Editorial: Billions wasted on Yucca

Friday, March 17, 2006 | 7:11 a.m.

In the 1980s Congress settled on burial as the best method for getting rid of deadly waste accumulating at nuclear power plants around the country. In 1987 it decided that Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, should be studied as the sole burial site. Congress then established Jan. 31, 1998, as the day of Yucca Mountain's grand opening.

From the start, Nevada steadfastly opposed this plan and warned Congress that it would continue fighting against it because of the life-and-death safety issues involved. Nonetheless, the federal government clung to this arbitrary deadline.

But scientific facts have a way of disintegrating even the most solid of deadlines. Nevada's legal arguments, based on geological findings and the obvious hazards of nuclear-waste transportation, rendered the 1998 deadline dead on arrival. The Energy Department, in charge of studying Yucca Mountain, then tried a 2010 deadline. Then a 2012 deadline. They didn't stand up either.

Today the deadline is much more vague. "We should be able to open it next decade," Paul Golan said Wednesday. He is the acting director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Waste Management.

So far, the Energy Department has spent $9 billion on drilling tunnels and studying the mountain's suitability to safely contain the waste for hundreds of thousands of years. And to show for it, they have three missed deadlines, not a shred of evidence that burial is safe and 60 lawsuits from nuclear power companies seeking billions for having had to store the waste on their own properties for the past eight years.

It should be clear by now that Yucca Mountain cannot be made safe for nuclear waste storage. The government would be better off settling with the nuclear utility companies, perhaps by subsidizing their storage costs until a truly safe permanent solution is found.