Editorial: Will nation see through nuke lies?

Friday, April 5, 2002 | 4:59 a.m.

Two months ago President Bush acted on Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's recommendation and approved Southern Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the burial site for the nation's high-level nuclear waste. He did this before the completion of scientific studies being undertaken to ensure that the man-made caverns beneath the Yucca ridge will safely contain the most deadly material on Earth. Campaigning in Nevada in May 2000, Bush said that as president he would hold off on any storage decision about nuclear waste until the site had been "deemed scientifically safe." A week before his approval, he reiterated that vow in a meeting with Gov. Kenny Guinn and Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign. Well, not much has changed since the 1950s -- Nevada, home of the Test Site, is still seen as a state that can be fed lies on nuclear issues.

Another lie that Nevada and the nation are now being asked to swallow is that transportation of nuclear waste -- 43 states would have Yucca-bound routes -- is perfectly safe. It's bad enough that the president's approval of Yucca came before the site itself has been proven safe. But it was a doubly bad decision when considering that it was made before any safe plan for transportation has emerged.

Can we assume that every bridge, every waterway, every highway, every tunnel, every overpass and every railroad that the waste would travel over or through can be safeguarded from the potential of accidents or terrorist attacks? Of course not, and that's why the casks containing the waste assuredly have to be indestructible. But Rosetta Virgilio, spokeswoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, says cask testing is "a work in progress." How's that for assurance, knowing that approvals have already been granted?

Just as unassuring is the news that the casks have been tested only through computer modeling. Professor Darrell Pepper, interim dean of the college of engineering at UNLV and an expert in computer modeling, says: "The automobile industry has been doing computer modeling for years. Do you notice they still crash them?"

Next week Gov. Kenny Guinn will carry his veto of President Bush's approval to Washington. We can only hope that enough members of Congress will vote to sustain his veto, realizing that their states have been lied to as well.