Editorial: Gaining friends in California

Monday, Feb. 28, 2000 | 9:14 a.m.

There are times when Nevadans feel lonely as they fight the federal government's dangerous efforts to send high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. After all, you're not going to find many other states willing to step forward and say, "Sure, we'd love to host a repository to store man's deadliest waste -- all 77,000 tons of it. Can we start next week?"

While the tail end of the 1980s and the dawn of the 1990s seemed bleak to Nevadans with regard to high-level nuclear waste coming here, that quickly changed after the election in 1992 of President Clinton, who has steadfastly vowed to veto legislation making it easier to store nuclear waste in Nevada. And during the same period Nevada's U.S. senators, Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, have been able to secure enough votes to sustain a veto in the Senate.

Meanwhile there was another positive development during a public hearing in San Bernardino, Calif., last week on the U.S. Department of Energy's environmental impact statement on Yucca Mountain. Even though the waste wouldn't be stored in the Golden State, officials there voiced serious reservations about the dangers associated with transporting the waste through San Bernardino County on its way to Nevada. The environmental impact statement said the worst accident involving a train carrying nuclear waste would result in 31 lives being lost through cancer caused by radioactive exposure.

"You can have pretty good confidence if we err, it will be on the side of safety," said Abe Van Luik, senior policy adviser for the U.S. Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain project. This offered little solace to residents there, according to the Associated Press. While no specific routes have been identified by the DOE, if Yucca Mountain were selected it is anticipated that waste would go through San Bernardino by either rail or trucks on Interstate 15. "If the federal government cannot guarantee zero tolerance against the risk of accident in the transport of high-level radioactive waste across our county, then this project should not be approved and should not proceed," Assistant County Administrator John Goss said. Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., said he wasn't convinced by the DOE's assurances it would be safe, adding that studies have shown there is a possi ble risk of "catastrophic disasters, and yet no other option has been proposed."

Even if some members of Congress were willing to ignore the fact that Nevada is one of the worst geologic places to store nuclear waste, Nevadans have long hoped that the issue of transporting nuclear waste across the nation to our state could be the Achilles' heel for Yucca Mountain. No wonder the nuclear power industry has been so adamant lately about trying to put a repository on the fast track: The more the public knows about the dual dangers of storage and transportation, the greater the hesitancy to support the Yucca Mountain project.