WASHINGTON state ought to be encouraged by a federal legal
panel’s decision rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to
unilaterally scuttle the billions of dollars and years put into the
long-term repository for the nation’s nuclear waste. After all, that is
where much of the nuclear defense waste stored at Hanford is bound.
Encouraged, yes, except for the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, rather than waiting for the U.S. Department of Energy to
appeal the decision, apparently seems raring to second-guess its own
Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. The commission quickly asserted
jurisdiction and asked for filings by next Friday.
Candidate Barack Obama promised to end the Yucca Mountain project,
which flouts the intent of Congress and leaves spent nuclear fuel and
defense waste stacking up around the country.
But the NRC’s panel noted the Obama administration did not offer any
scientific proof that Yucca was not a sound place for the waste but only
said it was “unworkable.”
Unworkable politically, that is. Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid, D-Nev., has long opposed the Yucca site in his home state.
Washington’s own Sen. Patty Murray, an unfailing champion of
the Yucca site, nailed Energy Secretary Steven Chu when he could not
produce any scientific reason for the decision.
Three of the five NRC members promised not to get in the way of
Obama’s Yucca decision at their confirmation hearings. The fourth, whom
Obama appointed as chair, was Reid’s former science adviser and, when he
joined the commission in 2005, voluntarily recused himself from Yucca
Mountain decisions but only for a year.
The deck certainly seems stacked here. The commissioners should do
their duty and uphold their board’s correct decision.
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