The Yucca battle: What you should know

Las Vegas Sun

Workers ride a train down a tunnel inside Yucca Mountain. Photo by Steve Marcus.

The current stage of Nevada's long fight against nuclear waste began April 8, when Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. He declared that the dump recommended by President Bush "is not inevitable" and said he would press the fight to "expose the Energy Department's dirty little secrets about Yucca Mountain."

Becoming the first governor to veto a president, Guinn said the health, safety and welfare of Nevada's citizens would be at risk if the federal government were to ship 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste to the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"Yucca Mountain is not inevitable and Yucca Mountain is no bargaining chip and, so long as I am governor, it will never become one," Guinn said.

The veto went to Congress, where it was rejected by the House May 8 and now awaits action in the Senate.

Guinn's veto, written by Washington-area attorney Joe Egan for the state, calls Yucca Mountain "the latest in a long series of Energy Department boondoggles -- one based on bad science, bad law and bad public policy."

"We will not permit Yucca Mountain to happen, and it will not happen, because the project is manifestly not a worthy cause," the veto reads.

The veto cites concerns about national security and recommends the Energy Department look at alternatives to reduce the toxicity of the radioactive fuel.

The state cites three main points in his 10-page veto: inadequate science, legal challenges and national security.

"The bottom line is this: Even if Yucca Mountain proceeds, spent fuel will continue to be stored above ground at reactor sites across America for many decades, perhaps centuries, to come," the veto says.

"Energy Secretary (Spencer) Abraham's 'one safe site' is a figment of DOE's imagination. The Yucca Mountain site is neither 'safe' nor will it ever be 'one.'"

Guinn argues that the Energy Department is no longer referring to Yucca Mountain as a geologic site and is instead discussing engineered features of the site that would protect the environment from nuclear waste. The geological features of the site have been used as an argument for Yucca Mountain.

"The former director of the Yucca Mountain project, Dr. John Bartlett, recently testified the project has become nothing more than a series of fancy engineered waste packages that just happens to be located 1,000 feet under ground. The Nuclear Energy Institute recently bragged that the repository can be licensed 'without the mountain.'

"Nevada strongly opposes the designation of Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste disposal because the project is scientifically flawed, fails to conform to numerous laws, and the policy behind it is ever changing and nonsensical," Guinn said in the introduction to his veto.

The veto followed Bush's selection on Feb. 15 of Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste dump, as recommended by Abraham.

In his recommendation letter to Bush, Abraham noted two decades of Energy Department research and said he believes the desert site is a safe place to permanently bury the nation's most radioactive waste.

"I have considered whether sound science supports the determination that the Yucca Mountain site is scientifically and technically suitable for the development of a repository," Abraham said. "I am convinced that it does."

Abraham said Yucca Mountain would have the "elements necessary to protect the health and safety of the public, including those Americans living in the immediate vicinity, now and in the future."

The Energy secretary said he weighed "national compelling interests" in his decision, including national security, environmental concerns and long-term energy goals.

Abraham acted despite a Nov. 30 report by the General Accounting Office that said the Energy Department should indefinitely postpone construction of a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

That GAO report is now one of Nevada's key weapons against Yucca.

The GAO, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, concluded that making a site recommendation without resolving key issues would "not be prudent or practical. The report said 293 technical and scientific issues remain unanswered.

Workers ride a locomotive into Yucca Mountain. Photo by Ethan Miller.

The GAO said the Energy Department has no reliable estimate of when or at what cost the repository could be opened.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the report was the most damning report ever produced about Yucca Mountain.

"It shows from an independent source -- no one has ever questioned the GAO's veracity or independence -- that the science is not ready for anyone to make a determination," Reid said. "The DOE is way ahead of itself."

The government's Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and a National Academy of Sciences panel have also criticized the Energy Department's research and progress. The department has spent $8 billion and 15 years studying the Yucca Mountain site.

Congress singled out Yucca Mountain in 1987 as the best site to bury high-level nuclear waste from the nation's 103 commercial reactors and weapons facilities. Scientists and their contractors have been studying Yucca ever since.

Nevada's fight against the dump was again fortified in April when two pro-nuclear scientists wrote in Science magazine that the decision to put the dump in Nevada is being pushed by policy concerns, not science.

The scientific basis for Yucca is "only a marginal consideration," the scientists, who have both studied the site for several years, wrote.

Allison Macfarlane, who directs the Yucca Mountain Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Rodney Ewing, a geologist at the University of Michigan, wrote that a Yucca nuclear waste repository may be feasible after further study, but they said to make a decision "without first addressing the outstanding scientific issues will only continue to marginalize the role of science and detract from the credibility of the (Energy Department) effort."

They say the Energy Department's plan is "based on an unsound engineering strategy and poor use of present understanding of the properties of spent nuclear fuel."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., called the article "another arrow in Nevada's quiver."

"This is the kind of material, from independent voices, independent sources, that gives us an opportunity to go to people and ask for their support," he said.

The scientists, who say they are generally pro-nuclear, wrote that pressure from the nuclear industry has made politics the driving force of what should be a scientific decision.

"It would be nice for this to work properly and for science to play the main role," Macfarlane told the Las Vegas Sun. 'They really don't have enough data."

Ewing led the assessment of Yucca's viability five years ago, a process he said raised critical concerns about the methodology and "gaps in the science."

In the years since, Ewing said he hasn't seen much process.

"I am very disappointed that we arrive at this point," Ewing said. "There are no alternatives, and this is before the highest decision-makers in the country -- the Congress -- and there is spin on both sides of the issue."

But Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said that if Macfarlane and Ewing are confident in their scientific ideas, they should forward them to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for consideration.

The NRC would have the final say on licensing Yucca if the Senate overrides Guinn's veto.

As the likely July Senate vote on Guinn's veto nears, Nevada nuclear dump fighters and their allies around the nation will be focusing their fight with arguments on the danger of transporting nuclear waste across the country to Nevada. They'll also be pointing out that despite the massive and dangerous transportation job, nuclear waste will continue piling up at the nation's reactors -- leaving the nation no better off than without Yucca.

Some 40,000 tons of waste now exists. The nation's currently operating nuclear plants, even before relicensing, will eventually double that amount, estimates Arjun Makhijani, president of the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

That's slightly more than Yucca's maximum capacity of 77,000 tons.

Relicensing would increase that amount by another 40,000 tons, Makhijani said. Waste from the military and new nuclear plants would push up the total even farther.

The ultimate amount of waste requiring disposal within 20 to 30 years could exceed 120,000 tons -- 43,000 tons more than Yucca is designed to hold.

Besides, nuclear fuel rods can't simply be pulled from a reactor, placed on a truck and shipped out. A freshly removed fuel rod is extremely hot, and must be placed in a cooling pond for as long as seven years before removal.

At many plants, those cooling pools have doubled as temporary waste storage centers as the nuclear rods pile up. As these pools run out of room, more operators are turning to "dry cask storage" as a solution.

Eighteen nuclear sites have dry cask storage centers, which are essentially huge concrete bunkers. While they keep radioactive material safely locked away, "These are not designed to be there for 10,000 years," said Craig Nesbit, spokesman for Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the single largest operator of U.S. nuclear plants.

Another argument likely to be made is that the Yucca Mountain plan isn't aimed at solving an existing nuclear waste crisis, but instead is needed to clear the way for Bush's goal of building new nuclear power plants -- something unheard of since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.

"The big push to get Yucca Mountain open is really just about getting the waste away from the reactor sites so they can build more reactors in the future," said Bob Loux, Nevada Nuclear Waste Project director.

Nuclear operators reply that the federal government already promised it would remove the waste when Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982. So far they've paid $18 billion -- collected from ratepayers -- into a fund to deal with permanent waste disposal, but have gotten nothing.

"The federal government has an obligation to take possession of this material," said Nesbit. "Whether it's Yucca Mountain or another site is another issue."

Nuclear industry officials aren't willing to predict that their budding renaissance will be dead if Yucca Mountain dies. But they acknowledge it will become much more difficult.

"I don't know if there is a yes or no answer, but I'd say it certainly makes it less feasible," Nesbit said.

Yucca Mountain main page