Editorial: Consistency missing in Yucca plan

Friday, May 3, 2002 | 4:22 a.m.

If President Bush would apply a consistent definition to "sound science," Nevada could be spared the selection of Yucca Mountain as the site for nuclear waste and 42 other states could be spared the dangers of transporting the toxic material through their borders. In a Washington Post article last week, it was pointed out that the president used the sound-science argument to pull the United States out of the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming. The treaty called for the country to reduce its greenhouse gasses -- mostly emitted from vehicles and industrial plants and which linger below the atmosphere, trapping heat before it can escape into space -- to 7 percent below 1990 levels. In a February speech, Bush said that if "sound science" by 2012 justifies further action, the U.S. would act then, implying that current science is not convincing.

The Washington Post article went on to document that Bush has used the sound-science argument to mow down other initiatives, such as new standards for arsenic levels in drinking water, increased fuel efficiency for automobiles, and a proposed ban on snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park. On the latter issue, the Bush administration is currently embarrassed over a letter endorsing the ban that the Environmental Protection Agency sent last week to the National Park Service. Gale Norton, who heads the Interior Department, which oversees the park service, and Christie Whitman, who heads the EPA, are now scrambling to counter the letter, which was sent unbeknownst to them by an underling. No doubt they will send another letter more in keeping with President Bush's practice of using sound science selectively -- stating there is no proof that exhaust from sno wmobiles threatens Yellowstone's air quality.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration clings stubbornly to the notion that the science so far having to do with Yucca Mountain is sound. It dismisses as unsound the science on global warning, despite the breakup of Arctic icebergs thousands of years old. Yet it embraces the "science" on Yucca Mountain, despite hundreds of outstanding questions about earthquakes, water, climactic changes in the future, the mountain's geology, the durability of the waste containers ... Sound politics, maybe, but not sound science.