If the Dems go ahead with their plan to hold an early presidential caucus in Nevada, it’ll be another big strike against the already beleaguered plan to open a nuclear-waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

Yucca Mountain has looked like a long shot for years anyway, beset by technical problems, timeline delays, and court challenges, and held at bay by Nevada’s two senators, who — like the vast majority of their constituents — are virulently opposed to their state serving as the nation’s nuke-waste dumping ground.

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If Nevada’s caucus becomes a key early contest, candidates will stumble over each other to swear on their mothers’ graves that Yucca Mountain won’t happen under their watch — just as they now pledge undying fealty to ethanol subsidies in Iowa.

(If only they’d just rotate the early caucuses and primaries every four years, so each state’s pet issues could get their 15 minutes of candidate pandering.)

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