Elko mining executive files for Reid's Senate seat

Longtime Elko mining executive Cherie Tilley filed Friday as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat held by Harry Reid.

Tilley said his goals in the election are to push his plans provide water for future Nevada growth and turn Yucca Mountain waste into a moneymaker for the state.

He said with more than 30 years in mining including work on water tunnels and drilling on the Nevada Test Site, he understands both the water engineering and the nuclear power issues involved.

Tilley laid out an ambitious plan to buy and import water from as far away as the Columbia River to Southern Nevada through an extensive network of pipes that would also tap the Snake River in Idaho and take flood-level runoff through tunnels in the Sierra from California.

He said the network could eventually provide water not only to Southern Nevada but to farmers along its route south from Washington state and even to the Los Angeles area. And he said it would be seeded by $2 billion from the Yucca Mountain waste dump budget.

He said his plan for Yucca Mountain is to build a huge reprocessing plant in what is now the secret air base at Area 51 and turn nuclear waste into fuel for new nuclear reactors that would generate electric power for the West, including Nevada.

He said the state "should get the rights to that fuel and to sell it," providing Nevada with millions in revenue. And the fuel, he said, would go to five new nuclear power plants he wants to build around the state.

Tilley is the second Republican in the race. Richard Ziser of Las Vegas filed last week and, while he has said the state should negotiate for benefits in trade for Yucca Mountain instead of just opposing what he sees as inevitable, Tilley's stand goes much farther.

Tilley said the advantage to his proposal is that the waste wouldn't be stored at Yucca Mountain for centuries because it would be converted into fuel and used in the new power plants.