A mountain of a problem

537 words/13 November 2009/Augusta Chronicle/AGCR/All/A6/English/© 2009 Augusta Chronicle. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.

No one signed up for this.
While the federal government does its best to get into an area it doesn't belong - your health care - it is retreating from one of its most solemn and necessary national security obligations: storage of nuclear waste.
Now, after the investment of more than 20 years, some $13 billion - and study after study, expert after expert - the Obama administration has decided the federal government won't have a national nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
Scientists long ago studied several dozen possible sites for a nuclear waste repository and decided on Yucca Mountain - largely because it is geologically the safest site.
It is also a national security issue, in that Yucca would have provided one secure location for storage of nuclear waste, instead of dozens of sites throughout the states.
But perhaps to assuage Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada - who is facing a tough re-election battle next year - the Obama administration has announced it is abandoning Yucca.
There are a great number of problems with that - not the least of which is the fact that the country has no Plan B.
The feds are forming a new panel to study what's next. But the goal isn't likely to be finding a better site; we've been through that and through that, and there is no better site.
So, it appears the Obama administration's goal is not to have a national repository at all. That would mean nuclear waste will remain at sites neither best suited nor prepared for long-term storage.
Including, of course, the Cold War-era "bomb plant" just over the border from Augusta, the Savannah River Site.
This is a huge issue for our area. We've got to come to grips with the Obama administration's decision and how to react.
No one here ever signed up for SRS being a permanent repository for nuclear waste.
"The government's about-face on this critical issue leaves state and local leaders with more questions than answers," says David Jameson, vice chairman of the Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization, a nonprofit that exists to enhance SRS-related economic opportunities in the region. "The federal government has broken faith with communities across the nation. It has violated its promise to provide permanent storage of nuclear waste. As a result, we must come to terms with our own lingering - perhaps permanent - role as caretaker for a large part of the nation's highly radioactive defense waste."
A statement by the group also says, "If left unaddressed, (the administration's decision) will negatively affect the region's image, create new long-term safety concerns, slow the deployment of nuclear power plants and impact the region's ability to retain and attract business and industry and create new jobs ..."
The SRSCRO has compiled a white paper on the subject - at www.srscro.org - and is making speakers available to public and private groups in the area in an effort to increase awareness and begin consensus-building on the region's response.
We need to speak with one voice on this issue.
And it needs to be heard.