Nuclear Expert Tells AP Yucca Mt. Unsafe

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Nuclear Expert Tells AP Yucca Mt. Unsafe

RENO, Nev. - The nation's nuclear waste dump proposed for Nevada is poorly designed and could leak highly radioactive waste, a scientist who recently resigned from a federal panel of experts on Yucca Mountain told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Paul Craig, a physicist and engineering professor at the University of California-Davis, said he quit the panel last month so he could speak more freely about the waste dump's dangers.

Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is planned to begin receiving waste in 2010. Some 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at commercial and military sites in 39 states would be stored in metal canisters underground in tunnels.

"The science is very clear," Craig told AP in an interview before his first public speech about the Energy Department's design for the canisters.

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Nuclear Expert Tells AP Yucca Mt. Unsafe