Though the data is far from conclusive, the Bush administration is moving ahead with plans to bring nuclear material by truck to Yucca Mountain from 131 sites around the country. Nevada has only three electoral votes, which doesn’t give it much clout with politicians. Still, a lively fight is unfolding on Capitol Hill and elsewhere that may put a crimp in the administration’s plans.
The science of how to dispose of nuclear waste is a relatively new field. We know little about these deadly substances and experts are divided about their afterlife. That means the administration should move carefully, if at all, in shifting the nuclear burden to Yucca Mountain.
The challenge of transporting nuclear waste is daunting enough to make any rational human being stop to at least consider whether there are other options. Even if the material arrives without mishap, storage in an underground repository 100 miles from Las Vegas is not a permanent solution. A rational society would launch a science project on the scale of Los Alamos to develop safeguards for the future so we don’t leave a nuclear mountain for our children and grandchildren to clean up.
But that won’t happen in a country as political as ours, where the Bush administration is trying to do nuclear storage on the cheap. Nevada isn’t the only state to rebel. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges is threatening to block the roadways into his state if federal trucks attempt to bring in weapons-grade plutonium. He staged a mock roadblock last week to show he means business. Not since former Alabama governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to prevent federal troops from enforcing integration has a southern governor attempted a similar stunt.
Hodges is up for re-election in November, and waving the flag of states’ rights is good politics. But he’s also got legitimate concerns that are a spinoff of the debate over Yucca Mountain. Just as the folks in Nevada felt betrayed by Bush, who during the 2000 campaign seemed to side with them only to flip-flop once he got to Washington, Hodges doesn’t trust this administration to keep its promise to build processing plants for nuclear waste. He thinks the Department of Energy (DOE) may scrap the program, which is costly, and turn South Carolina into a storage site instead. Before he lets in the trucks with their armed escorts, he wants the administration to sign a “consent decree” that would be enforceable in federal court.
The administration is so far refusing, citing the possibility that national security could be compromised in any future legal process of discovery. Hodges says that is nonsense. He doesn’t want his state left in the lurch should Washington renege on its promises. Those promises date back to the Clinton administration when South Carolina agreed to serve as a site for mixed-oxide fuel plants that would convert weapons-grade plutonium into usable fuel. The program was developed in tandem with the Russians and was part of the Clinton administration’s nonproliferation policy. It stalled when Bush took office in part because the new administration doubted the Russians could come up with the money to do their part. “We went ape over that,” says Hodges.
After September 11, the administration changed its mind and wanted to press ahead, but Hodges was wary. He had agreed that his state’s Savannah River site would become a processing facility; he didn’t want it to end up as a long-term storage facility, which was never part of the deal. “Energy secretaries come and go, and presidents come and go,” he told NEWSWEEK. “I want to make sure promises don’t come and go.”
The administration has set May 15 as the date when shipments could begin arriving in South Carolina from the Rocky Flats site in Colorado. Why the rush? Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard is up for re-election, and cleaning up Rocky Flats will help his campaign. While the citizens of Colorado have a right to expect the waste will eventually be moved, the urgency appears motivated more by politics than science.
South Carolina Rep. John Spratt has been in Congress for 20 years, and is now the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. He’s been dealing with the Energy Department and can recite how they’ve bowed to budget pressures and reneged on promises. Original plans called for a specially designed and built facility. Instead they’re using an old reactor and an existing building. A promised “immobilization” facility that would have taken plutonium that is not fit to be processed and stored it in canisters until it could be moved has been dropped from the Bush budget. “The governor says he wants an exit strategy,” says Spratt. “I also want an entrance strategy.” Spratt wants the Nuclear Facilities and Safety Board, which he created together with former Ohio senator John Glenn, to give assurances that the now makeshift facilities will hold up over time. “Nobody can fault us for that,” he says. “Knowing DOE’s track record, this stuff is likely to be around a lot longer than they say.”
Spratt has reason to wonder about the administration’s commitment. Money is scarce, and nuclear waste storage is apparently not one of Bush’s priorities. “We don’t want to commit to something like this on the cheap,” says Spratt. “It should be done right if it’s done at all.” So far, neither side is budging. Hodges says he is ready to stand in the path of federal trucks if that’s what it takes. Bush just wants the problem to go away, which is the least likely outcome when the issue is nuclear waste.
