Plane crashes on Yucca study list

Monday, July 30, 2001 | 11:03 a.m.

What is the chance of a military jet or space shuttle crashing into a proposed Yucca Mountain repository while a nuclear waste container is being loaded for burial? Or of a tornado wreaking havoc with radioactive canisters?

Too slight to consider, frustrated Department of Energy nuclear engineers say.

Yet experts from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must license a repository at Yucca if it is approved, are insisting that the DOE evaluate the consequences of those unlikely events.

Those marching orders came during a scientific exercise last week at Texas Station.

The odds that a military jet fighter pilot would crash into the mountain during a training exercise are "incredible, incredibly small," Richard Morissette, a nuclear engineer under contract to the DOE, said during the meeting of nuclear regulators.

No plane has ever crashed on the mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the only site being considered to contain 77,000 tons of commercial and defense radioactive waste.

The last tornado occurred 14 years ago, Douglas Orvis, a nuclear engineer under DOE contract, said. "The waste containers will always be inside a structure that would protect it from a tornado," he said.

Last week's meeting, one in a series, gave a glimpse into the information the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is likely to require if it receives a license request for Yucca Mountain. The DOE expects to begin that process in two or three years, though the site has not yet been approved by the president or Congress. The earliest the dump would open is 2010.

"The NRC concludes that the exclusion of an aircraft crash from the list of potential human-induced hazards that may affect the proposed repository is premature," the NRC staff said. "The DOE should provide a detailed analysis of the aircraft crash hazards by taking into consideration all types of aircraft flying in the vicinity of the proposed site."

A plane crash, while a remote possibility, could have devastating consequences to workers, people nearby and to the environment if highly radioactive materials blew away from the crash site on the wind, the NRC scientists said.

Commercial flights don't cross over Yucca Mountain, which is in the Nellis Air Force Bombing and Gunnery Range. Regulators were concerned about military training above the mountain and the possibility of future space shuttle overflights.

About 20,000 flights a year criss-crossed Yucca's desert mound, the Air Force reported in counts conducted from fall 1998 to fall 2000.

The Air Force agreed last year to reduce flyovers to 1,450 a year, Morissette said.

If Yucca Mountain is approved as the nation's nuclear waste repository, Congress will have to withdraw the site from public and most other uses. Flights could continue, however, unless future negotiations restrict them.

In the past the Air Force has objected to Yucca Mountain's use as a nuclear waste repository because it could interfere with fighter pilot training.

However, the DOE has not analyzed with the Air Force what could happen if a jet crashed into the mountain while it is being loaded with nuclear waste.