Yucca Mountain impact study to be released

Friday, Nov. 30, 2001 | 9:56 a.m.

Clark County officials on Saturday plan to reveal preliminary results of a study estimating the social, economic and political ramifications should a nuclear waste repository be built at Yucca Mountain.

The study will be presented during a public meeting, which begins at 10 a.m. Saturday at the County Government Center, 500 Grand Central Parkway.

County Commissioner Myrna Williams, who opposes the repository and serves on the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects Commission, said the three-year study was compiled by county agencies and outside consultants. Williams and Commission Chairman Dario Herrera plan to attend Saturday's public meeting.

Based on its study, the county recommends that the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, should be disqualified from consideration as the nation's nuclear waste repository, Irene Navis, director of the county's Nuclear Waste Division, said.

"Absent a final repository design and the issuance of a final EIS (environmental impact statement), it is impossible to identify the full range of impacts," Navis said.

For example, the county studied the potential impact on the local area from an accident that does not release radioactive material. At the other extreme, the study examines a worst-case scenario, wherein a large amount of radiation is released.

The study concludes that if nuclear waste is trucked to Yucca Mountain after 2010 without incident, more than 11,000 Clark County residents will move from Las Vegas and stop spending and estimated $182 million per year. The study bases its results on the "stigma" of living near a nuclear repository and a resulting decline in the area's attractiveness.

If an accident occurs that allows radiation to leak from a shipping container, more than 90,000 people will leave Las Vegas and stop spending $1.4 billion over 30 years as waste is shipped, the impact study says. A severe accident could involve a collision with a concrete bridge or a nuclear waste container rupturing during a long-burning fire resulting from the crash.

"Of interest to note is, that over this last decade the population within Clark County has never declined and in fact has grown an average of 6.2 percent per year," the study says.

The study is still under way, and is being directed by Keith Schwer and his staff at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Business and Economic Research. The people leaving Las Vegas include those who lose their jobs as a result of the bad publicity from the radioactive accident and subsequent drop in tourism.

In a single year of repository operation without a transportation accident, 5,393 jobs, most related to gaming, will be lost along with employee incomes of about $282 million, the study concludes. If radiation is released during an accident, more than 54,000 people will lose their jobs and $776 million of income will be lost because of the drop in tourism, the study says.

"The greatest job loss is equivalent to closing 30 Las Vegas resorts," Williams said.

The county's impacts will be included in a final report being prepared by the state for the Department of Energy, manager of the nuclear waste repository project.

"Unlike most accidents that cause disruptions to our everyday lives, a nuclear release will most likely result in this disruption continuing for a much longer period than other hazardous incidents or events," the study says. "The only, somewhat analogous case study to this type of accident would be the Chernobyl incident."

A nuclear reactor in the town of Chernobyl, Ukraine, melted down during an accident in April 1986, and former Soviet Union officials failed to notify area residents.