It’s not exactly news in a campaign season. Lots of candidates don’t know what they’re talking about.

But most of those talking-point myna birds and hare-brained pontificators aren’t being highly touted as U.S. Senate material the way Republican front-runner Sam Brown is.

And Brown didn’t know what he was talking about in 2022 when he stood before a Republican women’s group in Henderson and said Nevada was missing out on a big payday by maintaining its four-decade opposition to the Yucca Mountain Project high-level nuclear waste repository. That was in a previous Senate campaign in which Brown lost in the primary to Adam Laxalt, who was defeated by incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto.

Back then, Brown called the failure to open the Yucca site an “incredible loss of revenue for our state” and said, “If we don’t act soon, other states … are assessing whether or not they can essentially steal that opportunity from us. … We all know that Nevada could use another great source of revenue and it sure would be a shame if we didn’t monopolize on that and become a central hub of new development that we can do at Yucca.”

Oh, yeah. States are just salivating in anticipation of the windfall that accompanies being known as America’s nuclear waste dumping ground.

Although Brown recently told the Los Angeles Times that he favored economic development that can be done safely, his uncorrected ignorance on Yucca Mountain will haunt his latest run for office against incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen. For months, the Rosen campaign has taken the threat of Brown seriously. He’s a decorated Army war veteran who has the backing of top Senate Republicans and has kept busy on the campaign trail declaring his MAGA conservative values.

Now he’s made Team Rosen’s job easier.

What’s the half-life of such ill-informed remarks? Even with much of the public not yet focused on the campaign, and the Yucca Mountain issue a well-worn political tune, this promises to leave a mark. National political observers are already predicting his stance on the issue could do real damage in a race that’s expected to be close. 

A Nevada resident since 2018, Brown has no one to blame but himself and his political handlers for not amending his unforced error. The “waste is good for Nevada’s economy” line has been often repeated, but has never been accurate. It could be better argued that the state has generated more for its coffers by fighting the project, than rolling over.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats are having a field day at his expense.

This week saw former Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid, son of the late Senate battler Harry Reid, join current elected officials in a loud rebuke of Brown’s stance on the issue. That’s to be accepted, right? They’re Democrats, after all.

But this isn’t really a partisan issue in Nevada, where you’ll find members of both parties seeing Yucca as a dangerous loser for the state. And it’s not just a political stance. Serious scientific questions remain with the site.

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the experts.

In recent months, I’ve had the honor of interviewing several of the nation’s leading authorities on nuclear waste policy as part of a podcast series produced by the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. The agency, which has worked against the dump for decades, exists to protect Nevada citizens, its environment and economy with regard to any federal high-level nuclear waste disposal activities in the state. It was designed especially to put a state placed in a near-hopeless underdog position into a fight many were sure it could not win.

Although Nevada was targeted when Congress in 1987 voted Yucca Mountain as the single site for the country’s high-level radioactive waste, what most informed citizens recognize as the “screw Nevada bill,” it’s never been the right answer. As it was designed, its 77,000-metric-ton capacity would already have been exceeded by the nation’s 90,000 metric tons of material.

An attempt at political expediency and outright bullying backfired. Instead of accepting defeat as an underrepresented state – the place Brown, if successful in November, would represent – Nevada fought back against a bum deal and has never stopped fighting to accept what was a hugely flawed policy from the start.

Brown’s stance on Yucca Mountain doesn’t just cause politically damaging sound bites. It also casts serious doubt about his qualifications for the office he’s seeking. Polls in recent years have placed opposition to Yucca Mountain as high as 75 percent. It’s not only ignorant to support the deal that proposed to stick Nevada with the nation’s nuclear waste, it’s also terribly dumb politics.

You don’t really want to screw Nevada, do you Sam?

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 Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR.