Editorial: Living in shadow of repository

Thursday, Sept. 30, 1999 | 9:38 a.m.

When the debate turns to the hazards of a proposed nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, it naturally centers on the dangers presented to the 1 million-plus residents of the Las Vegas Valley, which is located just 90 miles away. Sometimes forgotten is the impact such a repository could have on Amargosa Valley residents, who live just 12 miles away from what could one day be the final resting place for man's deadliest waste. On Monday the Department of Energy, which has been given the task of determining whether Yucca Mountain could safely store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, held a hearing in Amargosa Valley, the first of 17 hearings in Nevada and around the nation as the public gets its chance to weigh in on the environmental impacts of a proposed repository.

For the 1,500 residents of Amargosa Valley, the DOE plans include removing from public use 230 square miles of land in the northern part of that town. But residents there say even that won't afford enough of a buffer, as the Sun's Mary Manning noted in a Tuesday story about their testimony, which included concerns about radiation leaking from waste containers and contaminating ground water. "Radiation will travel underneath the Amargosa Valley Community Center where you are sitting," Les Bradshaw, Nye County's manager of the Natural Resources and Federal Facilities Program, said. Pistachio farmer Ralph McCracken also worries about "leaky containers in a leaky mountain in a bad setting." And Ed Goedhart, who manages the Ponderosa Dairy with 5,000 cows that provides organic milk for customers throughout the West, noted that contaminated milk is an issue sinc e the dairy is 15 miles downstream of Yucca Mountain's ground water.

Supporters of a nuclear waste repository in Nevada imply that a repository will have little impact, because it's located in the sparsely populated desert. But the testimony offered by Amargosa Valley residents, and the fact that a repository would also be so close to the major metropolitan area of Las Vegas, belies this suggestion. Congress and the DOE should, then, want the toughest radiation standards for a repository, considering that the waste will remain deadly for thousands of years. Yet what is occurring in our nation's capital is just the opposite. The Senate is expected to determine soon whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should set the radiation standards instead of the Environmental Protection Agency. This is a critical decision since the EPA has sought more stringent repository guidelines than the NRC, a nuclear power-friendly agency.

Nevada's congressional delegation is asking President Clinton, who is visiting Las Vegas this Friday for a political fund-raiser, to pledge he will veto any legislation emasculating the EPA's oversight. This is a critical moment in Nevada's bid to seek fairness on nuclear waste storage, and it is hoped that this administration once again acknowledges that politics has no place in a scientific inquiry.