State delegates back scientists’ Yucca report

Tuesday, Oct. 26, 1999 | 11:22 a.m.

Nevada's four members of Congress welcomed the conclusion of an unreleased report that recommends the Department of Energy delay building a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain and spend $280 million to research technology that could convert the highly radioactive material into low-level waste.

But despite their support for the process called transmutation, the members of the state's congressional delegation said they remain united in efforts to keep the shipments out of Nevada.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the nation's 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 and another 7,000 tons of defense-related nuclear waste. Even if transmutation is successful, the study noted, a repository would be needed for the less radioactive remains.

The DOE has maintained that it cannot look at alternative methods of treating nuclear waste, because Congress did not allow such research in the 1987 legislation that established the Yucca Mountain project. However, DOE has provided $13 million in the past two years to fund research into transmutation, a process that transforms dangerous radiation into more stable elements.

"When you've spent $6 billion at Yucca Mountain, it seems to me you can spend a few million dollars to study transmutation," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday after reading news reports about the study, which has not been released to Congress or the public. Congress a year ago commissioned the study, which drew on scientific expertise from around the world.

"You can accomplish this without creating a lot of new high-level nuclear waste," Reid said. "We're going to have to spend large amounts of money, but it's worth it."

The report also suggested that after five years of study a pilot project could be built at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has spearheaded transmutation research since the DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., discovered a way to make the process safer and economical. Advanced accelerators used to change the radioactive matter could pay for themselves by producing electricity.

"I would view it (the report) as a very positive endorsement of the technology," Domenici's transmutation expert Pete Lyons said.

Up to $9 million for transmutation research is awaiting federal budget approval. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., submitted an amendment to add $6 million for research to see if the transmutation process can be done at the reactors where the waste is created.

"We should never think for a minute that this should validate Yucca Mountain," Berkley said of the report.

"We don't want a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain," Berkley said. "We are opposed to it."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who supported Berkley's amendment for further transmutation study, said that the report reaffirms his position that transmutation is the safest and most environmentally responsible way to dispose of nuclear waste.

"Sound science will ultimately prove that Yucca Mountain is the wrong place to store high-level nuclear waste," Gibbons, a geologist, said.

"The latest advancements in accelerator-driven transmutation put this nation on the right path of responsible management of nuclear waste disposal in America," Gibbons said. "Congress must continue to back its promising development."

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., was optimistic about the technology, but denounced any plans for storing waste in Nevada.

"The bottom line is, I think that transmutation is something we need to look at," he said, noting that the latest research could mean a major technical breakthrough to solving the problem of shipping 70,000 tons of highly radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain.

"We certainly don't want to substitute a technical program by shipping nuclear waste to Nevada," Bryan said. "Los Alamos would be an ideal site for a pilot project."