DOE wants Yucca

Jeff German and Mary Manning

Friday, Dec. 1, 2000 | 10:46 a.m.

The Department of Energy has been collaborating behind the scenes with the nuclear industry to prepare a public report that will recommend Yucca Mountain as the site for the nation's high-level nuclear waste repository, secret DOE documents show.

Federal law prohibits the DOE from taking sides during the site-selection process.

A draft of a 60-page DOE overview, obtained by the Sun, concludes that Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is safe to store the radioactive waste, even though an epic study of the Nevada site has not been completed.

Attached to the draft is a two-page note, put together by DOE contractors, that suggests the overview is designed to help nuclear industry officials sell the Yucca Mountain project to Congress.

The wording of the unsigned note has angered Nevada's two Democratic Senators, Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, who called it convincing evidence of "bias" by DOE against the state.

The note says the overview presents Yucca Mountain as the "key component in the DOE's proposed solution" to the country's nuclear waste problem.

"It is narrowly focused on the suitability of the site because decision makers and the public are equally concerned about transportation and other issues that bear upon the site recommendation decision," the note says.

"In fact, the technical suitability of the site is less of a concern to Congress than the broader issue of whether the nuclear waste problem can be solved at an affordable price in both financial and political terms."

Those words, Bryan said, "trivialize" the years of technical work done at Yucca Mountain.

"That is in fact saying the public and the health and safety of Nevada be damned," he said.

The overview, meanwhile, says the new price tag for the Yucca Mountain dump and the transportation of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste here has soared to $58 billion, well above the previous $36 billion estimate of the mid-1990s.

Summarized in the overview is the DOE report of a 15-year Yucca Mountain study, which could be made public by the end of this year. The report is being prepared by contractors for the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM), the agency overseeing the study.

"The report concludes that a repository that is likely to meet the safety standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the licensing requirements of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can be designed, constructed and operated at the Yucca Mountain site," the draft says. "The report is based on more than 15 years of field investigations, analytical work and engineering data."

Selected DOE officials and contractors pushing the Yucca Mountain Project have received copies of the draft and have been asked for their input into the final version of the overview.

The attached two-page note says the overview "makes a convincing case that Yucca Mountain is a technically suitable site for a repository, though a formal suitable finding will not have been made."

The note suggests that the overview, which is expected to be signed in its final form by Ivan Itkin, director of the DOE's Radioactive Waste Management office in Washington, is being put together to provide the nuclear industry with more ammunition in its intense campaign to persuade Congress to make Yucca Mountain the site of the high-level repository.

"The overview provides information that potential supporters can use in expressing support for a site recommendation," the note says.

That has drawn outrage from Reid and Bryan.

"The Department of Energy never surprises me," Reid said. "They can't get out of bed with the nuclear power industry, and this is another example."

Reid said he planned to haul NRC officials, who ultimately will decide whether Yucca Mountain is a suitable site, before his Environment and Public Works Committee early next year to make sure they understand concerns being raised about the DOE's bias. The committee has oversight over the national nuclear waste plan.

Bryan said the latest DOE documents leave little doubt in his mind that the DOE is working in concert with the nuclear industry, which he said is "totally inappropriate."

He called the relationship between the DOE and the nuclear industry an "unholy alliance" that is threatening the integrity of the site selection process.

"The tenor of these documents," Bryan said, "seems less interested in science and substance than tone, which I think most Nevadans will find offensive and which makes the point that Nevadans have been making for years -- this is not science. This is spin to support the nuclear power industry."

The documents give the public "no confidence" in the DOE's ability to make an objective recommendation on Yucca Mountain, Bryan added.

The DOE, he said, appears bent on "stacking the deck" against Nevada.

"This is not a done deal," he said. "But they're treating it like a fait accompli."

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, described the draft overview as a "slick sales brochure" aimed at convincing the pubic everything is fine at Yucca Mountain.

"The DOE is on a mission to build a repository here," he said. "It's never been anything else."

Note is denounced

In a telephone interview from Washington, Itkin disavowed the language of the two-page note, which he confirmed was attached to the first draft of the overview a couple of months ago.

"When I saw that section, it troubled me immensely," Itkin said. "It's not the position of the department.

"The department's position, as long as I'm director, is to do a professional job -- that is, to make a scientific and technical evaluation of Yucca Mountain to see if it's suitable for the repository."

Itkin said the note has been removed from subsequent drafts of the overview passed around the DOE community.

He said he believed it was written by one of the DOE's contractors looking at the Yucca Mountain site, but he did not recall the name.

Allen Benson, the spokesman for the Yucca Mountain Project in Las Vegas, later said several contractors had a hand in writing the note. But he declined to identify them.

"It is a contractor document," Benson said. "The comments are something someone thinks should be done. It is simply not acceptable to the DOE."

The note solicits opinions about the draft overview from other DOE contractors and asks that they be sent to DOE officials Chris Kouts in Washington and Richard Craun in Las Vegas.

Bryan said his concerns about the DOE's bias have not been eased by Itkin's disapproval of the note.

"Whatever the circumstances, I find it troublesome that those two sheets of paper were packaged with the draft overview," he said. "It's absolutely alarming and outrageous.

"Whoever wrote that should have been reprimanded or fired. This report is supposed to be scientific."

Itkin, meanwhile, acknowledged that he is close to recommending Yucca Mountain as a safe site for the repository.

"We do not see any show stoppers," he said. "So far, the work that we've done leaves us to suspect this could be a suitable site. But we need to do further scientific work."

In the original 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Congress made the DOE responsible for studying several sites across the country as potential nuclear waste repositories.

By 1987, however, Congress singled out Yucca Mountain as the lone site to study after the DOE argued that examining three to five sites would be too time-consuming and expensive.

Decision looms

The final decision on Yucca Mountain rests with the next president and energy secretary in July, Itkin said.

Before the energy secretary makes a recommendation to the president, the DOE must get input from citizens at public hearings, which could get under way early next year.

The energy secretary also must notify Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn and the state Legislature of its recommendation one month before formally notifying the president.

Nevada has the right to lodge a protest with the Congress, which could delay the selection process. But the process would move forward if both the president and Congress approve the site.

The DOE expects its comprehensive report ultimately will build public confidence that the volcanic layers of Yucca Mountain combined with man-made barriers will protect local residents from radioactivity for 10,000 years.

The repository could be ready to accept its first nuclear waste shipment in 2010 and final one 35 years later in 2045, the draft overview says.

With natural rock barriers and man-made shields preventing ground water from reaching the buried wastes, "the DOE is confident that a Yucca Mountain repository will protect public health and safety and the environment and comply with proposed EPA standards and NRC regulations," the draft asserts.

Nevada scientific experts have called the site unsuitable for years. Their studies focus on threats from deep hot water invading the site, the potential failure of metals the DOE plans to use as burial containers and the possible threat of earthquakes and volcanoes.

NRC consultant Brittain Hill also has warned the DOE that the greatest risk posed from buried nuclear waste is a violent volcanic eruption through the repository.

Hill said that even if the NRC issues a building permit, that will not end strict federal oversight.

Before the DOE ships a single waste container to the site, the NRC must conduct further public hearings, Hill said. And before the repository can open, the NRC will have to review the plan and license the DOE to accept the waste, which is expected to come from 43 states.

Mathematician Ronald Bourgoin of North Carolina said it is impossible for the DOE to claim Yucca is safe after less than 20 years' research there.

"Let's face it: It's been politics, not science, all along, and it'll continue to remain so," Bourgoin said. "The only force that will defeat putting waste in Yucca is political."