Editorial: Nevada is pursuing fairness

Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2001 | 8:30 a.m.

On Monday the state of Nevada filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy, a bid to stop the federal government from building a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The 1982 Nuclear Policy Waste Act mandates that the DOE rely principally on Yucca Mountain's natural geology to make a determination whether it's safe to bury nuclear waste there. But the state's lawsuit contends that a new DOE regulation sidesteps the 1982 law by ignoring problems with Yucca Mountain's geology. Instead, the state notes, the department will make its suitability decision based heavily on the metal canisters that are supposed to contain the nuclear waste for thousands of years.

The DOE contends that it simply is using new technologies to design the best repository possible, but that is a disingenuous argument. What really has happened over time is that the DOE has discovered that there are a host of geologic problems with Yucca Mountain -- and the department is just trying to find a way to "engineer" around them.

The biggest hurdle the DOE currently faces is the discovery of water inside Yucca Mountain, specifically how fast that deep, hot ground water is moving beneath the mountain. The warmer water could corrode buried metal containers, a situation that could result in nuclear waste-contaminated water escaping from Yucca Mountain and exposing residents to dangerously high levels of radiation. In response, the DOE is trying to sell the public on what it says are corrosion-resistant casks and panels that they say would redirect dripping water away from the canisters. But state officials have pointed out that even these new technologies still aren't foolproof and can corrode over time.

As the Sun's Mary Manning noted in a story Tuesday about a National Academy of Sciences' Las Vegas meeting on the Yucca Mountain Project, it's not just state officials questioning the DOE's work -- independent scientists have concerns as well. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is the agency that ultimately will decide whether the DOE will get a license to build a repository, has said it has 293 unresolved technical issues, including how fast water flows to the mountain and how much volcanic activity there is at Yucca Mountain.

It also isn't reassuring that the DOE recently said it wants to build a repository in stages at Yucca Mountain, which it says would give the department the ability to identify any flaws in the project and correct them early on in the construction. More likely the case would be that the department, based on its track record, would take advantage of the situation so that it could avoid addressing safety concerns while nuclear waste is shipped to Nevada, creating a fait accompli.

The state's residents have been dismayed by the DOE's failure to acknowledge the fact that Yucca Mountain is a terrible place to store man's deadliest waste. The DOE's arrogance actually has strengthened the unity of the state in its opposition, which includes elected officials, citizens groups and the business community. Just last week the Boulder City Chamber of Commerce joined chambers from Las Vegas and Henderson in withdrawing its membership from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after the parent organization came out in support of Yucca Mountain.

The struggle against the federal government isn't easy, and even the lawsuit is an uphill battle in light of the fact that the body that wrote the law -- Congress -- has been anything but fair in drafting nuclear waste storage legislation. But hope remains that Nevadans ultimately will emerge victorious in their fight against the federal government, which is seeking to fit a square peg in a round hole.