Letter: This scientist isn’t sold on Yucca science

Monday, July 22, 2002 | 8:43 a.m.

Isn't it amazing how quickly politicians have set Yucca Mountain aside and moved on to other issues? What is perhaps the most dangerous project since the Manhattan Project is, as far as they're concerned, resolved.

But nothing could be farther from the truth.

Politicians moved on the basis of the science that's been done, but the science that's not been done is what will cause the project to fail. Let's call it the science of the gaps.

There are so many gaps that, putting them end to end, they'd fill up empty space between us and the next galaxy. I, like so many other Americans, responded to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Yucca Mountain Review Plan Draft.

As a scientist, I know that radiation converts water to acid. I asked a simple question: At what point will the acid in Yucca Mountain eat through the C-22 canisters? The response I received was pure gibberish, indicating they don't know the answer. The gaps, or not-yet-done science, will cause this project to collapse. Which brings me to my point:

Congress had better vote to select another site for a repository. Since it's been determined a site can be engineered anywhere, it makes no sense to select a site for study. Save the time and money and simply select a second site, which might be the first site to accept wastes.

RON BOURGOIN Rocky Mount, N.C. Editor's note: The writer was a consultant to the town of Rolesville in Wake County, N.C., in 1984 when a site in that area was being considered by the Energy Department as a potential high-level radioactive waste repository.