Letter: Where’s proof that Yucca is safety threat?

Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2001 | 8:42 a.m.

Regarding your Dec. 16 editorial, "Stealth is par for the course":

Your editorial position on the Yucca Mountain repository is well known to your readers within Nevada and to some of us who follow the project from afar. But some of the opinions given can really stretch credibility.

For example, you wrote: "The reality is that the energy secretary couldn't care less about the threat posed to the health and safety of Nevadans by high-level nuclear waste."

How do you know whether he "couldn't care less?" To say nothing of the arguable premise that the repository poses a threat to the public health and safety of people in Nevada or elsewhere. What information in the Yucca Mountain Preliminary Site Suitability Evaluation can you cite as your contention that there is a threat?

If you or anyone else can prove during the license application review, that will be conducted by the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that such a threat to health and safely is above regulatory radiation or other standards, then the license does not get issued.

BRIAN O' CONNELL Washington, D.C. Editor's note: The writer is director of the Nuclear Waste Program Office for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. The group wants President Bush to reach a decision on Yucca Mountain's suitability as soon as possible.