Nevadans rip DOE report

Friday, Aug. 6, 1999 | 11:08 a.m.

The Department of Energy encourages comments on the draft Yucca Mountain Repository Environmental Impact Statement. Comments may be submitted at a public hearing or:

By mail: Wendy R. Dixon, EIS Project Manager Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management U.S. Department of Energy P.O. Box 30307, Mail Stop 010 North Las Vegas, Nevada 89036-0307

By fax: 1-800-967-0739

By the Internet: www.ymp.gov

The Department of Energy released a 1,400-page report today that is filled with uncertainty on how building, loading and monitoring a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain will affect the environment.

Nevada political leaders gave the draft environmental impact statement poor marks for ignoring transportation routes and other community concerns.

Unlike typical impact statements, the DOE's Yucca Mountain version ignores basic requirements. It does not address the need for a repository, alternative sites to Yucca Mountain or other ways to manage the 70,000 tons of highly radioactive commercial and defense wastes scattered across the nation. Each ton would fill a standard refrigerator.

The DOE wants to hear what the public thinks about the document, DOE spokesman Allen Benson said. Hearings will be scheduled at 16 sites across the country over the next six months. People can read the statement in two weighty volumes or on a CD-rom or on the DOE's website, www.ymp.gov. A final statement will be issued next year.

The DOE offered two choices in the report: Either build a repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain or leave the highly radioactive waste at 72 sites and five DOE facilities, most of them in Eastern and Midwestern states.

The DOE prefers to go ahead with the dump.

After an hour and a half briefing Thursday by the DOE's Lake Barrett in Washington, D.C., Nevada's congressional leaders expressed disappointment at what was not answered in the statement.

"It's the size of a New York City telephone book," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said of the draft EIS. "It's Yucca Mountain or nothing, the doomsday scenario or nothing. This document did not begin to answer my questions."

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said the report doesn't inform cities and towns across the country about the route the waste will take on its way to a proposed Yucca Mountain repository.

"For example, they know and we know the major rail and road corridors go through the major cities," Bryan said. "And yet they refuse to identify the routes for this high-level nuclear waste. And the reason is obvious. They don't want these communities to know."

Most of the DOE briefing, initiated by Bryan, focused on a deadline of 2010 for opening a repository, if the mountain is declared scientifically sound. The DOE estimates the costs from $28.5 billion to build the dump to more than $400 billion when it closes the 35 miles of burial shafts in 100 years.

"I think it's safe to say they felled the equivalent of a national forest (to print the report), but I'm not sure how significant it is to the average person who wants to know what the project is," Bryan said of the EIS.

Senate minority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he had not read the report, but a staff scientist briefed him. "I believe that this environmental impact statement is at best incomplete and at worst it's misleading," he said.

Transportation routes are not designated other than interstates nationwide, Reid noted. "It's possible one of those loads is going to go whizzing by their house or where they work," he said of an estimated 53 million people in 43 states where radioactive truckloads could travel.

"This draft EIS is terrible, just lousy," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who has a degree in geology. "This report is embarrassing by any scientific measure or standard."

The statement says that water is the primary path for radiation to escape and reach people and the environment. But the DOE notes that the site is in a dry desert with low population. Yucca Mountain is located in Nye County in a complex setting formed by volcanic activity about 12 miles away from the site around 12 million years ago.

Heat that will raise the surface temperature of the mountain by more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit, transportation to the repository and all other issues need more study, the statement says. The DOE admitted there is "a substantial amount of uncertainty" about the project.

In addition to radiation exposure to workers from nuclear containers at Yucca Mountain, radon gas occurring naturally in the rock could further expose both workers and the public, the statement says. At worst, four workers will die from cancer caused by radiation exposure.

The American Cancer Society reports that Nevada cancer death rate per year from all radiation sources is 185 deaths per 100,000 people.

After the repository opens and while radioactive waste is buried, 22 to 50 extra deaths from cancer and other causes are expected over 100 years.

The DOE would build the repository to withstand earthquakes, such as the 5.6 magnitude temblor that occurred on June 29, 1992, at nearby Little Skull Mountain, volcanos and floods. In 10,000 years after a repository closes, there is a 1 in 7,000 chance of volcanic activity.