Halt Yucca expansion plan

According to Bush administration officials, there are no technological constraints to a major expansion of Yucca Mountain. In fact, some administration officials want to triple the amount of highly radioactive used reactor fuel that could be stored in man-made caverns located about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Congress and President-elect Barack Obama need to put the brakes on this proposal. Nevada should not bear the brunt of the nation's nuclear waste disposal problem. The states should not have to bear containment and cleanup costs in the event of an accident while the waste is in transit.

With Nevada Sen. Harry Reid serving as Senate president, this proposal may well be dead, considering Congress holds the purse for any expansion efforts. Reid, a Democrat, has vehemently opposed the Yucca Mountain facility. Meanwhile, Obama has suggested the use of temporary storage of spent fuel at government sites instead of at Yucca Mountain.

This does not mean the nation can do nothing in terms of nuclear waste disposal. The United States' reliance on nuclear power will increase over time because of the nation's tremendous energy demands and an insistence by many large municipalities that within the next two decades they will no longer purchase electrical power produced at coal-fired plants. This will mean more waste, on top of the waste produced by existing reactors.

Under that scenario, a new approach to nuclear waste disposal will be needed. Recently, Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, visited Europe to observe how nuclear waste is handled there. In France, Bennett learned, spent fuel is reprocessed to the point that the final waste product is only about 4 percentof the volume created by nuclear power plants in the United States. That presents far different storage options than storing mass amounts of nuclear waste in deep underground caverns at Yucca Mountain.

Politically and economically speaking, Yucca Mountain has many obstacles. It is a full decade beyond its projected opening date. Its projected price is some $77 billion. That's a significant price tag under the best of circumstances, let alone as the nation is at war and experiencing a recession.

So should Westerners spend time worrying about Yucca Mountain? They should in the respect that the only solution the Bush administration appears to support is Yucca Mountain expansion. The clock is ticking, which means time may run out on this absurd proposal. Then, Congress and Obama must devise a more sensible means to address the nation's nuclear waste.