Varner, Gary E. "Congress, Consistency and Environmental Law: Nuclear Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada" (with John Lemons and Donald Brown), Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): pp. 311-27.

In passing the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), Congress committed the nation to an ethical principle of living in "productive and enjoyable harmony" with the natural environment. Thus understood, NEPA can be given either (1) a technology-forcing interepretation or (2) an intelligent decision-making interpretation. We argue that in its subsequent decision to site a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Congress acted inconsistently with this principle under either interpretation. We conclude that for the foreseeable future, the only way to handle the nation's nuclear wastes consistent with the environmental goal enunciated in NEPA is to leave them in temporary surface storage facilities, prohibit the licensing of any new nuclear power plants, and take all appropriate steps to reduce the nuclear weapons industry.

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