State is geared for years of opposition

Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2002 | 10:55 a.m.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommends Yucca Mountain as a suitable nuclear waste repository to President Bush.

If Bush approves the site:

Gov. Kenny Guinn or the Nevada Legislature vetoes the president's decision.

Congress has 90 days to override Nevada's objection. Both the House and the Senate must act by majority vote.

The DOE, if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves the Yucca Mountain site, begins construction.

Up to 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste begins arriving at Yucca Mountain and shipments will continue for 30 to 50 years.

The U.S. government seals Yucca Mountain. A specific date for closing the repository has not been determined.

Sources: Department of Energy, Nuclear Energy Institute.

Despite the urgent concerns of Nevada politicians over Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's decision last week to back a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, it will be years -- if not decades -- before any radioactive waste could be sent to the site.

The time frame for the site is mired in, and will likely be delayed by, a series of complex regulatory and logistical issues. As well, there's a contentious political debate brewing in which Nevada officials plan to use every resource available to block the project.

Gov. Kenny Guinn intends to take advantage of every day between now and the opening of a repository if, that is, one is actually built, he said.

"We will fight this with every ounce of energy, from the Oval Office to regulatory agencies," the governor said. "It's outrageous that politics overrode sound science."

State officials stepped up that fight last week, after Abraham told Guinn that he would recommend Yucca Mountain to President Bush as the world's first high-level nuclear waste dump.

Now they are putting into action a strategy that includes legal hurdles and legislative maneuvers to throw every obstacle in the way of the Energy Department's nuclear waste disposal plan.

They hope the extra time will allow the development of a new solution to deal with the tons of radioactive waste building up at nuclear power plants nationwide.

Bush can't accept Abraham's recommendation until Feb. 10, at the earliest. He has no deadline for approving it, but if he does, Guinn will have 60 days to a lodge a veto, which he has promised to do.

The governor's veto stands unless both houses of Congress override it with a simple majority vote.

The Republican-led House is likely to give the majority vote needed, but in the Senate, Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Majority Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev., have vowed to kill the project. They have admitted that they may not have the votes, but at the very least, they can slow it down.

"We're checking into all the parliamentary options," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said in a bipartisan display of support regarding the repository battle.

Beyond that, the project has to clear some hurdles of its own.

A General Accounting Office report acknowledges that if everything goes according to plan at Yucca Mountain, a repository would not open before 2015. The Energy Department missed its original deadline of accepting the nation's waste in 1998 and had planned to open Yucca by 2010.

The congressional investigation noted that 293 technical issues -- ranging from how fast water flows in the mountain to possible volcanic eruptions -- remain unresolved. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has to approve a license if a plan for a repository is to proceed.

In addition, the Energy Department would have to build a rail spur to Yucca Mountain. There are no railroad tracks to the site, and the department has yet to designate highway routes for trucks delivering waste.

If the repository is approved by Congress, Nevada's strategy calls for court challenges, which could include a U.S. Supreme Court hearing if the issue proceeds through the legal system.

That strategy is bolstered by a defense fund seeded by $4 million from the 2001 Legislature and fed by local governments including Clark County, Las Vegas and Fallon.

In September the state spent $2.5 million to sign Egan & Associates of Washington to a three-year contract to help the attorney general's office fight the repository. Lead attorney Joe Egan was trained as a nuclear engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At least five future lawsuits are being reviewed by the attorney general's office, according to Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency. They include:

"We're going to have to examine the letter (from Abraham) and have the lawyers look at it before we decide what to do about the 30-day notice," Loux said.

The state has already initiated a number of legal challenges:

The payoff of the delaying tactic for the state could be great if scientific research on an alternative solution progresses.

Congress appropriated $50 million this year for research into a process that may be able to transform highly radioactive waste into less harmful material. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, received $4.5 million as its share, which helps support accelerator research by 40 students in physics, engineering and chemistry.

Such a process, if it is perfected, would not eliminate the need for a repository, but it would make the waste less dangerous, and it could produce energy as a byproduct.

"A high-level radioactive waste repository may only need to be engineered for 300 years, if transmutation and reuse were instituted," nuclear engineer Anthony Hechanova of the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Research said. The current repository must keep the waste safe for 10,000 years.

"It shouldn't be buried. It's too valuable," Hechanova said.