Study says politics override science in review of Yucca

H. Josef Hebert

Thursday, April 25, 2002 | 11:12 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A decision on Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste dump should be postponed until more is known about its geology and how man-made barriers will perform over thousands of years, an independent study of the proposed site says.

"A project of this importance ... should not go forward until the relevant scientific issues have been thoughtfully addressed," two researchers argue in an article to be published Friday in Science magazine.

The study maintains that politics has overtaken science as the Bush administration has approved the Nevada site for the storage of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste without, they argue, a final decision on its design, nor certainty as to the long-term performance of the mountain or the devices being used to contain the waste.

"In the face of the scientific uncertainties about the site there is a surprising sense of urgency to move forward," wrote Rodney Ewing, a geologist at the University of Michigan, and Allison Macfarlane, director of the Yucca Mountain Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

When President Bush announced in February he would go ahead with the waste site, he called the decision a "culmination of two decades of intense scientific scrutiny." His energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, has said repeatedly he is convinced the science shows the waste can be stored at Yucca Mountain safely.

Nevada, invoking a provision of a federal nuclear waste law, has blocked Bush's decision. But Congress will vote later this year on whether to override the Nevada objection.

Both Ewing and Macfarlane in interviews described themselves as generally pro-nuclear and said they would support the Yucca Mountain site for waste storage if it is shown to be suitable scientifically for holding material that will remain highly radioactive for more than 10,000 years.

But they wrote that under pressure from the nuclear industry, politics has become the primary driver of the decision and the science "continues to be only a marginal consideration."

"The present sense of urgency is driven not by an understanding of the properties of the Yucca Mountain site, but rather by larger scale policy decisions concerning nuclear power and national security," they wrote.

They maintained in the interviews that wastes for the short term could remain at reactor sites in 31 states without posing safety risks. Even if Yucca Mountain were opened, thousands of tons would still be at reactors awaiting shipment, noted Ewing.

Today there is about 40,000 tons of used reactor fuel kept at commercial power plants in 31 states, with the amount growing by 2,000 tons a year.

Macfarlane, who along with Ewing, is editing a book of articles by scientists on various technical issues involving Yucca Mountain, said she decided to weigh in on the issue now because in the debate in Congress lawmakers appear that "they don't care about the science."

"Some of the important issues haven't been addressed," said Ewing, a member of the American Nuclear Society. The society, whose members are nuclear professionals, is on record supporting the Yucca Mountain site, concluding that its features will protect public health and safety.

But Macfarlane and Ewing said that in the past eight months three government agencies have raised serious questions about the scientific review of Yucca Mountain. Among them were a nuclear waste advisory panel that concluded the technical basis for approving the site was "weak to moderate" and another advisory group that questioned the reliability of computer models in evaluating risks posed by the long-term waste storage at the Yucca site.

"The current understanding of the performance of the engineered barriers and the geological processes of the mountain falls far short of that required to make a substantive evaluation of the safety of the repository," they wrote in Science.

"With further study," they concluded, "Yucca Mountain may be judged to be an adequate site for the disposal of nuclear waste (but) ... to move ahead without first addressing the outstanding scientific issues will only continue to marginalize the role of science."