Editorial: On a dangerous path

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2005 | 9:45 a.m.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted a group of electric utilities a license to build a temporary nuclear waste dump on a tribal reservation in Utah. A spokeswoman for the electric utilities, Sue Martin of Private Fuel Storage, said they don't view it as an alternative to Nevada's Yucca Mountain, where the federal government has encountered regulatory and legal setbacks in its plans to build a permanent nuclear waste dump. Nonetheless, Martin noted that a temporary, above-ground repository in Utah, which could hold 44,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste, could be a "very helpful kind of staging area" for shipping nuclear waste to Nevada in light of its proximity.

Utah state officials plan to appeal the decision in the courts, so it could be years away from becoming a reality -- if ever. Nonetheless, Nevadans should be concerned by the decision to go forward with the repository in Utah, especially since the agency that granted the license -- the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- is the same one that will decide Yucca Mountain's fate. But this isn't an issue affecting only residents of Utah and Nevada. Indeed, all Americans, particularly the tens of millions who live along the routes that the waste will be shipped, will be placed in danger by the needless shipping of nuclear waste.

Putting man's deadliest waste on our roads -- where it's vulnerable to spills from accidents or terrorist acts -- is insane. Keeping the waste safely in dry-cask storage at the power plants where the nuclear waste is generated makes the most sense. But the federal government, when it comes to disposing of nuclear waste, has shown an alarming lack of common sense by going forward with plans that not only ignore the dangers of burying the waste, as is the case with Yucca Mountain, but also the threats posed by shipping it thousands of miles across the nation. Our government's continuing failure to protect us from the unnecessary dangers of shipping nuclear waste is courting a catastrophe -- it's a question of when, not if, it will happen.