Dear NRC: Simple Facts About Yucca Mountain 
That Any Local Housewife Can Tell You

1. Any kid who grew up on local water has brown stained teeth. Just go to the high school and make ‘em laugh- you'll see. Fluoride is all through the water out here. (You all probably thought we just start ‘em chewing tobacco at an ungodly age). Scientists are now saying that after 20 years they just found fluoride in the Yucca Mountain water, and it might prematurely corrode the waste caskets. They are trying to find the "source" of the fluoride so they can make it go away. Our kids would like that. We wish the DOE good luck.
   
2. We replace our hot water heaters here every three years. This water is highly corrosive, and eats any metal right up. Shower stalls, water pipes, swamp coolers- all have to be surface-protected or plastic. We don’t think the titanium raincoats or these miracle-metal-22 caskets have a chance, but if they work, we all want new faucets out of that stuff.
   
3. Water is a liquid, and it flows downhill. Maybe not in Washington, but it does out here. Drawing a circle around Yucca Mountain and saying that water inside can be deadly poisonous and water outside must be clean seems pretty dumb, even for government scientists. We all live on the downhill side, and have no other water. And this water’s already run all through the Test Site before it even gets to Yucca Mountain. Go figure.
   
4. We may only get a few inches of rain a year, but we usually get them in about an hour. We keep telling the DOE that, but they just don't get it. Check these pictures out, from 1943, the 70`s and 80's, when we had the First, Second and Third Annual Hundred Year Flood,  2001 and 2004.
   
5. Nobody’s ready to deal with this stuff, even the "professionals". When they did a "practice nuclear waste truck accident" at the Nevada Test Site in September, it got screwed up so bad that the ambulance drove over the "victim" and the lady that organized it all was crying. Even the DOE got that message, and postponed sending waste to WIPP for one more year. What does this suggest to you about OUR future?
   
6. Accidents happen. No matter how careful you try to be, your kids get hurt, stuff breaks at the worst time, you drop things, you forget, get tired and mess up. Who out there has NEVER damaged a car? 74% of all problems at nuclear reactors are caused by human mistakes. What’s REALLY going to happen with 100,000 trucks of the deadliest stuff on earth? Get real.
   
7. Let the pie cool on the windowsill a while. Don’t burn yourself if you don’t have to. In a hundred years or two, used nuclear fuel will be a lot less dangerous to move around. And maybe the scientists will have worked out those other 293 problems at Yucca Mountain or found a better place.