Nuclear Expert Tells AP Yucca Mt. Unsafe

[Khephra]

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.

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"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.

"If we get high-temperature liquids, the metal would corrode and that would eventually lead to leakage of nuclear waste," Craig said.

"Therefore, it is a bad design. And that is very, very bad news for the Department of Energy because they are committed to that design," he said.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-yucca-mountain-critic,0,3345149.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines