Friday, Feb. 11, 2005 | 3:31 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
February 12 - 13, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Under intense pressure, the Energy Department has pushed for years to open the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010.
Nuclear plant operators have filed lawsuits to keep the project's managers on track. Politicians in nuclear plant states have relentlessly lobbied Congress. Yucca contractors have rushed to meet deadlines to win bonuses. And the department itself has scrambled to overcome setbacks while steadfastly clinging to its intention of opening the repository on time.
But last week Energy Department Yucca project chief Margaret Chu, who resigned Friday, acknowledged to reporters that Yucca's opening date had slipped to at least 2012. The date depends on how much money Congress gives the department, she said.
Energy Department and nuclear industry officials say the project is "doable," even as it is underfunded and beset by delays. They vow to forge ahead.
"The administration is focused and supportive of the repository," David Garman, an assistant energy secretary, said Thursday in response to questions from a House subcommittee about the new target date. "And we want to move ahead."
But many Yucca critics say the two-year extension is wildly optimistic.
"It isn't realistic," said Arjun Makhijani, an engineer and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Makhijani, who supports geologic waste storage, but believes Yucca is a bad site, said all the uncertainties surrounding Yucca make it hard to guess when a repository could open.
"They (Energy officials) should wise up and put out a date they could meet," he said. "If I were them, I'd give myself some elbow room."
Study of a repository, likely the nation's biggest public works project, started more than 20 years ago. Federal law in 1987 affirmed that the solution to the nation's high-level nuclear waste problem was to store it in underground tunnels at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But after two decades of research, digging a 5-mile-long exploratory tunnel, scientific tests and a presidential endorsement, the project is still a long way from finished.
Chu's acknowledgement was the first time an Energy Department official had admitted Yucca could not open by 2010. Chu resigned because of "personal circumstances," leaving the controversial project's uncertain future to a new leader.
Having missed several deadlines -- the repository originally was supposed to begin accepting waste in 1998 -- the project is so far behind that the nuclear industry is looking at other options for short-term storage, including a site on an Indian reservation in Utah.
Before it is able to apply for a license to build the repository and dig the miles of tunnels in which it will entomb the waste, the Energy Department faces a series of legal, regulatory and budgetary issues so burdensome that critics say the project has nearly ground to a halt.
Budget
Keeping money flowing to the project is instrumental to keeping it on track. But convincing Congress to fully fund the department's budget request each year is tough.
A large part of that money comes from a national fund fed by a tax on ratepayers whose electricity is generated by nuclear plants. The fund contains about $16 billion.
But like most federal projects, Yucca is subject to annual budget limits set by Congress.
Congress -- due in large part to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. -- has trimmed roughly $1 billion from budget requests in the last decade.
Last year, the Energy Department requested its biggest budget yet: $880 million. But in a budget stalemate, Congress froze most federal projects at the previous year's levels. That translated to about $300 million less than the department requested -- and more delayed work.
Past shortfalls have forced the Energy Department to rework its repository priorities, and many delays can be traced back to a lack of funding. In recent years the department has complained that the cuts delayed its ability to prepare a license application to build Yucca or to devise a waste-shipping plan.
Budget cuts -- and related delays -- infuriate the nuclear industry. Nuclear utilities have been waiting for the government to haul waste away from reactors to a repository paid in part by ratepayers for two decades. Industry officials and Yucca supporters in Congress have argued that the Energy Department should have direct access to the waste fund to use as it sees fit.
The Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, a national group of state utility commissioners and other Yucca supporters, sent a letter to Congress and the Energy Department last week demanding the budget rules be changed and that the department receive $1 billion for the project.
But critics have urged lawmakers not to relinquish their budget authority, and congressional watchers say lawmakers in general do not like to give up that oversight role -- even for projects they endorse.
The radiation standard
Since the repository's infancy, federal officials have faced a task never before attempted: to construct a national high-level nuclear waste burial ground.
But how would safety be measured? Federal law requires that the Environmental Protection Agency decides. The agency in 2001 ruled the Energy Department would need to prove its repository design would not release more than 15 millirem of radiation -- a little more than a chest X-ray -- per year for 10,000 years.
To give that time frame some context, anthropologists and archaeologists believe that 10,000 years ago the Ice Age just ended; wooly mammoths still roamed Earth; and humans had just started to figure out how to farm.
The rule, criticized for being too long or too short, gave the Energy Department a goal -- and a yardstick for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to use as it evaluates the license application. The department plans to submit a 45-volume application in December that proves its repository design can meet that standard.
There's just one major problem: The standard no longer exists. A federal court last year threw out the 10,000-year period because the EPA did not follow National Academy of Sciences' findings in setting it as per federal law.
That created a big hurdle for the Energy Department because a primary purpose of its license application is to explain that the 10,000-year standard can be met and that Yucca will be safe. But the court threw out the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's yardstick and threw the repository into limbo.
Two things could happen now: The EPA could act by setting another standard or re-writing the old standard to better justify how it meshed with the National Academy's findings; or Congress could legislate a standard.
The second option isn't likely, Yucca observers say. Former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recently said Congress should change the law, but a leading Yucca advocate, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., told the Sun it would be "too difficult" politically to get such legislation passed with Reid as the Democratic leader.
An EPA official said a revised radiation rule is set to come out this summer, but the official would not elaborate on how the agency was responding to the court ruling. Chu said she hoped the EPA could finalize a standard by year's end so the department could hand in the application then.
The academy saw no reason to limit the time frame to 10,000 years, advocating a standard that was tied to when Yucca radiation would reach a "peak dose" -- when radiation would be at its highest -- which could happen in 300,000 years.
Jean Bahr, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of geology and geophysics, said the EPA has to answer a tough question: "What is the acceptable risk?"
"It's not a scientific question, it's a policy question," said Bahr, who sat on an academy panel on the radiation standard. "They're claiming they are basing the standard on science, but that's where the discrepancy is."
Bahr said there is nothing magical about 10,000 years -- the peak dose will be later than that. The EPA has to decide how much protection the government owes future generations, she said.
Whatever standard the EPA sets, the Energy Department will have to prove the repository can isolate radiation until then.
If the EPA sets a dramatically tougher standard, the department likely will have a lot of work to do to effectively re-evaluate the whole repository, Makhijani said.
"They are going to go back and rethink all their engineered barriers," he said. "That's going to take them a few years."
Licensing
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will license and regulate the repository, will decide if the Energy Department's plan is sufficient once it reviews the application.
The commission plans to take three years to evaluate the application, with an option for a fourth.
Four years may sound like a lot, but the repository is one of the biggest, most complex nuclear projects ever reviewed by the commission, which historically has spent years painstakingly toiling over license reviews.
For example, the commission often spent a decade reviewing reactor license applications in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, when nuclear plants were still being built. It took 12 years to approve licenses for Comanche Peak 1 in Texas, which opened in 1990, one of the last to do so.
Even now it takes the commission almost two years to review and approve nuclear plant license renewels.
It's "almost certain" that the licensing phase will take longer than four years, said Joe Egan, one of Nevada's Washington attorneys.
The three- to four-year time frame is doable, but it would be an "extraordinary challenge" contingent on a number of factors falling perfectly into place, including the quality of the Energy Department's work on the application, C. William Reamer, director of the commission's high-level waste management division, told the Sun.
Once the department submits the application, the commission would spend up to 90 days deciding whether to even accept it, based on whether everything in the application appears in order.
After that, the agency would conduct a detailed "safety review," which could take about 18 months.
Then the hearing process would begin, launching what likely would be the most unpredictable phase of the review.
The commission will identify issues to be explored further by special administrative boards composed of NRC employees but separate from the NRC staffers conducting the review.
It's not known how long that could take, but Nevada complaints likely could slow the process significantly, officials said.
What's more, Nevada can challenge in federal court both the Energy Department's application and any commission approval of it.
Nevada already plans two types of complaints to the commission. One is what may amount to "hundreds" of substantive challenges that question Energy Department assertions about Yucca safety. The other is "quite a few" procedural challenges that are critical of how the Department has managed the program, Egan said. He declined to say what those challenges would be.
But, he added, "It's not real hard to find examples of the DOE not following procedure."
Construction
The Energy Department plans to build the repository in two to three years, roughly the time it takes to build a baseball stadium. The most recent estimate is "approximately three years," spokesman Allen Benson said.
But that is dependent on factors such as "adequate funding and receiving regulatory approvals in a timely manner," Benson said.
Three years is an ambitious timeline, especially for a project in which minor design or construction flaws could lead to costly -- even deadly -- problems in the future, experts said.
Yucca managers plan to save time in part by opening an above-ground storage pad before the underground repository is finished. They say early deliveries of waste could be accepted -- either at a surface holding facility or in the first-phase tunnels -- while construction is completed on the rest of the repository.
Updated budgets, manpower and equipment cost estimates for construction are "under development," Benson said. A 2001 estimate -- the most recent available, according to the department -- set the construction cost at $4.5 billion.
But experts said the bigger the public works project, the more difficult it becomes to accurately predict costs -- and timelines.
"This society is trying to build ever-increasingly big projects," University of California, Berkley, civil engineering professor C. William Ibbs said. "The track record of most government agencies is not very good in terms of managing these types of projects."
Experts point to other big public works projects that included significant tunneling, such as the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in and around San Francisco, the "Chunnel" between England and France and the "Big Dig" roadway in Boston. All took longer than projected to complete. Critics note the "Big Dig" contractor -- Bechtel -- also manages Yucca.
The fact that Yucca is a first of its kind project also presents contractors with a slate of delay-inducing unknowns, experts said.
"It's not unusual for a project to take longer and to cost more than we think it will,"said David Luberoff, executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard University.
"Some of that is due to the fact that you simply run into things that you don't expect. Some of it is just being overly optimistic," Luberoff, who studies big public works projects, said.
The containers
There are several "firsts" planned for the project. Among them is devising a way to package nuclear waste for thousands of years.
Vital to the Energy Department's contention that waste can be safely isolated inside Yucca Mountain is the 20-foot metal storage container.
Highly radioactive spent uranium fuel rods would be packed in each of the 11,000 containers that would be stored end-to-end in more than 100 miles of tunnels. In an underground repository that would rely on natural and man-made methods to isolate deadly waste, those containers would be the most important "engineered barrier" between the radioactive material and the environment.
The Energy Department has chosen a container design of a stainless steel "vessel" wrapped in a skin made of a nickel-based alloy commonly called Alloy 22.
But questions linger about the compound and what fabrication designs are best suited to containers that are supposed to last thousands of years.
Department officials are still designing the containers, and it has told the Sun that it has thus far commissioned only one prototype of the 10 to 15 different designs that will be needed to accommodate a vast array of waste types.
Among the most troubling container questions are those about Alloy 22. The worry is that water seeping through the mountain will corrode the casks, eventually releasing the waste.
Nevada and the nuclear industry have commissioned studies on Alloy 22. The industry says it will work. State officials say it won't. Both assail the way the other came to their conclusions.
Nuclear officials say the containers under consideration are "robust." They say Alloy 22 is a perfect match for Yucca's tunnel environment. And they note that it's highly unlikely that moisture will reach the containers, which would be covered with titanium drip shields, according to the Energy Department.
"Alloy 22 casks last as long as they do because of the environment that they are in," said Steve Kraft, director of waste management for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading industry lobbying group, and an active Yucca advocate in Washington.
Nevada and its researchers say just the opposite, concluding that Alloy 22 could corrode and the containers could fail within 100 years.
"There is no way that C-22 (Alloy 22) is going to last anywhere near as long as the DOE is saying it is going to last," said Susan Lynch, director of technical programs for the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency. "We firmly believe (corrosion) is going to happen."
A key difference in the research, according to Nevada officials, is the water used in the experiments. The nuclear industry used ground water in its research. The state used water that officials say will be coming through the mountain, which is far more corrosive.
The Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are conducting their own studies. Marissa Bailey, the commission's engineering section chief for its high-level waste repository division, says there has been no determination about whether Alloy 22 will work.
Because the cask design and metal studies continue, it is unknown if the Energy Department has enough information to back up its assertion that there is "reasonable assurance" that waste containers will not leak and harm the public, Reamer said. That includes proving the casks would hold up to corrosion, earthquakes and "to some extent" volcano eruptions.
"It is up to the DOE to put in the application what it expects the container to do" -- and then back it up with research, Reamer said.
And, while much attention has been focused on shipping and permanent storage containers, commission officials have another important concern: the temporary waste containers that would be used at a surface transfer facility at Yucca.
Officials plan to store some waste temporarily outside Yucca because waste will have to be sorted into the tunnels according to how long it has been removed from its reactors. But so far, Energy Department officials have shown the commission little information about the temporary storage containers. Reamer said he told the department that he can't understand how it was planning to submit an application by year's end without plans for those containers.
"We really haven't seen much of the design data there," Reamer said.
Quality assurance
Yucca critics say the quality of the Energy Department's data is also a project hurdle.
As with any major public works project, managers oversee a "quality assurance" program, often called "QA," an effort designed to guarantee that the scientific work is sound and that the data results can be justified.
Flaws in the Energy Department's QA program could be an obstacle to Yucca because errors can throw the whole program's research history -- and the repository's future success -- into question.
"The QA is one of those hot button areas of NRC regulating," Egan said. "It's an area where there are the greatest number of licenses going amiss. QA has brought down entire projects."
Yucca critics point to one example in which a nuclear plant in Ohio was nearly completed in the 1980s, but because some construction documents were not in order, the commission refused to issue an operating license. Plant owners refitted it into a coal plant.
The commission, as well as the General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, have criticized the QA program at Yucca.
Last year the commission told the Energy Department that it had serious concerns about the QA program. It noted a number of problems in Energy documents that showed the department had made numerous mistakes in how it tracked and organized data.
For example, the commission found the department was presenting some data that could not be tracked to any source. It made some assertions without including the basis for those assertions.
Even the most minor mistakes must be reviewed and corrected, Reamer said.
Last spring the Energy Department launched an effort to correct the mistakes, and finished in the fall. The Yucca QA program has been "upgraded and improved," he said. The department now has "full confidence that our QA program will meet the NRC requirements," Benson said.
The department seems to be "headed in the right direction," Reamer said. But the jury is still out.
Yucca critics are skeptical.
"The problem is that the DOE is now in its third, fourth, fifth, maybe sixth get-well plan," said Martin Malsch, a lawyer who works with Egan. "After a number of failures, you need to wonder if they are ever capable of curing the defect."
Transportation
Even if the Energy Department solved all its problems related to storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, many questions remain about how the waste would get there.
The department has not selected exact shipping routes across the country; the actual containers that hold the waste in transit do not exist; and a new $1 billion, 319-mile rail line has to be constructed in Nevada.
The department plans to make progress on these issues in fiscal year 2006, according to its budget documents, but like so many aspects of the program, that is contingent on congressional funding.
Yucca critics say each issue will take years of scientific analysis and bureaucratic processes to sort out.
In April the department announced it would use a "mostly rail" option to ship waste from 127 sites around the country to Nevada. Part of this plan includes building the rail route, which the department has said will take about four years.
Benson said a draft environmental study of the rail line construction should be done in "mid-2005." The department held public meetings around the state about what should be included in the report. Public hearings and comment periods will follow the draft's release and a final report would be issued based on those comments.
Nevada sued the Energy Department over the rail line in September, saying the department proclaimed the route and applied for the land but only now is evaluating the environmental impact. It should have looked at the impact first and decided if the route was the best option, Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval said.
The state also claims the department moved ahead with the largest railroad construction project in 80 years without consulting the Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that oversees rail projects. Sandoval asked the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality on Jan. 26 to investigate. "It is unfortunate that DOE is plowing ahead and expending such resources when there are so many health and safety questions to be answered and the primary issue of whose impact statement it is or should be has yet to be resolved," Sandoval wrote.
Building the track itself will be a challenge. Nevada transportation consultant Bob Halstead said the Energy Department is drastically underestimating the difficulty because uneven terrain will require at least 20 bridges of over 200 feet, and because of areas vulnerable to flooding, rockfalls and even earthquakes.
"It's an even worse (route) choice than we have argued in the past," Halstead said.
Recent flooding in Lincoln County showcased that flash flooding -- while relatively rare -- can damage tracks quickly, he said.
"This ought to be a big wake-up call," Halstead said. "This is a much bigger issue than anyone has thought through."
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