Editorial: Alternative to Yucca

Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004 | 9:28 a.m.

Energy experts, including environmentalists, former government officials and business executives, have recommended that the federal government develop more renewable energy sources, require better fuel efficiency of vehicles and push ahead with nuclear power. Further, the National Commission on Energy Policy recommended that the federal government not relent in trying to get a nuclear waste dump built at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Nevadans should take heart with one of the recommendations involving nuclear waste, however. The privately funded coalition urged the federal government to build multiple above-ground "dry cask" storage sites in the East and West to house nuclear waste in case Yucca Mountain is delayed or isn't given final approval by federal regulators to accept the nation's nuclear waste. It's the first time a national commission has supported dr y cask storage.

"It's proven technology," John Holden, co-chairman of the commission and an environmental policy professor at Harvard University, said of dry cask storage, which can safely contain nuclear waste for at least 100 years. "It's not expensive. It's safe -- it's even terrorist resistant." With a testimonial like that, you'd think Congress would explore dry cask storage as a permanent solution instead of the multibillion-dollar Yucca Mountain project, whose burial site is geologically unsafe and which would require thousands of dangerous cross-country shipments of man's deadliest waste to a location just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It's well past time for the Bush administration and Congress to adopt dry cask storage as the country's nuclear waste storage policy.