Technical panel, DOE officials spar at Yucca Mountain hearing

Friday, Feb. 1, 2002 | 12:58 p.m.

LAS VEGAS - A technical oversight panel and Energy Department officials sparred at a hearing about whether federal scientists know enough about the risks of burying the nation's radioactive waste in the Nevada desert.

Members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board focused on gaps in federal scientists' knowledge about Yucca Mountain, a volcanic rock ridge that would contain the proposed nuclear waste repository.

Lake Barrett, the Energy's Department's acting chief for civilian radioactive waste management, said the repository design could be flexible to adopt emerging technology.

He said the technical work is not finished, but that the project is scientifically sound.

Jared Cohon, panel chairman and president of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, focused part of Wednesday's hearing in Pahrump on how the Energy Department is presenting data.

He pointed to graphs and charts about whether metal casks containing spent nuclear fuel could corrode and whether molten rock could reach stored waste and spread radioactivity into the environment.

"Presenting it this way does not inform decision-makers about the risk. It obscures the risk," Cohon told William Boyle, a senior Yucca Mountain policy adviser.

Cohon said the technical oversight board has for years asked the Energy Department to release information that could be interpreted by the general public.

Boyle, of the Yucca Mountain project's Office of Licensing and Regulatory Compliance, said chances are remote that such worst-case scenarios could happen.

Even if they did, Boyle said, the repository still might comply with regulatory standards.

Federal Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Jan. 10 gave Nevada 30 days' notice that he will recommend to President Bush that Yucca Mountain is a suitable place to bury the nation's nuclear waste.

The site - at the edge of the vast federal Nevada Test Site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas - is the only place under study.

If built, the repository would entomb 77,000 tons of spent commercial, industrial and military nuclear waste for 10,000-plus years.

The Energy Department wants to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license in 2004 and begin accepting waste in 2010.

William Reamer, deputy director for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's division of nuclear waste management, said the NRC will not let the Energy Department begin building Yucca Mountain until it answers questions about water flow through the mountain and how heat from radioactive waste might affect surrounding rock.

The technical oversight board was created by Congress in 1987 to review the scientific work in the Yucca Mountain project and report to the Energy Secretary and Congress.

In a report released last week, it criticized the Energy Department scientific work at Yucca Mountain as "weak to moderate."

"We believe uncertainty can be decreased through further research," Cohon told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday.

Panel member Alberto Sagues, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of South Florida, said he is concerned about projections of waste container corrosion over hundreds or thousands of years.

"This is a concern we have over and over and over," Sagues said.

Panel members have suggested project scientists refine their calculations about heat from decaying radioactive materials accelerating corrosion of canisters inside storage tunnels.

The Energy Department is still undecided whether to create a "hot" repository with decaying waste packed tightly but warming tunnels to high temperatures, or a "cold" repository with waste more spread out.

The "cold" option would cost more - requiring more tunnels to be drilled in the repository grid pattern 1,000 feet below the surface.

The project is estimated to cost $58 billion over 17 years.

Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal