Editorial: No softballs for Yucca

Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

The first oversight hearing on Yucca Mountain since the Democrats won control of Congress is scheduled for Wednesday before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Before January this committee was headed by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a vocal supporter of burying the nation's commercial nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Now the committee is headed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a long-standing opponent of the project. Among her fears is that water destined for the Colorado River - which provides drinking water for much of the West, including Southern California - will seep through the buried waste and become contaminated.

When Republicans led the key committees overseeing Yucca Mountain, the serious questions about the safety of the project gave way to a higher priority - getting it licensed.

The Republicans, at the behest of the nuclear power industry, a big contributor to GOP campaigns, sought an answer to the waste problem - any answer - so that the construction of more nuclear power plants could be justified.

Since the issue of burying the waste came up 25 years ago, however, a majority of Democrats has opposed Yucca Mountain for safety reasons.

The entire Nevada congressional delegation has always opposed the project, with overwhelming support from Nevada's population and state and local government leaders. It is extraordinarily helpful to the state's cause that Harry Reid is the Senate majority leader, making him Congress' most powerful opponent of a Yucca repository.

We, too, have always strongly opposed the project. There is no design that can prevent the buried waste from polluting the air and water. Although planners say the pollution can be kept to safe levels, they cannot produce the science to prove it.

And the plan for daily cross-country shipments of the deadly waste to the mountain by rail and truck over 25 years is a plan for catastrophe .

Wednesday's hearing will finally give opponents of the project - including committee member and presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who called for the hearing - a chance to insist upon answers to their toughest questions. Unlike past hearings, the federal managers of the Yucca Mountain project will not have a Republican committee chairman running interference for them.