Editorial: A matter of principle

Friday, June 24, 2005 | 4:10 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

June 25-26, 2005

Last week Nevada received some help -- of sorts -- in its fight against the federal government's plan to permanently bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, who in 2002 voted to send nuclear waste to Nevada, said he is working on legislation that would require the government to study two alternatives to Yucca Mountain -- leaving the waste at nuclear power plants or temporarily storing it at government sites.

Hatch said he still supports Yucca Mountain for the long-term storage of nuclear waste, but Utah officials are concerned that if Yucca Mountain doesn't get approved by federal regulators, then their state might by default become the nation's home for nuclear waste. Their concern is well-founded.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is getting closer to approving a plan by a coalition of nuclear power plants, unhappy with the delays on Yucca Mountain, to temporarily store 44,000 tons of nuclear waste on an Indian reservation in Utah. So if Yucca Mountain's application does get turned down, as we believe it eventually will, then pressure will grow on the government to leave the nuclear waste in Utah -- no matter how much evidence exists that doing so is unsafe. "I understand why our colleagues from Nevada oppose the Yucca Mountain site," Hatch said on the Senate floor last week. "I am getting more and more understanding of that as I go along."

Prior to Congress' vote on Yucca Mountain in 2002, Hatch and Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, agreed to go along with President Bush's plan to send nuclear waste to Nevada. In return, the White House assured them that the administration wouldn't back efforts by some nuclear power plant operators to temporarily store nuclear waste in Utah. Obviously that promise meant nothing. Utah's senators very well may come to rue their 2002 decision not to join with Nevada and, on principle, fight the federal government's dangerous plan to send nuclear waste to Nevada. The failure to stand together, and declare that the West isn't a dumping ground for the government, very well could come back to haunt Utah.