Nevada has spoken: We don’t want a nuclear waste dump

Nevada has made it known in many ways that we do not want to be a nuclear state. Beginning in the 1950s, there were protests against testing atomic weapons at the Nevada Test Site. In the mid-’80s came a demonstration with more than 2,000 participants, including members of Congress, well-known actors and activists to protest the continuation of weapons testing by the U.S. after the Soviet Union had stopped its testing program. And simultaneously, Yucca Mountain, adjacent to the test site, was being eyed as the site to dispose of the nation’s highly radioactive waste.

Two areas on the test site (now known as the Nevada National Security Site, or NNSS) are used for the disposal of military low-level nuclear waste. Nevada had no say in the matter when those sites were established to receive specific types of low-level waste.

The Nevada Department of Environmental Protection (NDEP) has made it clear that no new kinds of waste can be brought in, and the Department of Energy (DOE) understands that. In a recent Government Accountability Office report, the DOE states that bringing any new type of waste to “NNSS faces several regulatory and political hurdles.” The department acknowledges it would need state authorization for increased amounts coming to the state and says that the secretary of energy has assured a senator from Nevada that DOE does not intend to dispose of any reclassified low-level waste in Nevada.

While Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects and the NDEP insist that strict rules be followed at those sites at the NNSS, those same officials, elected leaders and the people of Nevada have been ignored when it comes to opposition to Yucca Mountain, regardless of the fact that the opposition is well founded and justified.

Yucca Mountain cannot isolate waste for its dangerous lifetime. The on-again/off-again project has been the only site to be considered for over 30 years, no matter how emphatically we have said “no.”

For more than a decade, the Yucca Mountain project has been at a stalemate with at least two of the past three presidential administrations not wanting to proceed, and Congress has not provided funding.

Now we are seeing something new. The most recent DOE appropriation provided initial funding to try consent-based siting.

DOE has begun this effort by putting out a request for information. The department is asking groups and individuals to respond with comments and ideas about how they can successfully find a volunteer state or Native American territory for storage of highly radioactive waste. Federal energy officials pose a series of questions such as: What are barriers or impediments to successful siting of federal interim storage facilities using a consent-based process and how could they be addressed? What barriers might prevent meaningful participation in a consent-based siting process? And how could those barriers be mitigated or removed?

No mention is made of the elephant in the room — Yucca Mountain. Who would volunteer to negotiate a deal with DOE when it is clear to anyone paying attention that Nevada has been forced to fight for 30-plus years to stop a failed project?

A consent-based siting effort would seem to get us off the hook because there’s no way Nevada will change its mind.

The DOE cannot be seeking consent on the one hand while using force with the other. The department must show that it respects the intelligence and will of the people. Federal officials must declare Yucca Mountain to be unsuitable. Or, in the alternative, Congress must remove the long-stalled mandate to consider only Yucca Mountain for repository development. That would end the project.

With Yucca Mountain gone, DOE can then begin to establish the trust and confidence people would need to consider any sort of negotiation possibly leading to consent.