Can the Proposed Nuclear-Waste Dump in Nevada Leak?

According to a professor at the University of California-Davis, the nuclear-waste canisters in the proposed Yucca Mt. nuclear-waste dump in Nevada could leak (seen via Fark):

"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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Craig, who was appointed to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board by President Clinton in 1997, planned to speak Wednesday night at a forum sponsored by the Sierra Club. He said he's convinced the Energy Department will have to postpone the project and change to metal less liable to corrode.

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"When you serve as a member of one of those boards, you cannot talk about the political consequences of the science or the big picture. You are supposed to stick to the science and you should stick to the science," Craig said.

"You cannot have the kind of conversation we are having now if I was still on the board."

A leak could turn parts of Nevada into a desert!

On the other hand, we can compare the above to The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science:

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists.

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2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government. Claims that the oil companies are frustrating the invention of an automobile that runs on water, for instance, are a sure sign that the idea of such a car is baloney. In the case of cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann blamed their cold reception on physicists who were protecting their own research in hot fusion.

Hmmmm…