Editorial: Report is no endorsement

Saturday, Feb. 11, 2006 | 12:30 p.m.

This week a panel of the National Academy of Sciences issued a report that asserted high-level nuclear waste can be shipped safely. While the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power industry's lobbying arm, jumped on the report's conclusion, not everything in it was favorable to the industry.

The National Academy of Sciences panel noted that significant amounts of radiation could be released if a shipment were to be engulfed in a sustained and intense fire. That should hardly be comforting to the tens of millions of people who live along rail routes or highways where nuclear waste would be shipped if Nevada's Yucca Mountain ever were approved to permanently store 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

It certainly won't be of comfort to those who remember the fiery derailment of a 60-car freight train in Baltimore in 2001. One of the cars that ruptured was carrying thousands of gallons of hydrochloric acid. The fire, which sometimes reached temperatures as high as 1,500 degrees, lasted for six days. Imagine if that had been high-level nuclear waste.

The National Academy of Sciences panel found that there should be more real-world testing of the containers under extreme conditions. But the panel added that there was no need to test the containers to the point of destruction. In light of just how lethal this cargo would be, it makes absolutely no sense not to put these containers through the most severe tests possible.

In addition, it was alarming that the National Academy of Sciences panel said it was unable to gauge the risks that terrorist attacks would pose to these shipments because it could not gain access to classified information. In a post-9/11 world, there is no way to come to a final conclusion about the safety of nuclear waste shipments without factoring in terrorism. We are glad that the panel did recommend an independent investigation of the risks that terrorism poses - an investigation that doesn't have industry or government conflicts.

In our view, this report's conclusions aren't comforting at all. If anything, it reinforces our belief that nuclear waste should be left safely on site, where it is produced, until scientists figure out a way to render it safely. Why take needless risks with man's deadliest waste?