February 26, 2002
Charles Rousseaux
"We will fight on Capitol Hill. We will fight
it in the heartland. We will fight it in the court of public
opinion."
So proclaimed Las Vegas Mayor Oscar
Goodman, who is preparing for a fight of Churchillian proportion over President
Bush's recent decision to authorize construction of the nation's only repository
for high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain,
Nev.
The mayor's opposition is understandable:
After all, the Yucca repository represents a radioactive NIMBY nightmare. It
will eventually store up to 80,000 tons of high-level reactor waste 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas if it ever
opens.
Unfortunately for the mayor, the 40,000
tons of high-level waste already generated by nuclear reactors (primarily spent
fuel rods) has created a crisis of Churchilian proportions — especially since
2,000 tons of newly spent fuel are added each
year.
Those metallic masses are currently being
stored in 131 on-site short-term above-ground storage facilities in 39 states.
Many of those storage areas are rapidly running out of room, but much more
troublesome is the fact that 161 million Americans live within 75 miles of those
sites, making each one a potential target to a terrorist intent on creating a
weapon of mass disruption. (Terrorists who attack spent fuel rod storage areas
almost certainly won't be able to set off a nuclear explosion, but if they
succeed in breeching containment, the contamination problems could be
enormous.)
The repository offers a solid
solution to removing such a threat — literally. It will be drilled into one of
the thicker layers of volcanic rock in Yucca Mountain, about 1,000 below the
surface between two of the mountain's three faults (the one running through the
planned repository is tiny). The area is extremely stable geologically, and
aside from terrorists, the biggest threat to containment is the slow drip of
water eventually rusting some of the hardened storage containers, causing a
radioactive leak. That should take some thousands of years, since the repository
will sit about 1,000 feet above the local water table, and that the arid area in
which Yucca stands receives an annual average of 7 inches of rain each
year.
Such a radioactive leak would take even
longer to raise the risk of cancer in any of the local residents, considering
the desert environment of the government land upon which Yucca sits. That land,
it should be noted, is adjacent to the Nevada Test Site, where the government
used to test nuclear devices. Above that residual radiation is Nevada's somewhat
carcinogenic atmosphere from both Las Vegas' smoke-filled casinos and its
sun-filled skies. In fact, Nevadans tend to have higher than national
averageratesof melanoma (skin cancer) mortality, a partial consequence of the
higher than national average levels of ultraviolet radiation shining on the
Silver State.
Given those burning facts,
anti-Yucca activists have fallen back on fears of transporting nuclear waste to
Yucca. In a press release, Michael Marionette, executive director of the Nuclear
Information Resource Service (NIRS), called such shipments "mobile Chernobyls."
Mr. Goodman proclaimed that with his decision, Mr. Bush had chosen to "expose
millions of Americans in 43 states to potential nuclear
holocaust."
However, 2,500 shipments of spent
fuel have arrived safely at their destinations since 1965 according to the
Energy Department, and each transport cask will be built to survive both a
beating and a biting by "Iron Mike" Tyson. Besides, keeping the material where
it is still exposes millions of Americans to radioactive
risks.
There simply isn't a way to achieve the
zero risk solution that many of the anti-Yucca groups seem to be demanding.
While NIRS and other anti-nuclear power groups seem to be alarmed about finding
atoms everywhere (what else to make of NIRS' numerous campaigns for "nuclear
free zones") otherwise reasonable Nevadans may be more concerned that their
state will lose much needed tourism money.
That would explain why the American Gaming
Association may put up to $500,000 in the anti-Yucca campaign, and the Nevada
Resort Association plans on chipping in another $250,000. Yet those fears seem
somewhat farcical as well. After all, nuclear waste isn't usually the first
concern of couples intent on forming nuclear families (especially those intent
on doing so to oaths administered by an Elvis impersonator), and compulsive
gamblers with a burning tip don't usually pause at the airport gate to check in
with the Pentagon.
The repository at Yucca
would help the Pentagon though, considering that 40 percent of the Navy's fleet
depends on nuclear power. So do millions of Americans — 20 percent of their
electricity also comes from nuclear power.
So
while the Yucca repository is not a perfect solution to the problem of
high-level reactor waste, it does offer a reasonable answer to a series of
problems whose outcome would otherwise be a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside
an enigma. Indeed, if it does eventually open, it might well be said that never
in the annals of waste disposal was so much owed by so many to a single
site.
Charles
Rousseaux is an editor for the Commentary pages and an editorial writer for The
Washington Times.
