Nevadans urge analysis of federal Yucca plan

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 | 10:47 a.m.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- A federal plan designed to make sure the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, if approved, is working according to plan should have independent comprehensive analysis, Nevada representatives told the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste this morning.

Les Bradshaw, manager of the Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities for Nye County, told the panel that the performance confirmation plan will determine if the site will actually protect health and human safety in Nye County, as the Energy Depeartment implies.

The committee, an independent body that advises the five-member commission on nuclear issues, meets at the commission headquarters through Thursday.

When it comes to safety issues surrounding Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nye County "is more interested than anyone in the country" since site is in Nye County, he said.

Bradshaw recommended the DOE include information the county has compiled in the performance confirmation process, as well as assess other data that would be used.

"People won't believe what government agents say out of hand," he said.

Nye County currently collects and analyzes ground water samples and water levels from a network of monitoring wells placed near Yucca Mountain. That information is shared with DOE and the state.

Bradshaw reminded the panel that Nye County welcomes the site and that "it should be a first-class and world-class operation."

Meanhwhile, Steve Frishman, Nevada Nuclear Waste Project office technical policy coordinator, who opposes the site, pointed out that performance confirmation should not be a catch-all for every unanswered question about Yucca Mountain. The process has a clear regulatory and legal intent, he said.

"It shouldn't be a bucket for everything that's undone," he said.

On Tuesday Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials outlined progress on performance confirmation, or the final checklist of tests, experiments and analyses the department will use to see if the storage site lives up to its safety and scientific expectations as it is being filled.

Before a license can be issued to open a nuke waste dump at Yucca Mountain, a plan for testing the dump's safety before it is closed is required. NRC guidelines show the process continuing for at least 50 years after the first shipment of spent fuel arrives, and the department has said it will continue the process, even after the respository is closed.

The DOE described performance confirmation as "the most important monitoring activity" at Yucca Mountain in a report released in February 2002.

The DOE plans to send the final confirmation plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the license application, now scheduled to be submitted in December 2004. If the license is approved, the deparmtent expects to accept the first waste shipments of 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel by 2010.

The plan has already been drafted, and the department may finish a revision next month and issue the third revision next March, Deborah Barr, of the department's repository development office, said Tuesday.

The third version will define the activities, establish their baselines, identify test plans and define the reporting process, among other items.

James Blink, of Yucca contractor Bechtel SAIC, said the plan will address several areas, including igneous activity, seismic activity, waste packages and the surface.

Right now the department has not deemed any of the information it has gathered so far as performance confirmation work, but information compiled now for other areas will "flow" into the process, Barr said.

That raises Frishman's, and the state's, greatest concerns, he said -- that new data will not be collected. Frishman also questioned why some of the performance confirmation tests and data collection were not done before the site was approved.