Editorial: New report questions dump study

Sunday, March 21, 1999 | 10:06 a.m.

One of the prime movers behind the legislation, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said a recent viability assessment of Yucca Mountain by the Energy Department, which found there were no foreseeable problems with the site as a permanent repository, would help get this legislation passed. What Murkowski conveniently failed to mention is Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has stressed repeatedly that the viability assessment in no way should be construed that the Energy Department ultimately will decide in 2001 that Yucca Mountain is feasible as a permanent nuclear waste dump.

It also will be interesting to see how Murkowski and other supporters of the nuclear power industry react to an important report released last week by scientific experts that casts serious doubts about whether it will be safe to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. The Sun's Mary Manning reported that the six-member peer-review panel found the Energy Department faces major hurdles in completing experiments on the movement of ground water and potential radiation leakage from a proposed repository in the mountain.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the nuclear power lobby is pressuring federal lawmakers to quickly pass legislation that would place a "temporary" dump in Nevada, since the more scientific work that is done, the less safe Yucca Mountain appears. If Yucca Mountain was found to be unsafe, the federal government would have to start all over. The federal government already has spent 15 years investigating Yucca Mountain, so it's understandable that for selfish reasons they don't want to open the process again.

It is sickening, though, to see some of our nation's top elected officials cavalierly dismiss science in their rush to do the bidding of the influential nuclear power industry. These officials blindly ignore that the final judgment on how to safely store the world's deadliest waste. It is unconscionable for a U.S. senator or a member of the House to ignore the compelling evidence that suggests placing high-level nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain would be an environmental blunder we would have to live with for hundreds of years.