The heavy burden of storing nuclear waste

Re “An Alert Unlike Any Other,” Column One, May 3

This article about a nuclear waste vault in New Mexico mentions “a similar repository in Nevada at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas.” It also says: “Eventually it will store highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power plants as well as high-level waste from the weapons program.”

There is no similarity between the dry salt formations in New Mexico and the highly porous fractured rock of Yucca Mountain, which is essentially a sieve. As a consequence, water would seep into the Yucca Mountain tunnels, corroding the waste packages and carrying the radioactive waste to the human environment.

The Times should have been more cautious in repeating Energy Department propaganda. Because the Yucca Mountain site’s poor geology is so difficult to defend, the Energy Department has delayed over and over again submitting a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and facing a hearing, because it knows Nevada has assembled a first-rate scientific team. It is extremely doubtful the repository will ever open.

ROBERT LOUX

Executive Director

Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects

Carson City

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If placing our burdensome national debt on the shoulders of our children and grandchildren is immoral, what do we make of the fact that our lethal nuclear waste will threaten Earth’s inhabitants for 250,000 years? It is beyond grotesque, and it’s the reason my license plate has read “BAN NUX” for the last 24 years.

SUSAN HANGER

Topanga

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I’m puzzled by all of the effort going into storing nuclear waste forever. Why do scientists think we will be permanently stumped over how to make nuclear waste harmless? And why aren’t we reprocessing the spent nuclear fuel and using it again like most countries do?

If reused, we have enough uranium and plutonium to last 1,000 years, and we wouldn’t need to violently seize oil and gas from other countries. But then the military-industrial complex would lose some profits, and the oil industry would lose an excuse to loot our wallets.

Come to think of it, maybe I’m not puzzled anymore.

ART HOFFMANN

Santa Ana

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With regard to devising warnings for a future human race about our deadly, embarrassing garbage buried in New Mexico, will part of the elaborate signage include an apology?

STEPHEN JERROM

Los Angeles