Joint Yucca study eyed

Tuesday, July 28, 1998 | 10:40 a.m.

The Department of Energy is willing to pursue funds for a joint study with Nevada scientists to find out whether water rises inside Yucca Mountain, the proposed site of the nation's nuclear waste dump, a DOE spokesman said Monday.

State and DOE scientists dispute how water behaves inside the mountain.

State scientists pose an alarming theory. If they are right, deep water rises periodically inside the mountain -- which formed as a volcano 13 million years ago -- depositing quartz, opals and zircons.

But federal scientists believe the crystal deposits were left behind after water from the surface trickled through the volcanic rock.

Ground water rising from deep within the mountain could disqualify it as a repository site because the water could corrode casks containing nuclear waste and release radioactive contamination into the water and air.

DOE Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allen Benson said the money may be available from $40 million secured by former Energy Secretary Federico Pena for the next five years for independent, academic research on scientific puzzles remaining at the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Pena signed the funding order as one of his last acts as energy secretary. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced that the Harry Reid Research Center at UNLV would administer the funding, available at $8 million a year.

Benson reacted Monday to a report released last week from a presidential panel called the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. The review board concluded that there was not enough evidence to pursue a theory that deep, hot water would invade a repository inside Yucca Mountain.

The review board criticized former federal geologist Jerry Szymanski's theory that ground water rises periodically at Yucca Mountain, posing a threat to thousands of casks filled with highly radioactive waste.

The review panel examined 11 reports submitted by Szymanski in January 1997. Several of the reports were written by Yuri Dublyansky, a geochemist for the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Szymanski is working for the state under Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa.

The review board said Friday that its study found no evidence of ongoing invasion of ground water at Yucca Mountain or that large earthquakes prompted changes in the mountain's water table.

However, it did recommend that state and federal scientists work together to resolve the ground-water issue by dating the crystals discovered inside the mountain and in veins running throughout the area.

Del Papa said the state plans to pursue research on the deposits. "That's very, very interesting news," she said of the proposed funds for a joint project. "We're really convinced that somebody ought to look at what's happening out there."

While that additional research would help date when the crystals were deposited, the review board said the scientific work should be given a lower priority than other issues regarding the DOE's plans to build a repository by 2010.

The review board's findings mark the second time Szymanski's theory has been discounted by other scientists. In 1992 the National Academy of Sciences unanimously concluded that there was no evidence to suggest water rising inside Yucca Mountain.