Editorial: Another reason why this is a no-brainer

Monday, June 17, 2002 | 10:17 a.m.

Much of the recent debate in Congress over the Yucca Mountain project has centered on the transportation dangers of shipping 77,000 tons of nuclear waste cross-country to Nevada. But last week Mother Nature shifted the debate back to one of the geologic reasons why nuclear waste should not be buried inside Yucca Mountain. On Friday an earthquake registering 4.4 on the Richter scale struck Little Skull Mountain, which is just a dozen miles from Yucca Mountain, the proposed site of the nation's nuclear waste dump.

It's not as if last week's earthquake was unusual -- temblors are common there. Nevada is the third most seismically active state, and as recently as 1992 a 5.6 magnitude earthquake hit Little Skull Mountain, causing more than $400,000 in damage to Energy Department facilities near Yucca Mountain. Nevada's propensity for earthquakes should have been reason enough for Congress to never have considered our state as a dump. While the House has approved President Bush's plan to send nuclear waste to Nevada, the Senate still can do the right thing and block the plan. If we're lucky, the tremors from last week's earthquake reached Washington, shaking some common sense back into the heads of senators who mistakenly have backed Yucca Mountain.

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