N-Waste Should Be In One Place
No Americans want nuclear waste in their neighborhood, but nearly all Americans have used the electricity nuclear reactors produce. It is a scandal of our century that we built nuclear reactors but failed to dispose safely of their byproduct - spent fuel that will remain extremely dangerous for more than 10,000 years.
Next week, at long last, the Senate is expected to move toward approval of a plan.
One is needed. Today, 60,000 metric tons of intensely radioactive spent fuel is scattered all over the country at the more than 100 reactor sites where it was produced. The waste is crammed into concrete casks and “swimming-pool” storage basins of dubious integrity. Many of these disasters-in-waiting are in heavily populated areas.
The utilities that operate the reactors have shouldered the storage burden, even though the government promised to take the waste as part of its old “atoms for peace” promotions. Some utilities have better safety records than others and many reactors are approaching the end of their life span. Nobody wants to build new ones. Other energy sources such as natural gas are safer and cheaper.
In 1982 Congress passed a federal law creating a process to choose sites for permanent disposal of the waste. Unfortunately politics, more than science, guided the outcome. Eastern politicians killed the provision for a repository in the East where most of the waste is stored. In the West, three sites emerged. Two, near the Columbia River in Washington and an aquifer in Texas, had significant geological flaws. The third, at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, had advantages: isolation, a comparatively stable, dry environment - and a weak congressional delegation. So Congress stopped study of other sites and focused attention on Nevada, which ever since has fought to kill the project.
In the Senate, a filibuster by Nevada is expected to die in a vote next Wednesday and a bill, with bipartisan backing, will head for passage. The bill would establish an interim storage facility near Yucca Mountain at the already-contaminated site where the nation once tested nuclear bombs. It does make sense to consolidate this material using the latest storage technology, in one remote place near the likely site for permanent storage. The status quo poses intolerable risk to a world that knows too much about radioactive leaks, accidents and terrorism.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court ordered the government to start accepting the nuclear waste by 1998. The time for bickering is past - long past. The nation must accept responsibility for this waste and the Senate’s plan is a good way to start.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board