Reject temporary nuke sites

Rep. David Hobson of Ohio is trying to put a little more pressure on the government to begin sending spent nuclear fuel rods to temporary, above-ground storage sites. Although he didn't say it directly, Utah's Skull Valley has to be one of the sites in mind.

Hobson is chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on energy and water. Last week that committee approved President Bush's recommended budget for the proposed permanent storage site in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, then added $10 million more, instructing the Energy Department to use the money to pick one or two temporary sites until Yucca is ready. Given the long, turbulent history of Yucca, however (including the latest allegations that workers there falsified data), it isn't clear whether the site ever will be ready for storing waste.

And that's why Hobson's recommendation ought to end up in the budgetary waste can.

Without a firm commitment to Yucca, temporary sites such as the Skull Valley will likely become de facto permanent repositories, with casks stored above ground. Even with a commitment to Yucca, the day will come when spent nuclear fuel rods are in transit every day somewhere across the nation, which seems far more dangerous than the current on-sight storage at the roughly 70 nuclear power plants nationwide.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hobson said, "Frankly, it's time to rethink our approach to dealing with spent (nuclear) fuel." Of course, he meant the nation should focus on one or more temporary sites. But we think it's time for some completely different thinking.

The subcommittee did take a step in that direction by directing the Energy Department to work toward finding new recycling methods for the spent fuel rods. Former President Jimmy Carter put an end to recycling by executive order back in the '70s, but there is no good reason to keep from doing this now, especially considering many other nations already do.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has said he prefers to leave the fuel rods right where they are, near the nuclear plants that generated them. That's an option that will lead to many lawsuits, considering the government long ago promised to move the rods to a storage facility. But it makes a lot of sense, and it would make reprocessing that much more likely.