Yucca looks to future technology

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, May 14, 2003 | 11:41 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A new Yucca Mountain program is up and running in its first year with a goal of developing futuristic new technologies that could revolutionize the nuclear waste repository.

The fledgling Science and Technology program aims to spur research that leads to unforeseen advances in materials science, robotics, tunnel engineering and waste transportation, said Robert Budnitz, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist serving as the new program's start-up manager.

"We're really looking for out-of-the-box ideas," Budnitz said.

Budnitz made a presentation about the new program to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board during the second day of a regular meeting in Washington. Congress appointed the panel to watchdog the Yucca project science.

The Energy Department has been studying Yucca Mountain for nearly 20 years and last year deemed the site the safest place to permanently bury the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste. The department is now preparing an application for a license to construct the first-of-its-kind project based on current science and technologies.

But Budnitz said Yucca managers must "take a long view" into the future in order to develop new and better methods to transport, handle and store waste in the decades to come. New technologies could be applied at Yucca before the repository even opens, he said. The repository is scheduled to open by 2010 at the earliest and would close after roughly 50 years.

The new program was launched this year with $1.7 million, but Energy Department officials have asked Congress for $25 million to launch new high-tech projects in next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Budnitz plans to collect research proposals from corporations, universities and laboratories by this fall.

Meanwhile scientific studies of how effectively Yucca would isolate waste from the environment are ongoing, Yucca science manager Mark Peters told the board today.

The Energy Department wrapped many of its studies before it declared the site suitable last year. But some studies are ongoing and will continue for years.

Nevada officials have criticized the department for not knowing enough about Yucca before deeming it safe, and for department plans to obtain a Yucca license while scientific studies are ongoing.

But department officials say they know enough to apply for a license and they say it is prudent to continue to analyze how heat, water and rock interact at Yucca.

Peters outlined 11 of the studies, which include:

Energy Department officials on Tuesday told the board that the waste containers are not likely to corrode in the Yucca tunnels because the tunnel rock will be so hot it will blast away moisture for at least 1,000 years.

The issues of container corrosion and possible radiation leaks are key to obtaining approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Department laboratory officials provided detailed arguments against the likelihood of container corrosion.

Bo Bodvarsson, director of earth sciences for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said that the tiny amount of water that eventually could seep down into the mountain and into the tunnels would be driven away by heat. That's because the Energy Department is embracing a "hot" repository design. The hot design calls for the heat-emitting waste casks to be placed just inches apart, causing higher temperatures in the tunnel.

Peters said that even if the "seepage" water entered the tunnels, it would be "benign" to waste containers. He said the chemical makeup of the kinds of moisture in the Yucca tunnels that could corrode the casks is rare and found in small quantities. Peters also said the dust or salts that could accumulate on the casks would not initiate corrosion.

Joe Farmer, a senior scientist for Yucca contractor Bechtel SAIC, said studies had proven that samples of Alloy 22, the metal that likely would be used to fabricate the waste containers, have not corroded in test after test in which the Yucca environment was simulated.