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ReviewJournal.com – Opinion – EDITORIAL: The ‘science’ of Yucca Mountain

The ‘science’ of Yucca Mountain’ Guaranteeing’ the safety of nuclear waste
reviewjournal.com 5 Oct 08″…………………………..

To pretend that we can foresee how the landscape around us will appear in a million years — or even 100,000 years, which far exceeds the length of recorded human history — is hubris on a biblical scale. To pretend that we can build structures whose architectural integrity will withstand such changes is even more absurd. Ice ages with their glaciers can come in go in such a time period, as can volcanoes. Compared to such time frames, the age of the pyramids of Egypt is the blink of an eye.

Yet, because the courts have ruled that guaranteeing the safety of radioactive waste storage at Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years is not sufficient (because wastes buried there could remain deadly for a million years), the federal Environmental Protection Agency has now required that those building the dump certify its safety for a million years. And Department of Energy spokesman Allen Benson blithely replied, this week, “We believe we can meet the standard.”

The motivations for the waste dump at Yucca Mountain are not scientific, but economic and political. Congress and the nuclear industry believe they will have less trouble building new nuclear power plants if they can say they’ve “solved” the problem of where to put their spent (but still highly radioactive) fuel. And so “science” is bent and shaped to bolster these political and economic needs.

ReviewJournal.com – Opinion – EDITORIAL: The ‘science’ of Yucca Mountain

Tags: Nuclear, antinuclear, radiation, uranium

October 6, 2008 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes