During a recent trip to this area, Mohave Valley Community College geophysics professor John Squibb told me a few other reasons the idea might 'stink.'

First, there's always the possibilty of a geological fault-line and/or volcanic activity developing in this area. They happen too -- in the darndest places.

And if an earthquake ever, say, hit this area, it would be Chernobyl with an exponent -- a big exponent.

The exponent would be on these figures: Chernobyl's 1986 nuclear power plant meltdown created fall-out that was greater than any single atomic bomb explosion, ever. According to the book The Chernobyl Disaster, the carcinogenic particles that fell over a good deal of Europe from the accident could shorten the lives of up to 100,000 people in the next half century.

Back on this continent, professor Squibb said, earthquake or not in the Yucca Mountain region, another major problem is the waste containment vessels won't outlast the nuclear reactions they contain.

One would have to ask on this one: What the heck was going on with this thought process?

I asked the professor if there was a safer place to dispose of the nuclear waste. He said the Mohoravcic Zone of Discontinuity. I asked him to spell that, twice. Then I asked him where that was, pretty sure it wasn't a suburb of L.A.

Professor Squibb said the Mohoravcic Zone was extremely deep in the earth. What's more, he said this wasn't his idea. He said it was told to him by Dr. Dixie Lee Ray, former Atomic Energy Secretary for the Nixon and Ford Administrations.

She said what was being considered at the time was to drill a hole in a desert region (area with little aquatic life) of the Pacific Ocean near North America. The hole would extend to the Mohoravcic Zone, with a bunch of reinforcing material to make it as safe as possible.

Then the nuclear waste would be injected into the hole to a point where the North American platelet (which is in slow, continual motion) would fold it over into the core of the earth.

Professor Squibb explained the core of the earth is radiocative and this nuclear waste would safely dissolve into the other atoms there.

After I got the professor to repeat this, even more times than I had him repeat how to spell Mohoravcic, I asked him why this hadn't been done.

He said, primarily, cost.

It would cost much more for this tremendously deep ocean hole than to simply bury the nuclear waste in the mountain.

An ethics question: If the current American citizenry's corner, and cost, cutting on this nuclear waste issue leads to the deaths of future Americans, have we committed a crime?    Then again, who's going to have to worry about prosecution, huh?

A spiritual question: When God said, "Thou shalt not kill.", did He just mean while we were alive?

Note: While talking about this topic with a reporter at the Kingman (Ariz.) Daily Miner newspaper recently, he told me he thought it would be safer just to bury the nuclear waste close to each nuclear power plant site. I said what would be even safer still, would be not to have nuclear power plant sites in the first place.