fate of the thousands of tons of waste stored at SRS and other locations spread from coast to coast.

Also speaking was Rick McLeod, executive director of SRSCRO. He gave an overview of the situation and noted that the most recent SRS Citizens Advisory Board meeting included a presentation of the material given at Monday's event. The information, he added, is available at www.srscro.org, under the "community issues" link.

"Yucca Mountain is the most studied piece of ground in the history of the Earth," said Jameson, who is also co-chairman of the SRSCRO Yucca Mountain Task Force. "To date, more than $7 billion and two decades have been spent on characterization of this site. Study after study have confirmed that it is more suitable for long-term storage of nuclear waste than any other site."

Jameson noted that SRS, as a huge player in the Department of Energy's network of facilities, should have a place at the table in the disposal discussion.

"The challenge of properly disposing of nuclear waste touches every man, woman and child in America, both today and in the future," he said. "If we do not act now, future generations will be called on to solve the problem. It is an unfair burden to be left to our children and grandchildren only if we fail to act now."

He noted that high-level nuclear waste is stored at 16 sites among 13 states, in addition to used nuclear commercial fuel being stored in 41 states.

"This is a local problem and a national problem - one that we cannot ignore," Jameson said.

Plans are in place for the task force's representatives to make their case with elected officials, economic developers, community groups, technical organizations, business leaders and others, with a goal of educating and encouraging more public dialogue to reach Congress and the Department of Energy.

Making similar comments about the "new reality" was the task force's other co-chairman, Sue Parr, Jameson's counterpart at the Augusta Chamber of Commerce. She noted that "the federal government has broken its promise to our community, to DOE communities across the country and to the American people."

The plan, she said, has always been to send waste to Yucca Mountain, and facilities such as SRS handled the waste with the clear understanding that it was a temporary storage situation. The situation, she said, was akin to a hotel arrangement.

"Our guests, the nuclear waste, were non-paying transients. The waste was to stay here for a while, then move on. We never envisioned building a permanent retirement home for nuclear waste, but that is exactly the prospect we face without Yucca Mountain," she said.

The toxic residue creates, among other things, the challenge of "explaining this situation to our industrial prospects and businesses interested in our region," Parr said. "As an economic development agency, 'permanent nuclear waste storage' is not one of the descriptive terms we want on our recruiting and marketing brochures, so it is the view of the SRS Community Reuse Organization that our region cannot simply accept the government's decision. We need to talk about this issue."

A press release distributed Monday confirmed SRSCRO's plan to undertake "a comprehensive regional education campaign aimed at developing community consensus in responding to the federal decision to halt work on Yucca Mountain."

The issue's political angles include Nevada being the home state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who "led the fight to stop the nation's nuclear waste dump from being located in Nevada's Yucca Mountain," as noted in a Sunday report from The Associated Press. Reid is up for re-election in 2010.

Reid, in a letter to his constituents, noted that President Barack Obama "recognizes that the proposed dump threatens the health and safety of Nevadans and millions of Americans, and his commitment to stop this terrible project could not be more clear."