Audit: DOE withholding key Yucca data

Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning

Monday, Dec. 10, 2001 | 10:59 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Senior managers of the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project are withholding realistic costs and completion schedules for the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump, according to the first draft of a congressional audit.

The DOE managers are reluctant to revise the schedule beyond a 2010 completion date in part because nuclear power companies are suing the department, the report says.

The Energy Department could owe the companies between $2 billion and $50 billion for not hauling the companies' waste to Yucca Mountain by 1998, the report says. The longer the DOE delays opening Yucca, the more money it could owe in damages.

Those details are found in the 28-page draft report by the General Accounting Office that summarizes the status of the Yucca Mountain project.

The project is an intensive study to determine if the Nevada mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is a suitable site to permanently bury the nation's 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

The GAO on Nov. 28 gave a draft copy of the report to Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who requested the GAO study. The lawmakers promptly released excerpts and a report summary to the media. The Sun obtained the full 28-page report after it was posted -- and later removed -- last week on a state of Nevada Internet website.

DOE officials and its major contractor, Bechtel SAIC, have criticized the draft report and hope to correct what they say are errors for the final report, which could be released as early as this week. They allege Nevada lawmakers improperly leaked the unofficial draft report for political gain.

Details in the report explain why the GAO concluded that the Yucca Mountain repository could not be completed by the DOE's target date of 2010.

The report says DOE managers since March 1997 have not followed the department's own rules for routinely re-establishing the project's "baseline" -- its estimated schedule, cost and technical requirements.

For example, in November 1999, the Yucca Mountain site investigation office recommended that the DOE extend its target date for applying for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to bury waste at the Yucca site.

The office recommended delaying the date from March 2002 to December 2002 because Congress gave the DOE $57.8 million less than the DOE requested for the 2000 fiscal year.

In September 2000 DOE project managers proposed another new license application target: July 2003; in February 2001, they proposed a December 2003 date.

But the secretary of energy and Yucca Mountain project director did not officially approve any of the changes, which means they did not officially adjust the project's estimated schedule and cost to reflect more realistic timelines and budgets. While DOE officials still say they can complete Yucca by 2010, the GAO report says it would be more like 2013 or 2015.

The criticism echoes what Nevada officials, who oppose the project, and independent scientific panels such as the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, have been saying in reports -- that scientific information about the site is incomplete.

The state of Nevada plans to file a lawsuit later this month against the DOE for failing to follow its own guidelines, said Bob Loux, executive director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1998 ruled that nuclear power plant owners are entitled to money from the DOE for not hauling their nuclear waste away while Yucca Mountain is still undergoing analysis.

That means the DOE could owe nuclear plant operators a lot more money in damages.

"In part, DOE's desire to meet the 2010 goal is linked to the court decisions that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act ... obligated DOE to begin accepting spent fuel from contract holders not later than Jan. 31, 1998, or be held liable for damages," the report says.

A major point of controversy has developed between DOE officials and anti-Yucca forces in Nevada that centers on whether the DOE has enough scientific data amassed to make a recommendation about the site to President Bush in the coming weeks.

DOE officials say they have enough. But the GAO draft report recommends putting off the site recommendation until 293 specific scientific questions about the site are answered.

The report says the DOE's major contractor, Bechtel SAIC, has said those issues won't be resolved until 2006. But DOE officials say that is no reason to put off recommending the site.

DOE officials argue they can make the site recommendation and then resolve the 293 issues before they apply for the license to bury the waste at Yucca.

But the GAO recommends making the site recommendation closer to the time the DOE applies to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the construction license, the first of three permits necessary. "Doing so would improve the technical soundness of, and public confidence in, the site recommendation without delaying the license application," the report says.

Federal law requires that both the site recommendation and the license application are to be based on similar technical information, the report says.

"As a result, we believe that deferring the site recommendation until DOE obtains the technical information needed for a license application would improve the technical soundness of the site recommendation," the report says.

The report also says NRC officials contend there are three general areas of uncertainty about Yucca Mountain: how long metal waste containers would last, the physical properties of Yucca and the mathematical and computer models used to predict how well the site would keep waste away from humans over thousands of years.

Questions about the nickel-chromium alloy waste containers are key because DOE officials "depend heavily on the waste containers, rather than the natural features of the site, to meet NRC's licensing regulations," as well as Environmental Protection Agency radiation exposure standards, the report says.

Similar criticism on these same issues came from the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, created in 1987 to independently oversee the DOE's studies at Yucca Mountain.

Nevada officials argue that the waste containers have become too important to the repository's ability to isolate the waste, suggesting the waste could be stored anywhere if the containers -- not the tunnels under the desert mountain ridge -- are so key to isolating the waste.

Remaining uncertainties about the site itself include changes to faults in the mountain over time; flow of water through the mountain; earthquakes; how radiation might move through the mountain if released from containers; and potential volcanic eruptions, the report says.

Another issue centers on how the repository would be designed, the report says.

Waste would be stored in tunnels roughly 1,000 feet under Yucca Mountain. The waste would emit intense heat, and temperatures inside the repository would vary depending on how the tunnels were designed and spaced.

The independent Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and the NRC are concerned about the DOE's evaluations of high- and low-temperature repositories, the report says.

The DOE has not provided enough answers about that issue, according to an October 2001 letter authored by the Board, the report said.

Technical Review Board Chairman Jared Cohon said in an Oct. 17 letter that the DOE has not yet done "a complete comparison" of either repository design.

The report also outlines how the DOE is considering a plan that would involve constructing the Yucca repository in stages, so that waste could be moved into the site as it was being built.

The DOE plan also would involve shipping more waste to the site for temporary storage on the surface until room is made inside the mountain.

The DOE has enlisted the National Research Council to study the plan, the report says.

Among other topics, the council is studying "societal objectives and risks" of such a plan, the safety and security of a surface facility and the "public acceptance of such a facility."

Nevada lawmakers strongly oppose any sort of temporary storage in the state and federal law prohibits interim storage in a state that has a site under study as a permanent repository.

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