Scientists: Pursue new technology ahead of Yucca

Monday, Oct. 25, 1999 | 11:28 a.m.

An unreleased report from an international group of nuclear scientists urges the Department of Energy to delay a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain and spend $280 million on research to prove the feasilibilty of new technology that could transform deadly radioactive waste into less harmful material.

Although Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, would still be necessary, it could be considered a low-level nuclear waste repository if a new accelerator process works.

Yucca Mountain is the only site being studied for a high-level nuclear waste repository for 70,000 tons of spent fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants along with another 7,000 tons of defense-related nuclear waste.

Transmutation involves changing the form of matter. Once a dream from the science fiction realm, the process has become feasible in recent years.

Funds for developing the process have been slow in coming, however, because until last year DOE officials considered the technology too experimental.

The nuclear power industry opposes the technology, fearing it could delay a permanent repository. The federal government was originally scheduled to take nuclear waste from the nation's power plants last year. The soonest a repository at Yucca Mountain would open now, if it passes scientific muster, is 2010.

The report, commissioned last year by Congress, notes that in the past two years a team of scientists from the DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory, led by physicist Francisco Venneri, has worked on technology using high energy accelerators that could convert deadly radioactive particles into stable elements.

"This approach was reviewed in January 1998 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which found no insurmountable issues or show stoppers," the report says.

The DOE has not released the inch-thick report, which is marked "draft" on every page, to Congress or the public.

The independent report, which was delivered to DOE in September, boasts three pages of contributors, including scientists at eight DOE laboratories, experts at nuclear research facilities in six countries and researchers at universities including MIT, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Michael Shay of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory led the effort, which took about a year.

The plan has been endorsed by Nobel Prize winner Carlo Rubbia of the Italian National Agency for New Technology, Energy and Environment. Scientists in Italy, France, Japan and Russia are working on transmutation research.

If the technology can be proved in five years, the report notes, the complicated Yucca Mountain project might become easier for scientists to prove safe. The mountain would need to isolate waste for up to 300 years, rather than contain high levels of radiation for 10,000 years or more.

Transmutation would help solve another problem for the United States, the report says. Federal officials worry that a rogue nation or terrorists might steal nuclear materials from a reactor or a former nuclear weapons site to try to make an atomic weapon.

Instead of 600 tons of plutonium -- the most likely fuel for a bomb and the most radioactive substance that would go into the repository -- less than a ton would remain after transmutation, the report says. That means the plutonium "would no longer be available for potential future use in nuclear weapons."

The report calls for $56 million a year for five years to prove the technology -- a $280 million investment. Congress funded the DOE for transmutation with $4 million last year. This year there is $9 million available. In comparison the DOE has spent more than $6 billion studying Yucca Mountain for the past 15 years.

The report says that at the end of five years Congress could decide whether to proceed with a pilot program.

A pilot accelerator could be built at the Nevada Test Site for $10 billion, the report suggests. The Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been idle since 1992 when President Bush ordered a moratorium on nuclear weapons experiments that had been conducted at the site since 1951.

It would take at least 10 years to build a full-scale transmutation facility to demonstrate the accelerator-driven transmutation process, the report says.

Once the technology is proven, however, the DOE could build a total of eight accelerators nationwide within another 10 years to convert commercial nuclear wastes from nearby plants.

Each accelerator unit is expected to cost $1 billion.

While the accelerators convert harmful radioactive materials, they are also capable of producing electricity worth up to $850 million a year, the report says, making the technology capable of paying for itself.

The accelerators also may produce custom-made isotopes used in medicine, industry and research, the report says.

Nuclear engineer Anthony Hechanova, a UNLV research scientist, said that he had been briefed on the results of the draft report.

"There are those who do not want Nevadans to hear about this very promising technology that clearly and effectively mitigates problems of toxicity and hazards from longevity if the Yucca Mountain repository were implemented today," Hechanova said.

Congress should put its full support behind accelerator-driven transmutation, he added.

"Radioactive waste management in this country is a mess," Hechanova said. "I hope our congressional delegation continues to urge the federal government to pursue solutions to the national nuclear waste problem. This technology offers a win-win situation for Nevada."