Earthquake sign that nuclear dump shouldn’t be in Nevada, official says

Angie Wagner

Monday, Aug. 2, 1999 | 8:54 a.m.

The earthquakes that rattled Nevada over the weekend are just another example of why a nuclear waste repository shouldn't be built at Yucca Mountain, the head of the state agency overseeing the project said Monday.

"In our minds it sort of speaks to the fact that DOE nor anyone else can really predict with confidence what's going to happen in the future," said Bob Loux, director of the state Nuclear Projects Office.

Sunday's two moderate earthquakes 130 miles northwest of Las Vegas were the strongest since 1992 when a magnitude-5.6 earthquake rattled Little Skull Mountain, 12 miles northeast of Yucca Mountain.

A magnitude 5.6 quake occurred near the Nevada-California border at 9:06 a.m. Sunday, followed 21 minutes later by a 5.2 magnitude temblor, the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., said.

The earthquakes occurred about 50 miles from Yucca Mountain, but Loux said it was another sign that the area is geologically active.

"It certainly doesn't seem like a good place to put in a nuclear waste repository," he said.

Yucca Mountain, a ridge of volcanic rock 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site the Department of Energy is studying to entomb the nation's high-level radioactive waste - 77,000 tons of primarily solid, spent fuel pellets from commercial power reactors that will be encased in steel-nickel containers.

Gov. Kenny Guinn has said that from 1976 to 1996, there were more than 620 recorded earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 2.5 within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain.

But a spokesman for the Yucca Mountain project said if a repository is built, it would be constructed to withstand an earthquake of much greater magnitude - a 6.5.

"There was no apparent impact of the result of the earthquake," Allen Benson said. "There was no effect at Yucca Mountain. We do know that the area in general is seismic active. We've taken that into account with our designs."