Editorial: This crew just can’t get it right

Friday, Dec. 1, 2000 | 11:04 a.m.

The federal government's "best and brightest" scientific minds repeatedly have told the nation that it need not worry too much about 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste being shipped to Nevada if Yucca Mountain ultimately is chosen as a repository. Well, not only Nevadans, but also all the residents of other states who live along possible transportation routes, should be very worried about building a central repository for nuclear waste.

As the Associated Press reported earlier this week, a truck hauling radioactive waste to a federal dump near Carlsbad, N.M., missed a turn in Santa Fe and illegally headed on Interstate 25 toward heavily-populated Albuquerque before state police eventually turned it around and sent the driver in the right direction. The Department of Energy says it is investigating how the Tri-State Motor Transit truck missed its turnoff last week. The DOE also is looking into why a satellite tracking monitor system didn't notice the errant truck bound for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. So much for fail-safe protections.

The DOE is set to make a recommendation next year on whether it believes Yucca Mountain can safely store nuclear waste. Along with a growing number of scientific doubts about Yucca Mountain's suitability, there also are abundant unanswered questions as to how safe it would be to transport this deadly waste across the nation. As we've said before, the DOE should call a timeout immediately in its investigation of Yucca Mountain, acknowledging it doesn't have enough information to assess whether a central repository would be safe.