Editorial: Negligence casts pall over Yucca

Wednesday, March 17, 2004 | 8:35 a.m.

Testimony at a congressional hearing Monday in Las Vegas confirmed what has been feared now for weeks, that people's lives are at risk because safety standards during drilling at Yucca Mountain in the 1990s were not followed. Dust containing toxic silica, which causes the incurable and ultimately fatal lung disease known as silicosis, was swirling about unprotected workers for years as a five-mile, 25-foot-diameter tunnel was being drilled through the mountain. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., listened Monday as workers described conditions inside the mountain.

The issue only became public in January, after former workers had lodged complaints following illnesses. In response, the Energy Department set up silicosis screening tests for former workers and issued this statement: "Regulatory limits for airborne silica were exceeded at various times during the tunnel mining operations at Yucca Mountain from 1992 to 2000. During early work at the site, respiratory protection was available but requirements for its use were not consistently applied. Some workers may have been exposed to airborne silica."

From the testimony Monday, however, it appears that thousands of workers were exposed and that the "respiratory protection" consisted of useless hardware-store-variety masks. Silicosis is entirely preventable with proper respiratory masks, good ventilation and enough water that can be sprayed to keep the dust down. Unfortunately, work proceeded at a blistering pace without those safeguards, according to testimony. Workers said that heavy dust clouds were a constant presence because managers were more interested in meeting deadlines than safety standards. A safety technician who works at Yucca for the Los Alamos, N.M., national laboratory testified that workers "knew better than to file official complaints ... you did not stick around long if you complained." Another safety expert, who works for the Energy Department, confirmed that the air inside Yucca con tained unsafe levels of silica and that workers were not suitably protected.

The inspector general's office of the Energy Department is investigating the conditions at Yucca Mountain during the drilling. Did contractors knowingly subject workers to deadly silica levels? Did the Energy Department cover it up? These are the central questions. That such questions must be investigated leads to another central question: How are we to believe that Yucca Mountain will be a safe burial ground for the nation's nuclear waste? So far, all we have is the Energy Department's guarantee. Just ask the Yucca workers what that's worth.