Editorial: Mistakes just keep piling up

Sunday, June 11, 2000 | 9:51 a.m.

Valley residents received a jolt last week. The Sun disclosed that seven shipments of low-level nuclear waste, which arrived from January through March at the Nevada Test Site, had traveled along the North Las Vegas city streets of Craig Road and Cheyenne Avenue. Nevadans previously had been told that the waste from the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats complex in Colorado would travel only along highway routes, not near residential areas.

Despite the previous assurances, a DOE spokeswoman told Sun reporter Diana Sahagun that the agency actually could not dictate what route its shipping contractor must take. But after the Sun's story was published Wednesday, in which it detailed the concerns of North Las Vegas and state officials, the DOE altered its position. The agency now contends that it, in fact, sent a memo on March 21 to its Rocky Flats office, directing the shipper to avoid Las Vegas' urban area in the future.

The difficulty in getting a straight answer from the DOE as to who is in charge is troubling enough. Just as incredible is that the agency allowed the dangerous waste to be shipped through Las Vegas at all. Not only was the waste transported across the congested Hoover Dam, but it also traveled through Las Vegas' "Spaghetti Bowl" interchange, which handles about 300,000 vehicles each day. Don't forget that the DOE has mandated routes for its other shippers that avoid Las Vegas entirely. The shipping contractor for the DOE's Fernald, Ohio, facility previously was required to use a route through sparsely populated Northern Nevada to send its waste to the Test Site.

What makes this story even more compelling is that Nevada's Yucca Mountain is under consideration to be the nation's first repository for high-level nuclear waste, which is infinitely more dangerous. While federal officials say there would be stricter controls if Yucca Mountain is selected, the DOE's lack of common sense in transporting low-level nuclear waste hardly comforts a state that's been targeted for 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.