Editorial: Code red on Yucca remarks

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 | 8:47 a.m.

We can never again rule out any terrorist act as "unimaginable." The federal government's inventorying of smallpox vaccine is evidence of that. So it's irresponsible for U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to assess as safe from terrorist attack the transportation of high-level nuclear waste across thousands of highly populated miles. But that's what he did last week in Washington while addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Ridge told the editors that his office had reviewed the proposal to transport the deadly waste to Yucca Mountain and had found no fault. That his office, barely seven months old, could arrive at a definitive conclusion so quickly is more a model of political loyalty than a miracle of government efficiency. The nation's editors, we hope, understood that Ridge was responding more to the platform of the Bush administration than to any standard of critical judgment.

Let's rule out terrorism for a moment. There hasn't been a study yet that hasn't calculated dozens of accidents during the 30 to 40 years that Yucca would be receiving multiple deliveries a day. The Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office, for example, using the Department of Energy's own figures, calculates there will be 175 to 355 accidents -- distinct from lesser "incidents" -- depending upon the mix of highway and rail routes. The numbers upon which the projection is based derive from actual accidents and incidents as nuclear waste was being transported from 1971 through 1990.

Now we have terrorism to add to the equation. The known and the unknown when it comes to terrorism are frightful to contemplate. The unknown includes how many foreign terrorists -- sleeper cells -- are already in the country and how many domestic terrorists, ala Timothy McVeigh, there might be. The known is that the Immigration and Naturalization Service and law enforcement agencies are capable of preventing many, maybe most, but not all acts of terror -- as Oklahoma City and Sept. 11 demonstrate.

Yet Tom Ridge says he knows for sure that transportation should not be "an impediment" to opening Yucca Mountain. We think the color-code "red" should be attached to his opinion -- symbolizing a severe threat to credibility.