Editorial: Predictable irony

Friday, Feb. 27, 2004 | 8:52 a.m.

If a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain receives a license to open, federal law requires that no more than 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste can be stored there. The problem confronting the Energy Department is that much more high-level radioactive waste exists than legally could fit into the proposed dump. So the Energy Department wants Congress to give the department the power to reclassify high-level radioactive waste at its nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities as being low-level instead.

The upshot would be that more radioactive waste would then be allowed to stay at nuclear facilities across the nation. Currently there are 53 million gallons of radioactive material at the Hanford site in Washington state, 34 million gallons of the liquid waste at the Savannah River site in South Carolina and 900,000 gallons at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The Bush administration isn't above playing hardball on this issue, warning that it will withhold $350 million in cleanup funds at nuclear facilities unless it gets its way in reclassifying the waste.

Nevadans obviously have sympathy for residents in these other states as the Energy Department tries to unfairly change the rules in the middle of the process. But it also shouldn't go without notice that Idaho, Washington state and South Carolina had congressional delegations in 2002 that voted overwhelmingly to approve President Bush's reckless plan to permanently entomb nuclear waste in the geologically unsafe Yucca Mountain. Talk about bad karma for them.