Why the push on Yucca?

Thursday, July 23, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., this week introduced an amendment to the Defense Department appropriations bill that would make Yucca Mountain home to the military’s high-level nuclear waste.

Graham’s amendment is the latest desperate attempt by Republicans and nuclear power supporters to revive efforts to open a nuclear waste dump 90 miles from Las Vegas. More than two decades in the making, the plans for Yucca Mountain have been reeling in the past few years.

The courts have criticized the plans. The Energy Department has failed to show scientifically that Yucca Mountain — a volcanic ridge — is a safe and suitable site to store 77,000 tons of deadly radioactive waste. And President Barack Obama has joined with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Nevada’s congressional delegation in fighting the plan.

Still, Yucca Mountain proponents are mounting a campaign for the dump. They are trying to convince people that it is safe to haul deadly waste across the country — on highways, through cities and past schools — and dump it underground in an area prone to earthquakes.

The nuclear industry currently stores its waste at reactor sites in either indoor cooling pools or in thick steel-and-concrete casks. However, the industry wants the waste taken off site and says it is too risky to keep it where it is.

Greg Jaczko, the new chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a former Reid aide, disagrees. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Jaczko said that when considering “risks at any nuclear plant, spent fuel isn’t the most significant risk that we have.”

He said an NRC study found that safety risks posed by nuclear reactors, although extremely low, are a million times greater than the risk of storing nuclear waste at reactor sites.

If Graham and other Yucca Mountain proponents would take a few minutes to consider the facts, they would see that it is far safer and cheaper to store the spent nuclear waste on site.