Public could thwart Yucca plan, ex-DOE official says

Mary Manning and Benjamin Grove

Thursday, May 3, 2001 | 11:10 a.m.

Public opposition to a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain could stop the project within a year, a former Energy Department official told a gathering of nuclear scientists in Las Vegas this week.

Leif Eriksson, former deputy project manager and manager of regulatory compliance, research and international programs for CAO Technical Assistance Contractor (a major contractor for the DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Project in New Mexico), brought the political fight to the scientific arena at a meeting of the International High Level Radioactive Waste Conference, which ends today.

"Yucca Mountain could be dead within a year if public support is against it," Eriksson said afterward.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied to become the nation's repository for 77,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel and defense waste.

WIPP, which opened two years ago 26 miles outside Carlsbad, N.M., is designed to hold 6.2 million cubic feet of plutonium-laden defense waste.

Eriksson, a consultant to international energy companies and a critic of DOE's approach to involve the public, said the New Mexico site opened only after gaining community support.

"The biggest difference between New Mexico and Nevada was the community supported WIPP," he said. "With rising public opposition, Yucca Mountain may not be built."

Eriksson's comments raised an interesting issue: Will opposition in Nevada to the Yucca Mountain project matter? Could the Not-In-My-Backyard argument kill the project?

Eriksson argued yes.

Momentum behind the project is great: The DOE has invested 14 years and about $7 billion developing Yucca and is expected late this year to recommend it as a safe site to bury the nation's high-level nuclear waste.

The DOE proposes to spend $445 million developing Yucca next year and preparing a license to store waste. The president, Congress and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must approve the site.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Wednesday stressed that a permanent waste dump is key to increasing nuclear power output, which is reported to be an important part of President Bush's energy strategy.

Abraham called for Americans to begin a new national debate on the merits of nuclear power, but he declined to say if the DOE would wage a public relations campaign to promote nuclear power.

"When you look at nuclear energy, you are looking at a public discussion," not a DOE "advertising" campaign, Abraham told reporters Wednesday during a break in his testimony before a congressional panel about DOE's budget.

The Bush administration faces a difficult quandary: People want more power, but no one wants a new power plant built nearby. And certainly, no one wants a waste dump in their state.

Despite the Yucca project's momentum, Nevada's opposition has been a "huge hurdle" to Yucca's development, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said.

"If it wasn't for Nevadans, we would already have nuclear waste in the state on an interim storage site," Ensign said. "We're going to do everything we can to keep it out."

Opposition in Nevada could kill the project just as Eriksson suggests, Ensign said.

"I think ultimately we will win this battle, this war," Ensign said.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., agreed. He said the DOE has a "credibility problem" with the public.

"The public plays an enormous role in the political process, and what worries me is that some people (at DOE) are turning a blind eye to science and to the political process," Gibbons said.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., on Wednesday slammed the Bush administration for touting nuclear power.

"That's great for the nuclear energy lobby, but it's going to mean a proliferation of nuclear plants throughout America's neighborhoods, and it's going to pose an untenable problem with nuclear waste," Berkley said. "Yucca Mountain is not safe, and the industry will not be able to dump its waste there."

Observers say the DOE has never successfully sold Nevadans on the idea that Yucca could be an economic boon to the state, as it did in New Mexico. Threat of a nuclear accident could hurt the tourism engine that drives the state, some officials say.

"The public relations battle has always been there. Since the first day when they put a shovel in the ground, the DOE has tried to argue that Yucca was good for Nevada, but they have never, ever succeeded," said Nevada native David Cherry, of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who works for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

New Mexico activist Don Hancock, who spent years fighting WIPP, said the DOE built support in Carlsbad for that project by promoting economic benefits, but many people statewide still opposed it. In the end, Congress makes the call, said Hancock, director of nuclear waste program at Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, N.M.

"Certainly, public opposition is essential to killing the project," Hancock said. "Whether it is enough to kill it or not -- that's up to the politicians."

Nevada activist Kalynda Tilges said opposition to Yucca within Nevada was probably not enough to derail the project.

"We absolutely need national opposition to Yucca Mountain," said Tilges of Citizen Alert, a Nevada environmental group, who was on Capitol Hill this week lobbying against the project.

But Las Vegas businessman Steven Cloobeck, who is leading a campaign to mobilize the resort industry against the project, disagrees.

Cloobeck said he has asked scientists, engineers, attorneys and elected officials if anyone has heard of a community receiving a federal project that residents opposed.

"Nobody can come up with a project," Cloobeck said.

"If we continue to rally and fight this with a strategy, which we are doing now, we have a hell of a shot," he said.