Hot stuff coming

Don’t look now, but thousands of tons of the hottest, most dangerous garbage there is—radioactive nuclear waste—will be heading toward California, in trucks and railcars, from all across the country, within the decade. Look at a map of America and you’ll find that the doomed destination for all this hot trash—Nevada’s Yucca Mountain—is located 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, 20 miles from the California border and not all that far from Sacramento. (It’s right there to the right, on the other side of Yosemite National Park.)

Congress’ vote last week to approve the long-debated plan makes the build-out of Yucca Mountain pretty much a done deal if the courts don’t step in. The first-ever national nuclear-waste burial ground is designed to hold 77,000 tons of spent commercial, industrial and military nuclear fuel. The site will hold the exact nuclear waste nobody wants, i.e. the kind that will remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

It’s no exaggeration to say the vote was a giant victory for the nuclear industry, which has been lobbying for a waste storage site for more than 20 years. It was also a significant triumph for George W. Bush, since a major expansion of nuclear power is a prime goal of his new energy policy.

Those who opposed nuclear power from its earliest days thought this particular pro/con debate was over in 1979 when nuclear power fell from grace after the dangerous accident at the Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The event spurred the cancellation of plans for new nuclear power plants all across the country. But the Yucca Mountain vote is a clear signal that nuclear power is back—despite the fact that these plants are dangerous as hell, as well as being the most expensive way there is to produce power, and they require massive governmental subsidies.

Besides signaling the frightening return of nuclear power, the Yucca Mountain project has plenty of other troubling indicators. The mountain is crisscrossed with numerous earthquake faults. Volcanoes exist nearby. And scientists have found the rock in the sparse desert mountain to be riddled with fractures, i.e. water will move downward, past the waste and toward the aquifer. (Remember, this stuff is supposed to be kept absolutely isolated from the environment for 10,000 years.)

It’s tough not to look at the Yucca Mountain decision as yet another injurious development in a string that seems to be coming at us from Washington, D.C., these days. But perhaps we should look at the recent vote, as Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn does, as simply another reason to rejoin the battle. Indeed, Guinn has promised to continue fighting the dumpsite in court and his state now has five lawsuits pending. Perhaps—once outside the political arena—some level of objectivity, common sense and wisdom can prevail on this most crucial of decisions.