Editorial: EIS omits alternative to Yucca

Tuesday, June 4, 2002 | 8:52 a.m.

PECO Energy of Philadelphia is part of Exelon Corp. of Chicago, the country's largest producer of nuclear energy. PECO is also part of an agreement signed two years ago with the Energy Department calling for the federal agency to take ownership in 2004 of nuclear waste piling up at PECO's two nuclear power plants in southeastern Pennsylvania. Interestingly, the agreement doesn't mean that PECO's nuclear waste would be crisscrossing state borders on its way to some remote storage site. Rather, it means that dry storage space would be built on site.

The agreement mirrors what the state of Nevada advocates -- let the nuclear plants store their waste on site until there's a better solution than Yucca Mountain, where ground water infiltration and (geologically) frequent earthquakes make a mockery of the site as a solution. Because the PECO agreement means the utility's 1.5 million electricity ratepayers would no longer be pitching in to pay for Yucca, other utilities have sued the Energy Department in federal court.

That's unfortunate, but more unfortunate is that this agreement was never mentioned in the Energy Department's Environmental Impact Statement filed in February on Yucca Mountain. The purpose of an EIS is to analyze every option, so that lawmakers will have all the information before deciding. The Energy Department's excuse is that the PECO agreement would not work everywhere because of the expense. In our view, the agreement should have been included so that lawmakers could have decided for themselves. In weighing the true cost of Yucca Mountain, after all, lawmakers might want to consider the potential cost of a transportation accident or the cost of contamination in the event of an earthquake.

Additionally, lawmakers might have wanted to consider that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has calculated that on-site, dry storage would be safe for the next 100 to 150 years -- plenty of time to find a safer solution than Yucca.