Ward Valley Project License

Your April 26 editorial (“Chernobyl Tears, Western Fears”) contains an error in its brief reference to the proposed Ward Valley low-level radioactive waste disposal facility. The editorial errs when it says, “The licensing of the proposed Ward Valley site in the Mojave Desert is stalled, caught in a war of words.”

It cannot be repeated too often that the Ward Valley disposal project has been licensed, and the license has been upheld by the California courts. The California Department of Health Services issued a license to construct and operate a disposal facility at Ward Valley on Sept. 16, 1993. Last Jan. 18, after more than two years of litigation, the California Supreme Court rejected the opponents’ last appeal and upheld an appellate court ruling that dismissed all complaints as “without merit.”

Ward Valley has a license. What it lacks is state ownership of the land. The federal lands in Ward Valley must be conveyed to the state before construction can begin. The project is stalled because of a lack of political will in the Clinton administration to approve the conveyance requested by the state almost four years ago. To overcome this roadblock, bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the Senate and the House of Representatives to convey 1,000 acres.

The Chernobyl accident at a Soviet-designed nuclear power plant in Ukraine has nothing to do with opposition to Ward Valley in California. Rather it is ideological opposition to the use of radioactive materials that drives the opposition to Ward Valley. Opponents figure that blocking a disposal facility will eventually stop the use of radioactive material in medicine, medical and other scientific research, and nuclear power generation.

ALAN PASTERNAK

Technical Director, Cal Rad Forum

Lafayette, Calif.