Thursday, April 25, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
Since nothing is so uncertain as human behavior, keeping nuclear waste out of Yucca Mountain may be the best solution of all, Yale University sociologist Kai Erikson said.
Erikson has studied the issue for years as a member and current chairman of Nevada's Technical Review Committee. The state is responsible for independent oversight of Yucca Mountain, the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas that is under study for a nuclear waste dump.
No one in the U.S. Department of Energy or anywhere else has ever pondered human intrusion into a contaminated burial ground that will remain dangerous beyond 10,000 years, Erikson said Wednesday night during a Nevada Humanities Committee lecture in Las Vegas on "Nevada in the Nuclear Age."
"The nuclear age came in on a crest of so strong a wave, no one could stop it," he said of developing the atomic bomb and then nuclear power. The waste is an eternal afterthought.
A question of confidence
How much confidence can we have that humans won't dig up the waste, steal it, and contaminate the air and water?
"How on Earth can anyone use present logic and knowledge for a period twice as long as recorded history?" he asked. "It's preposterous to know what they will do in a century or a millenium hence."
While trying to answer these questions is "like looking into a universe of darkness with only a flashlight," it is important to ask such questions before the United States makes a mistake and tries to bury more than 70,000 tons of radioactive commercial and defense wastes in one place, Erikson said.
Places change. Yucca Mountain lies where the northern plains were covered by a mile of ice just 10,000 years ago.
Monuments don't last
Monuments, suggested by some scientists as a way to universally warn people away from the dump, have poor survival records. Sumerian tablets, hieroglyphic scripts and the Dead Sea Scrolls have failed to translate to modern times.
Even warnings posted at the desert site would be useless since languages have lives far shorter than nuclear waste. "By definition, we have no record of what markers failed," he said.
"The ways of rocks are uncertain enough to give us pause," he said, "but the ways of human beings are as wisps of air."
When challenged about what to do with existing nuclear wastes, Erikson said, "I'd rather keep it near where I live in Connecticut, rather than ship it all the way across country to your back yard."
Erikson has spent his life studying disasters, natural and man-made, and how they affect those who survive them. They include floods, fires and the Three Mile Island reactor accident in Pennsylvania. His book, "A New Species of Trouble," explores nuclear issues, including Yucca Mountain.
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