State says Yucca shields too costly

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, May 25, 2004 | 8:55 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The state wants the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ignore the Energy Department's plan to install drip shields over nuclear waste storage containers inside Yucca Mountain.

The proposed shields will cost billions of dollar and may not actually get installed, Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, wrote in a letter to the commission last week.

"It is Nevada's position, one it will take in any NRC hearing on DOE's (the Energy Department) license application, that the planned duration between waste placement and repository closure is so long that whether or not the successors to DOE will ever install the drip shields before closure is a matter of sheer speculation," Loux said in a letter to NRC Chairman Nils Diaz. "The NRC cannot reasonably place any reliance on this happening in any licensing proceeding on the adequacy of public protection."

The department plans on submitting its license application for the nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to the commission by the end of the year.

The license application is expected to include a plan to use titanium drip shields over the containers storing the waste as a barrier against water corroding the casks. The department plans on installing these during the 'closure phase" of the site, which could take place up from 100 to 300 years from now.

"When we talk in terms of centuries, any license conditions the current NRC imposes on the current DOE will be totally unenforceable and it would be a sham to pretend otherwise," Loux wrote.