THE FOREVER WASTE

LATE NEXT MONTH, the Department of Energy intends to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a permit application to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The application will be long, complex, and incomplete. Missing will be a radiation standard needed to protect humans from exposure during the millennia that the high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel will remain dangerous after being left in the deep geologic repository. The missing radiation regulation had been developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, but it was dismissed by a U.S. Court of Appeals’ decision in 2004. Time was the problem. As the appellate court wrote in the first words of its decision, “Having the capacity to outlast human civilization as we know it and the potential to devastate public health and the environment, nuclear waste has vexed scientists, Congress, and regulatory agencies for the last half century.” The court’s statement throws a spotlight on the ...