Send the Nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain

What would happen if terrorists decided to attack a high-level nuclear waste dump? What are the real dangers of transporting spent nuclear fuel rods to a permanent repository deep inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain?

These questions aren't dinner-time conversation starters in this part of the West. Around here, nuclear waste has become kind of like politics and religion. You don't bring it up in mixed company without expecting to unleash, shall we say, a lethal dose of emotional fallout.

We have good reason for that kind of response in Utah. Here, the government lied for years about the effects of above-ground nuclear testing. Even the underground explosions that continued in Nevada until a little more than a decade ago weren't really as safe as officials said they were. That's why the recent suggestions in Washington that the tests may resume have inflamed so many passions here. People still are dying from the old tests, thank you. We don't need any more.

But what about waste?

I bring this up because the Yucca Mountain project recently became a football in presidential politics. Sen. John Kerry traveled to Nevada and accused President Bush of betraying Nevadans (who voted for Bush in 2000), by signing a paper that formally endorses Yucca Mountain as the nation's first permanent repository for the stuff nobody wants.

Bush flew to Nevada right after that and argued his case, saying he knows Nevadans don't like the thought of housing all that hot waste — stuff that won't be touchable until a time period roughly twice the current length of recorded history — but that he honestly feels Yucca Mountain is the best place for it.

Kerry said he wants more scientific proof, even though he voted for a 1987 law that essentially said what Bush is saying now.

Utah plays into this in a number of ways. If Yucca is delayed or somehow rejected, the proposed temporary above-ground storage site on the Goshute Reservation west of Salt Lake City takes on added importance. Some say it would, if approved, become a defacto permanent repository. Suddenly, a lot of people in Utah are cheering for Yucca Mountain, which a lot of Nevadans think is not exactly neighborly behavior.

A lot of emotion. A lot of heat. But very little intelligent discussion.

In 21st century America, the word "nuclear" is, by itself, poisonous. It is a black cat crossing the road of rational dialog. Many people, it would seem, are less worried about filling their cabinets with hazardous household cleaners and driving next to trucks loaded with gasoline than about the chances that a cask-enclosed spent fuel rod may travel within a few miles of their home.