Letter: Spreading fear about Russian nuclear wastes

Thursday, June 5, 2003 | 9:08 a.m.

Say something often enough, and it eventually passes for truth. Not a day goes by that we don't hear about all of the unguarded weapons-grade and spent-fuel nuclear materials in countries of the old Soviet Union.

There's one thing for certain: no one wants terrorists and rogue states getting their hands on fissile nuclear materials. It is that fear that will put nuclear wastes in Yucca Mountain if we aren't careful.

The Bush administration will present Yucca Mountain as a matter of international security, and it will quote this report and that report to justify its position. There will be an urgent need, it will say, for the U.S. to store Russian nuclear wastes.

We are already familiar with this administration's Words of Mass Distortion, and we need to be on our guard.

Let's think for one minute. If the United States broke up, would Los Alamos or Hanford or Oak Ridge or Savannah River be left unguarded? Of course not. Why, then, should we believe that nuclear fissile materials in the old Soviet republics would be treated any differently? Does a citizen of Russia want less protection from those materials than I do?

I'm not saying some nuclear materials are not disappearing, but they're disappearing here too. Let's be careful about swallowing hook, line and sinker what we are told.

What proof do we have that as many nuclear materials are being bought or stolen as is claimed?

RON BOURGOIN

Editor's note: The writer was a consultant to the town of Rolesville in Wake County, N.C., in 1984 when a site in that area was being considered by the Energy Department as a potential high-level radioactive waste repository.