Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Sun editorial:

Expanding Yucca Mountain?

Proposal to increase nuke waste capacity in Nevada makes a bad idea worse

On Tuesday the Energy Department asked Congress to pass legislation so the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain could be built to handle far more of the deadly radioactive material than was intended when the site was first selected for study, in 1987. Congress had set a limit of 70,000 metric tons of waste for the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas but the department said in its report that Yucca Mountain “can be expanded to accommodate three times, or more, the current statutory limit.”

That is based on past studies that have suggested the dump, which is now proposed to encompass 1,250 acres, could be expanded to cover as much as 4,200 acres.

Our advice to Congress is to simply toss out the report. We also believe it would be in the national interest for the new Obama administration, which takes over in January, to simply ignore the recommendation and proceed instead with a strategy to kill the dump plan.

The Energy Department argues that unless the 70,000-ton limit is removed, a second dump will be needed. It is estimated that the limit, which factored in 63,000 tons from commercial nuclear reactors and the rest from national defense facilities, will have been achieved by 2010. It is also estimated that if all commercial reactors are granted license extensions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate for 60 years, they will have generated 130,000 tons of waste, more than double the 58,000 tons currently being stored at those reactors.

But the problem with expanding the proposed dump is that it takes a bad idea and makes it worse. No studies have proven that the earthquake-prone mountain is geologically safe for a dump. And no one has figured out a way to safely transport nuclear waste cross-country to Nevada.

The agency, then, had better get busy and come up with alternatives to Yucca Mountain. That’s the legislation that should be passed and signed into law by the next president, Barack Obama.

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