Editorial: Corroding rationale

Wednesday, May 26, 2004 | 8:49 a.m.

The U.S. Energy Department application for permission to build a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain is expected to include a plan to place titanium drip shields over the containers that would store the waste. The department believes the shields would act as a barrier against water so the casks wouldn't corrode, but the state of Nevada doesn't want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider the drip shields when weighing the application. Nevada officials reason that because the shields are anticipated to cost billions of dollars, they may never get used, a situation that demands a conservative approach by the NRC when weighing the application.

There also have been concerns that titanium drip shields wouldn't do the job of protecting the nuclear waste canisters from corrosion in the first place. For that matter, the nation's final resting place for 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste is supposed to be a "geologic" repository that doesn't need jury-rigged extra protection to keep the waste from escaping and jeopardizing the public. It should be increasingly evident to the NRC that Yucca Mountain, which sits in an earthquake-prone region, is one of the worst places in the nation to bury nuclear waste and that a dump application should be rejected -- with or without titanium drip shields.