Six Questions for Daryl Thome, Member, Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Advisory Committee

By Joe Schoenmann

Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Daryl Thome is an expert on nuclear issues. He responded to the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant disaster three decades ago and worked for the Environmental Protection Agency at the Nevada Test Site for many years.

Thome, 65, is a member of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Advisory Committee, which keeps the Clark County Commission abreast of Yucca Mountain issues.

Do you think Yucca Mountain is the right place for nuclear waste?

If I didn’t think it was safe in Las Vegas, I certainly wouldn’t have raised my precious daughter here ... I can’t imagine a safer place to store it.

You must be odd man out on that committee.

(Chuckles) I’m a scientist and what I try and contribute to the committee is a logical sequence of thought that is based on science, not emotion.

So, again, you have no problem with nuclear waste so close to Las Vegas?

The material is spent nuclear fuel, it’s not waste. And it still has great value. That’s why the Nuclear Waste Policy Act says if it’s stored underground, it has to be accessible for 50 years. Right now, it’s cheaper to mine uranium ... than it is to reprocess spent fuel. But someday that may not be the case.

You think we have a treasure trove here?

That’s right. And someday it will be retrieved.

In this age of water shortages, how would you feel about a nuclear-powered desalination plant somewhere along the California coast?

If I heard that was going to happen, I would jump up in the air and click my heels. If they did that, so much water would be available to the Southwest.

You grew up in Las Vegas (he was 10 in 1954, four years before the Nevada Test Site stopped aboveground nuclear bomb tests). Did you ever see a nuclear bomb test?

I hate to admit this. When I was a kid, they were around dawn and I never got up to see one. But I was young and my parents never dragged me out of bed, and now I regret that.