©2025 League of Conservation Voters
1982 Scorecard Vote
52
40
8
The vote is on the McClure (R-ID) motion to kill the Cannon (D-NV) amendment to the National Nuclear Waste Policy Act (S. 1662). The bill as written set a 1987 deadline for finding a permanent nuclear waste site. The bill allowed a state to object to a federal decision to put a nuclear waste dump within its borders if it could get one House of Congress to agree. The Cannon amendment said that a state objection would prevail unless both the House and the Senate voted to override it, thus strengthening the hand of local residents who are most deeply affected by a siting decision. No safe and permanent way to dispose of nuclear wastes has yet been found. The federal government has repeatedly tried to locate disposal sites in places whose safety was questionable, only to back off when public resistance increased. Environmentalists wanted to strengthen the hand of states because they fear that the federal government will rush into a premature siting decision without adequate study, in its eagerness to declare the nuclear waste problem “solved.” McClure motion passed 52-40; April 29, 1982. NO is the pro-environmental vote. (Senator Proxmire (D-WI) later got the Cannon language included in the final version of the bill.)
©2025 League of Conservation Voters