Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Ganging up on Nevada

Friday, Nov. 2, 2001 | 5:08 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

THERE IS SOMETHING leaking from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And it has nuclear waste written all over it.

Nevada has no greater champion in the fight against the federal government's "bury the high-level nuclear waste at all costs" attitude toward Yucca Mountain than our own senior U.S. senator, Harry Reid. And in his new position as majority whip, he has become even more lethal in his efforts to shove the government's plan to bury that stuff in our back yard where it really belongs. Nevadans would be crazy to do or say anything that would diminish Harry's ability to continue this fight for survival. And I am not crazy.

But I can't help wondering "whassup" when I read that our senior senator penned a letter to the NRC's inspector general, Hubert Bell, requesting an immediate investigation into reports that what should be a very secret NRC document has fallen into the hands of the enemy. The enemy, of course, is the Department of Energy, which has been designated by Congress to carry water for the nuclear power industry. The nuke power producers have been working overtime for years now to force any kind of solution -- even the absurd one that demands burying the waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain -- upon the American public. Tens of millions of dollars into the coffers of congressional campaigns later and it appears that they may soon have their way.

The DOE is expected to recommend to President George W. Bush later this year or early in 2002 that he approve Yucca Mountain as the only place in the universe where America will dump at least 77,000 tons of the deadliest poison known to man. That number is expected by all except the most naive among us to double, which means that untold numbers of trucks will be rolling their way across America on their way to Yucca Mountain for untold years, leaving untold numbers of Nevadans and other citizens at the mercy of plain old luck. As an aside, a decision by the president to dump the nation's problems on Nevada would be the only way our good governor, Kenny Guinn, could be beaten next November. After all, he is the guy who sold Nevadans on candidate George Bush as the man who understood our needs and felt our pain. He would have a heap of explaining to do if Pr esident Bush double-crossed his friend, Kenny, and with him a couple of million Nevadans!

But back to Harry. There is not a stone he will leave unturned in his quest to lead the Nevada congressional delegation in its fight against the rest of the Congress. His letter to the inspector general, though, is but a pebble.

Who, other than Nevada's families, cares one bit that the NRC might have leaked the sensitive material to the DOE? Whether it was a violation of federal law or not, there is little chance that anyone at the federal level is going to find fault with the fact that the Department of Energy may have been given advance notice of the rules that will govern the licensing process that is certain to come once President Bush taps Nevada as the place where no one will ever want to live. Not that people shouldn't care, because they should. But when it comes to stuffing that glowing garbage down our Yucca Mountain, Nevadans have become used to the fact that life just ain't fair.

So there may be some noise about a federal investigation. There ought to be at least that much, or the DOE will have a junkyard dog of a senator on its tail. But in the end, it is as clear as day that not very much of anything will happen, because those folks are all in this mess together.

The NRC is no different from the DOE in its belief that storing the nuclear waste where it is made is not a good idea. When you ask why, of course, there is not a reasonable answer forthcoming except for some chatter about ratepayers and the billions of dollars they have paid for a workable solution. And that's the real crime in this whole charade. Nevadans will be sacrificed -- if Congress and the DOE have anything to say about it -- because it is cheaper to bury the nation's problems than to challenge 21st century science to come up with the right answer.

Right now the price tag is a few billion dollars higher to let science and technology dictate the proper disposal for high-level radioactive garbage than it is to bury it in Yucca Mountain. That is unless you add in the cost of the first accident somewhere along the highways and byways of America. Cleaning up that mess could easily surpass the $10 billion mark and that is only for the first accident. Which one of you out there thinks even for one second that there won't be at least one tragic accident? Or two? Or many more?

Murphy's Law is never wrong, so when the trucks overturn or the terrorists attack the nuke-laden transports in their quest to obtain the plutonium necessary for their crash courses in bomb-making, remember those who claimed so wrongly that the "federal government says nuke waste burial is safe and, therefore, it is."

Senator Reid's letter asking for an investigation is the right thing to do because anything we can do to get in the way, slow down the process and get sane people to think about the insanity they are trying to unleash, is better than doing nothing. I am just not certain that a letter like that will bear fruit. It may, though, give Nevada's lawyers a record to show bias on the part of the federales, and that, in the long run, may make a difference. So while it may not prove fruitful, when the rest of the country is hell-bent in its quest to bury us and our way of life under thousands of tons of radioactive garbage, then, I suppose, any and all efforts must be made to stop the onslaught.

In a world of decreasing opportunities to beat back those who would bury us, Harry Reid has found one more creative way to take the fight to the front door of bad government. He has asked for the inspector general to call the DOE and its crowd a bunch of liars and cheaters and people unwilling to play by any set of rules that could thwart their plan to bury us.

But, we don't need an inspector general's report to tell us that truth. All we need is to pay attention to history while it repeats and repeats and repeats itself.