Review panel blasts Yucca studies

Thursday, March 18, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.

Scientific experts are casting doubt on the Department of Energy's ability to decide by 2001 whether Yucca Mountain can store high-level nuclear waste safely.

A report by a six-member review panel criticizes the DOE's 15 years of scientific work at Yucca Mountain so far, saying the federal agency does not have enough evidence to prove it is a safe place to keep highly radioactive waste.

The panel's report focuses on the lack of information from experiments in the area's soil and ground water to prove a repository will work.

The experts who compiled the report told the DOE in Las Vegas on Wednesday that the agency faces major hurdles in finishing experiments on the movement of ground water and possible radiation leakage from a proposed repository in the mountain.

The panel last month finished what it termed the "highly critical" report that sent shock waves through the DOE ranks.

The site is so complex and the time necessary to keep the radioactive waste away from people and the environment is so long -- more than 10,000 years -- that the DOE will have to scramble to gather enough information to make a decision on the repository in the next two years, the report concluded.

What the radioactive material will do once it leaks out of buried containers is unclear, the reviewers said.

"There is much work to be done," said Chris Whipple, vice president of ICF Kaiser Engineers, who chaired the panel of experts.

University of Michigan nuclear engineer Rodney Ewing, a panel member, said Yucca Mountain is much more complicated than the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, a site where the DOE plans to store plutonium-laced wastes in salt caverns near Carlsbad, N.M.

"Plus the amount of waste is larger and much more dangerous," Ewing said of the radioactive load projected for Yucca Mountain, which is under study to contain 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

DOE Yucca Mountain Project managers in Las Vegas said that the criticism has launched efforts to conduct more complete studies, such as drilling 22 wells in Forty-Mile Wash, an area running southwest from Yucca Mountain that has not been tested for depth or flow of ground water.

Despite the criticism, the DOE is confident that its work on Yucca Mountain will be ready in two years, according to Abe Van Luik, senior technical adviser for assessing the mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The review panel agreed that the DOE did a good job assessing such possible disruptions as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and nuclear reactions within the repository if radioactive wastes were to leak out from broken canisters.

However, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is the federal agency in charge of licensing a repository to operate, is concerned about volcanic activity. Black cinder cones from eruptions millions of years ago are in plain sight 12 miles from Yucca Mountain

"If the NRC requires a detailed vulcanism analysis, you might as well forget it," reviewer Robert Budnitz, president of Future Resources Associates Inc. of Berkeley, Calif., said.

"If the NRC wants to see all the gory details, it is going to be a hairy mess," Budnitz said, adding that he did not see volcanic eruptions as a threat. But it could cost $1 billion or more to satisfy the NRC if the agency requires such detailed studies, he said.