Nevada scientists get funds for Yucca studies

Wednesday, July 1, 1998 | 11:32 a.m.

Independent university scientists have the funds for a new era of examining Yucca Mountain, moving studies of the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository away from politics.

They plan to study if earthquakes and volcanos pose a threat, if ground water can corrode buried containers, whether radiation can escape from the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and possible contaminants.

Outgoing Energy Secretary Federico Pena, on his last day on the job Tuesday, signed a $40 million, 5-year cooperative agreement with the University of Nevada System to continue work started by the California Institute of Technology of Pasadena and Harvard University's Geophysical Observatory this year.

Cal-Tech and Harvard scientists published a report in the journal Science during March showing that the mountain's crust was moving 10 times faster than previous DOE studies indicated. The initial $2.7 million study was funded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the agency charged with licensing a high-level nuclear repository.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said securing the DOE funds will allow independent, academic work at Yucca Mountain. "The Department of Energy has to do what is right for Nevada," Reid said Tuesday during a news conference at his Las Vegas office. As ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee Reid reviews all DOE funding.

The DOE stopped funding the state of Nevada's oversight program in 1995 after a congressional audit indicated monies might have been spent on lobbying against the dump.

The expanded scientific work is underway, and $8 million of the money will be spent each year, Reid said. "We are going to have the opportunity to base decisions on Yucca Mountain on science and not on politics," he said.

Academic institutions will conduct fair studies and report findings as they are discovered, he said.

"We can't have a decision on Yucca Mountain without answers to scientific questions," Reid said. "They couldn't possibly take the information they have now to the NRC (for a license). I think the NRC would laugh at them."

Cal-Tech's Brian Wernicke, the leading scientist studying Yucca Mountain's moving crust, said the university team was surprised when satellites showed that the earth moved during the seven years' they tracked it. Under the agreement, Wernicke will blanket the mountain with monitors to watch the ground by satellite.

The University of Nevada will administer contracts so the best scientists can study the mountain. Researchers at UNLV, the Community College of Southern Nevada and the Desert Research Institute will try to understand what happens when ground water is removed for irrigation and other purposes after Yucca Mountain studies are completed.