Scientist: Radiation could contaminate milk

Monday, Aug. 10, 1998 | 10:43 a.m.

If the nation's high-level nuclear waste is buried inside Yucca Mountain, Los Angeles children may someday drink milk contaminated with radiation escaping from the repository, according to a state-contracted geologist.

Nevada is fighting a proposed dump for high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, with studies done by geologist Steve Frishman. He is a contractor to the Nevada Nuclear Waste Projects Office.

Frishman told the state's Commission on Nuclear Projects last week that Yucca Mountain is not geographically capable of containing 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste, so the thrust of the Department of Energy project has shifted to releasing the escaping radioactivity slowly throughout the environment.

Both DOE and state scientists agree that ground water from Yucca Mountain will drift toward Amargosa Valley on the Nevada-California border, where Nevada's largest dairy with 4,500 cows produces 30,000 gallons of milk a day, which is shipped to Los Angeles.

Based on radiation in the ground water, the alfalfa the cows eat and the water they drink would become contaminated, thus contaminating the milk, Frishman said. "The DOE has long ago backed away from assuming Yucca Mountain would contain the wastes," he said.

But a DOE official denied any shift in the government's policy. "The policy has not changed," replied Allen Benson, DOE's Yucca Mountain Project spokesman. "The policy is still for geological disposal and containment (of nuclear waste)," he said.

The DOE is preparing a report for Congress late this year on its progress in studying Yucca Mountain.

The DOE has estimated that casks of stainless steel, known as C-22, will keep the wastes intact for 200,000 years. However, one container in every 11,000 could fail from the first day it's placed inside the mountain, government reports said. And the DOE has underestimated how fast water flows through Yucca Mountain from the surface, Frishman said. "They should follow the water," he said.

"Now we're down to a safety strategy of dilute, delay and disburse," Frishman said. Allowing for radiation leaks from underground containers that burst, the DOE is expecting ground water to carry the radiation away from the repository, he said.

"I sat on top of Yucca Mountain in a rainstorm one day and watched water disappear through fractures," Frishman said. "It didn't surprise me."

Frishman said the DOE also failed to run the worst-case scenario for water escaping from the repository more quickly than expected.

Nuclear Projects Commission Chairman Brian McKay issued an invitation to the DOE to present its approach for containing the wastes at Yucca Mountain during the next meeting.

The DOE's Benson said the federal agency will review Frishman's report and will respond.