Radioactive GOP pandering

Politicians are prone to telling voters what they want to hear. But that self-serving impulse doesn't give presidential candidates a pass to support a dangerous policy. Too bad that's precisely what three Republican White House aspirants did during Tuesday night's debate in Las Vegas.

An audience member asked, "Do you support opening the national nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain?"

Only Newt Gingrich gave the right answer, pointing out that "because this has been caught up in a political fight, we have small units of nuclear waste all over this country in a way that is vastly more dangerous to the United States than finding a method of keeping it in a very, very deep place that would be able to sustain 10,000 or 20,000 and 30,000 years of geological safety."

While most of those "small units of nuclear waste" are now at power plants around the nation, a substantial concentration of radioactive refuse is at the Savannah River Site, near Aiken and a major earthquake fault. The volume of waste will continue to grow due to the Obama administration's refusal to revive the Yucca project.

Pressed by CNN moderator Anderson Cooper on whether that Nevada site is the proper waste repository, Gingrich hedged with "I'm not a scientist" before answering correctly: "Yucca Mountain certainly was picked by the scientific community as one of the safest places in the United States."

Then the pandering to the Nevada crowd began. Ron Paul, citing "states' rights," said "the government shouldn't be in the business of subsidizing any form of energy." He concluded that "the more the free market handles this and the more you deal with property rights and no subsidies to any form of energy, the easier this problem would be solved."

Mitt Romney praised and echoed Rep. Paul's answer, elaborating: "If Nevada says, 'Look, we don't want it,' then let other states make bids and say, 'Hey, look, we'll take it.' ... Let the free market work."

Rick Perry said Mr. Romney "hit it, the nail, right on the head."

Actually, Mr. Romney, like Rep. Paul and Gov. Perry, hit common sense right on the noggin. Even in these hard times, which states would bid for nuclear waste? Even if they did, shouldn't it go not to the lowest bidder but to the lowest-risk site?

"The free market" can and does work wonders. It remains the key to our overdue economic comeback. Perhaps it can play a positive role in the storage of nuclear waste.

But the particular hazards of high-level radioactive waste demand that the federal government carry the ultimate responsibility for that challenge.

And when presidential candidates answer questions, they should consider more than the political fallout.