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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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121189
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12118900.015
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1990-09-22
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ENVIRONMENT, Page 81No Home for Hot TrashA U.S. nuclear dump is delayed
Nuclear waste is nasty stuff. The inevitable by-product of all
atomic-power plants, it remains radioactive for up to 3 million
years and necessitates heavy shielding to protect any human or
animal life that may come near it. The U.S. Congress believed it
had conquered the problem of where to put such waste when in 1987
it ordered the Department of Energy to focus on building a national
dump site in Nevada. By 2003, the Government promised, spent fuel
from the country's 110 commercial nuclear reactors would be
trundled across states and safely buried deep within Yucca
Mountain, an isolated peak about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But that forecast, like an earlier one predicting a national dump
site by 1998, proved too rosy. Last week energy officials pushed
back the opening to at least 2010.
Deputy Energy Secretary Henson Moore claims that the revised
schedule is necessary to satisfy scientific and environmental
concerns. "This is in fact a realistic reappraisal rather than a
delay," he says. But to critics, it is yet another sign of
bureaucratic bungling. Two years and $500 million into the Yucca
project, the federal agency appears to have accomplished little.
John Tuck, Under Secretary of Energy, conceded last week that the
department did not have a "scientifically sound plan" for assessing
the site's suitability as a dump.
Nevada citizens, environmentalists and scientists are adamantly
opposed to the Yucca site. They contend that the area is
geologically insecure: Lathrop Wells volcano is twelve miles away,
and Nevada ranks just behind Alaska and California in frequency of
earthquakes. As a result, Nevada has refused to issue the
environmental permits needed for a study of the site. The DOE
announced last week that it has asked the Justice Department to
file suit against the state.
For the nuclear-power industry, which has been hoping for a
rebirth with a new generation of safer reactors, the DOE's latest
postponement appears to be a heavy blow. But the industry professes
to be unperturbed. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said it
will not delay licensing future nuclear plants as long as it looks
as if a waste repository will be in operation within the first
quarter of the next century. Given the Government's record so far,
even that target may prove to be a problematic one.