Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: The science of spin

Thursday, Nov. 18, 1999 | 10:21 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

HERE'S a good one.

The Department of Energy is arguing that the state of Nevada should base any decision it makes about water use at Yucca Mountain on -- get this -- scientific evidence.

The person who made that argument to Nevada's state engineer, Mike Turnipseed, must be new to the world of hardball national politics and decades of DOE neglect as it relates to the Silver State. The fellow's name is Brent Kolvet and he's a lawyer for the DOE. Talk about sending in the clowns.

Now, I don't know Mr. Kolvet and I am willing to accept the fact that he may be a perfectly fine attorney, but in matters of nuclear waste and nuclear fairness to the people who live and work in this state, this guy is way out of his league. Otherwise, he'd never let the words "scientific evidence" slip from his lips when arguing anything that had to do with placing the high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

For, unless you have been living under a rock for the past 20 years, it would be abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that science has next to nothing to do with Yucca Mountain. Unless, of course, you count the billions of dollars of taxpayer and ratepayer money that the nuke industry and Congress have been willing to waste on their way to justifying their decision to dump the dump on us.

The odd argument was presented to Turnipseed toward the end of a days-long hearing in which the state engineer will decide whether to allocate 430 acre feet of water for the DOE to use in the construction and operation of the nuclear dump. One of the reasons it is so odd is that the DOE has only used the pretense of science as a foundation for its political decision to shove the deadliest toxin known to man into Nevada's desert, just 90 miles from the heart of Las Vegas.

Everyone here has known for years that the billions of dollars being spent on scientific research at Yucca Mountain is solely for the purpose of finding the ways and means to justify Congress' decision back in the 1980s to forsake all other possible dumpsites in favor of the least politically damaging one -- Nevada's desert.

I have never been a proponent of burying the 10,000-year-old menace to life, health and happiness because I believe that 20th and now 21st century science should be able to come up with a better answer than that which has gotten us by for the first few thousand years. Whenever man has had a problem with what to do with something bad the answer has been to bury it. In some cases, that decision has led to billions of dollars of cleanup costs and thousands of deaths and dying because toxic chemicals have been buried instead of being properly disposed of. Does Love Canal ring a bell?

The fact of the matter is that as we approach the end of the 20th century, the scientific answers to many of our toughest problems are at our fingertips. So why use our hands to dig holes in the ground when our fingers can help compute far more effective and significantly less harmful solutions?

And the only person I have heard at the federal level -- besides our own congressional delegation -- use the word science when talking intelligently about Yucca Mountain is President Clinton. While Sens. Harry Reid and Dick Bryan have effectively garnered the 34 votes they need to sustain a presidential veto -- so far -- it is the president who has sent the message to Congress and the DOE that good science, not bad politics, should determine the appropriate solution to this national problem. So, all of a sudden, here comes an attorney into Nevada urging this state to rely on science when determining whether to give the DOE enough water to drown out the hopes and dreams of every Nevadan. Sorry, buddy, that just won't wash.

The public interest is important in deciding what to do with any of our natural resources. We shouldn't give our water, our air or anything else we have to someone who is going to use it to cause hundreds and thousands of years of death and destruction to our people and, potentially, multitudes of billions of dollars of damage to our tourist-based economy.

That's no more speculation, Mr. Kolvet, than the DOE's contention that the nuclear waste will stay stable for 10,000 years in Nevada's environment which, in case you didn't know, is prone to earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Stable, you say? How about that earthquake that shook all of Las Vegas awake last month. Imagine what would have happened to 70,000 tons of high-level death just waiting to shake its way loose into the water table or the air. The only speculation that exists is in which year that disaster is going to happen and which of our generations to come will pay that heavy price!

No, attorney Kolvet, Nevada doesn't buy your argument about science. We'd love to but, you see, your bosses in the nuclear power industry have made cynics of us all. Not about science, but about the motivation of Congress and its power company handlers.

It is in the public interest to use our water for good things. Not the bad thing you and yours want to shove down our throats.