Shoshone leader describes deadly nuclear legacy

Friday, March 29, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney said the seeds of destruction sown by nuclear weapons experiments at the Nevada Test Site have already choked his livelihood.

As part of his duty to the Western Shoshones, whose roots stretch back into Nevada for more than 3,000 years, Harney performs rituals to heal. But the plants he once plucked from Southern Nevada are dying.

"My berries are gone, my roots are gone, all the plants we used in medicine for thousands of years are gone," Harney told a joint hearing on the Department of Energy's plans to store and eventually dispose of the radioactive remains of the Cold War at the Test Site.

What Harney worries about is plans for storing plutonium in P-tunnel at the Test Site for up to 50 years, or perhaps burying highly enriched uranium and plutonium mixed with high-level nuclear wastes in a proposed dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"If this goes off under the water table, what happens?" asked Harney, referring to the threat of plutonium reaching the critical mass necessary for a nuclear explosion.

From the DOE's perspective, plutonium may be a useful ingredient in light water nuclear reactors in half a century. At the moment federal scientists are struggling to lock it away from unstable nations or terrorists whose interests lie in building bombs. Stored, it's a resource, not waste, they say.

"We're worried about the Russians," said the DOE's Howard Canter, who came to hear what local residents thought about using the Test Site for nuclear storage. When the former Soviet Union fell apart, so did its security, he said.

If the U.S. sets an example, then the rest of the world may keep bomb-grade materials out of the wrong hands, Canter said. Besides, Yucca Mountain has not been named as a permanent high-level nuclear waste dump, he said.

Others at the hearing in the Sands Expo & Convention Center called the idea of using Nevada as a national nuclear storage or dumping ground "ridiculous."

Chemical engineer Grant Hudlow, whose father was project manager for Hoover Dam in the 1930s, said the rules of secrecy won't work for the DOE anymore, so if something happens officials could face 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

"Anything you bury, we're going to drink, I don't care how deep," Hudlow said.

He also criticized the DOE for ignoring basic scientific solutions, such as shooting nuclear waste with 25,000 volts of X-rays to neutralize radioactive waste or collecting the radiation in colloids. Colloids are solids, liquids or gases that hold a substance in suspension.

There is no known method of destroying plutonium, with its radioactive lifespan of 24,000 years -- and at that point only half the radiation is gone -- Canter replied.

The U.S. has not made any plutonium since 1988.

"This is a beat-the-swords-into-plowshares, rather than make more swords, project," Canter said.

"How dangerous will it be when it comes here?" Harney asked. "How many lives is it going to take?"

To submit comments, the public has until May 7 to send to: DOE-Office of Fissile Materials Disposition, c/o SAIC-PEIS, P.O. Box 23786, Washington, D.C. 20026-2786.