NRC advisory panel studies Yucca issues

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2005 | 9:17 a.m.

The controversial e-mails that cast doubt on some Yucca Mountain research, plus ongoing tests to check that research, were among the issues discussed Tuesday at a meeting of an advisory committee of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Energy Department's efforts to have the NRC license Yucca Mountain as a high-level nuclear waste dump suffered a black eye in March with the discovery of e-mails by U.S. Geological Survey employees that suggest several Yucca researchers did not follow proper procedures and may have "fudged" data.

The studies are important because critics have said water flow inside the mountain could ultimately cause radiation to leak from the repository.

Russell Dyer, Department of Energy assistant deputy director, told the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste on Tuesday that his department is conducting a "root-cause analysis" on what happened with the flawed Geological Survey process. The analysis should be completed in mid-October, he said.

Doug Weaver, a Bechtel Corp. contractor working on the Yucca project through the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said the Energy Department is moving forward on 20 testing procedures. Most of the tests have to do with the contentious issue of how much water moves through the Yucca Mountain rock, and how fast. Water could corrode the canisters designed to hold the radioactive waste.

Among the tests already under way, he told the advisory committee, is monitoring of the precipitation in the desert area to get an idea of how much water is normally in the soil; monitoring of seepage into the testing "drifts," or testing tunnels already bored into the mountain rock; monitoring of seismic activity at the site; and numerous other technical test programs.

The advisory committee also took testimony from Jeff Ciocco, senior project manager for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's division of repository safety. The NRC is working on a five-step, 18-month process to ensure that its evaluation of the Department of Energy's safety standards are sufficient, he said.

"We're going to plan, we're going to implement, we're going to control and we're going to track," Ciocco said of the NRC's supervision of the process.

The Energy Department may have received a boost last month when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed two-tier radiation standard for the repository. One tier would maintain the 15-millirem standard for up to 10,000 years, and the other would allow exposure of up to 350 millirem per year for 10,000 to 1 million years.

Yucca opponents say there is no reason the radiation limit should increase so drastically.

Energy Department officials told the advisory committee that they are updating their license application so it reflects the new proposed radiation standards -- which would have to be implemented by the NRC -- while it continues to review the work of the U.S. Geological Survey scientists.

Dyer told the advisory group that the "science and design work for the license application is technically sound and supports robust safety analyses ... through 10,000 years."

The agency is working to update the application for the million-year standard, he said.

Michael Ryan, advisory committee chairman, said the meetings in Las Vegas are important to take comments from people in the state. He said the committee has heard of the controversy surrounding the U.S. Geological Survey scientists in earlier meetings, but this is the first time the issue has been discussed by the committee in Las Vegas.

He said discussion of the proposed EPA million-year radiation standard came out before the committee's meeting last month, but this is the first meeting of the group to more fully explore the issue.

The radiation standard is scheduled to be discussed at the second day of the committee's three-day sojourn in Las Vegas today. Among the topics is a discussion of how the climate could affect the Yucca Mountain dump over the next million years.

"We're really interested to hear that," Ryan said.

Time also is scheduled for the public to comment on Yucca Mountain issues.

The five-person Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste is made up of scientists and engineers with backgrounds in radioactive waste management, chemistry, geology and related issues.

The committee meets once a year in Las Vegas to take comments from people in the community.