In the desert of Nevada, a hundred miles from Las Vegas, engineers have drilled a tunnel through the heart of Yucca Mountain. The hole is 25 feet wide and five miles long. It’s dark in there. The light bulbs have been removed. The ventilation has been turned off. There’s nothing inside but some rusting rails that were supposed to carry 70,000 tons of nuclear waste to a permanent grave.
Outside, the gates are locked. When three members of Congress visited in March, the federal government spent $15,000 just to reopen the place for a few hours.
Yucca Mountain is a case study in government dysfunction and bureaucratic inertia. The project dates back three decades. It has not solved the problem of nuclear waste, but has succeeded in keeping fully employed large numbers of litigators.
The mountain dump was a project that came to life slowly and tortuously, and is in the process of dying in a similar fashion. Proponents haven’t given up on it, and it could yet be resuscitated by the courts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is expected to issue a ruling any day now on a lawsuit, filed by the states of Washington and South Carolina, among other plaintiffs, that contends that the Obama administration lacked authority to kill the congressionally mandated program.