Editorial: Heavy dose of wishful thinking

Friday, Sept. 13, 2002 | 9:14 a.m.

If a three-day conference of nuclear technology company executives in Washington is any indication, they're jazzed by Congress' recommendation that a nuclear waste dump be built in Nevada. These executives, who build and design nuclear power plants, believe the nettlesome issue of what to do with the nuclear waste building up at power plants has been resolved. They think that development improves nuclear power's future. Not surprisingly, their conference's theme was "Nuclear Renaissance."

Congress' approval of President Bush's plan to store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste in Nevada was a victory for the nuclear power industry, but this is far from a done deal. The Energy Department has yet to win regulatory approval for the dump, and the state of Nevada has a good case to make in federal court that the Energy Department didn't follow the law because it ignored evidence that Yucca Mountain is unsuitable as a geologic repository. Meanwhile, the industry claims that nuclear power, unlike coal and other forms of energy, is clean. But that claim is ridiculous. If it's so clean, why doesn't anybody else in the nation want 77,000 tons of nuclear waste buried in their state?

It also is laughable that the industry argues that nuclear power is economically viable. The fact is that nuclear power costs much more than coal or natural gas. And if the nuclear power industry is confident about its future, why is Congress on the verge of approving the industry's request to provide it with government-subsidized insurance in the event of a catastrophic accident at a nuclear power plant? In light of public anxiety about the safety of nuclear power plants, it's not surprising that no new nuclear power plants have been ordered since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.

This doesn't exactly look like a "Renaissance" to us. What it looks like is a failing industry that has a ton of campaign contributions to throw around in Congress to help prop it up, whether it's corporate welfare in the form of government-subsidized insurance or approval for a nuclear waste dump that would be an environmental and public safety disaster if it ever gets built.