Nevada officials push for full-scale tests of nuke-waste casks

Wednesday, March 12, 2003 | 9:24 a.m.

Nevada government and environmental representatives have long urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ensure that any cask used to ship high-level nuclear waste to Nevada is able to withstand the most severe accidents.

They planned to make that case again today at a daylong workshop the NRC was scheduled to conduct at the Clark County Russell/Cameron Office Building at 4701 W. Russell Road.

Robert Halstead, transportation advisor to Nevada's Nuclear Waste Project Office, told the Las Vegas Sun editorial board Tuesday that the state is not convinced that planned NRC tests will be adequate to ensure the safety of Nevadans.

Part of the problem, Halstead said, is that the federal agency does not fully simulate casks when they undergo certification. Up to now, the tests have involved half-scale or smaller models and the range of testing also has been inadequate, he said.

"The shipping casks currently in use have never been tested full-scale," Halstead said. "Most have not even been tested as scale models."

The NRC plans to use the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico to test potential casks that would be used to transport nuclear waste from around the nation to Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But Halstead said the NRC is planning only limited testing and computer simulation and not the more detailed testing demanded by representatives of the state, Clark County and environmental advocates such as Citizen Alert and the Shundahai Network.

Halstead said he would like to see the NRC drop full-sized casks onto unyielding surfaces and steel spikes to simulate impact accidents, subject them to extreme heat, submerge them in water to check for leaks and have them go through pressure tests. That's because even small amounts of radioactive seepage into the atmosphere is enough to contaminate a large area, he said.

"The NRC would like to create the illusion that the casks are invincible," Halstead said. "Nevada believes that full-scale testing is necessary to determine whether the casks are safe."

He also said the federal agency must develop a way to ensure that the casks proposed for Yucca Mountain shipments meet stringent quality control standards in the way they are constructed.

"The casks for Yucca Mountain have never been built," Halstead said. "They're bigger than the casks they have now and will use different material."

The NRC has said that the proposed tests, which are expected to occur in 2005, are still in draft form and subject to change. The agency has proposed dropping the casks from a height that simulates a 75 miles-per-hour crash into an unyielding surface and performing a fire test for more than 30 minutes.

The agency has also said that the casks must be leak-proof. But the agency's draft plan involves only one design each for casks to be used on trucks and trains.

Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., argued in a joint release issued Tuesday that the proposed tests will not go far enough to determine when and how the spent fuel casks will fail.

"It is grossly irresponsible to conduct tests that are less than full-scale when you're dealing with material that poses such an enormous safety risk to the people of Nevada and across the country," Ensign said. "These tests are designed to create a false impression about the supposed safety of these containers, and we find it unacceptable."

Reid said that because the casks are designed to carry "extremely dangerous" material, "We need to test them thoroughly and understand the results completely. The weak, inadequate tests suggested by the NRC are completely unacceptable."

Joining Halstead and NRC officials at today's workshop were to be representatives of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, Citizen Alert, Shundahai Network, Moapa Paiute Tribe, Western Shoshone National Council, Las Vegas Office of Business Development, Clark, Nye, Lander, White Pine and Lincoln counties and the states of Utah and New Mexico.