Editorial: Keep fighting against Yucca

Saturday, Jan. 1, 2005 | 3:22 a.m.

We have supported the state of Nevada's fight against Yucca Mountain for more than 20 years, as have the overwhelming majority of the state's residents. During most of those years the odds looked pretty grim on paper. The combined forces of the federal government and the nuclear power industry were bearing down on tiny Nevada. Yet our state stood its ground, holding off those forces, never yielding despite the unrelenting pressure.

The payoff came in 2004 when the state scored major administrative and legal victories in its battle to stop the government's plan. Finally, the momentum that had been building for so long to permanently bury high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was forced to a halt. The Energy Department's plan to file an application by December 2004 to open Yucca Mountain was put off indefinitely. This alone was reason for all Nevadans to celebrate on New Year's Eve.

But one group of Nevadans instead decided recently that this is the time to capitulate, to sell out to the federal government and throw away our hard-fought victories. Calling itself "For A Better Nevada" -- a misnomer, if ever there was one -- the group began advocating in late December that Nevada resign itself to the inevitability of Yucca Mountain and begin pleading for federal handouts in exchange for accepting the deadly waste. Imagine a trainer throwing in the towel right after his boxer had just decked his opponent. It would be the same thing.

Last year Nevada challenged the Energy Department's certification that it had submitted all documents to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission necessary for its license application. And the state won, delaying the application for several months. And in federal court, the state challenged the department's design standard for protecting against the escape of radiation from the mountain. In this case, Nevada won a huge victory. The department had been designing Yucca to be radiation proof for only 10,000 years, when its job from the start had been to make the mountain safe for several hundred thousand years. If President Bush stands by his promise to accept decisions by the courts regarding Yucca Mountain, this could be the project's death blow.

Nevada is fighting Yucca Mountain because it's an unsafe plan, one that would jeopardize its citizens and millions of Americans along the routes that would be used to bring the waste here. Fortunately, in this state of historically strong opposition to Yucca Mountain, For A Better Nevada's voice is as weak as its reasoning.