Proponents cite missing waste as need for Yucca

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Oct. 7, 2004 | 11:26 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Highly radioactive waste is missing at a closed California nuclear power plant, and critics and proponents of Yucca Mountain each say the issue bolsters their positions regarding the nuclear waste dump.

The missing waste signals a need for a single, permanent national waste repository, Yucca proponents say. They say it's a huge leap to suggest that lost waste at a few plants signals trouble ahead for Yucca.

But critics ask: If a single nuclear plant can't account for all its waste, how can the Energy Department keep tabs on 77,000 tons of highly radioactive material, loaded on thousands of shipments bound for Nevada, over decades?

"We know that's not possible, and a single accident or terrorist attack would be a disaster," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.

At issue is the highly radioactive spent uranium fuel from the nation's 103 active commercial nuclear reactors, and the waste stored at closed reactors. The federal government for years has aimed to establish a single repository for the waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Meanwhile the waste is piling up in storage at the power plants.

This is not the first time a plant has lost waste.

-- The Vermont Yankee plant reported two missing pieces in April this year and found them in July -- right where they should have been, in the plant's waste pool.

-- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission fined the Millstone nuclear plant in Connecticut $288,000 after plant officials in 2000 realized that they could not account for two spent nuclear fuel rods, which contain uranium and plutonium. The rods were not found.

"These things are 15 feet long and fairly radioactive," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to better regulate used fuel. "It's hard to accidentally lose track of them."

But nuclear power industry officials said the incidents of lost waste are exceptionally rare in the 50-year history of commercial nuclear power. They say it is a stretch to argue that the incidents are a preview of waste losses and accounting errors in the massive effort to ship the nation's waste to Yucca.

The Humboldt waste was lost because of an accounting record mistake in 1968 or 1969, PG&E spokesman Jeff Lewis said. One set of old records said the waste was shipped away and other records said the waste went into the plant waste pool. More high-tech searching of the pool is planned, Lewis said.

"This is a decades-old issue that doesn't reflect the attention to detail that we have now," Lewis said.

There is no connection between the Yucca Mountain plan and a few scraps of lost waste, said Steve Kerekes, spokesman for Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top lobby group.

"Leading scientists for decades have said the best way to isolate the waste is a geologic disposal facility," he said. "To try to say we should turn that on its head because of the situations that occurred at these (three) facilities is ludicrous."

Private waste shippers and Energy Department officials who would manage the Yucca project have long said they can safely transport waste to Nevada. High-level waste has been shipped for decades without lost cargo or an accident that resulted in a harmful release of waste, department spokesman Joe Davis said. The department must adhere to a long list of federal shipping requirements, Davis noted.

But Yucca critics are skeptical.

"If the nuclear plants can't keep track of this material while it's stationary, how do they expect to keep track of it when it's in motion to Yucca Mountain?" Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., asked.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said, "They have had a lot of problems with the Yucca Mountain project already. I don't have a lot of confidence in the DOE."

Meticulous record-keeping and documentation is going to be required for Yucca, project critic Kevin Kamps said.

"And the Department of Energy and the industry are not showing that they can do it," said Kamps, nuclear waste specialist with Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

Nevada officials also don't buy the argument that waste could be better monitored in a central repository at Yucca. Waste will still accumulate at plants as long as plants operate, said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Office.