Editorial: Let nuke waste stay put

Thursday, July 20, 2006 | 7:27 a.m.

It was a joke when the government initially claimed that Yucca Mountain would be accepting the nation's nuclear waste by 1998. That year has long come and gone and this week the Energy Department announced its new deadline for Yucca Mountain to receive nuclear waste: March 31, 2017. The Energy Department would like for everyone to believe it is being more realistic, but the fact is that a 2017 opening is just as much a joke as 1998 was.

With each passing year, additional evidence keeps accumulating that shows how dangerous it is to ship nuclear waste thousands of miles to Nevada and how unsafe it is to bury the waste in the seismically active region where Yucca Mountain is located. Nonetheless, the federal government, prodded along by the nuclear power industry, has pushed for Yucca Mountain's opening. The Energy Department says it will submit its Yucca Mountain license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2008 - shortly before President Bush's term expires.

The fact of the matter is that the nation's nuclear waste can be safely stored for a century above ground, preferably where it is generated, until a realistic way is found to render it harmless. Indeed, a plan by Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Pete Domenici, R-N.M., would allow for interim storage of nuclear waste at federal sites around the country near where the waste is generated.

Although Domenici believes that Yucca Mountain is still needed, we agree with Reid that once residents in those states with nuclear power start having to wrestle with the transportation risks of shipping waste to temporary sites, they'll be content just to leave it where it is, let alone transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain. That is yet one more reason it is so disappointing to see President Bush fight so hard to approve such a dangerous plan that would send man's deadliest waste to Nevada.