Yucca could receive added waste

Friday, April 27, 2001 | 11:18 a.m.

If nuclear power use expands, a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain could end up with five to 10 times the amount of radioactive waste that has been set by law, an Energy Department official said.

But it would take an act of Congress to increase the amount, Russ Dyer, DOE Yucca Mountain project manager, said this week during a tour of the mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"That suggestion is the reason that nuclear waste must never come to Yucca Mountain," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who was on the tour and asked Dyer about expansion.

Yucca Mountain, the lone site chosen to contain commercial reactor and defense wastes, is under study to determine whether it can contain up to 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

Congress set the amount of waste in the 1980s, when it singled out Yucca Mountain from three sites that were being examined.

About 7,000 tons would come from weapons-related activities, including Navy submarine reactors. The other 70,000 tons would be spent nuclear fuel from 103 commercial reactors.

However, nuclear regulators are extending the operating life of the nation's nuclear reactors, Dyer said.

Five operating reactors have received 20-year license extensions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. License renewals for another five reactors are pending.

Another 32 reactors are expected to apply for license renewal by 2005.

If all of those extensions are granted, about 120,000 tons of waste would have to be buried over the next 40 years just from existing reactors, and Yucca Mountain is the only repository expected to be open, Dyer said.

"There's no appetite in Congress to find a second repository," Dyer said.

If more reactors are built to meet growing energy demands, the waste volume could increase to between 500,000 tons and 700,000 tons, he said.

A repository at Yucca Mountain would have space to expand, he said. It would require a vote of Congress.

That might not be so easy, one congressional watcher said. "I wouldn't say it would be an automatic win in Congress these days," said Lisa Gue of Public Citizen, an environmental watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader.

Spokesmen for the nuclear industry and former Sen. Bennett Johnston, D-La., author of the bill that singled out Yucca Mountain, said they had not heard that the repository might need to expand.

"I have not heard that, since the amount of nuclear waste is set by law," said Johnston, now a Washington lobbyist representing international concerns including energy companies. The former senator authored an amendment in 1987 known as the "Screw Nevada" bill, which eliminated any other option for managing nuclear waste except burying it in a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.

The nuclear industry has never projected such high numbers for its wastes or expanding a Yucca Mountain repository, Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, said.

"I have never heard that," Kerekes said. "Right now it's an open question."

However, nuclear utilities are hoping that if the energy crisis spreads from California across the country this summer, it will revive a demand for nuclear power, he said.

"While we're very confident there will be some nuclear reactors built in the coming years, I have not heard of any numbers of that kind," Kerekes said of the waste amounts suggested by Dyer.

Berkley has supported research funds for alternatives to Yucca Mountain. Scientists are developing new techniques to reduce the amount of nuclear waste using advanced accelerators in Los Alamos National Laboratory. UNLV received $3 million of the $34 million secured for accelerator research this year.

A million dollars a day is being spent on research on Yucca Mountain's suitability, and getting more to study alternatives has been a hard sell in Congress, Steve Frishman, technology coordinator for the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said.

DOE officials oppose spending a lot of money on alternatives such as advanced accelerators, saying that they would take too long and be cost prohibitive.

But, Berkley said, more must be done.

"I am opposed to any attempt to expand nuclear energy in this country until we figure out what to do with the nuclear wastes," Berkley said.