Editorial: Don’t cut corners on licensing

Friday, March 14, 2003 | 8:53 a.m.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking to find out whether the U.S. Department of Energy can safely ship 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste to Nevada. On Wednesday the NRC held a workshop in Las Vegas to receive input on just how stringent testing should be to see if nuclear waste shipping casks could fail.

The state of Nevada is worried that the NRC isn't proposing real-world tests. Under one proposal, the NRC would drop full-scale truck and railway casks more than 250 feet, allowing them to reach speeds of 75 mph before they hit reinforced concrete. But that isn't enough. As some Nevadans present at Wednesday's hearing noted, the casks should be pushed to their limits until they fail. "By testing to failure, I think we'll learn something useful of those thresholds," said Fred Dilger, a planner in the Clark County Nuclear Waste Division. Some of the ideas for testing that were advanced by Nevadans included dropping the casks on steel spikes and exposing them to water and, in an acknowledgement of increased terrorism risk, firing an anti-tank missile into the casks.

The cost for conducting realistic tests isn't cheap. The state estimates the price tag could run from $50 million to $70 million, a sharp contrast to the $20 million projected by the NRC for less rigorous testing. The federal government already has taken too many shortcuts in its evaluation of Yucca Mountain. Now that the licensing process is under way, it's critical that this be done right. And if the casks aren't durable enough, then the federal government should reject the Energy Department's application. It is wrong to jeopardize the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who live near highways and railroads across the country where the waste would travel before it would reach Nevada.