Editorial: More Yucca bombshells raise alarm

Friday, May 30, 2003 | 5:28 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: June 1, 2003

A U.S. Senate hearing last week in Las Vegas, co-chaired by Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., only intensified fears over the construction taking place at Yucca Mountain. Among the witnesses were experts from the General Accounting Office, which is the investigative arm of Congress, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their testimony was chilling. Just as chilling was the absence of two witnesses, Yucca employees who had separately raised quality-assurance alarms with their supervisors. Each had claimed their actions were greeted with disciplinary retaliation. A main reason for the hearing was to get their stories on record and allow the senators to ask them questions. But neither attended, inviting an accusation from Reid that the two were being muzzled by the Energy Department, the site's primary contractor.

Congress has selected the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the burial site for at least 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste from the nation's commercial reactors. A worst-case scenario for Yucca is that the Energy Department and its subcontractors will gloss over recommended precautions and take shortcuts during its construction. The environmental damage, which would include contaminated air and groundwater, cannot be overestimated in that scenario. In our view even a best-case scenario, where all of the known science would be applied and workmanship would be top-notch, still carries too much risk for the project to be viable.

Unfortunately, work continues with the blessings of Congress and President Bush. Given the deadliness of nuclear waste, and the mountain's proximity to Las Vegas -- the country's fastest-growing area -- at a bare minimum the project should be proceeding with the utmost caution and with the ultimate attention to quality control. Last week's hearing offered evidence to the contrary.

Robin Nazzaro, the GAO's director of Natural Resources and Environment, testified that the Energy Department has been unsuccessful in addressing "recurring quality assurance problems." She said new problems have been identified since the Energy Department issued an improvement plan last year. She cited criticisms of the quality of work at Yucca that have been expressed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency charged with determining if Yucca Mountain should be licensed. She said the Energy Department has developed strategies to resolve only 77 of the 293 key technical issues that must be resolved in the construction process. "As we see these recurring problems (the Energy Department) doesn't seem to be able to correct them," Nazzaro testified.

Also testifying were Allison Macfarlane, senior research associate with MIT's Security Studies Program, and William Belke, a retired NRC official who served on-site at Yucca. Macfarlane criticized the Energy Department for not allowing its scientific studies of Yucca to be reviewed by scientists outside of the department. In fact, she testified, the Energy Department is pressuring outside scientists to not challenge its Yucca findings. Many scientists, she said, fear retaliation if they do. She cited the effects of water seeping onto the waste's burial casks as one critical area that has not been properly analyzed either by the Energy Department or by independent scientists. She said the changing temperature inside Yucca Mountain and the radiation could cause groundwater to hasten the casks' corrosion rate. Belke confirmed that Yucca employees, such as the two who stayed away from the hearing, indeed face official retaliation.

On Thursday, a day after the hearing, Margaret Chu, the Energy Department's national nuclear waste director, announced a plan to improve the environment for employees and to do a better job of ensuring quality work. After all that came out in just a rather small hearing, her plan is hardly comforting. It certainly should not dissuade the Senate from holding a larger, much more formal hearing. We think the nation should hear what we heard.