The Trump administration’s charm offensive hit Las Vegas last week with its congressional acolytes praising the wonders of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and a phalanx of angry Democrats pointing to the damage already being done and predicting even more dire scenarios to come.

A few miles away, another administration-allied dog-and-pony show was playing before an audience estimated at fewer than 100 at the Santa Fe Hotel and Casino and drawing less attention. It was an invitation-only gathering hosted by the Department of Energy-approved Mothers for Nuclear group. Since its founding in 2015 by two employees of California’s Diablo Canyon power plant, Mothers for Nuclear has expanded with multiple chapters in Europe.

With speakers and a slide show setting the tone, I’m reliably informed the prevailing theme was sunny with a good chance of an even sunnier future. Fears of nuclear energy are wildly exaggerated, they said, making a reference to the lovably bumbling power plant worker Homer Simpson. In short, several speakers postured, the time has come to stop worrying and love nuclear power. 

The presentation, I’m told, was mostly well received in an audience that included retired nuclear power industry workers now making their homes in Southern Nevada. The Mothers for Nuclear and their friends were batting in a friendly ballpark, where it was easy to write off the risks of nuclear waste transport and storage and downplay the dangers of radiation exposure. The fraught history of the thus-far-derailed plan to establish the nation’s high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nye County was not the main course of discussion.

The words Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima were polished so bright you could almost see yourself. No word yet on whether a generation of Downwinders exposed to atomic testing fallout grumbled from their graves.

The idea of letting go of the past, overcoming fears and embracing the future sounds refreshing. But outside the friendly confines of a controlled environment, the sales job figures to get much tougher for Mothers for Nuclear Inc. — at least in Nevada.

And speaking of Nevada, one expert noted that a certain unfinished radioactive waste repository site was approximately 50 percent completed. This probably comes as a surprise to those who have fought hard against it. Come to think of it, the story of Yucca Mountain might make for a good episode of The Simpsons.

Another authority on the subject spoke about the safety and relatively small footprint all the radioactive waste in America would make. A mere football field would contain it, attendees were told. (Insert your least favorite NFL team’s name here.)

That doesn’t explain why the states that enjoy the benefits of nuclear power have so little interest in storing their own waste product. But this is an old story which, we are asked to believe, is now a past political battle that has reached its half-life.

The immediate and predicted fallout from President Donald Trump’s signature bill understandably garnered most of the press and public’s attention. There’s something about canceling Medicaid and food assistance for millions of poor people that generates headlines.

But the nuclear issue poses a challenge for Nevadans, and especially for Trump-friendly Gov. Joe Lombardo. Just months ago, the governor through a spokesperson assured skeptics that the Yucca Mountain issue was settled. It was history. Mothballed. That puts Lombardo in diametric opposition to the Trump administration, whose Project 2025 playbook proposes not only restarting the licensing process but fast-tracking it. 

Nuclear waste isn’t Nevada’s only problem. The state is struggling. As OBBBA zealots attempted to write their “How I Spent My Five-Week Summer Recess” essays, they were compelled to mansplain the unforced error that put them at odds with Nevada’s gaming industry with the bonehead 90 percent gambling tax write-off provision. Get out the erasers, kids.

On the positive side, OBBBA includes a temporary partial tax break on tip income. That’s good news, as long as it lasts.

But it takes a lot of gall to fly into a state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate and the fifth-highest gasoline prices in the country and start singing Happy Days Are Here Again. Just days before the 60th anniversary of the creation of Medicaid, it’s now estimated that at least 114,000 Nevadans will lose coverage and be forced to go looking for medical treatment where they inevitably seek it — from county hospitals and 911 first responders.

The Trump administration’s nuclear power happy face can’t compete for news space against that grim reality, or for that matter the increasingly disturbing proximity of Trump to the sordid world of his late friend, the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. But at least for now, it has a crowd size problem.

Judging by our history, Nevadans would be wise to wear shades before being dazzled by the light of this proposed nuclear future.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.