Volcano research could delay dump

Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 | 9:45 a.m.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is waiting for the Energy Department's results from new studies on potential radiation released from a theoretical volcano erupting through the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

The research, however, could last until 2006.

An NRC volcanic expert said the studies could delay waste burial at the repository, which the Energy Department plans to open in 2010.

Eric Smistar, the Energy Department's expert on volcanos at Yucca Mountain, said that researchers plan to take detailed aerial photos by February of shadows first found in 1999 by Nye County and U.S. Geological Survey surveillance at Yucca Mountain.

"We are going to find out if it's a buried volcano and how close it is to the repository," Smistar said during the NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste's meeting in Las Vegas on Thursday.

If the shadows on the earlier flyover show buried volcanic cones, the studies for a potential eruption near Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, could expand to an area four times what was previously studied by the Energy Department.

Volcanic activity as young as 75,000 years is evident at Crater Flat near Yucca Mountain, Smistar said, and it is not unexpected. The new study will examine areas east and west of Yucca Mountain for the first time.

"Are they, indeed, volcanos? That is what we are trying to find out," Smistar said of the new research that is emerging after the first independent review of volcanic activity at Yucca Mountain.

If so, then as funding becomes available, the DOE plans to dig into the layers of volcanic deposits and date them, Smistar said.

NRC volcanic expert John Trapp, who attended the meeting at Texas Station from Washington, D.C. headquarters, said that the information gathered by consultants to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must license the repository site before it can be built, indicates higher levels of radiation released in a volcanic eruption than those predicted by the Energy Department.

"The trouble is, we don't know how much radiation could be released," Trapp said. He praised the Energy Department for committing to further studies.

The department is estimating that five buried containers of nuclear waste could rupture and spew radioactive particles along with volcanic ash from an eruption through the repository, but the radiation dose would be a fraction of 1 millirem. Millirems are a measure of radiation exposure to people. A typical chest X-ray exposes a person to a range of 5 millirems to 10 millirems of radiation.

However, Trapp said NRC consultants believe that 10 times the radiation exposure could occur during an eruption. "We just don't know," he said.

The Energy Department's study, however, will offer much more information than is available, Trapp said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission could take three or four years to complete its licensing review.

Potential volcanic activity at the repository site is a major issue between the NRC and the DOE.

"Don't expect to see nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in 2010 if the studies are not completed," Trapp said.

Frank Spera, a member of the Energy Department's review panel, said that there is no definite pattern to volcanic eruptions. While an eruption is highly unlikely, its consequences would be severe, he said.