Editorial: Don’t trash Nevada

Friday, Aug. 11, 2006 | 7:48 a.m.

A group of Northeastern governors is opposing a U.S. Senate bill that proposes to temporarily store nuclear waste nearer the reactors that produce it.

According to the Associated Press, the Coalition of Northeastern Governors has written a letter protesting the Senate spending bill that calls for regional storage of spent nuclear fuel in states that generate commercial nuclear power.

The provision - added by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah; and Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M. - specifically bars using Nevada or Utah as temporary storage sites.

A site in Utah has been named as a potential interim dump.

But Nevada is where these Northeasterners want the waste they created to be buried. They fear temporary sites will delay the opening of a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain. And, they say, the bill's timetable would result in "a hastily created network" of temporary facilities without allowing enough time to determine whether such storage is safe.

These governors seem unable - or unwilling - to see that haste and safety concerns are the very reasons Yucca Mountain isn't being built.

It is not a safe place to store high-level nuclear waste, and the government has been trying to cut corners and massage data to build it anyway. Those who are creating this waste back East can just keep it.

Nevada is not the nation's nuclear trash heap.