Editorial: Odds against house on nuclear waste

Sunday, July 23, 2000 | 10:22 a.m.

If video poker players were told they had a mere one in 90 chance of hitting a royal flush on any given hand, casinos would have waiting lines stretching to the state's borders. Now take those same odds and equate them to the chance a nuclear accident will occur in the Las Vegas Valley if Nevada is forced to accept the nation's high-level nuclear waste. Those waiting lines will be frightened motorists trying to leave the state.

Of all the studies about the effects of potential nuclear waste dumping at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, a report commissioned by the city of North Las Vegas is one of the most disturbing we have seen. Sun reporter Diana Sahagun passed along the bad news when she wrote that our odds are one in 90 of having a nuclear accident in the valley within 24 years if local roads are used to ship the waste to the mountain.

In the land of odds such an accident could cost us billions of dollars in sales and millions of dollars in tax revenue, according to the researchers, Louis Berger & Associates. Talk about being dealt a bad hand.

We urge Congress to take a close look at this study before considering any future Yucca Mountain legislation. To ignore the warnings of this research is to gamble with the lives of every Southern Nevadan.