Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2003 | 11:17 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials are making a new push to warn congressional leaders that the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository could hurt training and endanger sensitive operations.
Air Force officials are arguing that plans to haul waste through the Nevada Test and Training Range, which is adjacent to the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain, are "untenable."
"The Air Force has consistently stated that we know of no route through the Nevada Test and Training Range that would avoid sensitive areas," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper and Air Force Secretary James Roche wrote in a Sept. 11 letter to various key lawmakers including House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.
The Air Force's argument could derail Energy Department plans for the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Yucca Mountain opponents say.
"This by itself can doom the facility," said Martin Malsch, a Washington attorney who represents Nevada in the state's lawsuits seeking to stop the project.
Hunter had requested the Air Force's view of the Energy Department's plan to store 77,000 ton of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, during a Aug. 16 visit to the Nellis Air Force base.
Mitch Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the agency has not seen the letter yet so he could not comment.
As well as arguing against moving waste through the range, the Air Force is arguing that the Yucca Mountain site could curtail operations out of Nellis Air Force Base because of its location.
In June, the Sun obtained a declassified Energy Department report completed a year earlier that said that airplanes pose a potential danger to both Yucca Mountain and the shipping routes to the mountain. But the report was not clear about how significant or likely that danger would be.
The Energy Department has said that potential plane crashes are not a realistic objection because the specific number of flights that travel over the site, although difficult to pin down, is limited.
But any overflight restrictions on aircraft flying in the training range would "negatively impact our readiness activities," the Air Force officials wrote.
Nellis training ranges are adjacent to Energy Department and Bureau of Land Management property. About 40,000 flights pass through the base's nearly 3 million-acre air range each year, including combat training exercises using live ammunition four times a year, according to some estimates.
The department, though, says there shouldn't be much of a threat because most of the waste would be stored underground, deep inside the volcanic ridge.
The Air Force leaders have encouraged lawmakers to get more information on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility's possible effects on the Air Force range.
Their arguments add another level of debate to Nevada's opposition to the project.
"It adds more fuel but also adds its own set of problems," Malsch said. "If DOE was thinking about reducing airplane crashes by making a deal with the Air Force, this is a sign that is not going to happen."
Malsch said the Air Force's position not only affects how the Energy Department will be able to select transportation routes, but also its ability to show that potential airplane crashes are not a threat.
To try to mitigate concerns about moving waste, House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Hobson, R-Ohio, has suggested the department use a route north of Las Vegas that would run through Lincoln County. He suggested that a line be included in the House energy and water spending bill that shipments of spent fuel should not go through "the environs of metropolitan" Las Vegas.
But even that proposed route, which runs north of Las Vegas through Lincoln County, would affect the range, the Air Force officials wrote.
The Air Force position "is yet another example of how the Yucca Mountain plan is critically flawed at every level," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev, who is one of the senators working out differences between the House and Senate spending bills.
Malsch said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that will ultimately decide to license the facility, has sent the department "back to the drawing board" with its preliminary work on the issue.
He added that its does not take a lot of flights over the mountain by military planes to reach the probability limits set in the commission rules.
Malsch said the possibility of an airplane crash is one of the "key technical issues" the department working to answers.
"I can't believe they can push it off now," Malsch said.
The "key technical issues" are unresolved scientific and technical question the commission wants the Energy Department to answer.
"The Air Force is as concerned as everyone else about the dangers of transporting nuclear waste," Reid said. "Tens of thousands of shipments of nuclear waste will pass through areas where jet fighters are flying, and it certainly isn't rocket science to figure out the dangers posed by that scenario."
The Air Force officials wrote that all the military branches and other agencies use the training range for test flight and "mission-critical systems evaluations," including 75 percent of all Air Force live munitions.
The range allows large-scale operation training, which was a "critical resource" for Operation Iraqi Freedom, Jumper and Roche wrote.
They encouraged Hunter to get a briefing from the Air Force Ranges and Airspace Associate Directorate and the Air Force Test and Evaluation Office to explain why waste transportation routes and overflight restrictions are "untenable."
A committee spokeswoman said it is "more or less a readiness issue" and that Hunter wants to make sure people are still able to train. She did not know when the meetings would be but added that they could be classified since they would discuss sensitive information.
Hunter voted in favor of allowing the Energy Department to move forward with the Yucca project last year.
Potential plane crashes have stalled efforts for Private Fuel Storage, an interim nuclear waste storage site slated for Utah's Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has rejected its license application based on safety concerns for the the Utah Test and Training Air Force range.
The board has said the company failed to adequately demonstrate that there was not a significant risk of an F-16 crash into the storage facility.
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