Editorial: Yucca: Death by e-mails

Friday, April 22, 2005 | 4:57 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

April 23 - 24, 2005

Last month the Energy Department, in charge of the project to bury the nation's high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, disclosed the existence of damning internal e-mails written between 1998 and 2000. They contain admissions from several scientists associated with the project that some of the work to verify the mountain's safety was falsified. The disclosure launched multiple investigations that remain ongoing.

On Friday the Las Vegas Sun disclosed the contents of other incriminating e-mails, which were culled from millions of Energy Department documents contained on a public database. They were discovered by a law firm hired by the state of Nevada to fight the opening of Yucca Mountain. The e-mails prove that scientists working on the project determined by 1997 that the mountain could never meet a critical specification set forth by Congress.

In 1982 Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which placed the Energy Department in charge of disposing of the waste from nuclear power plants, and also established the criteria that a disposal site must meet. Congress was clear -- the site's own geology must be capable of preventing any escape of radiation into the environment.

The latest e-mails uncovered, though, prove that scientists recognized that Yucca's geology could never meet that standard. One scientist wrote in a 1997 e-mail: "The answer is clearer than ever. Engineering has to do the job." Another e-mail that year from one scientist to another said, "I know you are trying to dodge the geologic disposal problem ... but the simple fact is that the only purpose of the natural system now is to provide a benign environment for the engineering." These, and other e-mails, show that it was clearly understood that Yucca's own geology cannot protect against radiation leaks. Man-made protections were going to have to be engineered.

About the time these e-mails were written, the Energy Department departed from the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and declared that its nuclear dump at Yucca -- just 90 miles from Las Vegas -- would be a combination of natural and man-made barriers. The whole reason Yucca Mountain was selected in 1987 as the sole site to be studied for a disposal site was because it was thought to be geologically safe. Now we're learning conclusively that it isn't.

The disclosure of these e-mails over the past two months is another compelling reason for permanently dropping the notion that high-level nuclear waste can ever be safely buried at Yucca Mountain.