Letter: Workers can’t speak up at DOE

Friday, Jan. 30, 2004 | 9:36 a.m.

At the recent meeting of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board in Las Vegas, board member Mark Abkowitz asked John Arthur of the Energy Department if employees within the agency can freely express any concerns they might have about Yucca Mountain. Mr. Abkowitz was told that the Energy Department is creating an intra-agency Leadership Council, where employees can direct their concerns.

What employee is going to voice a concern against the repository project, knowing full well his or her superiors are pushing the project full speed ahead?

Let's be realistic: Any intra-agency concern will simply be given the runaround, and to expect otherwise is absurd. Let's imagine that an Energy Department employee were to suggest that nuclear wastes could be annihilated by high-energy X-rays, for example. Are we to suppose that the department would rush to test the employee's idea? Not a chance! The agency is bent and determined to bury the wastes, period.

RON BOURGOIN Rocky Mount, N.C.

Editor's note: Ron Bourgoin 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 the location for a high-level nuclear waste repository.