Yucca could be costliest project in history

Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning

Friday, March 9, 2001 | 4:03 a.m.

For almost 200 years leaders in Britain and France dreamed of digging a tunnel under the English Channel.

French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned plans. A long series of failed attempts began in 1880.

So when the $20 billion "Chunnel" was completed in 1993, the mammoth project was celebrated as a testament to man's determination -- and his will to build big.

The planet is sprinkled with awe-inspiring construction projects that have boggled minds, sparked controversy, inflamed critics and cost fortunes: the Empire State Building, Golden Gate Bridge, Panama Canal and Hoover Dam.

Now another engineering marvel may take shape in the Nevada desert: A cavernous tomb 1,000 feet under Yucca Mountain is designed to permanently store the nation's high-level nuclear waste, among the nastiest substances on Earth. Yucca Mountain could prove to be one of the most costly and unusual projects ever undertaken.

To be sure, Yucca would be a complex and expensive project. The Energy Department wants to haul 77,000 tons of high-level waste by truck and train to be carefully placed in tunnels deep in the Earth's crust.

Here's how Yucca ranks in cost, size and scope compared to some other notable engineering achievements:

Cost

As with most large-scale, first-of-its-kind projects, it's difficult for experts to say what Yucca will cost. But if approved and completed, Yucca could be one of the nation's most expensive projects ever. About $6.7 billion has been spent on Yucca during the 14 years of site study. If the project is approved, actual construction would not be completed until 2010 at the earliest.

The DOE's latest cost estimate made this year, including the waste's storage, is $58 billion. Officials estimate 1,637 workers would be needed by 2006, Yucca's peak year of construction.

But internal DOE reports show that the estimate increases to $75 billion if all public health and safety measures are included, such as shields to protect buried containers from ground water.

"In terms of cost, it's going to be a huge number," said William Ibbs, a University of California, Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor who has studied the Yucca project. "Quite frankly, I wouldn't trust any cost number I see at this point."

By way of comparison:

* Hoover Dam had a $165 million price tag when it was completed in 1935 (roughly $1.7 billion in 2001 dollars). Two years later in San Francisco workers finished the $35 million Golden Gate Bridge -- at a time of bread lines in America.

* The once-vilified, now often-praised Denver International Airport, the nation's newest major airfield, cost $5 billion by the time it opened in 1995. Washington's 103-mile Metro subway system, launched in 1967 and still expanding, also cost about $5 billion.

* The U.S. interstate system, about 43,000 miles of roadway projects launched in 1956 despite some congressional criticism, cost about $129 billion by the time it was completed in 1991.

"There were people at the time who said it was pie-in-the-sky and would never be realized, but you could get that kind of reaction with anything you want to do," UNLV engineering professor Walter Vodraska said of the interstates. "It turned out to be a tremendous boon."

Today many engineers say that the most expensive project under construction is Boston's Central Artery/Tunnel project (locals call it the Big Dig), "the largest, most complex and technologically challenging highway project ever attempted in American history," its website says.

In Boston, 4,500 workers are building a tunnel to Logan Airport, a bridge over the Charles River and an underground expressway to replace elevated highways in the city's core. The 10-year-old project is scheduled to be finished in 2004. The latest cost estimate is $14 billion (federal taxpayers pay 80 percent).

The Big Dig's cost was estimated at $3.2 billion in 1987. In April, Massachusetts Turnpike Chairman James Kerasiotes and his top project officials were fired when it was learned that the Big Dig would cost more than the $10.8 billion he claimed.

The Big Dig, like Yucca, is plagued by controversy and costs that exceeded estimates. Still, many Bostonians take a perverse pride in it. "People love to hate it," Dan McNichol, a former Big Dig spokesman who wrote a book about the project, told the Hartford Courant. "It's like the Red Sox." Overruns on large-scale projects are common, said David Luberoff, a Harvard University professor and public works expert who studies the Big Dig. Often costs are difficult to estimate for a variety of reasons: Complex mechanical expenses and permit costs can quickly skyrocket, Luberoff said. Sometimes accountants on long-term jobs don't adjust for inflation.

Other times it's plain old politics.

"Sometimes, it's simply a case of if you put the actual price tag out there, you'll never get the go-ahead," Luberoff said. "It's not unusual for major public works projects to be more expensive than people estimate. And it's not uncommon for them to be intensely controversial."

Size

In terms of size, it's difficult to compare Yucca with other large-scale engineering feats. It depends or how a person defines "big." Is it the amount of earth moved or geographical girth or its effect on people?

By any of these criteria, Yucca's size likely would rank high on the list of notable public-works projects -- if not at the top.

Consider:

* The 1.2-mile Golden Gate Bridge opened in May 1937 as the world's longest suspension bridge after weathering years of criticism that it could never be done. The 746-foot-tall, 887,000-ton bridge was designed to last 200 years, today's engineers say. About 42 million vehicles crossed it in 1999.

* The 50-mile Panama Canal was completed in 1914 for $380 million -- a project that was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. Workers excavated more than 329 million cubic yards of earth. More than 700,000 vessels have passed through the canal, changing world commerce.

* Perhaps the "biggest" engineering project in the world today in terms of geographical impact is China's Three Gorge project that will dam the Yangtze River and create a massive 350-mile-long reservoir, flooding entire towns and -- talk about controversy -- displacing more than 1 million people. The estimated cost so far is $27 billion. The 7-year-old project to be completed in 2010 aims to control flooding and produce up to 11,000 megawatts of power a year -- close to 10 percent of China's energy. (Hoover Dam produces about 2,000 megawatts.) It will be the world's largest hydroelectric project.

By comparison, Yucca Mountain would be the world's largest -- its only -- high-level nuclear waste dump. It would resemble a large mining complex, 1,000 feet below the surface and 1,000 feet above the water table. That underground catacomb, along with surface facilities, would cover 1,400 acres.

Scope

What truly ranks Yucca Mountain among the biggest engineering projects ever is not its physical size, but the size of its purpose and the uniqueness of its goal: sealing hazardous material away from humanity forever.

A national nuclear waste dump is a first-of-its-kind endeavor, engineers say. It could become a model for other nations -- or a permanent lesson on what not to do.

Yucca represents the first time that engineers have been so driven by such high stakes to design a project that must not fail for eons.

Ibbs likened Yucca to the transcontinental railroad or the Panama Canal.

"They really were unique," he said. "No one had ever tried anything like that before."

University of Nevada, Reno, seismology professor John Louie compared the scope of Yucca to Hoover Dam.

Hoover, like Yucca, poses a threat of failing -- albeit debatably small -- that could be catastrophic, Louie said. A disastrous dam failure could cause widespread death, flooding, power outages.

A Yucca failure could spark "catastrophe like we have never seen," Louie said.

"But people have embarked on these high-profile, monumental projects before, even when a failure of the project would be catastrophic," Louie said.

DOE officials say they expect the first failure at Yucca wouldn't occur for maybe 10,000 years. But one geotechnical-engineering consultant who advised the DOE on Yucca said some project managers are shooting for a nuclear waste site that would remain secure for up to 1 million years.

"They said we couldn't fly to the moon," said the DOE-paid consultant, who strongly believes in the success of the project and declined to be named. "But we did that, and there would not have been any lasting effects on us if we had not flown to the moon. But there are truly consequences to not solving this problem. They say this can't be done. But this is one of those things that damn well has to be done."

Of course, Yucca opponents disagree.

"It's a boondoggle of incredible magnitude," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., one of the state's four delegates to Congress who are battling to kill the project. The delegation is joined by Gov. Kenny Guinn, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and other high-profile politicians who are waging a war of words and money against the DOE's plans for Yucca.

Berkley said large-scale projects such as dams and bridges have a positive effect on people's lives and commerce. But Yucca represents potential catastrophe for the environment, human health and Nevada's economy, she said.

"For those three reasons, this engineering marvel isn't very impressive," Berkley said.

Environmentalists decry Yucca for threatening the water for future generations. They fear future volcanoes, earthquakes and other disasters that could release nuclear waste into the environment and create disaster.

"Just because we are capable of rising to the challenge of accomplishing this project scientifically doesn't mean it's a good thing to do," said Lisa Gue, policy analyst for the Washington-based environmental and consumer organization Public Citizen.

Critics assailed the Chunnel, too, said Jack Lemley, a 40-year veteran engineer who supervised its construction. The leading trade digest, Engineering News Record, named Lemley one of the 125 top people of the century.

Yucca and the Chunnel have a lot in common, he said.

The biggest challenge for any massive project is not the actual construction, Lemley said. It's the bureaucratic bogs -- approval processes, regulatory oversight, scheduling, funding.

"(Yucca) is certainly not going to be an exception," Lemley said.

Lemley's work turning around the troubled Chunnel and completing it after seven years of construction was the culmination of a career of building big: Tennessee's Tombigbee Waterway, Mica Dam in British Columbia, King Kalide Military City in Saudi Arabia.

Lemley likes the Yucca project and hopes it succeeds, he said. The technical and regulatory complexity, along with the "enormous size" make it among the biggest projects in the world, Lemley said.

"Mankind has always looked for new frontiers," Lemley said. "There are aspects of human nature that want to explore the unknown and there are fewer physical frontiers left to conquer. There is now a search under way for new infrastructures -- new ways to have influence on life."

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