Early waste storage sought

Thursday, Dec. 21, 2000 | 11:22 a.m.

As a cost-saving measure, nuclear waste would be shipped to Yucca Mountain up to three years before the waste facility would even open under a 2-year-old proposal by the Energy Department's chief contractor.

The proposal sought to trim millions of dollars from reactor-site storage by bringing in wastes early, then spreading the costs over time by building the repository in phases.

Casks containing the waste would be stored at Yucca Mountain in shielded structures on the desert's surface under the TRW Environmental Safety Systems Inc. proposal. The plan was discovered by the Sun among official DOE documents.

TRW's proposal would bring the waste directly to Yucca Mountain. This is in contrast to a plan for temporary interim storage suggested by Congress for the Nevada Test Site. Interim storage has been fought by Nevada officials because it portends a permanent nuclear waste dump. Under the TRW plan, the permanent dump would be a fact.

Bob Loux, Nevada's top official overseeing state interests as Yucca Mountain is studied, says the surface storage would be dangerous in the event of an earthquake. A quake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale -- anything over 4.0 can cause surface damage -- occurred about 12 miles from Yucca Mountain in 1992.

An earthquake could conceivably crack or break a cask laying on the surface, which means that deadly radiation could be carried by the wind to populated areas. The theory behind underground burial is that the mountain would contain any spread in a worst-case event, Loux, director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects, said.

The DOE has not ruled on TRW's proposal, which is part of a 23-page cost-containment study dated Dec. 18, 1998. The plan remains on the table.

TRW referred the Sun to the DOE for comment.

Paul Harrington of the DOE's Yucca Mountain Project Office was on vacation and could not be reached for comment, a spokeswoman said.

TRW, however, will not be the chief contractor after Feb. 12. The DOE awarded a new, five-year, $3.1 billion management contract to Bechtel SAIC Co. LLC.

The contractor put forward the idea as a way to save money on storage and shipping costs. Nuclear waste is now being stored at the nation's 110 power plants. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site in the nation under study for a permanent burial ground for the deadly material.

Looking ahead at the potential for the DOE to assume on-site storage costs -- because the DOE promised the nuclear industry in 1982 it would have a storage solution by 1998 -- and looking ahead at the price of nuclear waste transportation in the future, TRW saw the idea of an early transfer of the waste as potentially saving $500 million or more, the proposal says.

TRW suggested that transportation could begin as early 2007. Nuclear waste containers would be stored in dry casks or in pools of water built in Midway Valley, about 15 miles northeast of Yucca.

In the best-case scenario, Yucca Mountain will not be ready to receive nuclear waste until 2010.

Concern about TRW's proposal was voiced by Loux, whose agency is required by federal law to oversee the state's interests on Yucca Mountain.

"We have always been opposed to interim storage," Loux said.

The state's chief concern for on-site storage is the threat of earthquakes, agency technical coordinator Steve Frishman said. Congress had specified Jackass Flats on the Nevada Test Site for above-ground storage of nuclear waste in failed legislation for temporary storage.

Less than two miles west of the flats a 5.6 magnitude quake damaged a building during the Little Skull Mountain temblor on June 29, 1992, Frishman said.

"It appears from the regulations you couldn't license a nuclear reactor there because of the earthquake threat," he said.

Nevada's position in opposing interim storage is rooted in federal policy. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled in 1990 that nuclear utilities may keep radioactive wastes on site for up to 100 years.

In a copyrighted story Dec. 1, the Sun reported that TRW prepared a 60-page overview of all Yucca Mountain studies to date. Attached was a two-page memo addressed to DOE reviewers, stating that the report could be used to sell Yucca Mountain to Congress.

The memo gave rise to questions as to whether the DOE is prejudiced in favor of Yucca Mountain as the nuclear waste storage site. By law, the DOE is required to remain neutral during the site-selection process. Even though Yucca is the only site being studied, the mountain could be rejected if scientists do not believe that the burial site would be safe.

When Yucca was originally selected for study, the estimated cost for scientific determination of safety was $6 billion. The estimated cost today is at least $58 billion, which is one reason TRW prepared the report and memo.

A federal investigation, spearheaded by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is under way to determine if the nuclear industry had any influence in the preparation of the TRW report or if the report indeed was to be used to "sell" Congress on Yucca.

After a briefing on the TRW report, Reid said such information would be useful to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, during a second investigation. Nevada's congressional delegation on Monday said a request was being prepared to begin another probe.

"It's right in keeping with what we've been saying all along," Reid said today.

Before Yucca Mountain can open, it must be approved by the president, Congress and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The 60-page overview was an executive summary of a 1,500-page report, which will not be released until after the federal investigation, which is being conducted by the DOE's inspector general's office.

The DOE's nuclear waste chief, Ivan Itkin, blamed TRW for the memo and said he had removed it after copies were sent to about a dozen people within the department. The Sun obtained the memo and the overview from a Washington source.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act does not allow temporary storage at a permanent repository site. Congress, however, has tried to send nuclear waste to the Nevada Test Site for five years. Nevada's congressional delegation has successfully defeated these attempts.