Editorial: Back to drawing board

Thursday, July 22, 2004 | 8:59 a.m.

In a ruling earlier this month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sent into limbo the timetable for opening Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump. The Energy Department's designs are based on the mountain's ability to protect the outside world from radiation for 10,000 years. The court threw out that standard, citing research by the National Academy of Sciences that shows the standard should be much longer.

The Energy Department, though, still plans to submit an application for a license to operate Yucca Mountain this year, and to open the dump by 2010. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will decide on the license, would then have two options -- begin evaluating aspects of the Energy Department's application that do not pertain to the radiation standard, or wait for a new standard. In our view, it's impossible to set a meaningful standard for even a thousand years, much less 10,000 years. The whole dangerous project should be shut down. At the very least, not one minute should be wasted evaluating the license application during the time the Energy Department is trying to set a new radiation standard.