Recently, construction of a giant toxic waste dump within Yucca Mountain, Nv., was complicated when it was discovered that the location of the future site lay directly over a tectonic fault line. The system of tunnels is the most expensive public works project in the country. With roughly $8 billion already spent on development, out of a projected $58-billion budget, the complex and massive system of tunnels is the most expensive government project in the country. And despite progress made since initial approval of the plans in 2002, it appears the entire program may have to be scrapped.

After geologists with the Federal Department of Energy analyzed rock samples from deep under the mountain, it was determined that the Bow Ridge fault line was, in actuality, several hundred meters east of where it was first thought to be. It is now feared that the fault line runs directly under a storage area for fresh nuclear waste, which has to be treated before it gets entombed deep within the complex.

Bob Loux, executive director at the Nevada agency for Nuclear Projects, was understandably upset with the result of the tests. "It certainly looks like the DoE has encountered a surprise out there, and it certainly speaks to the fact that they haven't done the technical work they should have done years ago," he is quoted as saying in the Las Vegas Journal Review. It should be noted that the state of Nevada has been against the project since the start, citing concerns over seismic activity in the area (there have been 621 significant seismic events in the area since 1976.)

Such a massive oversight is more than worrisome. Were the magical moving fault line to go undetected, the complex would have turned into a $58-billion time bomb (the site, by the way, is a little over an hour's drive from Las Vegas.) Tons of volatile nuclear waste would have been at the mercy of shifting tectonic plates, and perhaps we would have found out that the fault lay under Yucca Mountain only when it began to glow in the dark. If such a simple and essential test was neglected until five years and $8 billion into development, one is led to wonder what other corners were cut, or issues overlooked. We would like to think that the government would be competent and cautious when dealing matters of such large-scale public safety, but the fact of the matter is that a potentially disastrous situation was mitigated into merely one of wasted time and taxpayers' millions because a few rocks went untested. Perhaps the government could use a reminder that no matter how big the project is, what matters most are the little things.