GAO: Delay decision on Yucca

Mary Manning and Benjamin Grove

Friday, Nov. 30, 2001 | 10:06 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department should indefinitely postpone a decision on whether to build a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, a Congressional audit says.

The report by the General Accounting Office is a crushing blow to the department's plans to proceed with Yucca, Nevada lawmakers said.

According to the report, the department has no reliable estimate of when or at what cost the repository could be opened, and even the project's main contractor says it is premature to recommend Yucca Mountain.

"I believe this may be the smoking gun that will derail Yucca Mountain," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who is sending a letter about the report to her 434 House colleagues.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, launched the Yucca study in February at the request of Berkley and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Reid said the report was the most damning report ever produced about Yucca Mountain. He plans to meet next week with Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., to plot strategy in using the report to kill a Yucca repository.

"It shows from an independent source -- no one has ever questioned the GAO's voracity or independence -- that the science is not ready for anyone to make a determination," Reid said. "The DOE is way ahead of itself."

The report surfaced just a month or two before the Energy Department is expected to recommend to President Bush establishing a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

However, the GAO said the DOE "is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening a repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010."

Nevada's four-member congressional delegation plans to use the report to lobby Bush directly, urging him to postpone a Yucca decision.

The Energy Department should "pull the plug" on the project, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said.

"It is a failed scientific process," said Gibbons, who is drafting a letter to Bush. "I think we will see that Yucca Mountain will turn out to be the greatest waste of taxpayer dollars in U.S. history."

Nevada lawmakers said they were troubled that the GAO said the plans for Yucca Mountain shown to Congress and Nevada residents "may not describe the facilities that DOE would actually develop."

"They're trying to sell us a project that doesn't exist -- what they're actually going to do they haven't shown us yet," Berkley said. "It's immoral, unethical and illegal."

Nevada lawmakers said they also were concerned that the report said the department, in reviewing its options, is considering a "staged" waste shipment plan in which high-level radioactive material is gradually moved to Nevada. That essentially establishes a temporary waste site in Nevada until Yucca is complete -- a plan Congress has rejected.

Bush, during the presidential campaign, told Gov. Kenny Guinn that he would veto a temporary waste site because scientific issues at Yucca are unresolved.

The GAO study also put new light on the stance of the Energy Department's major contractor, Bechtel SAIC.

The report revealed that Bechtel told the government that it would take until January 2006 to complete detailed research and cost estimates for a repository. The DOE and its contractors are still analyzing nearly 300 technical issues that raise concerns about the site's suitability.

"DOE is not ready to make a site recommendation because it does not yet have all of the technical information needed for a recommendation and a subsequent license application," the GAO report says.

That is what state officials have been telling the department all along, said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, which acts as a watchdog for the state.

Berkley agreed.

"How can the administration approve a project at a point when even Bechtel is saying that it is impossible to finish (its) analysis until all the evidence is in -- no earlier than 2006?" Berkley said.

Congress singled out Yucca Mountain in 1987 as the best site to bury high-level nuclear waste from the nation's 103 commercial reactors and weapons facilities. Scientists and their contractors have been studying Yucca ever since.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to recommend the mountain as a permanent tomb for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste within the next few months.

Bush then likely would recommend it to Congress. Nevada can veto the decision. State officials also are planning lawsuits alleging flaws in the Energy Department's scientific studies and to tie up the project in court.

Congress would have the power to override Nevada's veto, and the site could face up to four years of review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before the Energy Department could begin constructing tunnels 1,000 feet below Yucca Mountain.

The GAO report recommends that if Abraham decides to recommend Yucca, he provide a detailed rationale for "proceeding without additional technical information needed for a license application."

"Furthermore, we are making recommendations to DOE to better manage the nuclear waste program and to prepare estimates of the schedule and costs for opening the repository at Yucca Mountain that are tied to a new baseline for the program," the GAO said.

The report deals a blow to the Bush administration's accelerated plans to revive nuclear power in America, where nuclear plants have not been constructed since the 1970s, Nevada officials said.

Nuclear power industry lobbyists have long argued that the government had a legal obligation to begin hauling waste away from plants by 1998. Finding a permanent storage area for waste is key to the "renaissance" of nuclear power in America, nuclear officials say.

Nuclear officials disagree with the GAO report's assertion that there is not enough scientific data available to recommend the site, said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top lobby group.

"The NRC has said that there is enough information available, the DOE has said there is enough information, we say there is enough," Singer said.

"Nobody is going to say that this is going to be built tomorrow. But there is no sense in stopping the whole works."