Editorial: Waste dump loses support

Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.

Outgoing Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Edward McGaffigan Jr. has said what Nevadans have been saying for two decades: Forget Yucca Mountain.

The planned nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas has been fatally flawed since the beginning, and McGaffigan says a major part of the problem is that the process to select the site was unfair.

All along, Congress has ignored science and chosen political solutions. Instead of studying three sites in Nevada, Texas and Washington, as had been mandated under federal law, lawmakers did the politically expedient thing in 1987 by singling out Nevada, which at the time had a small and not very powerful congressional delegation. Congress passed the so-called Screw Nevada Bill, which bypassed a study and designated Yucca Mountain as the site. Nevada has been in strident opposition since. The state and federal governments have spent millions of dollars in legal fights, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is leading the strong congressional effort to stop the Yucca Mountain repository.

McGaffigan has declared that the project is not "politically viable."

"There is no chance Yucca can go forward under current statute," McGaffigan said in a story by Lisa Mascaro in Wednesday's Las Vegas Sun. "I would go back to the beginning. When you go out of process it's a problem, it's a huge political problem. If a process is done fairly, I think you have a shot."

He said the plan needs to be put "on a path where states are treated from the get-go with great respect and deference - and I don't believe that will result in 50 states saying no.

"If you chose a course that is hostile to the state ... if you try to jam something down a state's throat, it won't work."

McGaffigan is speaking out because he is dying from cancer. He is a supporter of nuclear energy and the creation of a waste repository, but beyond the inequity, he sees other problems with Yucca Mountain. People at the Energy Department, he feels, have been avoiding issues, making unrealistic promises and hoping succeeding administrations would fulfill them.

Energy Department officials "managed to lock themselves into solutions that didn't work," he said. "I grew more frustrated over time that we weren't honestly dealing with the issue."

There is no question the project was simply a bad idea to start with, and it has been compounded by terrible science and shoddy work, some of which has had to be redone. "Rework is not a good sign of a healthy project," McGaffigan said.

In a commentary piece written for Energy Daily, McGaffigan said there had been a "quarter century of bad law, leading to bad regulations, bad personnel policy, bad budget policy and bad science advice."

Still, President Bush, who approved the project in 2002, wants to push ahead and has put nearly $500 million for Yucca Mountain in the proposed budget he sent to Congress. Energy Department officials expressed "some level of confidence" they can meet their latest deadline - completing the license application next year. But the department has a sorry performance history. The project was originally slated to open in 1998, and now, using the most optimistic projections, it could open in 2020.

Burial of high-level nuclear waste is not the answer, whether at Yucca Mountain or anywhere else. It is simply too dangerous. It would require carting the highly radioactive waste around the country, causing increased risk of nuclear accidents on the nation's highways. Burial would also make the waste susceptible to earthquakes, which could split casks open and hasten what appears to be inevitable - that the waste will eventually leech into the ground water.

The only realistic answer is to store the waste, as many reactors are doing, in heavily fortified above-ground casks until there is a better answer, such as recycling. McGaffigan has said a blue-ribbon panel should be appointed to study proposals and bring a new plan to Congress after the 2008 elections.

World Nuclear News, an industry online publication, quoted Edward Sproat, the Energy Department official in charge of Yucca Mountain, as responding to that criticism with what is simply an incredible answer. "The site is Yucca Mountain," he said. "That decision was made in 2002. The next step is, can you license a repository at that site? That's where we are now."

The answer should now be clear. No, absolutely not. The administration should be listening to the wise words of Edward McGaffigan.