Nuclear scientist to head up study on Yucca Mountain

Wednesday, Nov. 24, 1999 | 10:43 a.m.

Former nuclear reactor designer and Pennsylvania legislator Ivan Itkin was approved by the U.S. Senate on Friday to become head of federal efforts to study Yucca Mountain as a high-level nuclear waste repository.

Itkin, 63, replaces acting Director Lake Barrett as head of the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Itkin has not been sworn into office.

In his new role, Itkin will direct the DOE's efforts to study and to develop Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a repository for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from commercial reactors and Defense Department nuclear wastes.

Itkin served as a Democrat in the Pennsylvania Legislature from 1973 until he resigned for a run as governor in 1998, a race he lost.

A nuclear scientist, Itkin worked at Westinghouse Corp., where he designed Navy nuclear reactors under Vice Adm. Hyman Rickover. Itkin also helped an expert panel investigate the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor core in Middletown, Pa., during 1979.

Meanwhile, the 50,000-member American Public Health Association passed a resolution last week declaring Yucca Mountain unsuitable as a permanent high-level nuclear waste repository.

The national resolution noted that the Department of Energy cannot contain the waste in the mountain, ground water under the mountain goes for drinking and irrigation, frequent earthquakes exceed the current rules for nuclear reactor sites and transporting radioactive wastes will put 50 million people at risk.

The association plans to meet with Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and contact federal, state and local agencies with its concerns.