Panel: Data back Yucca concerns

Scott Sonner

Friday, Feb. 20, 2004 | 11:41 a.m.

RENO -- New data the past year substantiate decade-old concerns an independent U.S. panel of scientists has raised about potential leaks at a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, the board's top administrator said Thursday.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board documented the new evidence of potential dangers in a report to the Energy Department in November and is still waiting for DOE's formal response, said William Barnard, the board's executive director.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is planned to begin receiving waste in 2010. About 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at commercial and military sites in 39 states would be stored in metal canisters underground in tunnels.

Barnard's comments come in support of criticism leveled Wednesday by Paul Craig, a University of California-Davis scientist who said he quit the panel last month so he could speak more freely about problems with DOE's design for Yucca Mountain, especially the potential for high-temperature waste to corrode steel waste canisters.

"The board always has had concerns about the uncertainty at these high temperatures and now that the data is coming it, it looks like there is a problem," Barnard told the Associated Press.

"Those concerns date all the way back to the early 1990s," Barnard said.

In the past year data have been gathered indicating a good possibility of corrosion on most of the canisters during the first 2,000 or 3,000 years of the repository's life "where temperatures are up in the 160 to 180 degree Centigrade range," he said.

Craig told the AP on Wednesday that the November report "says in ordinary English that under the conditions proposed by the Department of Energy, the canisters will leak."

The Energy Department is still preparing a response to the board's report in November. DOE spokesman Allen Benson said from Las Vegas on Wednesday that the agency stands by its design but had no further comment.

David Cherry, spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said this is not surprising since every time a question about the project is asked, be it this corrosion issue or the more than 200 remaining scientific questions on the project, the Energy Department is not concerned with gathering more data.

"I don't see them producing any evidence that has been helping their case," Cherry said.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said he could not think of a reason the department would need to wait four months to meet with the board or at least respond to their concerns.

"How long have you been studying this site?" he said. "If they were as together as they advertise themselves to be, they would have sat down with the board -- they next day and talked with them about this."

Margaret Chu, director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said in a letter to the board on Dec. 17 she was concerned about the board's conclusions.

"Our analyses do not suggest such results and I do not believe that the data presented in the board's report support such strongly stated conclusions," she said.

Barnard said from board headquarters in Arlington, Va., that Craig is raising "valid concerns."

"How you interpret those, the information and what it means for the overall program, is the Department of Energy's decision. The board is waiting for a response," he said.

Craig, who was appointed to the board by President Clinton in 1997, "no longer speaks for the board," but remains a respected scientist with a record of accurately portraying the board's work, Barnard said.

"He may be on a mission, but he certainly is not a disgruntled board member," Barnard said.

Industry leaders said there's still much disagreement over whether the design must be altered.

"The board's view, among the scientific community, is a minority," said Rod McCullum, senior project manager for waste management at the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C.

The institute has no position on Yucca Mountain's design but does not believe the licensing application should be delayed regardless of whether corrosion concerns prompt revisions, he said Thursday.

"Even if the board is correct about this corrosion mechanism, the answer would not be that the repository would have to be delayed. If a concern comes up in the licensing process, it gets modified," he said.

Sun reporter Suzanne Struglinski contributed to this story.