Panel told Yucca Mountain lawsuits can be expected

Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2000 | 10:03 a.m.

A presidential panel has been told that one thing is certain about proposals for a nuclear waste dump in Nevada - lawsuits are sure to follow whatever action is taken.

The prediction came at a hearing of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an 11-member panel evaluating Energy Department plans to build a repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"There is one certainty and that is litigation," said Greg White, a Michigan representative on the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. The group is pushing the government to come up with a solution for storage of 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste, most of it from nuclear power plants.

"I fully expect Nevada will do everything necessary to delay this program," White told the review board during a meeting here Tuesday.

White urged board members to keep the program moving forward or the government and the nuclear power industry might end up in a situation where waste is left at the power plants and without funding for a national program to store it.

He predicted that lawsuits will cause delays and "that exposes ratepayers to additional storage costs and increases environmental risks."

Steve Frishman, a consultant to the state Nuclear Projects Agency, expressed concerns about the waste storage program, particularly timing allowed for the waste to be rendered harmless.

Frishman said the "greatest uncertainty in the whole system seems to be related to the 10,000-year cutoff."

He was referring to the time set by the government during which Yucca Mountain and its barriers must contain the waste. Scientists have said some of the peak doses from the radioactive material won't come for a long time after the 10,000 years.

Frishman described one of the barriers - shields to keep water from dripping on waste packages - as "the most enormously expensive band-aid I've ever heard of."