Miller: Yucca’s fate bound for court

Wednesday, Oct. 28, 1998 | 11:34 a.m.

Despite assurances by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson that Yucca Mountain's future as a nuclear waste dump rests solely on science, Gov. Bob Miller said he believes the issue will end up in court.

Nevada has been battling the nuclear industry and much of Congress to keep highly radioactive waste out of one of the fastest growing states in the nation.

"All the science, which disagrees with the Department of Energy, does not get considered," Miller said Tuesday, adding the state will have to take legal action to prevent the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, from becoming the nation's nuclear dumping ground.

"I hope I'm wrong," the governor added.

The DOE has downplayed recent scientific findings that bring into question the safety of using Yucca Mountain as a storage site for nuclear waste, which comes from commercial power plants and former weapons sites.

In June, Siberian scientist Yuri Dublyansky, working with support from the state and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, identified crystals he removed from Yucca Mountain's tunnel as less than 200,000 years old.

Dublyansky said the crystals are coming from hot, deep water that will flood the repository, 1,000 feet below the mountain's surface, and corrode the storage containers for the waste.

Former DOE geologist Jerry Szymanski studied Yucca Mountain 15 years ago. He warned that the rising deep water could cause the repository, which is laden with nuclear canisters, to explode.

Yet DOE scientists insist that the minerals are caused by rainwater seeping into the mountain's cracks and not from the rising hot water. Rainwater, they say, poses no threat to the environment because it will not reach the canisters buried in the repository.

Other recent studies have found that the surface of the mountain is moving.

Evidence of surface movement at Yucca Mountain over the past seven years was published earlier this year and such activity, the study said, could crush buried waste canisters.

Scientists from Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology will have confirmed whether the mountain is creeping within the next two years.

"I will be reviewing that issue today," Richardson, who toured the mountain Tuesday, said.

Science, not politics, will determine the answer, he said. Congress singled out Yucca Mountain as the only site in the nation for the DOE to study as a nuclear waste dump.

After a speech at the Global Energy Future conference, the secretary spent the day at the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain, talking to scientists. "We have not always been as open and as cooperative," he said of the DOE, while promising to listen more to governors and local officials.

Richardson became forceful when referring to a department report, known as a viability assessment, due to Congress by the end of the year.

"The viability assessment is a checkpoint. It is not a decision point," Richardson said. "I have not seen it. I have not approved it."

The report card to Congress offers a place to stop if Yucca Mountain should not be studied further, he said. The decision to continue toward licensing the mountain as a repository comes much later.

"That decision will be made in 2001," Richardson said, after much more scientific study is completed within Yucca's volcanic rock.

While President Clinton and Richardson both vowed to shield Nevada from becoming a temporary storage dump for the nation's commercial nuclear waste, Miller said the political whims of Congress could make the difference.

Richardson made clear the Clinton administration's stand on sending nuclear waste early to the Nevada Test Site. "We oppose temporary storage," he said at the Flamingo Hilton hotel-casino. "Current law prohibits nuclear waste storage in Nevada.

"I am enforcing the administration's position as far as temporary nuclear waste storage."

The secretary met with environmental groups Monday night. Their representatives expressed concerns over ground water contamination and Western Shoshone land rights under the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley.

Richardson said the DOE would disqualify the site if it posed adverse impacts to humans or the environment. He became the second energy secretary to visit Yucca Mountain, following his predecessor Federico Pena.

DOE documents show that people in nearby Amargosa Valley will receive radiation from drinking water, said Judy Treichel of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force. "Any imposed dose is an adverse impact," Treichel said.

"It seems clear to me that there are going to be impacts," said Rick Nielsen, executive director of Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental watchdog group, "even DOE admits that. It appears to hinge on what is acceptable and to whom."

The Western Shoshone nation claims Yucca Mountain under the Ruby Valley Treaty. Richardson said he has encountered Native American concerns at other DOE weapons sites. The secretary said he has appointed Navajo member Chris Sterns to advise him on Indian issues.