Editorial: Lump sum a terrible proposal

Monday, Oct. 1, 2001 | 8:51 a.m.

Over the years Congress and the Department of Energy have advocated shortcuts that would make it easier to build a high-level nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Most often these ideas have come in the form of proposals that would junk any semblance of tough safety regulations involving the transportation and storage of nuclear waste.

There also have been efforts among pro-dump lawmakers in Congress to end the legislative branch's oversight of the spending on the Yucca Mountain Project, although fortunately those haven't gotten too far. But as the Sun's Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning reported last week, those efforts are being renewed from another source. For the first time the DOE is asking Congress to consider paying for a dump at Yucca Mountain in one fell swoop instead of approving smaller annual appropriations to pay for the work there as it goes.

Nevada's congressional delegation correctly points out that the estimated price tag for the dump is huge -- $58 billion. That poses the obvious question: Just where will Congress get all this money during an economic slowdown and war?

One of the biggest frustrations all along with the Yucca Mountain Project is that the DOE acts as if it already has made up its mind to build a dump -- even though no final recommendation has been made yet on whether Yucca Mountain is scientifically suitable. In this instance, the DOE says it simply is throwing out possibilities on how to fund Yucca Mountain -- and that a lump-sum payment just happens to be one of the options. The DOE says that it will wait to make a final recommendation on how to allocate the funding after the DOE makes its final suitability assessment of Yucca Mountain. But even offering for consideration the possibility of a lump-sum payment is premature and unseemly, which is routine for the DOE that seems eager to please its benefactors in Congress who want to see a dump built immediately.