Editorial: Yucca is falling from grace

Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2005 | 10:33 a.m.

A few years ago those in support of turning Yucca Mountain into a dump for nuclear waste talked of the project with certainty. The word "inevitable" came up frequently in their conversations. They were bold in saying that Nevada should kneel and beg the federal government for benefits in exchange for exposing its residents to the waste site's dangers. The project will be built anyway, so the state should should stop fighting it and get whatever it can, they would argue.

Today it is doubt, not certainty, that characterizes the prospect of Yucca Mountain ever getting built as a permanent, underground burial facility for high-level nuclear waste. Owing to the fight that Nevada has waged over the past two decades, a fight that has exposed the multiple health and safety flaws of the project, Yucca Mountain opponents are the ones who have reason for confidence these days.

The latest blow against the project came this week from Congress, where both the House and Senate decided to cut the budget for Yucca and at the same time fund an alternative to burying the waste. President Bush had asked for $650 million for continued work at the site, which is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Congress approved $450 million. In each of the past two years it had approved $577 million. This willingness to cut the budget in a year that Bush had asked for a significant increase suggests that the president's support in Congress on this issue has weakened.

At the same time it cut the Yucca budget, Congress approved $50 million to promote the recycling, rather than the burial, of spent nuclear fuel. This would never have happened in Yucca's heyday. We regret, however, that Congress appropriated any money at all for this outrageously flawed and apparently doomed project.