Garbage That’s Too Hot to Handle

For more than a decade the Department of Energy, in collusion with Congress, has sought to force a political solution to the disposal of the nation’s nastiest bundle of garbage: highly radioactive nuclear waste that can remain dangerous for as long as 10,000 years. Finally, after two years and millions of dollars, the department has acknowledged that its hard-sell effort to locate the depository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., will not stand scientific and engineering scrutiny. The department will begin the planning job all over again.

The decision by the new secretary of energy, James D. Watkins, is both courageous and correct. It will cost time and money, but the nation cannot afford to fool around with radioactive stuff that can pose a hazard for more than 300 generations of human beings. If the federal government is ever to have a credible nuclear-waste disposal program, it has to persuade both the public and the scientific community that the burial ground cannot leak radioactive waste into the ground-water supply or be ripped open by volcanoes and earthquakes.

Nevada got stuck with the site in part because it has only four electoral votes. But even Nevada, with its wide open desert spaces and a history of nuclear exposure, does not have to put up with shoddy work. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy will ask Congress for permission to establish an interim storage site elsewhere in the nation for the spent nuclear fuel rods from 114 electric power plants around the nation. Ever since the first power plant went on line, the old fuel rods have been collecting at each plant because there was no place certified safe for long-term storage. By the year 2000, the spent fuel is expected to total 40,000 metric tons. Good luck to the department in finding some place that will take the radioactive waste even temporarily.

Up to 1987, the department was studying three potential depository sites, in Nevada, Washington state and Texas. But Congress then decided to speed things up by focusing all efforts on the Yucca Mountain site. While experienced in making nuclear weapons in secrecy, the department was not used to a project that was subject to civilian review and scientific assessment. From the outset, the Yucca Mountain effort has suffered from fragmented administration and quality-control problems. No credible institution trusted the technical work that was supposed to justify the selection of Yucca Mountain.

Now, the department pledges that everyone will get a chance to look over its shoulder. The project will get peer review from the National Academy of Sciences, the state of Nevada, the NRC and the nuclear power industry. They must watch closely. Hundreds of generations of humankind have a stake in the outcome.