Editorial: Bush should listen to his own promise

Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004 | 8:49 a.m.

Campaigning in Las Vegas a month ago, President Bush played up his commitment to science as the determining factor in whether Southern Nevada's Yucca Mountain should open as a permanent burial site for high-level nuclear waste. Bush also told his Las Vegas audience that he will yield to the judgments of the courts.

At no time did Bush bring up the previous month's major news about Yucca Mountain, which involved science and the courts. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in July that the Energy Department has been dead wrong about the most important scientific safeguard of all. Relying on a ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department has been constructing Yucca to protect against radiation leaks for 10,000 years. The court, however, ruled that the Energy Department all along has been required to follow a 1995 report by the National Academy of Sciences. This report says the mountain's protection should extend through the time of the waste's peak emission of radiation, which would be in the range of 300,000 years from now.

Despite the president's pledge to respect science and the courts, we haven't seen his administration change its policy on Yucca Mountain -- or its construction and radiation standards -- one bit since the decision by the appeals court. It hasn't shown any inclination to work with the National Academy of Sciences. In fact, the Bush administration remains hell bent on opening Yucca Mountain within six years. Margaret Chu, who heads the Yucca Mountain project for the Energy Department, told the Sun that the court decision would have no bearing on the administration's position and that it is "crucial to ... continue to move forward in the licensing phase."

More crucial than for the president to keep his word?