Editorial: Yucca Mountain low

Thursday, Sept. 6, 2007 | 7:21 a.m.

In a rightfully harsh opinion, U.S. Chief District Judge Roger Hunt saw the Energy Department's latest duplicitous attempt to dump nuclear waste in Nevada for what it was.

"The issues here are credibility and good faith," Hunt wrote. The Energy Department once again has failed on both counts.

Hunt was asked to intervene to stop Nevada from enforcing a cease-and-desist order, which was issued after it was found the Energy Department was illegally taking water to drill bore holes at Yucca Mountain in violation of a court-sanctioned agreement.

Hunt denied the Energy Department's request, and although he did not rule on the merits of the case, the department and its attorneys should be ashamed for even bringing the action. For example:

That sums up the Energy Department's view of things because it cannot support the project. Time and again it has been shown that the plan to dump 77,000 tons of deadly radioactive waste in Nevada is fraught with problems and is based on faulty science.

Hunt wrote that the Energy Department may have "misled Congress and the president in its application for approval of the site" in 2002. Hunt noted the department was, by law, to be done with its preliminary "site characterization" studies before then to prove its case. Department officials told Congress there was no more study needed.

Yet Energy Department documents call the bore-hole drilling site characterization work.

The department's lies and law-breaking have gone on too long. It is beyond time for Congress to shut down this disastrous plan once and for all.