‘Catastrophic’ radiation could be released if canisters fail

Monday, July 8, 2002 | 9:39 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- New research suggests that "catastrophic" amounts of radioactivity could be released into the atmosphere at Yucca Mountain due to a failure of the canisters that would be holding high level nuclear waste there.

State Solicitor General Tony Clark says the scientific study will be used to persuade members of the Senate to vote against Yucca Mountain, in the legal fights in federal courts and in hearings before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must license the repository.

The Senate is expected to vote this month on the plan to send the nation's nuclear waste to a repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Clark, of the state Attorney General's Office, said the two-year 688-page report is "another prong in the attack" to stop the project.

State Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa contracted with a company called TRAC Corp., headed by Dr. Charles Archambeau, an environmental expert, to conduct the research on Yucca Mountain.

The researchers say that an earthquake could occur at Yucca Mountain, sending large quantities of hot underground water up through fractures in the mountain and into the tunnels where the casks of nuclear waste will be stored.

This would lead to "the rapid deterioration of the integrity of all engineered barriers," such as metal being used to protect the canisters from damage.

"The releases of radioactivity, directly into the atmosphere, could be very large, potentially attaining catastrophic proportions," the scientists said.

In dispute is whether minerals found at the site were due to rainfall or from the "upwelling" of the water deep within Yucca Mountain.

Archambeau said the Energy Department and President Bush made their decisions on findings assuming that rainfall was responsible.

The present study, he said, provides evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt that the deposits were deposited by episodes of upwelling water which began millions of years ago and have continued essentially to the present."

Joining in the report were Jerry Szymanski, a former scientist for the Energy Department; Dr. Tim Harper from England; and Drs. Yuri Dublyansky Sergey Smirnov, Sergey Pashenko and G.P. Palyanova, all from Russia.

Research completed by UNLV geologist Jean Cline in November 2000 backed the Energy Department's assumption that the evidence of geothermal water at the proposed site was 2 million to 5 million years old.