Critics are condemning as irresponsible and illegal the Bush administration’s recent proposal to increase the budget for the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump in western Nevada State despite unresolved safety issues and legal challenges.
After more than two decades of contesting the selection of their state as the nation’s primary repository for high-level nuclear waste, many Nevadans feel they now possess the legal and scientific grounds to undo the project.
In addition to multiple pending suits brought by the State of Nevada, the indigenous Western Shoshone National Council is challenging the U.S. Government over land rights to the area, a case that has garnered the council international support from the Organization of American States (OAS).
Washington hopes to store around 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste in metal containers beneath Yucca Mountain. Now, most of the nation’s nuclear waste is kept above ground at hundreds of nuclear energy, military and former weapons facilities throughout the country.
Bush’s 2005 budget, released earlier this month, increases spending on the Yucca Mountain storage facility by 50 percent to 880 million dollars, a move one Nevada State official called "highly optimistic," given the number of unanswered questions surrounding the project.
"The government is far from having the requisite amount of data required by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to recommend Yucca Mountain as the primary repository for the country’s nuclear waste," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects at the Office of the Governor of Nevada.
Irrespective of claims by Loux and others that the Yucca Mountain site has not been proven geologically sound to serve as a long-term repository, the US Department of Energy (DOE) recently formally recommended to Bush that the site be developed.
Citing "sound science" and "compelling national interests," Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said that more than 20 years and four billion dollars worth of scientific studies have demonstrated the site’s suitability, according to a Feb. 14 DOE statement.
"The Department of Energy is obviously trying to sink so much money into this hole in the ground that the project becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Wenonah Hauter, director of the Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program of the non-profit group Public Citizen, in a statement.
But the DOE claims to be standing on firm scientific ground. "I have considered whether sound science supports the determination that the Yucca Mountain site is scientifically and technically suitable for the development of a repository. I am convinced that it does," said Abraham in a letter to Bush.
Loux is unconvinced, and argues that science has proven that the site is not suitable. The State of Nevada brought multiple lawsuits against the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and awaits ruling on the cases, which Loux feels could derail the project.
"One of our main concerns is that the DOE discovered that the physical characteristics of the site contribute less than one percent of the needed isolation to contain the waste," he told IPS, adding that the law requires geology to be the primary factor in protecting the environment from nuclear waste.
To compensate, the DOE has used the largest aquifer in southern Nevada as a waste containment mechanism in its calculations, violating the Clean Water Act and a host of other regulations, according to Loux.
Also, the US Geological Survey admits there are 33 known earthquake faults in and around the Yucca Mountain site and volcanoes dot the region, including one just 16 km away.
Water seeps quickly through the desert rock strata and both Loux and Shoshone Chief Raymond Yowell worry that radioactive water will contaminate nearby farms where food and livestock are raised and some of it shipped around the country.
Not surprisingly, most Nevadans are adamantly opposed to hosting the nation’s high-level nuclear waste.
"For more than two decades the State of Nevada has protested its designation as the nation’s high-level nuclear waste dump," said Loux.
"This governor as well as the last five governors have been adamantly opposed to Yucca Mountain, and over 75 percent of the population is telling the state to do all they can to stop the dump," he added.
The Western Shoshone National Council is challenging the US Government on different grounds: that the federal government does not own the land where it proposes to build the nuclear waste dump.
That land, according to Yowell, is part of the Western Shoshone Territory that extends through six western states and was never legally ceded to the government.
"The US can’t show how they got it from us, so they don’t own it," Yowell said in a telephone interview.
The OAS agrees with Yowell. In January 2003 its Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) found Washington in violation of international law and infringing on the aboriginal land rights of the Western Shoshone.
Deborah Schaff, an attorney with the Indian Law Resource Center, said that as a member of the OAS, the United States is subject to the jurisdiction of the commission and is obligated to abide by its charter.
Yowell cites other national and international laws to bolster his case.
In addition to an U.S. 1832 Supreme Court decision (Worcester v. Georgia) that found a treaty between an Indian nation and the United States "involves no surrender" of the nation’s independence or its "national character," he cites a principle of international law that states that the long-held possession of territory by one nation excludes the claim of every other nation.
Yowell says the Shoshone people and their ancestors occupied the territory that is modern Nevada thousands of years before the existence of the United States, and refuse to accept monetary compensation for the sacred land.
He is incensed at the idea of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste being buried inside the Earth.
"Mother Earth is the most sacred thing in our religious beliefs," he said. "To store nuclear waste within her is not acceptable to us."
Successive administrations have sought to compensate the Shoshone for the use of the land and have attempted to establish US ownership through legal maneuvering. But the Shoshone remain steadfast in their claim to the territory.
The Nuclear Energy Institute’s website quotes Bush as saying Yucca Mountain "is important for our national security and our energy future." Yowell disagrees, saying that to achieve national energy security, Washington must direct all funding of the nuclear and oil industries toward the development of renewable energy.
But he is not waiting for the Bush administration to transform its unsustainable energy policy, and has his own plans for the Yucca Mountain territory, including installing a solar energy farm.
"We’ll be looking more into solar energy," said the chief. "We get quite a bit of sunshine on our land."
