SUN EDITORIAL:

A real nowhere bill

Latest Republican tactic to revive Yucca Mountain gives irresponsibility a new meaning

Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008 | 2 a.m.

One reason the federal plan to bury high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is moribund is because the science proving that it would be safe does not exist.

That presents a major problem for the Energy Department, which is intent upon submitting a license application for Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 30.

Six Republican senators introduced a bill Thursday that would solve that problem for the Energy Department by essentially taking science off the table.

Under the bill, Yucca Mountain could be licensed for the first 300 years if the NRC “determines that there is a reasonable expectation that the health and safety of the public will be adequately protected.”

Only after 300 years have elapsed would scientists have to set a standard for how much radiation could escape the mountain for the duration of the waste’s lethal life, which would be at least 300,000 years.

We anticipated such a bill in 2004, after a federal court ruling.

The court found that the Energy Department had been obligated to follow the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences in setting a radiation standard. The Academy had said the waste should be shielded enough, from the moment of burial, to protect the outside environment during the peak life of its deadly radiation — several hundred thousand years.

At the time, however, the Energy Department was trying, unsuccessfully, to prove the waste would be safe for 10,000 years. But the court left the department an out — it would withdraw its ruling if Congress would lift the requirement that the department take direction from the Academy.

That’s what this bill is intended to accomplish — substitute the Academy’s scientific ruling with a judgment call by the NRC. The bill, whose main sponsor is Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, gives the words “reckless” and “irresponsible” new meanings.

Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the state’s leader in the fight against Yucca Mountain, is the one who will see that this bill goes where it belongs, which is nowhere.

Discussion: 1 comment so far…

By boco

1/28/08 at 7:17 a.m.

Suggest removal

Just to clarify some points raised in Sunday's Yucca editorial "Nowhere Bill:" It is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that must set the radiation safetl standard regulations for the repository at Yucca Mountain. EPA was ordered by the federal court to revise the rule in 2004. EPA issued a draft revision in 2005, but has yet to publish the final rule. The draft supplemental EIS issued by DOE last fall showed that the proposed repository will meet the standards set in the draft rule, but it will be up to yet another federal agency to make that determination in a licensing action yet to take place.
By the way, the National Academy of Sciences, in its 2003 report "One Step at a Time," endorsed the staged development concept for geologic repositorities which is an underying basis for the Inhofe legislation.