Editorial: Yucca’s cost is no object?

Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005 | 8:56 a.m.

Anyone researching the cost of building Yucca Mountain would naturally turn to the Energy Department, which has been managing construction of the proposed nuclear waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas for more than 10 years. But the most current information being provided by the department dates to May 2001. The number given then for digging miles of underground tunnels, preparing them to safely contain the waste for thousands of years, and for building associated facilities for receiving and processing the waste, was $4.5 billion. That number is hopelessly outdated, but the department refuses to provide a more accurate accounting.

Since 2001, average costs for union and nonunion labor have mushroomed. Union labor costs are now increasing at the rate of 6 percent a year, and nonunion labor is going up even faster, according the Las Vegas chapter of the Associated General Contractors. A shortage of skilled workers, owing to all of the construction under way in Las Vegas, is pushing costs even higher for labor at Yucca Mountain, which is not the most desirable place to work given its remoteness and blotched safety record. The cost of materials, including steel, cement and petroleum products, has also been rising steadily. Las Vegas real estate consultant John Restrepo told Sun reporter Benjamin Grove that when labor, materials and other expenses are totaled, the cost of construction in Southern Nevada has gone up 40 percent just in the past two years.

The Energy Department says it will not release an updated Yucca Mountain construction cost until after its final design of the project is completed sometime next year. Why the secrecy? It is standard for the estimated cost of public projects to be known in advance, and for the public to be kept informed if the cost increases.

Also mushrooming is the long-term cost of Yucca Mountain, which has been estimated at $58 billion. This includes loading the mountain with 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste over the next 25 years, sealing it and monitoring it for umpteen decades. Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, gives $100 billion as a more accurate figure. And Clark County has calculated that local governments will shoulder costs totaling $3.7 billion over that same 25-year period as they provide security and emergency services for the waste as it moves through the Las Vegas Valley.

Our strongest objection to Yucca Mountain is based on the fact that scientists cannot prove, or even truthfully predict, that it will be safe. But we are also alarmed at the rising costs. The Energy Department should level with the taxpayers of Southern Nevada and the whole country. As the ones footing the bill, they should know how wide they will have to open their pocketbooks to fund this dangerous, scientifically unsound project.