Tuesday, March 16, 2004 | 11:11 a.m.
With its long history of lies and deception, it was hard to imagine that the Department of Energy could sink any lower in its treatment of Nevadans.
That was until we heard Senate testimony in Las Vegas Monday on how the DOE allowed thousands of scientists, technicians and miners to be exposed to toxic dust, such as silica, with nothing but a store-bought paper mask during tunneling operations at the Yucca Mountain Project.
Such a callous attitude toward the well-being of its own workers doesn't exactly instill confidence in the DOE's ability to protect all Nevadans from the dangers of transporting high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and storing it underground there.
This issue may not stop Nevada from becoming the nation's nuclear waste dumping ground, but it certainly brings into focus why people like Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who conducted the hearing, are fighting so hard to keep out the deadly waste. It is a good fight because the DOE has proven over the years that it simply can't be trusted.
Monday's hearing was emotional for Reid, whose late father contracted the lung disease silicosis after being exposed to silica while mining in Searchlight, and for former Yucca Mountain workers, such as Gene Griego and Jeffrey Dean, who also developed the illness, which causes coughing and shortness of breath.
Griego, who last week filed suit against several DOE contractors, fought to hold back tears as he testified that he had six of the eight symptoms of silicosis.
The DOE field test coordinator said he had uncovered evidence the federal agency sent the workers unprotected into the tunneling operations between 1994 and 1996 so that deadlines for studying and building the Yucca Mountain Project could be met.
Dean, a conveyor operator assigned to the Yucca Mountain tunnel boring machine, described how he would be caked with dust at the end of his shift each day and how he developed silicosis and other lung diseases.
He said he naively trusted his employers not to put him in a work environment dangerous to his health.
Amazingly, testimony also revealed the DOE's own scientists warned there were high amounts of silica and other dangerous minerals at Yucca Mountain long before the tunneling started.
And it was no secret that silica can cause silicosis.
One expert described silicosis as an "ancient disease" discovered by the Greeks and Egyptians in the 1st century. The illness has been well documented among miners in this country.
So there was no excuse in this high-tech information age for the DOE and its contractors not to have protected the Yucca Mountain workers.
All of this, Reid said, was preventable.
Even at the hearing, Gene Runkle, a senior DOE safety adviser, though he testified that tough protective measures now are in place, appeared insensitive to the plight of workers exposed to the toxic dust.
Reid chastised Runkle for not even acknowledging the suffering of Griego and Dean, who sat a few feet away from Runkle.
Runkle's snub was a disgusting display of arrogance of the sort we have come to expect from the DOE, a cold-hearted agency that cares more about appeasing the mighty nuclear industry than protecting its own workers and everyone who lives here.
Once again the DOE has managed to give Nevadans reason to fight harder against Yucca Mountain.
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