Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Down this road again

Friday, Dec. 1, 2000 | 10:47 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

While the country waits for a president-elect, how about a few issues closer to home.

At the risk of mentioning nuclear waste once too often -- an impossible task because if the GOP gets its way next year, that's all we'll be talking about -- how about that truck that got lost on the way to a New Mexico nuclear site?

As often as we hear our government -- through the Department of Energy, senators and congressmen who are hell-bent on burying the nation's radioactive garbage in our back yard, and nuke waste producers looking for any old place to send their mess -- talk about the absolute safety and security with which they will send the country's high level nuclear nightmare to the Silver State, you would think that the folks in Washington would finally get their acts together. But that is not the way of government and certainly not the way of the DOE, its contractors and minions who decided years ago that the one and only place worthy enough to play host to plutonium and other deadly nuke products for the next 10,000 years is Nevada.

What qualified us two decades ago, of course, was our sparse population and the minimal clout Nevada had in the Electoral College. Election backdrop: If you haven't heard of the Electoral College by now, just stop reading because this could get too complicated for you.

When the rest of the country is looking for a place to bury a national disaster of economic, political and health-impacting proportions as yet unknown in America, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the state with the least clout in Washington will always get the short straw. That is what happened to Nevada when Congress passed the "Screw Nevada" law that decided to circumvent all known and unknown science and semblance of fair play by singling out the Silver State as the one and only place to study for the the ultimate siting of the dump.

The lawmakers followed that courageous decision with a few billion dollars of taxpayer money so that it has become harder and harder to change their minds -- in the face of mounting scientific evidence that says they should -- out of fear that they will be criticized for wasting money. If you can follow that logic you will understand all that Washington, D.C. is and does.

In any event, the one thread of scientific truth to which the DOE clings is that Yucca Mountain will be perfectly safe for the next 10,000 years. Safe from earthquakes in what is one of the most active earthquake zones in the United States; safe from volcanic activity as they plan to bury thousands of tons of plutonium in the middle of a volcanic field; and safe from any threat of underground water contamination in the face of evidence that water has found a way to seep into Yucca Mountain in recent years and off of the reservation in a a relative blink of an eye.

In spite of all this, the DOE says, "Don't worry, trust us. We know what we are doing." When have you heard that before?

So what about that truck in New Mexico? Why on earth was it traveling down a highway that was strictly off-limits to nuclear cargo? The answer is simple. Human error. It happens all the time and it is part of the definition of being human. And that is why all the political maneuvering and DOE sleight of hand should ultimately fail to convince the public and the courts when they are asked to approve Yucca Mountain for now and all time as the nation's nuclear garbage dump.

People make mistakes. DOE scientists make mistakes. Truck drivers make mistakes. And the people who will be packing and shipping the deadly cargo make mistakes. So will the folks who are digging the tunnels into Yucca Mountain. Their mistakes could be the worst and most deadly of all.

Human beings know and understand that mistakes happen. Those who run the DOE, the nuclear power companies and those in Congress obviously think they don't. Are they less than human?

We may know soon enough.

The Sun's editorial Thursday took the California medical community to task for testing perchlorate on human beings. In an effort to determine the harmful effects of the chemical on the thyroid and other organs in the human body, the Loma Linda University Medical Center is giving perchlorate pills to humans. The Sun took issue with the use of humans, suggesting that rodents would be better used in such cases. I know a certain segment of our community that would prefer humans to mice, but that is a different discussion!

Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about and why Loma Linda is spending so much money on volunteers for their tests. Everyone knows that Lake Mead is full of perchlorate with levels of the chemical in our drinking water reaching significantly higher amounts than what is considered safe by the California Department of Health Services. So why conduct experiments on humans or rats in California?

They can save a lot of money just moving to Las Vegas for a few months and drinking from the tap!

We have known about perchlorate for years, with the suspected and logical source for the toxin coming from the industrial plants in Henderson. This week, the Southern Nevada Water Authority reported the highest level of the rocket fuel booster ever recorded for Lake Mead. They were able to make those findings because the chemical finally made its way close enough to the water intake pipe to record the levels properly. By the way, the intake pipe is the way Las Vegas gets its drinking water from Lake Mead.

So why threaten the health of volunteers in California when we have hundreds of thousands of people right here in Clark County drinking that stuff every day. While scientists aren't certain it is dangerous, they suspect it adversely affects the thyroid, especially in children. Drink up, kids.

Is it as obvious to you as it is to me that most Las Vegans would volunteer for such a study?

Because if we didn't like the thought of drinking contaminated water, wouldn't we demand our elected officials do something about it?