Our View: Far-fetched nuclear waste idea roiling eastern Kern requires watching
Rudy Salazar’s dream is giving his neighbors nightmares. They have good reason to fear, despite the assurances of Kern County officials.
Last year, Orange County truck mechanic Salazar bought 58 acres of land near Randsburg in eastern Kern with plans to mine for gold. But then he got the bright idea to turn his property into a burial ground for radioactive waste.
So far, his idea is just talk. He has not applied for any permits, Lorelei Oviatt, director of Kern’s Planning and Natural Resources Department, reports. And if he does, he faces an uphill battle to obtain local, state and federal approval.
As he shops his idea around, he admits local folks “want to tar and feather me.”
Area residents “are terrified that this is actually true. And this is not true,” Oviatt told The Californian. “This is not a real thing.”
She added that Kern County is “not interested in being the trash heap for the coastal nuclear waste.”
Fair enough. But there’s a push now in Congress to build more nuclear power plants to generate “clean energy,” while the nation hasn’t figured out what to do with the radioactive waste created by existing plants.
More than 85,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel has piled up at more than 100 locations across the country. Just the shuttering alone of the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Orange County has resulted in more than 3.5 million pounds of radioactive nuclear waste being “temporarily” stored on-site, awaiting a permanent home.
It’s the federal government’s responsibility to figure out what to do with the waste. So far, it has failed.
Two decades ago, Congress passed and then-President George W. Bush signed a law calling for the creation of a massive radioactive storage compound at Yucca Mountain, north of Las Vegas.
After all, Yucca Flat was the site of 739 nuclear tests in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Nearly 4 of every 5 tests carried out at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) took place at Yucca Flat, which some call “the most irradiated nuclear-blast spot on the face of the Earth.”
So, what’s wrong with adding more radioactive waste to that mix?
Ask people in Nevada and they say, “A lot!” Concerns range from groundwater contamination to accidental radioactive releases.
Nevada Democratic Rep. Dina Titus put it simply: “The bottom line is this: Nevada does not produce nuclear waste, we have not consented to storing it in our backyard, and we should not have it forced upon us.”
Since Congress and the Bush administration in 2002 established a permanent depository for radioactive waste at Yucca, bipartisan Nevada opposition has blocked allocating federal funds to build it.
Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris, who chairs the Energy and Commerce committee, blames politics for dismantling the Yucca project.
“Opposition from states, like Nevada in particular, to this program has inhibited congressional appropriations and driven the executive branch to dismantle what had been a technically successful program.”
Three presidents — Obama, Trump and now Biden — have yielded to the opposition.
But a “new plan” to build several “temporary” depositories throughout the country to take the waste, while a permanent one can be built, now is gaining congressional support.
And that’s where Salazar’s Randsburg dream comes in. While it may be far-fetched, the inability to find a permanent solution creates pressure to build “temporary” ones that could easily morph into “permanent” ones.
Randsburg and Kern County residents, who have been on the receiving end of far too many waste-dumping schemes, would be wise to keep their eyes on this nuclear waste ball.
