The Wrong State, the Wrong Mountain

In 1987, Congress passed what Nevadans call the "Screw Nevada" bill. This bill, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, later amended in 1987, said that Yucca Mountain in the State of Nevada was to become the Nation's first national repository for high-level nuclear waste, the deadliest substance known to man.

Government agencies call it "The Yucca Mountain Project." This bill was the consequence of an earlier ill-conceived piece of legislation mandating congress to find a permanent repository to store waste generated by nuclear reactors. So it was mandatory that Congress choose the place. Unluckily, Nevada won.

But there was a nasty little surprise lurking within the bill that the nuclear energy industry and the administration hoped people would not notice. The unpleasant surprise? Transporting nuclear waste to Nevada would endanger millions of Americans. No one was supposed to think about the fact that in order to get the waste to Nevada, it would have to travel by train or truck through 43 other states, within one-half mile of 50 million Americans, including many of you now reading this. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act might be more aptly named the "screw America" bill.

We at Citizen Alert, as a statewide grassroots environmental justice organization, have been fighting this nuclear waste war since 1975. At that time, the government was researching two sites, one on the East coast and one in the West. Nevada was on the short list. In 1987 the list got shorter!

Since we began, we have been telling Nevadans this is not safe stuff, contrary to what the government has said. And, guess what? Storing it in a mountain with a troubling geological record will certainly not make it any safer. Yucca Mountain is not a safe repository. It is vulnerable to earthquakes and volcanic activity. It leaks. It moves. Native Americans long ago started calling it "Moving Hill." We have told Nevadans and everyone who will listen that the decisions concerning Yucca Mountain are not based on science, they are based on politics.

For everyone's sake, we're also doing all we can to address the nuclear waste transportation issues. The Department of Energy (DOE) is resisting our request that shipping casks be "tested to failure."

The casks are called by some "mobile Chernobyls" with good reason. The deadliest substance known to man would be traveling on our highways and railways in containers that have not been tested to the most rigorous engineering standards. No one knows how susceptible these containers are to fire. At what temperature will the walls fail and the deadly contents spew out? Since they haven't been tested to failure, no one knows what stresses the casks can withstand upon impact, say in a crash. What would happen if a cask plummeted into a deep gorge if an accident occurred along one of Nevada's many mountain passes? How vulnerable are the casks to terrorist attacks or an act of sabotage? These vital questions don't have answers.

After promising to make no judgments on storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain unless the science proved it safe, the Administration instead chose to ignore the science aspects, and is making political decisions that could well endanger the health and safety of millions of Americans.

With so much at risk, we fight the Yucca Mountain Project on many fronts, including in the courts. Recently we won an important court decision. The State of Nevada, Citizen Alert, and other environmental groups nationwide sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because we believe they violated the will of Congress.

Congress instructed EPA to use standards established by the National Academy of Sciences that meet radiation exposure limits of 300,000 years for storage of radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain. But with blatant disregard, EPA set a compliance period of 10,000 years. On July 9, 2004, a federal appeals court agreed with Congress. They ordered EPA to either revise the radiation standard following the Academy's recommendation, or ask Congress for legislative authority to deviate from the Academy's recommendations. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission cannot proceed with the licensing process until there is a new EPA standard. We believe that this could be the death knell for the Yucca Mountain Project unless DOE can convince Congress to exempt the project from EPA standards.