DOE: Flaws could end Yucca project

Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000 | 11:21 a.m.

RENO -- Department of Energy scientists said Wednesday they would stop work on a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain if they uncover a major problem.

A fatal flaw for the project 90 miles north of Las Vegas might be a discovery that contaminated ground water likely would move to populated areas -- farms in the Amargosa Valley are 12 miles away -- in less than 10,000 years, the estimated lifetime of the repository.

Yucca Mountain is the only site being considered for a repository for 77,000 tons of spent fuel from nuclear reactors and highly radioactive defense waste. If it is found scientifically sound, it could begin accepting shipments by 2010.

Ground water contamination is "the endgame," DOE Yucca Mountain scientist Robert Levich said at the Geological Society of America meeting, which continues through this week.

If such a serious problem is found, the DOE, which is charged with solving the nation's nuclear waste problem, would seek another answer, he said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must license the site, and Levich noted during a media briefing that the NRC oversight is a safety valve for the public if serious problems are uncovered.

"If the DOE does not (stop it), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will," Levich said.

NRC scientists in a seminar today are expected to lay out to the DOE the major flaws that could spell the end of the Yucca Mountain Project.

The DOE will not decide until next July whether to ask the NRC for a license to build and operate the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository.

Yucca Mountain, probably the most studied site in the world, will undergo more scientific scrutiny, Levich promised.

"If we go to licensing and receive a license, scientific studies will continue at Yucca Mountain," he said.

U.S. Geological Survey project manager for Yucca studies, Zell Peterman, said the big unanswered question is how fast the ground water travels off the mountain.

"All ground water will eventually discharge somewhere," Peterman said. No one can answer the question of when water will reach people from Yucca Mountain.

USGS scientists suspect Yucca's ground water does not flow southwest into Amargosa Valley and then to Death Valley, as earlier studies suggested, but almost directly south to Franklin Lake playa, Peterman said.

From there, the ground water could flow around Eagle Mountain to Tecopa, Calif., a popular stopover for snowbirds and other desert travelers, Peterman said. The USGS does not know how much of the ground water evaporates before reaching the Tecopa Springs area, he said.

The DOE has not decided how to design a repository at Yucca, because the heat from buried nuclear wastes could raise the rock's temperature above the boiling point, DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Gudmunder Bodvarsson said.

The DOE believes the extra heat from the wastes will drive away any water flowing toward the buried containers, Bodvarsson said, but a small amount of water can have a large effect on the surrounding rocks.

The DOE is considering expensive titanium shields to deflect drips from the nuclear containers after 5,000 years, when the heat would have subsided and water could threaten the containers again, Bodvarsson said, but the studies are not complete.

"Scientists have not been working on Yucca Mountain to determine if it's a good site," Levich concluded, adding that the DOE is curious to see if the site is able to keep nuclear waste out of the environment and away from people. "We have approached it as scientists."