Danielle Knight

WASHINGTON, Dec 19 2000 (IPS) — Anti-nuclear watchdogs and lawmakers here are calling for a federal investigation into an alleged attempt by the government to help the nuclear industry win approval for a controversial nuclear waste storage site in Nevada.

Environmentalists and lawmakers in Nevada have long argued against using Yucca Mountain in the deserts of southern Nevada as a permanent repository for 70,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors and weapons facilities across the country.

A new leaked document from the Department of Energy has given opponents against the site new ammunition.

While legislation to store the waste in Yucca Mountain has been stalled in Congress, the Department of Energy (DOE) has been studying the site and has been compiling an independent report.

But according to opponents of the project, a leaked memo attached to reviewers of the draft report proves that the agency is biased in favour of the nuclear industry that wants the site approved.

The memo, given to reporters, states that the document “provides information that potential supporters can use in expressing support for a site recommendation”.

“This outrageous memo demonstrates that the DOE’s ‘impartiality’ in assessing Yucca Mountain’s suitability for a high-level radioactive waste dump is a joke,” says Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.

Nevada senators Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, and representatives James Gibbons and Shelley Berkley, are joining advocacy groups in calling for the US General Accounting Office to investigate if the DOE and its contractors are secretly lobbying for the nuclear industry.

“It is imperative that science precedes politics and that the Department of Energy maintains the highest degree of integrity while conducting its evaluation process,” says Senator Reid.

On Dec. 8, Senator Reid asked the DOE’s Inspector General to Investigate the allegations of the DOE’s bias. On Dec. 12, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson requested an investigation and said the report on Yucca Mountain would not be released until the investigation is complete.

But activists are pushing for the General Accounting Office, as an outside investigator, to look into the matter since the Yucca Mountain proposal represents an enormous subsidy for the nuclear industry, according to Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an advocacy group.

Storing the waste at Yucca Mountain is expected to cost the federal government about 50 billion dollars.

“Instead the money should be used for further investigations of what we should do with the waste,” says Mariotte.

Environmentalists across the nation are opposed to moving the waste from commercial reactors, which are concentrated in the eastern United States, to Nevada.

Dubbed “mobile Chernobyl” by activists, the transportation scheme would involve highly radioactive shipments passing through 43 states to get to the far western state.

According to opponents to the Yucca Mountain site, the plan not only poses dangers to those along the transportation route, but several scientists say the waste could likely contaminate the groundwater sometime in the future since the waste will remain dangerously radioactive for about 240,000 years.

Critics also warn that the waste could be released during an earthquake since Nevada ranks third in the nation for current seismic activity.

Several indigenous rights organisations have also joined environmentalists in opposing the site because Yucca Mountain is considered sacred by the Western Shoshone Native American tribe.

While environmentalists differ on what should be done with the waste, Mariotte says that it should remain stored at the reactor sites until the highly radioactive waste decays or until a site proven to be permanently safe is found.

A letter sent Tuesday by about 160 environmental organisations to the DOE urged Secretary Richardson to disqualify the Yucca Mountain site based on its unsuitability.

Since 1954, when the Atomic Energy Act allowed commercial nuclear reactors to generate electricity and held the federal government responsible for the spent nuclear fuel, scientists have been looking for a place to bury the waste.

In 1982, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act required that two sites be selected. But five years later, Congress told the Energy Department to study only Yucca Mountain. While the legislation to approve the Yucca Mountain site has stalled in Congress, lawmakers remain under pressure by the nuclear industry to give the project the green light.

Senator Reid worries that the political battle to keep nuclear waste out of Yucca Mountain will become harder if President-elect George W. Bush appoints Senator Bennet Johnson of Louisiana to the post of Energy Secretary.

Johnson, who while in the Senate had introduced legislation to store waste in Yucca Mountain, is one of three people Bush is currently considering for the cabinet position.

“Appointment of Bennet Johnson would be tantamount to a declaration of war against the environmental movement,” says Mariotte.