U.S. Park Service objects to dump at Yucca

Monday, March 27, 2000 | 11:28 a.m.

The National Park Service has come out against plans for a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, saying that radiation could harm an endangered fish that exists only in Death Valley and transportation routes could threaten Lake Mead.

The Park Service filed its objections with the Department of Energy as part of public comments the DOE solicited on the repository's environmental impacts.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied as the nation's burial ground for commercial nuclear reactor and defense wastes.

After 2010, if the mountain passes scientific muster, 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste will be shipped to Nevada for permanent burial.

The Park Service, which may be the first federal agency to oppose the proposed repository, is worried that ground water contaminated with radioactivity could flow 22 miles downhill from Yucca and affect rare and endangered species in Death Valley, Regional Director John J. Reynolds said.

"If the facility were built and operated as proposed, and never leaked into ground water or elsewhere, it could be acceptable," Reynolds said.

"Of course, if that were true, the facility could be built anywhere," Reynolds said.

Contaminated water could eventually enter the springs in Death Valley and at Devil's Hole, the Park Service said in its comments to the DOE.

Ground water flows from Yucca Mountain and feeds freshwater springs that support rare and endangered plants and pupfish in Death Valley and the Amargosa Valley.

In addition to concerns about ground water and springs in Death Valley, the Park Service said transporting nuclear waste through or near Death Valley, the Great Basin National Park in northeast Nevada and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area poses a threat to public health and safety as well as to the environment.

"The possibility of the spill or inadvertent release of radionuclides within or neighboring a park unit is unacceptable," Reynolds wrote.

The Park Service learned that the DOE will stop studies of the Death Valley National Park aquifer system once a repository is licensed. A leak from the repository, if it is built, would be "catastrophic" to critical water that keeps endangered pupfish alive, Reynolds said.

The Devil's Hole pupfish live on a water-covered shelf in a remote volcanic rock, protected by a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

"Dangerous levels of radiation may exist long after the predicted 10,000-year-life of the repository," Reynolds said.

One of the longest-living radioactive elements in nuclear waste is neptunium 237, which requires 2.1 million years for only half of the radiation to dissipate. Neptunium 237 can affect human bones and livers.

Also, if the Southwest's climate becomes wetter in the next 10,000 years, extra rainfall could increase the risk for contaminating the ground water, the Park Service said.

While the DOE concluded that a volcanic eruption is rare -- one chance in 7,000 -- for the first 10,000 years after the repository closes, the Park Service noted that consequences from such volcanic activity were not considered by the DOE.

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology, who are studying Yucca's crust, observed surface movement over seven years from 1990 to 1997.

The DOE is funding ongoing studies, but the Park Service is worried about possible radioactive contamination if the mountain's movement crushed buried containers and released radiation.

The Energy Department is reviewing nearly 2,000 comments it has received and is expected to issue a final statement of environmental impacts from a Yucca repository at the end of the year.