Senators call for plutonium probe

Friday, Sept. 12, 1997 | 3:58 a.m.

Nevada's U.S. senators asked Friday for an in-depth investigation of plutonium moving through groundwater at the Nevada Test Site and its implications for a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, both D-Nev., asked Energy Secretary Federico Pena and the General Accounting Office to evaluate a scientific report released this week on the surprising rapid movement of plutonium and other radioactive materials in Nevada Test Site groundwater.

Two federal laboratories, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos, discovered plutonium almost a mile from where an underground nuclear weapon exploded less than 30 years ago.

"I believe this scientific information is a nail, the last nail, into the coffin at Yucca Mountain," Bryan said during a news conference at the Addeliar D. Guy Ambulatory Care Center in Las Vegas.

The Benham experiment on Dec. 19, 1968, packed a nuclear punch of 1.15 million tons of TNT as the warhead designed for the Spartan missile exploded beneath Pahute Mesa at the Test Site.

How the groundwater beneath Pahute Mesa carried minute particles with plutonium and other radioactive materials clinging to them is under investigation.

The senators fear government scientists have not done enough work at Yucca Mountain to ensure the health and safety of people and the environment if a nuclear dump for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste is built there. They fear the radiation from the underground repository escaping through cracks and fissures the way the plutonium appears to have moved in groundwater.

In Nevada's 15-year battle to keep the nation's nuclear waste out of Yucca Mountain, science has come slowly to the side of the small Western state, Reid said.

"Water is gold in the desert," Reid said. "It is more precious than gold in the desert."

The best course for nuclear utilities would be to keep the irradiated fuel rods on the nuclear power plant sites in dry casks, Reid said.

"They've already spent $7 billion at this facility (Yucca Mountain)," he said, referring to studies to determine the site's suitability.

The senators also want to know what disqualifies Yucca Mountain as a dump site.

"The rules change continually in the middle of the game," Reid said.

Yucca Mountain is riddled with earthquake faults, nearby volcanic activity and possible groundwater intrusion, Bryan said. "Nobody would have chosen this site if it had been scientific, not political," he said.

For the rest of this year, Bryan and Reid plan to fight nuclear utility plans for temporary storage of nuclear waste at the Test Site. Bills to store the waste aboveground at the Test Site have surfaced in recent years because of the scientific obstacles presented by permanent storage.

The House Commerce Committee could consider later this month a bill similar to one already heard in the Senate to ship nuclear wastes to the Test Site, starting about 2003.

President Clinton has vowed to veto any legislation to temporarily store nuclear waste in Nevada.