Nuke waste director visits Yucca opposition

Monday, Jan. 10, 2000 | 10:10 a.m.

Before Ivan Itkin, a Pennsylvania resident, became chief of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project, he had come to Nevada once to tour a defunct gold mine, FMC of Pittsburgh.

"Being from the East, I thought you'd see veins of gold in the tunnel's rock," Itkin, 63, said Friday in Las Vegas. "It was piles of sand."

Itkin realized only after that visit that modern mining takes microscopic bits of gold from crushed rock, unlike the hand-held pick and shovel of a century ago.

From that experience, Itkin decided to take a hands-on approach after Energy Secretary Bill Richardson swore him in Dec. 2 as director of the Office of Radioactive Waste Management, an arm of the Department of Energy.

He spent several days last week in Southern Nevada, touring the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, meeting with concerned groups such as environmental watchdog Citizen Alert and the Sierra Club and visiting with the Nye County Commission in Tonopah.

As a nuclear engineer, Itkin calls himself a disciple of Adm. Hyman Rickover, known as the father of the nuclear Navy. Itkin spent 20 years designing nuclear-powered ships for the Atomic Energy Commission, DOE's predecessor, before entering politics in 1973. He spent 25 years as a member of the Pennsylvania House and failed to win the governor's mansion in 1998.

In his new position, Itkin said he will combine his experiences from both fields to ensure a safe repository if Yucca Mountain passes scientific muster. But it is too soon, he noted, to discuss transportation routes.

"The repository has not been approved yet," he said.

The Yucca project has had solid opposition from Nevada's leaders. The state's congressional delegation has presented a bipartisan front against dumping nuclear waste into the Silver State and prevented temporary radioactive waste storage for the past five years.

"This project is extremely explosive," Itkin admitted.

"It's not just developing a good technical product, but you also have to sell it," Itkin said. "I decided that the first thing I would do in the new year is go to Nevada and meet people on the project."

The low-key Itkin, who has a doctorate in mathematics and degrees in chemical engineering and nuclear engineering, promised to be available and establish lines of communication that might not have been open before to Nevadans.

Jessica Hodge, urban issues coordinator for Citizen Alert, met with Itkin on Thursday to hear his views on what to do with 77,000 tons of highly radioactive wastes piling up at 83 commercial nuclear reactors and defense sites across the nation.

"He said, 'We can't leave it on site and not worry about it,' " she said. "Well, you can't stick it in Yucca Mountain and forget it, either."

Hodge said Itkin emphasized his intentions to decide the fate of Yucca Mountain on the basis of science, not politics.

"I think that I would not want his job," Hodge said. In fact, no one wanted it for three years. Itkin replaces acting director Lake Barrett.

Itkin himself understands the limited time he might have in his third career. In a year, a new president could remove him from the job.

Despite the advantages of Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Itkin said he is very aware that nobody wants a nuclear burial ground in their back yards.

"I'm not trying to convince anybody this is something they'd like to have," he said. "Even if I can assure them, they would say, 'Thank you, but no thank you.' "

Pressed on whether he would tell the president and Congress if Yucca failed the scientific tests in a couple of years, Itkin said he is required to do so.

"I'm pledged to do that," he said.

Yucca would allow the DOE to retrieve buried waste containers if something goes wrong, he said.

"We are assuming the worst that there could be, we know there is water in the rocks, but we will defend the site to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," Itkin said.

The commission has the final word on whether Yucca becomes a permanent nuclear waste land after 2010.

And if Yucca fails to pass scientific muster?

Then the nuclear wastes will stay where they are, at the reactors and research sites, Itkin said. Congress might choose a second option of building an interim storage facility, he added.

"We hope to be unobtrusive at Yucca Mountain," Itkin said, "so that the people of Nevada will not know there is a site here. Just like they did not know we sent materials from nuclear submarines from California to Idaho for 40 years."

Itkin said he knows Las Vegas is a worldwide tourist destination, but one day it could become a mecca for nuclear research. "A center of excellence," he termed it.

Nevada already benefits from nuclear waste research, Itkin said. Of this year's $350 million in the DOE's Yucca budget, all but $50 million of it goes into the state's economy.

"I fully appreciate the community's opposition to this thing," Itkin said. "There is a lot of money, however, that will pour into Nevada's economy."

With three grown children, Itkin said he is so impressed with Southern Nevada that one day he might consider moving to Las Vegas to retire.

"In any case, you are going to see a lot more of him," DOE spokesman Allen Benson said.