IT ALL seemed straightforward two decades ago when the US government was designing a permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste. It picked Yucca Mountain, a fairly remote desert site in the state of Nevada. Sure, there was a lot of geology and hydrology and seismic work to do to be certain the waste would not leak.
But they had years to work on that. And eventually the scientists concluded that they could build something that would protect people who might decide to live or farm near the site 10,000 years from now.
However, the behaviour of rocks and water is apparently much easier to predict than the behaviour of the judiciary. A federal judge has decided that the Environmental Protection Agency did not use the right standard to judge how radioactive the site would become. The deal is, 10,000 years from now no one drinking a glass of water from the local aquifer should be exposed to more than the equivalent of three chest X-rays of radiation. The design for the repository claims that it is doable. But the judge ruled this month that the real problem is 100,000 years from now. Can the government guarantee that level of protection then?
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The ruling has thrown the scheme into some disarray. Will engineers have to redraw final plans? Will it eliminate Yucca Mountain altogether as a site 鈥� an outcome the governor of Nevada would not be at all unhappy about?
One other question comes to mind. Will there be farmers 100,000 years from now?
OFFICIALS at the US Department of Agriculture have always claimed that they are on top of the mad cow situation, and so they may be. But they鈥檝e lost any smugness they might once have had.
The problems really started last December, when a cow in Washington state was found to have been infected with BSE. USDA officials were happily able to say that the offending cow came from Canada, but the agency decided it better get serious about looking for evidence of BSE in American cattle. Beginning 1 June, the department began an expanded testing programme aimed at looking at 250,000 鈥渉igh risk鈥� animals.
USDA officials were criticised by farmers for issuing press releases whenever an animal came out positive on a screening test. The farmers preferred that the officials keep their yaps shut until they had something certain to say. So far, the two positive screening tests have not been confirmed by follow-up testing.
USDA officials were criticised by companies that made the screening tests. Prionics wanted to know why BioRad got the big contract and not them.
USDA officials were criticised by the agency鈥檚 inspector general for the way they set up the screening programme.
USDA officials were criticised by Congress for all of the above.
USDA officials are probably beginning to yearn for the days when all they had to worry about was foot and mouth disease.
