YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Critical juncture for project

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act signed into law by President Reagan on Jan. 7, 1983, established a national policy for storing nuclear waste in a repository, an idea first proposed by the National Academy of Sciences in 1957.

The act initially suggested placing the nuclear waste in a repository no later than Jan. 31, 1998 and talked about having two repositories. Utility companies filed suit after the U.S. Department of Energy failed to meet that deadline.

The DOE studied numerous locations for a repository site, mostly salt domes in southeastern Mississippi, the Texas Panhandle, Southern Utah and Eastern Washington as well as Yucca Mountain. The amended Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain as the only site to be studied with only one repository built that would house no more than 70,000 metric tons.

Now the project has approached a critical junction. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was to make the recommendation on whether Yucca Mountain is a suitable location for a repository in 2001, now the DOE says the recommendation is due this winter. Secretary Abraham will use the final environmental impact statement, also due to be released soon, in making his recommendation.

"The $7.1 billion process to design and evaluate two or more geologic repositories for permanent disposal of the nation's highly radioactive commercial and defense wastes, set in motion by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, is now approaching its denouement," Jim Williams, a contractor for the Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Office, said in an April 2000 study on the project.

All four members of Nevada's congressional delegation sent a letter to the White House Dec. 4 asking President Bush to delay the site recommendation. They refer to a report from the General Accounting Office that notes the DOE isn't ready to make a site recommendation because it lacks the technical information needed and is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening a repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010. Senators also pointed out a report from the Department of Energy's inspector general, which referred to a conflict of interest by a law firm representing the DOE and the Nuclear Energy Institute.

"The systematic mismanagement, conflicts of interest and failed scientific processes necessitate an immediate postponement of the site recommendation of Yucca Mountain," U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons said in a press release.

"We hope this letter sends a strong message to the administration," U.S. Sen. John Ensign said. "If sound science is the standard, then Energy Secretary Abraham must delay his recommendation for site suitability at Yucca Mountain."

"The GAO report makes it crystal clear that Yucca Mountain is fast becoming the biggest and costliest boondoggle in the history of the country. Between the GAO report and the recent revelations about the Winston and Strawn law firm, it's hard to see how any administration would allow this kind of corrupt process to continue," U.S. Rep. Shelly Berkley said.

The secretary of energy is required to consider public comments as well as scientific studies in making the recommendation whether Yucca Mountain is suitable. April Gil, a geologist in the DOE office of licensing and regulatory compliance, sought to assure the public their comments will be heard, noting DOE staff are working 10-hour days sorting though them.

"We've got about 15,000 comments so far," Gil said. "What we've done is categorized the comments into groups."

"This week senior DOE management is going through every single comment and every single response," she said. The secretary will review a summary comment document, compiled by DOE staff, since obviously he can't review each one, raising the question of how the secretary will know what people are commenting.

"We didn't want to lose the flavor of each comment," Gil said. "One of the things the secretary wanted to know is: has anything new come up?"

Assuming the secretary recommends Yucca Mountain as a repository site, Secretary Abraham will have to notify Gov. Kenny Guinn and the state of Nevada 30 days before submitting his recommendation to the president. If the president approves the energy secretary's recommendation, it will be submitted to Congress, setting in motion a 60-day period during which Nevada may submit a notice of disapproval. If the state disapproves of the site, as expected, the Yucca Mountain designation will be disapproved unless Congress, during the following 90 days, passes a joint resolution approving the repository site.

If the site designation becomes effective, the energy secretary will submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for authorization to build a repository. The NRC will have three years to issue its final decision on the license, but can ask for a fourth year.

Pahrump residents who toured Yucca Mountain last month, accessed by a road from Lathrop Wells without any signs referring to Yucca Mountain, were subject to heightened security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Four Nevada Test Site security guards, clad in army fatigues with M-16s, thoroughly searched any vehicles approaching the gate. En route to the mountain on the bus, they saw remnants of other projects on that part of the Nevada Test Site, an experiment to build a jet fueled by a nuclear reactor and a joint Japanese-American project studying the effect on farm animals from an unshielded nuclear reactor.

A tunnel-boring machine 25 feet in diameter, with 48 cutter heads equipped with conveyer belts to transport the dirt, built at a cost of $13 million to bore the hole through the mountain, still sits at the south portal of Yucca Mountain. It's for sale.

The tunnel was built clear through the mountain, for what the DOE calls the exploratory study facility. Visitors are taken by rail car to an alcove dug perpendicular to the main tunnel, 1,000 feet below the surface and 1,000 feet above the water table. The alcove contains thermal testing equipment, the heaters will be turned off next month after four years of testing. The cannisters were placed in the mountain and heated up to 390 degrees, to simulate the hot radioactive waste, expected to heat the surrounding earth to 290 degrees, Bechtel/SAIC Chief Science Officer Mike Voegele said.

The cannisters of nuclear waste would be set in emplacement drifts a foot to a yard apart, Voegele said. "If you space them far apart you can maintain temperature below boiling," he said.

A counter in the alcove noted the cost of the thermal testing at 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour. As of early November it read $380,740.78, using 585,754.25 kilowatt hours. Voegele said the heat will cause water in the mountain to turn into steam, move out from the heated zone and condense. Evidence suggests the water then flows through drifts in the mountain and doesn't coalesce in pools.

Mark Peters, a testing engineer for Yucca Mountain contractor Bechtel/SAIC, explained Yucca Mountain is made of Topopah Spring volcanic tuft, in an arid climate with a thick, unsaturated zone. That's an issue by opponents of Yucca Mountain, who fear the cannisters will decay, allowing the radioactive material to seep into the water table. Yucca Mountain is 25,000 pounds per square inch, hard rock, like granite, with very low permeability for water to flow through, he said.

Peters stopped the rail car to point out a crack in the wall to visiting news media. "Some fractures are cooling joints, others are from tectonic activity," he said.

Seismographic equipment in the alcove inserted in cracks in the mountain was measuring earthquake activity, while lasers are used to line up a series of points on the main tunnel to look for any movement.

"One of the keys with the unsaturated setting, the (emplacement) drifts provide a barrier," Peters said. "When we mined this tunnel we didn't see any areas that were dripping water. That's not to say there's not water in the rock."

The emplacement drifts that would house the actual waste would be built on the other side of the tunnel from the testing alcove where visitors are taken. Voegele said those drifts haven't been built yet; contractors are waiting to get the authorization to proceed, and that is not expected until 2007 under the best scenario. The drifts wouldn't all be built at once. Instead the drifts will be built piecemeal as the waste arrives.

"There would be a significant amount of building after construction authorization, which can't begin until three or four years," Voegele said. "You probably have three, four, five years of construction going before the waste would start coming."

That assumes the project meets the schedule of planting waste by 2010, which doesn't take into account an expected legal challenge by the state of Nevada, he said.

Visitors last month, had a chance to see one of the actual casks that will be used to ship the nuclear waste, which consists of fuel rods. The casks have a 5.75-inch thick lead gamma shield, 3/4-inch thick stainless steel mini-shell, five-inch thick neutron shield and 1.2-inch thick stainless steel outer shell.

There was a question in published reports whether the casks would've survived the intense heat in the fire in the Baltimore tunnel this past summer. "The NRC is studying that," DOE consultant Bob Burgoyne said. He the cannisters were tested in a fully engulfing fire at 1,475 degrees.

If the site is recommended for storing waste and the license issued, testing won't end, scientists say. "We'll be monitoring the flow of water through the mountain. We'll be monitoring seismicity all the time," said Steve Broccum, DOE assistant manager of licensing and regulatory compliance.

The Pahrump Nuclear Waste and Environmental Advisory Board has asked the DOE to provide more money for studying recycling of nuclear waste, through methods like transmutation. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, received $4.5 million for the coming year to study advanced transmutation research.

"Right now, we don't have that technology. It's very promising," Voegele said of transmutation. "There's no economic incentive to reprocess uranium because it's cheaper to buy it on the open market."

"Most engineers will tell you it's a shame to walk away from that resource and bury it," he said.

But reprocessing would produce a plutonium by-product, in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Gil said. "Seventy-five percent of France's electricity comes from nuclear power. They do have a reprocessing facility but they're also looking at a geologic repository," she said.

Voegele said the contracts allow utility companies to ship whatever nuclear fuel they wish, speculating companies will ship their hottest waste first. That may lead to developing a thermal management strategy, mixing the hottest loads with cooler material before planting it in the mountain, he said.

Mike Chormack, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist, stood on top of Yucca Mountain to point out to visitors the north-south ridges, the result of faulting after volcanic activity. Chormack pointed out the nearby Lathrop Wells cinder cone, a relatively young volcanic feature that erupted 75,000 years ago.

"The rock we're standing on here is approximately 1.2 million years old," Chormack said. "The major faulting that formed Yucca Mountain took place 12 million years ago to 11 million years ago."

Scientists drilled bore holes and took chips of rock to produce a geologic map of Yucca Mountain, Chormack said. "Some of the bore holes we drilled as deep as 6,000 feet. We remained in volcanic rock down to 6,000 feet."

"We finally found out where the water is below Yucca Mountain," he said. "You'd have to go down about 2,300 feet to hit the water table."

Chormack said the water table is flat and doesn't flow rapidly. "The water beneath our feet here at Yucca Mountain is 10,000 years old and possibly as old as 20,000 years old," he said. "The nearest production well is about 15 miles to the south."

Chormack was asked about the Little Skull Mountain earthquake in June 1992, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter only 15 miles to the southeast. Chromack said the exploratory study facility wasn't open at the time to judge if there was any damage in the tunnel.

Voegele said scientists concern about earthquakes is they could cause new fractures in the rock that could result in creating new water pathways.

The waste-hauling building on site could have incoming shipments of nuclear waste sitting out of their containers before they are placed in the mountain, Voegele said. "We're pretty confident that building will be built to withstand any earthquake," he said.

"We were cautious and careful when we built the exploratory studies facility," Gil said. "When we did that underground laboratory, we were very careful any excavations we did would not damage the ability of the facility to isolate waste."

While some Pahrump residents, like Ed Fox and Ray Langford, said they became supporters of Yucca Mountain after taking the tour, other residents didn't get the answers they wanted.

"I'm for the permanent storage to be here. I worked out here 15 years," said former Nevada Test Site worker Jean Hollis. "There'd be no better place to put it."

"I enjoyed the tour, but one of the problems we had in talking to the experts, our questions have not totally been answered," Laurel Duffy said.

"They don't even know at what temperature they'll be storing these casks and they don't know what ventilation they'll be using," Janet Erett said. "I don't think they have enough data to base a scientific decision on."

Nevada's congressional delegation, echoing the opposition of many Nevadans, wishes the entire project would be scrapped. A decision not to recommend the site would mean the termination of the nuclear waste repository project within six months. That wouldn't be unprecedented. in October 1993, Congress killed funding for a superconducting super collider, a 54-mile ring that would've run beneath Waxahachie, Texas, after spending $2 billion on the estimated $11 billion project.


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