Editorial: Another colossal blunder

Thursday, June 3, 1999 | 10:50 a.m.

The federal government has had an abysmal record regarding its investigation into whether high-level nuclear waste can be stored safely at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Political considerations, instead of scientific reasons, have tainted site selection and subsequent research. Any time legitimate questions are raised concerning the environmental dangers posed by placing a nuclear waste dump there, the federal government just shrugs its shoulders and mumbles something about finding an engineering solution to alleviate the concerns.

In a way, then, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that this track record of ignoring the problem at hand has been replicated elsewhere. The General Accounting Office released a report this week that uncovered a shocking failure by the Department of Energy's attempt to solidify 34 million gallons of nuclear weapons waste at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Department of Energy spent 16 years and nearly $500 million before finally acknowledging this week that it will abandon a plan to vitrify and store millions of gallons of radioactive waste, because the procedure scientists developed to change the liquid into a solid is dangerous, producing an explosive benzene gas.

The GAO report asserts that the South Carolina "project was managed on a fast-track schedule -- design and construction being done concurrently -- with an emphasis on pushing ahead in the belief that the problems could be solved later." The trouble first was observed in 1983 when, the report notes, a release of benzene "was higher than the instruments in the tank could measure." But the 1983 test was viewed as a success because the high-level waste was separated from the solution; the exceeded levels were "forgotten over time" by the scientists, according to the GAO. Some success. Starting over with a substitute method could take an additional 10 years and cost as much $3.5 billion.

A worrisome pattern has developed over the years regarding Department of Energy projects, especially those dealing with nuclear waste storage and cleanup: Scientists and government officials often ignore the obvious pitfalls inherent in some technologies. They would rather rush along and try to find a solution -- even if it's not feasible.

In one respect, it is at least encouraging to see Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson have the sense to pull the plug on the operation in South Carolina and consider hiring a new private contractor to develop alternative technologies to separate the most highly radioactive material from the less radioactive liquid. The key is whether the Department of Energy and Congress learn from this catastrophic mistake, similarly heeding the massive array of evidence pointing to the dangers of storing high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.