Yucca director plans visit

Friday, April 19, 2002 | 10:09 a.m.

The new Energy Department director in charge of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is scheduled to visit with local officials in Las Vegas, a spokesman said.

Margaret Chu, sworn in as director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management on March 20, is planning to meet with officials from 10 affected county governments on May 2, said Allen Benson, a Yucca Mountain spokesman in Las Vegas.

Her schedule is not final and Benson said he did not know if she would visit Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the proposed national repository for 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

There are 10 counties considered directly affected by the department's plans to build and operate a repository at Yucca Mountain.

The affected counties include Nye County, where the mountain is located, Clark County, with the largest population in the state, and Inyo County, Calif., whose boundary is 17 miles west of Yucca Mountain.

Chu is responsible for advising Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and President Bush on issues surrounding the ongoing scientific research and possible licensing of the nation's first permanent high-level nuclear waste repository.

For more than 20 years Chu conducted research on nuclear waste management, nuclear reactors, energy policies, nuclear materials management, nuclear weapons non-proliferation issues and environmental remediation at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

From May 1995 until April 1998 Chu succeeded in certifying the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, a repository for plutonium from U.S. nuclear weapons operating since 1998 near Carlsbad, N.M.

Since 1998 she has led and managed 170 professional staff members on global nuclear waste management problems at the Nuclear Waste Management Programs Center at Sandia.