Feds work feverishly on Yucca project

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, July 30, 2002 | 11:02 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department plans to "jump start" plans for transporting high-level nuclear waste to Nevada in order to open Yucca Mountain by 2010, the project's top administrator said today.

Now that Congress has approved Yucca Mountain, the department is working feverishly to keep its ambitious plans to obtain a construction license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by 2007, Yucca chief Margaret Chu told a National Academy of Sciences panel.

Chu outlined an "extremely tight" schedule that would allow the project to open by its 2010 target date for completion.

Chu's plans include playing "catch up" in an effort to prepare for a massive waste-shipping campaign, she said. The department must identify the exact routes to be used, prepare state and local emergency response teams and construct a $900 million rail line to Yucca in Nevada within eight years, Chu said.

Chu said the department soon will formally state a preference for shipping most of the waste by rail, as opposed to trucks, because it would involve far fewer shipments. Chu also said the department plans to construct the rail line in Nevada "as soon as possible," over Nevada's objections.

Chu said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham next year would unveil a "National Transportation Plan" that will spur a national discussion about specific waste routes and emergency planning.

Chu remains optimistic, despite critics who say the department will never meet its 2010 project deadline. The plan hinges on the department using a "modular" approach to constructing the dump in which the department begins shipping waste to Yucca before construction of the repository is complete. Waste would be stored on the surface and moved into the tunnels in "phases" as construction was completed.

"Instead of building a whole house at one time, we build part of the house in order to begin receiving waste," Chu told the National Academy's Board on Radioactive Waste Management, which meets periodically to study waste issues, but which has no direct oversight over Yucca.

For the first time, Chu publicly offered more detail on the phases, saying the department plans to ship 400 metric tons of waste to Yucca in 2010; 600 metric tons in 2011; and 1,200 metric tons in 2012.

If construction begins in 2007, its unlikely the whole repository, which would hold 70,000 metric tons of waste, would be complete by 2010, many observers say.

"It's very little time to build a whole repository if we are going to keep the 2010 date," Chu said.

The department is undergoing a "cultural sea change" as it shifts its focus from two decades of scientific research at the site, to a licensing phase, Chu said. The department plans to apply for a construction license by 2004, and it could take the NRC three to four years to approve it.

In other comments, Chu said she hopes to reduce the project's projected $56 to $58 billion budget, but offered few specifics besides re-evaluating the need for expensive, tent-like titanium "drip shields" designed to prevent water from corroding metal waste containers.

Meanwhile the state of Nevada plans to vigorously pursue a five lawsuits it has filed designed to kill the project, Steve Frishman, technical policy coordinator for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, told the Academy panel.

The suits have been filed against the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Among the state's top objections is that the Energy Department plans to rely too heavily on the metal waste containers, rather than Yucca's natural geology, to isolate waste from the environment. The law calls for a geologic repository, Frishman said.

"There are laws out there and agencies don't have the right to change the law," Frishman said.

Judy Treichel, a long-time anti-Yucca activist from Nevada, told the panel, "The real focus (of the Energy Department) has been to make that site work. If the rules had to change, they were changed."