Panel rejects water theory at Yucca site

Monday, July 27, 1998 | 1:42 a.m.

Despite the conclusion of a presidential panel, the state of Nevada clings to its support of an alarming theory that groundwater at Yucca Mountain could someday overwhelm any nuclear waste stored there and threaten human life throughout the Southwest.

The panel came out with a report late Friday that says there is not yet enough evidence to support the theory. The panel, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, is known as the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. It reviewed 11 scientific reports supporting the theory before making its conclusion.

"The material reviewed by the board does not make a credible case for the assertion that there has been ongoing, intermittent hydrothermal activity at Yucca Mountain or that large earthquake-induced changes in the water table are likely at Yucca Mountain," the board said in summarizing its report.

The theory that "hydrothermal activity," which is hot, deep water that rises periodically from deep in the Earth, is a factor at Yucca Mountain was first posed 15 years ago by geologist Jerry Szymanski.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is being studied by the Department of Energy for use as the nation's burial site for high-level nuclear waste.

If deep water rises inside the repository's rock block, containers holding Yucca Mountain's capacity of high-level nuclear waste -- 77,000 tons -- could burst, contaminating the air and ground water, Szymanski says.

Szymanski, who headed the U.S. Department of Energy's geology team at Yucca Mountain from 1983 to 1992, now works for the state of Nevada as a researcher for Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa. He resigned from the DOE in 1992 after the federal agency would not take his findings seriously.

The geologist now maintains that the DOE is trying to cover up scientific facts at Yucca Mountain that could spell doom for future generations. He says crystals found inside the mountain prove that hydrothermal activity has existed at Yucca for centuries.

"There is no room to doubt those crystals came from deep below," Szymanski said Sunday night in commenting on the Review Board's conclusion. "There is no scientific, valid reason to reject that report."

The Review Board found the crystals intriguing, but said that scientists who are basing their theories on the sole discovery of the crystals are ignoring "non-supporting data."

"Important dissenting information ... is not mentioned or discussed" in the materials presented by Szymanski and other dissenting scientists, the Review Board said.

The Review Board supports a cooperative approach with Nevada that would examine the crystals more thoroughly to determine what date they may have been formed.

The nuclear waste must remain buried for 250,000 years, after which it would no longer pose an environmental threat. If the crystals are conclusively found to be younger than 100,000 years, the board says it would agree that hydrothermal activity could pose a threat to the proposed dump.

The DOE hopes to accept highly radioactive wastes from commercial power reactors and defense sites by 2010.

Nevada is not alone in continuing to take the "hydrothermal activity" theory seriously. Also suggesting that the theory has credence is The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research of Takoma Park, Md., headed by nuclear scientist and researcher Arjun Makhijani, whose works have been published worldwide and commissioned by such think tanks as Brookings Institute.

Also supporting the theory is Yuri Dublyansky, a geochemist at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who has studied crystals from within the mountain and written several reports on the potential for deep, hot water rising inside the mountain.

Dublyansky will spend the month of September continuing his studies of the crystals.