Editorial: Double standard on nuke waste

Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2003 | 9:06 a.m.

Southern California Edison wants to get rid of a 770-ton nuclear reactor that it no longer uses. The utility, however, has run into a number of problems in trying to ship the reactor -- contaminated by low-level nuclear waste -- to a dump in Barnwell, S.C., the only place licensed to accept decommissioned reactors. As detailed by a Cox News Service story, published in Monday's Sun, two Cabinet departments are throwing up roadblocks to the plans:

The U.S. Transportation Department has said no to shipping the reactor cross-county over federal highways. Rail lines also have spurned Southern California Edison, citing liability issues. Efforts to ship it by barge were blocked by Panama Canal officials, who say the reactor's weight exceeds their 150-ton limit for radioactive materials. The utility's plan to send the reactor farther south on its ultimate destination to South Carolina, around Cape Horn at the end of South America, is being opposed by the U.S. State Department. The State Department, saying the international waters around Cape Horn are some of the globe's most dangerous passages, prefers the waste to be shipped through the Strait of Magellan. But such a course, because it's in Chile's territorial waters, could be blocked by that nation.

We, too, have concerns about shipping low-level nuclear waste via barges. But what's perplexing is the federal government's newfound concern about shipping low-level nuclear waste while at the same time it's hell-bent on sending 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste to Southern Nevada, waste that's much deadlier than a decommissioned nuclear reactor. We haven't heard the U.S. Transportation Department voice its concern about the thousands of cross-country shipments of high-level nuclear waste to Nevada that would be required over highways if the Yucca Mountain project gets a license to start shipping waste. Indeed, the U.S. Energy Department's plan to send nuclear waste here has the enthusiastic support of President Bush. This double standard is further proof that the federal government doesn't have a clue -- and can't be trusted -- when it comes to ship ping and storing nuclear waste.