The ‘science’ of Yucca Mountain

Millions of years ago, Nevada and the rest of the Great Basin were covered by a shallow inland sea. The fossilized remains of creatures that lived in and along that sea can still be dug from exposed sand and gravel faces throughout this desert.

The sea eventually drained -- cataclysmically -- to the north, helping create the gorges of the Snake and Columbia rivers. If there had been man-made structures in the path of those waters (which there almost certainly were not), how would they have fared?

Between Europe and Asia, archaeologists report finding evidence of human settlements beneath the shallow waters of the Black Sea. In times recent enough to have been witnessed by mankind -- far less than a million years ago -- it seems likely there was dry land there, even though it sat beneath sea level. When the waters of the Mediterranean broke through and poured in, could there have been a flood so devastating that the tale comes down to us, altered over time, in the account of Noah and his ark? Could anything have stood in the path of such a deluge? How about written warnings posted by those long-ago occupants?

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.

A more sensible answer to the court's ruling might be shorter-term, recoverable storage, based on the assumption our descendants will perfect better, safer means of reprocessing the waste. But if Congress and the Energy Department were to embrace such a plan, would a billion-dollar tunnel inside Yucca Mountain still be needed, at all?

Of course, if Nevada politicians really oppose the Yucca Mountain Project, it's worth asking why they've never challenged federal ownership of and "exclusive" jurisdiction over the site, given that it's never been "purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be" -- given that Washington can show no bill of sale for the land, as required under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Doesn't that mean they're subject to state permitting requirements?

But the question at hand is whether the builders can guarantee that a hypothetical farmer living 11 miles from Yucca Mountain 990,000 years from now can be protected by today's engineering from receiving a dangerous dose of radiation from the stuff proposed for burial there. The builders confidently say they can issue such a guarantee, and that they can prove its validity "scientifically."

"Science" cannot tell us whether it will rain on this date next year, or whether Idaho will be buried under a mile of ice in 5,000 years, but the Energy Department contractors insist they can program their computer to "prove" that said farmer will still be safe in a million years.

You know what? We bet they can program their computers to "prove" just that.

The question is how they can still call it "science."