Edition: U.S. / Global  Radioactive Waste Site: A Shift In
Strategy  Published: July 31, 2001  After spending 14 years and
$4.5 billion to figure out whether Yucca Mountain is dry and
stable enough to entomb highly radioactive waste for 10,000
years, the Department of Energy is shifting its focus from
geology to the protective powers of titanium and steel.  What
began as an exercise to find dry rock with predictable
characteristics in an ancient desert ridge has evolved into a
debate about whether the engineers can create materials that
will survive the natural environment at Yucca.  Nevada
officials, who oppose the waste site, argue that 95 percent of
the federal plan for safe storage now relies on tough
containers, not on the geology that attracted federal interest
in the first place. Since a repository with containers that good
could go anywhere, said Robert Loux, director of Nevada's
Nuclear Waste Project Office, ''then you could put it in Central
Park.''  While the alternative to Yucca, near here, is not