Craig’s Dump Site Bill Called Political, Unscientific

Nevada officials don’t think much of a bill introduced in Congress by Idaho Sen. Larry Craig and others to force that state to take the nation’s nuclear waste.

Craig’s legislation calls for building storage and disposal sites in Nevada for all nuclear waste generated in the U.S., and for the short-term storage site to start accepting military and commercial nuclear waste in 1998.

He called it a good deal for Idaho, because the state finally will get rid of radioactive waste that has been stored at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

Joe Strolin, planner for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said, “The legislation continues the unscientific and we think unsupported process of politically forcing a high-level waste site on Nevada that’s not justified from a scientific standpoint.”

Nevada feels burying waste at Yucca Mountain would make it vulnerable to earthquakes, volcanic activity or water table rises during the next 100,000 years while its radioactivity decays.