Nuke waste security to be studied

Suzanne Struglinski

Thursday, Dec. 4, 2003 | 9:04 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Security risks associated with nuclear waste storage pools and containers at nuclear power plants will be part of a new $1 million study by the National Academy of Sciences, officials said Wednesday.

Congress included the study in the energy and water spending bill signed by President Bush on Monday. The academy will coordinate a 10-member panel to complete a classified report in the next six months, study director Kevin Crowley said at a meeting of the academy's board on radioactive waste management in Washington. An unclassified version of their findings will be available about six months later, Crowley said.

The country's 103 nuclear power plants all have varying levels of spent fuel stored onsite, waiting to be moved to the final federal storage site now planned for Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, more attention has been called to potential security threats on the power plants and storage pools since Yucca, if approved, is not set to open until 2010.

The Energy Department intends to submit its license applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the site by December 2004.

NEI, the commission, the General Accounting Office and other groups on Wednesday presented findings on nuclear waste storage security from previous reports.

"We believe spent fuel is safe and secure where it is now, but you can't argue it won't be more safe and secure in the middle of the desert, 1,000 feet underground," Steve Kraft, NEI's director of waste management, said.

The Energy Department, which wants to move the nuclear waste to Yucca, has long used the argument that moving it to Nevada will reduce the threat of having waste stored all over the country. However, critics, including the state, say shipping the waste to Yucca could create even more security problems.

The new study will not include any security analysis of Yucca Mountain.

Jon MacLaren, Homeland Security Department director of physical infrastructure, said there are no plans to evaluate security of the proposed Yucca facility.

He added that the department and the commission have jurisdiction on the Yucca project so it would be up to them first to initiate a security study.

Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., head of the House appropriations homeland security subcommittee, and Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, head of the House appropriations energy and water subcommittee, included the $1 million study in the final version of the energy spending bill.

Jeanne Wilson, a staff assistant for Rogers' subcommittee, told the panel that the chairman is interested in learning more about the benefits of putting waste into dual-use casks, or canisters that can store waste on site and then eventually be moved to Yucca if it opens.

She said he wanted to study to be complete in six months so its results could be considered during the 2005 fiscal year appropriations process that will begin in February.