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Voice of Opposition
By: Angus MacKay
Freelance: Contributed Article
The Yucca Mountain Project has been an ongoing intrusion upon the people and the State of Nevada for over 20 years despite their resounding voice of opposition from the very beginning. The nuclear industry has known from their first introduction of nuclear power as being a sound economic investment for consumers that they would have to develop a storage facility of some type, somewhere, for the waste their industry would also develop. With this in mind it should be obvious that they were not telling the whole story, or the truth, from the overall initiation of their proposal and plan.
What this boils down to is corporate manipulation of the consumer forcing the hand of the government to become a player through each of the states that selected to allow this industry to be built or manufactured in their areas. Markets used to be based on 'demand and supply' not the other way around.
Nevada has never been a nuclear power state. It has no plants and it doesn't import it from other states. In fact, Nevada has been to war with the State of California over issues of water and power for decades. California has nuclear power plants and even with them they cannot meet the demand. They are bordered on the west with an endless supply of water that has no desalination plants to meet their demand. Even Kuwait has these modern facilities. And yet, even though Nevada has the Nellis Nuclear Test Site, right next to Yucca Mountain by the way, it is a military base located on Native American Indian/Shoshone Lands and has absolutely nothing to do with the nuclear power issue. Or does it? Just because they exploded thousands of atomic and nuclear bombs above and below the earth doesn't constitute dumping the worlds nuclear waste in the same area. That alone is very stupid. It doesn't matter if the Yucca site is 100 or 200 miles away from the Nuclear Test Site...how far is St. George, Utah? Las Vegas is even closer. The areas that were, and still are, effected by these tests suffer problems that give sci-fi writers the unbelievable content they produce for our motion picture industry. Remember when all the stuff in Buck Rogers was just neat Saturday afternoon matinee movie magic?
If you have never seen any of the film-footage on one of these bombs being detonated below the surface then try this experiment... take a full pan or bowl of water and let it set until the water is calm, next: take a small stone, about the size of a green pea, you could even use a green pea, and drop it directly in the middle of the calm water. Now, observe the ripple, or ripples, that eminate from this action. What you are seeing is what happens to the earth when these bombs are exploded - below the surface. The effects of this have been seen and felt as far as 368 miles away, both above and below the surface. Taking this into consideration it should have been more than obvious to the political and corporate scientists that this is not the place to bury even one (1) ton of nuclear waste. The scariest thing about this project is not so much what they propose to bury but the "50 Years" of cooldown above these tunnels, on the surface, out in the open where much of this waste must sit before they will bury it as well. Who is going to watch this for 50 years? Think!! If you are old enough think back through the past 50 years. Look at the changes that have come about throughout the entire world in politics, economics, industry, agriculture, military, science, education, weather and more. Does this project make sense? It is something that is being made now for others to be responsible for in the future - it's passing the buck. Some have said, "Why should I care, I won't be here in 10,000 years." Perhaps not, but, what if you weren't here now and happened to be one of those 10,000 years from now. This whole situation is a display of a total lack of responsibility and respect for those of us who are here now and for our children's future.
If the scientists today are so insightful of depending on future science to resolve what they cannot now then they too are admitting that they do not have a solution to fix this problem they created. Let someone else do it. Again, this is stupid and unacceptable. Just because a person has a college degree, or may be intelligent in a particular field, does not prove they are smart or even possess common sense. This is professional within their chosen fields? Not even close. It is rude and a slap in the face of civilization, modern and ancient.
History is stacked higher and buried deeper than Yucca Mountain that proves and repeats that this is just not going to work.
In the Wheel of Life one finds that the Mouse sees things close to the ground and the Eagle sees things far away...the United States is represented by the Eagle but this Eagle appears to have the eye-sight of the Mouse.
If the nuclear power industry cannot produce energy without the results of tons of deadly waste then it should be banned altogether just like asbestos, numerous pesticides, lead, and others. Anybody remember Times Beach, Missouri? Hell, you can't even drive without seatbelts, child carseats, insurance, registration, a drivers license, license plates, and in some states catalytic converters. In this sense of things if the states can pass these types of mandatory laws to protect people and property then it would seem that they could do the same with something much more deadly and not just deadly in one area but the entire planet.
There are many problems with all of the nuclear power plants than they are admitting. Who killed 'Silkwood'? The industry is not just dying out it's passing its death onto others. There is not one plant that has escaped major problems during their construction and after they were started up. The entire picture is an abstract of reality.
So what do we do now? Stop. Shut them down. Quit contributing to a problem that has no solution. Burying nuclear waste anywhere on the planet is not a solution but it is, however, very much a cover-up, literally. What do we do with what we have already piled up? Build a plant that will reverse the process - a defusion plant, and once again, build it in a central location where all of the waste is produced in the first place. In this way it is not shipped through innocent states, or countries, to states that have nothing to do with it and want nothing to do with it.
The recent vote of 306 for to 117 against dumping in Nevada over-riding the Nevada States' Rights clause passed by congress appears to be a government SNAFU. In other words, a state may utilize their states' rights protection as long as it doesn't interfere with the Fed's agenda or that of corporate America. Therefore, their comments are: "Say what you want, vote the way you want, write and print what you want...we're going to do it anyway. We're going to screw Nevada for 24 years, without a kiss, without an orgasm!"
I can understand why the Idaho Representatives, Mike Simpson and Butch Otter, voted in favor of Yucca Mountain when you consider the problems at INEEL. Why store it here when we can ship it to Nevada?
Have you noticed lately that there is no mention of nuclear waste transport from foriegn countries in the news? What are they up to now?
Could it be that they may be worried about a potential terrorist attack on one of these ships in the open seas or on our shores? How about storms, hurricanes and typhons at sea? If there is a national security concern in regards to terrorist attacks at any of these sites or their current storage facilities then it would also seem ludicrous to put it all in one place to make it easier for them to get to. The local/national security for protecting the safe transportation of nuclear waste is a joke...there just isn't any. Have you seen this stuff on trains and traveling across our nation's roads? Where is the security? There just isn't any. Are the crews on these ships trained to protect their vessles? Are the drivers of these trucks trained to protect their vehicles or cargo?
It does not matter how much money can be offered, or paid, to tease anyone into accepting this or any of these types of programs. It will create jobs and be good for the economy. How many times have we heard that one? The cost in the short and long run is just not worth it. Of course, these are just accumulated opinions from thousands of Americans, including myself, and some may think we're wrong - we know for a fact, we're not.
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WHERE IS THE TRUTH?
Submitted Article: Opinion
"Policy was already written to cover these lands before the United States Government had any contact with the indiginous people of this country...and yet their fate was already decided just the same." These western lands were not free lands for the U.S.G. to give to anyone. The Natives did not have to make a claim to the U.S.G. as to their ownership, but, the big G didn't want them there so they had to come up with something to remove their opposition in order to make good on their promises to the veterans of the Revolutionary War. LAND! But where were they going to get it? Well that's easy. We'll just take it from these heathen people over here who can't even speak english. What are they going to do about it, go to war with us? Yeah, right.
Treaties were signed, and to this date over 85% of them have been violated by the U.S.G. Very few of these treaties, very few, state that the Indian People gave up their lands or their rights to them. Most of the lands in the United States, especially west of the Mississippi are still Indian lands. The American people who live on these lands are actually living on lands still in the possession of the Indians by treaty.
Alright then, what does all of this have to do with Yucca Mountain? It's Western Shoshone land! It's that simple. It is protected by their treaty with the United States and has never been altered or ratified by the President, any President since it was signed. Therefore, BLM, the DOI, DOE and the DOJ are violating this treaty and conducting what the United States government has often classified as an act of war on a foriegn nation.
Within the borders of the United States there are many different foriegn embassy's and these embassy's are treated as though they were on their own soil. If they were attacked or infringed it would be an act of war. In todays language it would most likely be an act of terrorism.
We hear about the equal rights of those being held prisoners at Guantanimo Bay who are not American Citizens, who have no treaties with the U.S.G.; who have not fought in any of our wars; we did not use their language as a secret code in WW2; who are not American Veterans of WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and who knows where else, and yet, who cares about the rights of the American Indians and their treaties? Has America forgotten to teach in the public educational school system that it was the Indians who voluntarily gave to the emigrants a place to stay in order to escape and avoid the terrorism of their homelands out of the goodness of their heart, (...never bite the hand that feeds you...and the Indians fed the whole world when they came here and it was their medicine that kept everyone alive and healthy). Yes, that's right, the Indians helped a lot in the fight for America's independence and it was them also who helped these new people to survive the harsh winters and gave to them the day of celebration known as "Thanksgiving", and it was the Indians who actually wrote the "Declaration of Independence". The world sees all of this and the American People are beginning to see it also. There is still an ongoing battle of genocide within our very borders of freedom and it is against the American Indians. Very much of it is cultural genocide and when those who are supposed to represent and uphold the Constitution of the United States for all of its people, including the Indians, have failed to do so when it comes to a proper and truthful education for all American citizens. They have allowed history to be re-written and taught to fit their needs. One of their needs is to eliminate the American Indians along with their hold and treaties of their lands.
It's really too bad for the U.S.G., I mean, Nevada and Yucca Mountain just ain't Manhatten because it is priceless and there ain't no bead trading going on here.
Insofar as the "public domain" is concerned, those lands set aside for our heritage, national forests, and otherwise are now the property of the "World Heritage Foundation", a United Nations group, and not the lands of the American People or the American Indians. You can damn well thank former President Nixon and those that have followed him for that one.
Have you noticed the signs at Yellowstone National Forest, or Carlsbad? They no longer belong to us. Even some of our national monuments are now theirs. How many other places in our country are now the property of the World Heritage Foundation?
Guess what?
They've done this in other countries as well. Why?
It's all part of this New World Order thing they've been trying for decades to perpetuate on civilization. If they can't get everyone to accept it by a 'forced voluntary method' then they will just scare everyone to death with world terrorism as the new enemy (install paranoia here) and sell it through the media as a 'done deal' using the 9-11 issue as their reasoning.
None of this happened overnight and it didn't take them by surprise in New York either. There's a lot more going on in this country that pertains to this issue than just one incident.
If you learned anything in school let's hope it was how to study and do your research...now is the time to really use what you've learned. Hit the books and the libraries while we still have them...then, ask a lot of questions.
You're going to love this one...and it's a kick right between the legs...
How many countries and governments have lasted as long as the U.S.G. projects for the Yucca Mountain Project to exist?
500 years minimum to 10,000 thousand years, possibly more, is their timeline. Come on. That's rather presumptuous about our government being around that long. Just look at the changes we've gone though in the past 50 years. Suppose that even 100 years from now the Yucca Mountain territories belong to another nation. What the hell are they going to do with it?
By now, one may begin to wonder what the whole point of this issue I present is all about, especially with the BLM. Well, how long has BLM been manipulating the lands throughout the State of Nevada?
What has been their ultimate goal?
How have they managed to get away with all of their illegal activites?
Why have we been tolerating this agency?
Who's fooling who here?
Wake up Nevada!!
The BLM is not our friend.
A Special Assembly of the entire Nevada House should be called to order and there should be obtained by this gathering sound state legislation to ban them (BLM), a immediate cease & desist order of all their activities, and a restraining order covering the entire State of Nevada and to have them removed from our state entirely.
The State of Nevada should enter into a dialog with the Western Shoshone Indians in regards to the rights of their treaty and how it effects the overall land rights and possessions within the State of Nevada. Wherefrom this meeting a bill whould be drafted to acknowledge the agreement between the State of Nevada and the Western Shoshone Nation of Newe Sogobia under and by the Ruby Valley Treaty. Then and therefore submitting this agreement to the President of the United States as to this most historical event. It's that simple.
If an alliance between these two internal nations is required to ban the U.S.G. from infringement within these lands then that time is now.
The State of Nevada has a responsibility to protect the indiginous people and their rights in this territory known as Nevada and to them as Newe Sogobia.
It is believed, once the table is set, great things can be accomplished on both sides, to everyones benefit, without disturbing the lives of all those people and townships located on these lands. In deed, if we are a country of democratic processes, then Nevada can very well be the only state in the union to accomplish what no other state or government agency under any President has ever done in our nations history...the right thing.
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Yucca Mountain: No Place for Nuclear Waste
By: Corbin Harney
Western Shoshone Spiritual Leader
Yucca Mountain, in the heart of the Western Shoshone Nation, is a place of deep spiritual significance to Shoshone and Pauite peoples. Despite this, the federal government plans to send there 98 percent of the radioactivity generated during the entire Nuclear Age. The Department of Energy (DOE) has already spent 3 billion dollars towards the project and wants to spend 35 billion more to complete it before the end of the decade.
The government has no right to use Yucca Mountain this way. Newe Sogobia–the land guaranteed the Western Shoshone Nation by treaty–includes Yucca Mountain. Even the mere study of the site is a violation of the treaty. The Shoshone people have made their wishes clear: They want the DOE off their land and their mountain restored to them.
Because of U.S. nuclear testing over Nevada, the Western Shoshone Nation is already the most bombed nation on earth. They suffer from widespread cancer, leukemia, and other disease as a result of fallout from more than 900 atomic explosions on their territory.
More than 100 grassroots environmental groups, Native and non- Native, organized to gain broad participation in the Yucca Mountain Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process. But the vast majority of people who might be affected by this decision still are not aware of the danger. The Yucca Mountain EIS largely sidesteps the issue of transport.
90,000 shipments of high level waste designated for Yucca Mountain will be passing by the front yards of more than 50 million Americans along highways and train routes. Obviously, the transport of this waste poses a huge public health risk. Even DOE studies anticipate a rate of one accident per 343 shipments or 268 nuclear accidents over the next thirty years, at a minimum.
In addition to illegal treaty violations and the possibility of a "mobile Chernobyl" while the waste is on the road, Yucca Mountain is simply not a safe repository for nuclear waste. According to the DOE study, at least one storage canister of the more than 10,000 canisters envisioned at Yucca will fail within the next thousand years. After 10,000 years, all the canisters may degrade, according to a report on the DOE proposal in The New York Times.
More than 621 earthquakes have been recorded in the area (at magnitudes of 2.5 on the Richter scale or higher) in the last twenty years. An earthquake at Yucca Mountain could cause groundwater to surge up into the storage area forcing dangerous amounts of plutonium into the atmosphere and contaminating the water supply. (Given this, it is not surprising that the nuclear industry has fought against any groundwater radiation standards for the facility–these standards could derail the entire project.)
As the federal EIS process grinds on, the industry is doing all they can to expedite and insure Yucca's opening. Each year for the past five years, legislation has quietly appeared in Congress in a backroom effort by the industry to change current law and seal a Yucca deal.
This year's proposed changes to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act pretty much "threw radiation standards out," according to Michael Marriotte of the Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS) in Washington, D.C., going so far as to strip the EPA of authority for setting standards. All this, says NIRS, is to "make the Yucca shoe fit" and insure the production of more nuclear waste.
On April 25, 2000, President Clinton did the right thing and vetoed the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act as he promised. A Senate vote to override the veto scheduled for Tuesday, May 2nd, failed by a narrow margin. So, for one more year, the Western Shoshone, Yucca Mountain, and fifty million Americans are safe from the nuclear industry. But what about next year?
Join the call for "No Nuclear Waste on Native Lands". Help right historic injustice and bring about a nuclear-free future!
Nuclear Politics and Environmental Injustice
Every single proposal to store high level nuclear waste in North America targets Native territories.
Not only do these proposals represent immense environmental injustices toward Native peoples, but the dumps, if authorized, will enable a dying nuclear industry to get some last breaths.
Nuclear waste is the Achilles heel of the industry. Reactors are filling up with spent radioactive fuel and there is no safe place to put this deadly waste. Utilities will have to close down their plants if they cannot get a waste site authorized. The industry sees this as a political problem, not an environmental one. Targeting isolated and economically disenfranchised Indians is their one solution. Help us close this loophole. Join the movement to stop nuclear waste on Native lands and create the impetus for our society to move towards wind, solar and other renewable resources.
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Yucca Mountain Repository
Is Not a Gamble Nevadans Wish to Take
By: Scott Galindez
T r u t h o u t | 02.09.02
Just the other day we experienced after shocks from the Northridge earthquake here in Los Angeles. I wonder if Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham knows that one of the first aftershocks from that earthquake (seven years ago) centered at Yucca Mountain and did over one million dollars worth of damage to the research facility that was studying the feasibility of the site to store all of our nations nuclear waste.
One of the effects of the After shock centered at Yucca Mountain a decade ago was a rise in the groundwater level. If a similar event were to happen again at Yucca Mountain while nuclear waste was stored there then the water supply could be affected for hundreds of miles. The result could be catastrophic.
Now a decade later, the Department of Energy (DOE) is recommending Yucca Mountain as the site for storage of nuclear waste. After the earthquake, many called for seeking out alternative sites and to date Yucca Mountain is the only site the Department of Energy considered. Despite the fact that all independent studies have raised serious concerns about Yucca Mountain, Spencer Abraham is requesting that the President certify the site.
Bechtel/SAIC, as well as the General Accounting Office, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, the Yucca Mountain Technical Review Board, the National Academy of Sciences, and recently, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency, have each concluded that significant additional studies need to be performed before the DOE can seriously consider whether to recommend the Yucca Mountain site for permanent nuclear waste disposal.
For example, NRC has indicated that at least 292 major studies remain to be completed in 19 key areas, including corrosion of the waste packages, potential effects of volcanic activity, rapid groundwater flow rates through the mountain, large uncertainties in predicted repository performance, even the very design of the repository itself.
In particular, many of the organizations noted above have commented on DOE's newly improvised "total system" approach to nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain, an approach that appears designed to ignore the blatant unsuitability of the geology at Yucca Mountain for the isolation of radioactive waste.
Even if the site problems were resolved, another major concern would be transporting the waste from sites scattered throughout the country to one site. If Yucca Mountain is designated as the sole site for storage of our country's nuclear waste then the waste produced at plants throughout the country would have to be transported on our nation's highways and rail systems, a gamble that our nation cannot afford to make.
After many years of debate the current administration is making new arguments for moving ahead on the project. The most blatant argument is that the site would provide greater "security against terrorism." This seems to be the Administration's answer for everything these days. The Administration won't tell you that even if the site is approved it will take decades to prepare it for storage of waste. In addition some experts estimate that there will be over 100,000 shipments to the site in the first decade of operation, where for decades the waste would be stored aboveground, approximately 90 miles from Las Vegas. Instead of better security, it would actually be a better target for terrorism.
President Bush should not gamble with our lives by certifying Yucca Mountain. Instead he should lower the odds for a nuclear accident by reducing our nation's need for nuclear power. While there is no safe way to dispose of nuclear waste, we should not be continuing to create more and more waste by building more nuclear power plants. We do have to do something with the waste we now have and while more studies are done, nuclear plants across the nation should continue building inexpensive and safe dry storage facilities for their spent fuel. It is not time to put all our chips in one basket.
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Yucca Mountain Concerns Continue
By: MARK WAITE
VIEW STAFF WRITER
Comments made during a public hearing on the Yucca Mountain supplementary draft environmental impact statement at the Pahrump Community Center June 7, ranged from requests to extend the public comment period to suspicions the nuclear waste site managers changed the decision because the project won't work, to fear by one speaker of an outright nuclear megablast.
The draft EIS for the plan to store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste was issued Aug. 13, 1999. U.S. Department of Energy EIS Document Supervisor Jane Sommerson said that elicited 11,000 comments. Sommerson said comments received after the preliminary EIS have resulted in some changes.
Scientists have been conducting tests on the heat generated by the nuclear waste. The EIS states the hotter nuclear waste will heat the adjoining rock up to 200 degrees. The plan is to blend hotter and cooler material in a cooling tank. It also includes a plan to leave as much as half of the nuclear waste, up to 40,000 tons, outside to cool as long as 50 years before placing it in the mountain.
Besides concerns over temperature, plans were revised for moisture control. The spaces between the emplacement drifts will be widened to allow moisture to flow through and a drip-shield of corrosion-resistant titanium added over the waste packages.
The hearing was another chance for opponents of the project to express their views.
Lisa Gue said no one will have a chance to comment on the transportation plan and noted the state of Colorado designated its own preferred route. Robin Sweeney, with the DOE, said the transportation routes won't be pinned down until four years before the waste is scheduled to be shipped in 2010.
Susi Snyder, with the Shundahai Network, said the EIS dealt with earthquake potential, but not volcanic eruptions and especially human intrusion. Shundahai Network is an international anti-nuclear organization that supports environmental justice and sustainable energy as an alternative to nuclear energy.
Joe Ziegler, with DOE, said it's possible a well driller could tap into the waste packages, the DOE is talking about a post-closure monitoring period of the site of from 100 to 325 years. The site will fill up with nuclear waste in just 26 years.
Ziegler said the fuel can't be shipped unless it's at least five years out of the reactor, 10-year-old fuel will be shipped first. The average age of the spent nuclear fuel will be 26 to 27 years, he said.
"It seems like you're picking the site and asking the guidelines to fit," said Kalynda Tilges with Citizen Alert. Citizen Alert was founded in 1975 and works to assure public participation in issues affecting people of Nevada, particularly nuclear weapons and nuclear waste.
Don Hancock said the DOE is in a rush to put together the documents, with a schedule to meet in order to issue the site recommendation this year.
"The reason to do this document is because Yucca Mountain doesn't work," Hancock said.
"In reading the supplemental environmental impact statement, these people just don't know what they're doing," Helen Van Ronk said. The nuclear waste will be stored outside for up to 50 years where temperatures can reach 150 degrees in the summer, she said. "They want to put in a dry storage area with 200 acres of cement."
Van Ronk mentioned there was a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in 1932, and a 5.2 earthquake in 1994 that caused $1 million in damage to DOE facilities in Mercury. "Looks like we might be due for another one any time now," she said.
Piper Weinberg of Shundahai Network, said the EIS disrespected the original inhabitants, the Western Shoshone Indians. The concept of environmental justice -- in which projects with environmental impacts aren't just placed in poor neighborhoods -- should be enforced in this case, she said. The EIS should quantify impacts on downwinders, those who drink the water, cancer rates and accident possibilities, Weinberg said.
The DOE also hasn't given replies to comments in the EIS process, Weinberg said. Sommerson said the written comments will be published in the final EIS.
"Is this design going to have to sprawl as Las Vegas is doing or the test site is doing?" Weinberg asked.
Willie Fragosa said he's had visions of the holocaust from World War II.
"We have a nuclear holocaust being put on the people of the United States and all around the world. This time the trains are coming to us," Fragosa said. Scientists can put a man on the moon and find a cure for AIDS, he said. "We should take another couple hundred years to figure this out."
"People feel defeated. Why bother fighting, it's a done deal," Tilges said. "That makes me feel like for 20 years we've been the victims of psychological warfare if we can be defeated by words."
Greg Getty remarked, "If ever nuclear waste comes together, it will simultaneously explode in a megablast."
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This is the result of a boost to the economy.
Getting Yucca Mountain Right
March/April 1998
Vol. 54, No. 2
The nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain has to last for thousands of years. It had better be built to exacting standards.
By: Luther J. Carter & Thomas H. Pigford
The most commonly held image of the geologic disposal of nuclear waste is surely that of a deep underground labyrinth of tunnels for the emplacement of waste containers. Plans for the geologic repository proposed for the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada square well enough with that image: There would be more than 100 miles of tunnels, and into this extraordinary labyrinth would go about 12,000 very large, massively built containers of spent fuel from nuclear power reactors, together with about 4,500 smaller containers of high-level waste from the former nuclear weapons production complex.
But this may not be the most telling image for understanding what is afoot at Yucca Mountain. Rather, the mind's eye should focus on the great plume of contaminated ground water that would form over time beneath the repository and eventually extend out some 40 miles beyond it. This is the image that best reveals the important but obscure policy issues relevant to protecting future generations from harmful doses of radiation.
Calculations based on the Energy Department's latest published performance assessment indicate that the plume would begin to form within the first 5,000 years after the repository is sealed. Many of the waste canisters will have failed by then from the corrosive effects of water dripping from the ceiling of the waste emplacement tunnels, or "drifts."
Radionuclides will have started going into solution and contaminated water will have begun migrating hundreds of feet down through the rock to the water table and aquifer below. Yucca Mountain Project planners generally assume that the plume first takes on roughly the outline of the repository above it, measuring nearly two and a half miles wide and two miles long. But the plume, with an assumed depth of about 160 feet, becomes steadily more elongated, moving ever closer to the earth's surface as it follows the aquifer to the south.
Advancing at a rate of maybe 30 feet a year, after 7,000 years the plume will pass beneath U.S. 95, the highway from Las Vegas to Reno, at a point near the hamlet of Lathrop Wells. After 7,500 years the plume will reach the first farm well in the Amargosa Valley. After about 11,000 years it will reach its terminal point 40 miles from Yucca Mountain at a spot known variously as Franklin Lake Playa or Alkali Flat, where the aquifer nears the surface.
Here the water will be drawn into the surface environment and atmosphere by capillary action, the roots of plants, and evaporation. Some radioactivity, principally the long-lived and highly mobile fission products iodine 129 and technetium 99, will begin to be deposited at or near the surface as solids, subject to dispersion by wind and water.
The plume, although undergoing some dissipation at its edges, will remain in place for hundreds of thousands of years, with the concentration of contaminants gradually increasing over its 40-mile length as more and more radionuclides migrate downward from the repository to the aquifer below. Concentrations will be greatest near the repository.
Calculations by the project show that in 10,000 years the annual dose from drinking contaminated water from wells three miles from the repository will be about 0.02 REM per year. When the dose from eating food contaminated by irrigation water from these same wells is added, the total dose will be about 0.13 REM. This is 13 times the annual dose limit established by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) two decades ago for persons living near a nuclear power plant. It is five times the annual dose the NRC allows for persons making unrestricted use of a nuclear facility whose license has terminated. (The dose calculations allow a 5 percent probability of doses higher than those cited here.)
After 10,000 years, the calculated annual dose at a well three miles distant rises rapidly. Indeed, after 30,000 years the annual dose from iodine 129 and technetium 99 will have increased about 80-fold, to 10 REMs. Then the longer-term annual dose from neptunium 237 appears and rises to about 50 REM by about 100,000 years, amounting in less than a decade to an exceedingly high, life-shortening cumulative dose.
The Energy Department recognizes that these doses exceed reasonable standards for public health protection-hence the pressing need for deeper analysis and a search for a more promising strategy.
Policy Questions:
The projected plume brings a number of important policy matters into sharper focus. Some pertain to broader national and international considerations, others to technical strategies appropriate to the Yucca Mountain site.
The proposed repository should become the primary facility of a national center for nuclear waste storage and disposal. Permanent geologic disposal of spent fuel and high-level waste would take place inside the mountain following interim storage of these materials to the east of the repository at a place known as Jackass Flats, within the boundaries of the Nevada Test Site, the 1,300-square-mile reservation used from 1951 to the early 1990s for testing nuclear weapons.
Some 84,000 metric tons of spent fuel may eventually come to the Nevada center before the middle of the next century. That would impose two important responsibilities:
The first is to contain harmful radioactivity. The repository must be designed and built to safety standards robust enough to be convincing to the technical community and most opinion leaders. Indeed, with an estimated life-cycle cost of $33 billion (in 1994 dollars), the project will have to be convincing to receive the annual congressional appropriations necessary for sustaining it over the next several decades.
The second responsibility is to securely sequester the weapons-usable plutonium that the fuel contains. Every ton of fuel contains more plutonium than the 6.2 kilograms in the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. Eighty-four thousand tons would contain about 800 tons of plutonium, or three times more than was present in the combined arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union at the peak of the nuclear arms race. For security and accountability, as well as for long-term safety, central interim storage is far superior to continued storage at scores of nuclear power stations. With final disposal of spent fuel inside Yucca Mountain, security would be enhanced still further. Effective international oversight might have to continue as a safeguard against recovery of the plutonium by mining operations, but the sheer complexity and difficulty of such operations in the presence of the heat and radiation from radioactive decay will itself be a safeguard.
As for containing radioactivity, there is not at the moment a clear promise that the proposed repository can be made robustly and definitively safe. The project has been lumbering along, with its massive tunnel-boring machine completing a five-mile loop through the mountain last spring and setting the stage for a deep in-situ investigation of the site. But defensible goals and scientific strategies for finishing the job are still lacking.
As yet, neither the Energy Department nor Congress is committed to providing a system of containment and isolation that can meet internationally recognized standards of safety and do so in a way that can be confirmed by reliable predictive models. These are the issues that cry out for a proper and timely response:
Stringently defining the "critical group" and the allowable annual radiation dose. Safety standards must protect the people most exposed, or the "critical group." Who makes up that group may vary from one era to the next, because the group is essentially self-selected by its choice of lifestyle and place of residence. But the group should include, for instance, a farm family whose drinking water comes from the wells near the repository (and down-gradient from it), and whose diet includes in substantial part vegetables watered from the same wells.
For repository performance standards to be convincing to a broad public, the critical group must be defined as the bounding case-that is, as the people who would receive the greatest exposures. The allowable annual radiation dose for that group should be no greater than the 0.01 to 0.025 REM permitted today for individuals living near nuclear power plants or freely using the site of a nuclear facility whose license has terminated.
If the critical group is protected, then all persons at lesser risk will be protected. Further, just as the critical-group concept works for people of a given time and generation, it also applies across great spans of time-protection of the critical group of a very distant epoch also protects people of times less distant.
This definition of the critical group is consistent with the one adopted by the International Commission on Radiological Protection in 1985, and since widely honored and respected by health physicists and radiation biologists worldwide. In contrast, the bill passed by the House of Representatives in October 1997 would have radiation safety assessed on the basis of a vaguely defined "vicinity average" annual dose not to exceed 0.1 REM.
That standard would permit an unconscionable leniency. A vicinity average dose could be kept low enough to meet virtually any health standard simply by manipulating population numbers, yet the critical group and many others in the vicinity could be harmfully exposed. Also unacceptable and susceptible to manipulation is the "probabilistic critical group," a concept proposed in 1995 by the National Research Council's Committee on Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards. (Thomas Pigford, one of the authors of this essay, was a member of that committee; he set forth his dissenting views at the time.)
The Yucca Mountain Project assumes that a future critical group will obtain water from a well three miles from the repository, where the contaminants will be less concentrated than they will be at the repository boundary. Moreover, an attempt is now being made in some performance assessments to base compliance determinations on calculated radiation exposures from water extracted from a well 12 miles away, at Lathrop Wells, or even farther away, at Amargosa Farms.
Developing an adaptive strategy based on the particular strengths and weaknesses of the Yucca Mountain site. The repository would be built high above the water table, which offers the important advantages of easy access and relatively dry rock. But there is a significant disadvantage: The presence of air in the repository complicates the hydrology and makes for an oxidizing atmosphere that promotes rapid deterioration of the spent fuel and early release of radionuclides from the waste containers.
An effective adaptive strategy would establish barriers to prevent water from ever reaching the waste containers. A two-layered capillary barrier might be the answer.
The Energy Department is now considering plans to slow the long-term release of radionuclides and to reduce the peak doses at 30,000 to 100,000 years by installing drip shields and by using a container material that will fail by pinhole penetrations rather than by general corrosion. But there is no data base-nor even adequate theories-for calculating the corrosion and mechanical failure of drip shields and the growth of pinholes over many tens of thousands of years. Reliable calculations of safety benefits cannot be made.
Adopting a carefully staged, iterative approach to developing and licensing the repository. If geologic disposal is to succeed at Yucca Mountain, the design of the overall repository containment system must be rigorously and repeatedly tested against performance standards stringent enough to push the project to a higher level of resourcefulness and ingenuity. Licensing should come only at the end of a staged, iterative process. Instead, present plans call for the repository to be licensed and receiving waste by the end of the next decade.
Pending congressional legislation reaffirms the inflexible, counterproductive commitment to a fixed licensing schedule. The House bill would direct the Energy Department to have built and licensed a repository that would begin operations by January 17, 2010.
If the often-repeated cliché of the nuclear industry were true-that nuclear waste disposal is a political rather than a technical problem-then it might be possible to have a repository up and running by 2010. But this notion is wrong. Building a repository is much more than a matter of building tunnels and waste-emplacement drifts and installing the necessary waste handling equipment. Rather, the problem is to design and create- through iterative stages that could take decades-a system of containment capable of meeting rigorous standards of safety over many tens of thousands of years. Further, major new challenges often reveal themselves unexpectedly as site exploration and design progresses, independent of any scheduling constraints that Congress or project managers might choose to impose.
Recognizing the close and supportive relationship that an interim surface storage program can have to geologic disposal. Interim storage in surface casks or monoliths relates to geologic disposal in two ways:
First, surface storage is the default solution to the nuclear waste problem-it is what will happen if geologic disposal fails or is abandoned.
Second, if a central interim storage facility is available, a repository can be developed and licensed in keeping with a staged, iterative process. Continued storage of spent fuel at the scores of widely dispersed reactor stations is not, however, likely to support such a patient, thorough-going process. This is what has led to the present intense lobbying by the nuclear industry, the state public utility commissions, and more than a dozen governors, for the present proposals for expedited, hurry-up solutions to the nuclear waste problem.
The Nevada Test Site offers special advantages for surface storage-isolation in a dry and almost uninhabited desert environment; the tight security of a former weapons-testing facility; and closed hydrologic basins from which no surface water flows.
The co-location of interim surface storage and the proposed repository project would offer yet another advantage. Jackass Flats, the area selected for surface storage in pending legislation, together with the repository site that is just to the west of it, is in a closed basin that discharges to Death Valley. Central storage there would be safer and more convenient than surface storage at virtually any other place in the country.
Sponsors of the House and Senate bills, strongly influenced by the nuclear industry, are solidly committed to providing surface storage at the Nevada Test Site. But the White House is not, objecting that to begin storing waste there might prejudice the outcome of the Yucca Mountain Project, either by tilting evaluations in the project's favor, or perhaps by lessening its urgency and political support.
Although these are not fanciful considerations, greater weight deserves to be given to the fact that central interim storage is an essential condition for the appropriate iterative approach to repository development. Central storage is, moreover, superior in its own right to continued storage at reactor sites. It affords greater long-term assurance of radiological safety. It also affords greater security and better accountability.
Improving Safety:
Improving the repository waste isolation system, and doing it in ways that enhance the reliability of safety predictions, can be best accomplished through changes to the waste containers and their mode of emplacement.
The relevant maxim is that the farther the radioactivity migrates from its engineered emplacement, the greater the uncertainties in predicting the concentration of radioactivity in the ground water. The aquifer dilutes the radioactivity once it migrates down from the repository, but calculations of the dilution vary by factors of a few thousand to over 100,000, adding to uncertainties in radiation exposures for the critical group.
The calculation is subject to uncertainties in repository hydrology and in aquifer flow. In turn, the latter reflects uncertainties about hydraulic contours, rock porosity, and permeability. Some hydrologists suggest that, instead of the large elongated plume calculated by the project's idealized model, heterogeneities will cause several small plumes to form, each a few hundred feet across, creating some localized regions of higher concentrations and others of lower concentrations than those now predicted.
But if it is necessary to strengthen containment, how might it be done? And how can the reliability of our calculations be improved?
One possibility is to fill void spaces in the waste containers with a chemically reducing material such as pellets of depleted uranium. Experiments might show that such a reducing environment would lower the solubility and spent-fuel oxidation rate enough for better retention of the more troublesome radionuclides, especially isotopes of iodine, technetium, cesium, and neptunium. The fillers would also guard against the possibility of nuclear criticality.
Another possibility would be designing and installing barriers that divert the flow of water. This would be more than drip shields. The barrier would consist of a two-layered backfill covering the sides and tops of the waste containers with a course gravel layer next to the containers, then a layer of sand or finely ground volcanic tuff on top of that.
The outer layer would be a capillary barrier: the relatively large capillary forces of the sand layer would cause drip water to flow only through the sand and down into the porous rock below the emplacement tunnel. In the gravel layer, the spaces between the relatively large gravel particles would be too large to exert much capillary force.
Still to be determined is whether enough sand or ground tuff from the capillary layer would work its way down into the gravel, in a process called "fingering," to significantly reduce the barrier's effectiveness. Mock-up experiments conducted for the Electric Power Research Institute indicate that fingering is not a serious problem. However, the experiments should be extended using a shaking table to simulate the effects of earthquakes.
The properties that make such a diversion barrier promising can be measured in the laboratory. There is also a well-established mathematical theory for making reliable predictions of water flow and radionuclide release. In principle, capillary barriers could reduce the repository's peak annual dose from about 50 REM for the base case to a few microrem, a 10-million-fold reduction. Much greater predictive reliability also results because the capillary barrier's calculated performance appears insensitive enough to uncertainties in ground water flow for performance to remain unchanged even with a flow that is orders of magnitude greater than what is currently assumed.
Nevertheless, project managers seem reluctant to consider using capillary barriers because they would entail additional emplacement procedures and the redesign of equipment for waste emplacement. The use of any kind of backfill would be more complicated and costly than simply moving containers into their emplacement tunnels and leaving them, as in the present design. However, similar problems are being tackled in Europe, where project planners expect to install compacted clay backfill.
In any case, if the idea of capillary barriers is not carefully explored, their potential for insuring low doses and predictive reliability might be seized upon by skeptics of geologic disposal as a way to enhance the prospects for long-term surface storage.
Some 1,300 to 1,500 years ago, the Japanese protected burial vaults with capillary barriers. On the island of Honshu, near the town of Kumagaya along the Ara River, about a hundred of these vaults survive to this day. A wide variety of materials (steel, bronze, wood, cloth, and bone) have been well preserved because the barriers kept the moisture content extremely low inside the vaults and their surrounding gravel cocoons. These mounded structures, built on the surface, have remained undisturbed and functional despite Japan's damp climate and frequent earthquakes.
Potential Rewards:
The rewards of a successful Yucca Mountain repository would be large. A fully developed site would accommodate all the commercial spent fuel and high-level nuclear weapons waste now in prospect, and then some. Under present law, the repository's capacity would be limited to 70,000 tons (with 7,000 reserved for weapons waste), but the actual potential is for some 140,000 tons. The U.S. spent fuel inventory at the middle of the next century is estimated at 84,000 tons, which could be high if no more reactors are ordered, for it assumes that all of about 100 existing reactors will remain on line for the rest of their 40-year operating permits.
Similarly, waste generation from the former U.S. nuclear weapons production complex is now well bounded. The Energy Department plans to dispose of 19,000 canisters of vitrified high-level waste from the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and the Hanford site in the state of Washington. But that may be an overestimate. Much of this waste is expected to come from Hanford, where the special problems of recovery from the underground tanks there may well prove too difficult and costly to be achievable.
Consolidating spent fuel storage in Nevada before the repository is built would offer important advantages. If surface storage began early in the next decade, the Energy Department would be only a few years late in meeting its contractual and statutory obligations to the utilities, not to mention the rate payers, who have paid $12 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund over the past 16 years.
Getting on with consolidated storage in Nevada will also be the key to the timely decommissioning of power reactors as they come to the end of their operating permits or are prematurely retired for economic reasons. It is important to prepare now for decommissioning, for if nuclear generation declines as steeply over the next 20 years as some studies predict, the user fees going into the Nuclear Waste Fund will decline correspondingly, perhaps causing a pinch with respect to building and operating the multi-billion-dollar spent-fuel transport and storage system that will be needed.
By consolidating spent-fuel storage in Nevada, the United States could provide a prototype for a global network of regional centers operating within a framework established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A network could make for greater nuclear materials accountability and control and thus a stronger nonproliferation regime.
The Nevada center could accept some fuel from other nations within the Western Hemisphere without taking on a heavy additional burden. While Canada has a substantial nuclear power program, it also has its own plans for spent-fuel management. The small tonnages of fuel that might come to Nevada from Mexico and Argentina, the only Latin countries that now have commercial nuclear programs, would add only marginally to the U.S. inventory.
Ultimately, with final disposal of U.S. and some foreign spent fuel deep inside Yucca Mountain, hundreds of tons of weapons-usable plutonium would be relatively inaccessible and under effective IAEA safeguards. The isolation and security of the spent fuel and plutonium would be enhanced by the installation of capillary barriers consisting of more than a million cubic yards of gravel and other material.
Here we come full circle to the importance of a Yucca Mountain repository as the centerpiece of a national center for nuclear waste storage and disposal in Nevada. If this facility is designed, licensed, and built to the appropriate standard, with radioactivity in the plume of contamination kept to innocuous levels, the United States will lead the world in finally coping with a nuclear waste problem which for far too long has gone without effective response.
Luther J. Carter, a writer in Washington, D.C. and the author of Nuclear Imperatives and Public Trust: Dealing with Radioactive Waste, has had the support of the Ploughshares Fund and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Thomas H. Pigford, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, is an internationally prominent adviser on radioactive waste and other nuclear issues.
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Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository
Yucca strategy: Sue, Stall
State hopes legal battles will slow or kill project.
By Erin Neff
LAS VEGAS SUN
Feb. 18, 2002
Now that President Bush has approved a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada officials plan to stuff the courts with lawsuits, tying up the issue for as long as possible.
Although the state's ultimate goal is to block the repository, attorneys and officials admit that with the federal government's deep pockets and their own questionable legal grounds, Nevada's real court strategy is delay.
"Delay has sort of always been the state's motto here," said Robert Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Bret Birdsong, an environmental law professor at UNLV's Boyd School of Law, said time is on the side of the plaintiff -- or in this case Nevada -- in environmental suits.
"If you can just throw enough sand in the gears it can slow things until different science emerges or the political winds change," Birdsong said. "If you just stop the process, it improves your chance for victory."
What started as a small suit disputing water safety has grown to a smattering of cases -- and plaintiffs -- in courts around the country.
Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa even had to ask her staff Friday how many Yucca Mountain challenges are out there.
The state already had four lawsuits -- including one joined by Las Vegas and Clark County -- even before Bush's decision. The lawsuits argue everything from the government following a faulty process in making the decision to the Energy Department basing the decision on incomplete science.
Both Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's recommendation Thursday and Bush's move Friday gave the state additional fodder for lawsuits.
"Now we have a final decision," Marta Adams, senior deputy attorney general, said. "Before much of our legal argument was premature because there was no final agency decision."
On Friday the state sued again, this time naming Abraham and Bush in addition to alleging the Energy Department failed to rely on Yucca Mountain's geological suitability in naming the site.
Las Vegas and Clark County also amended their case Friday naming Bush as a defendant. The state's new suit and the city and county's amended suit are both before the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington.
"This was a political decision, not based on sound science," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a criminal defense attorney, said.
"Some people have expressed concern that it's over," Goodman added. "But the fight has just begun."
Las Vegas City Attorney Brad Jerbic said it is asking the court to hear the city's arguments as soon as possible, even as the city explores additional legal remedies.
Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera added there is "political, legal, and public relations ammo that hasn't been realized yet."
But what chance does Nevada really have in the courts?
Gov. Kenny Guinn describes it as a David versus Goliath fight.
"These people are just unbelievable," Guinn said referring to the nuclear energy industry. "They don't have a budget and they've hired the best law firm they can."
"Fighting the government is tough, and we're a very small state," Guinn added.
Carl Tobias, a UNLV constitutional law professor, said there is an opportunity and legal precedent for Nevada to successfully make Yucca Mountain a state's rights issue.
The Supreme Court ruled favorably twice for states based on 10th Amendment arguments.
In New York v. United States -- a 1992 case involving nuclear waste in New York -- the court said the federal government was "commandeering" the state's infrastructure to transport the waste.
The second case involved a Montana challenge to the Brady Law's gun registration requirement. Lawyers for a Montana sheriff argued the federal government was "commandeering" local law enforcement officials to perform the background checks.
"Nevada could try that argument," Tobias said. "But it's a fairly narrow window."
Adams said the state believes both Abraham and Bush's decisions have legal and procedural faults that could lead a judge to side with Nevada.
"It's safe to say our strategy is to delay," Adams said. "But there are real legal grounds."
The state has two suits pending on the safety of water under Yucca Mountain. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals kicked one of those suits back to federal district court in Nevada and the other is in district court in Tonopah.
Nevada has also filed suit in Washington over the radiation standard and the site guidelines used by the Energy Department.
Birdsong said he thought the water challenge was "a minor sideshow," but that the state's site guideline challenge may prove successful.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act specifies Yucca Mountain can be recommended as the repository because its geologic isolation allows it to safely store nuclear waste. But the Energy Department last year successfully argued for a change in that law to allow the mountain's suitability to be based on constructed barriers -- not geologic isolation.
But Birdsong warns that many courts will defer to the agency when there is a question about environmental law.
In addition, he added, national environmental laws are generally weak and would likely give the government the edge.
Still Birdsong said there may be enough in the 10,000-page environmental impact statement to "interest a judge."
Among the documents in the 80-pound package of information DOE has submitted is a report assessing Yucca Mountain's science as "poor to fair."
"A judge may see that and say, 'No you can't go forward'," Birdsong said.
Loux said all it takes is one legal victory to block the site. And Guinn vows to fight any of the cases as far as they will go.
"We just have to be litigious," Guinn said. "On science, people can say it's safe and other people can say it isn't.
"We have to rely on the courts to settle that part of our fight," Guinn added. "The presidency of the United States was settled in court and the American people abide by it."
Adams said both the state's internal and private legal teams are "in a good position to make something stick."
Nevada officials are not commenting on how much the state intends to spend in court. However, the Nevada Protection Fund -- established by Guinn to fight the repository -- has $5.4 million.
Guinn said another major donation to the fund will be announced this week, and he encouraged all residents and businesses to give what they can to the fund.
"It's a commitment all of us need to make," Guinn said.
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Legislature has few options in 2003
By: Erin Neff
LAS VEGAS SUN
Feb. 18, 2002
If the Nevada Legislature were in session right now, the 64 lawmakers could have a say in the Yucca Mountain fight.
But meeting just 120 days every two years leaves the Legislature without a role in the current battle, and there are few options when it does convene next year.
Short of resolutions condemning the federal government's decision to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, state lawmakers really can't do much.
"I'd love to see us as a state invoke the 10th amendment and see how far we could get," Sen. Ann O'Connell, R-Las Vegas, said.
But O'Connell doesn't know quite how Nevada can legally argue for state's rights when her own Legislature couldn't pass a bill seeking to study and limit federal mandates that come without funding.
"We couldn't get that out of committee," O'Connell said. "It's hard."
Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said that while the Legislature is committed to "doing anything we can," the reality, when it comes to disputes between state and federal governments, is a bit different.
"We could pass some law governing the shipment or any other methods regulating the nuclear waste, but it would probably get shot down as a Commerce Clause violation or a federal government exemption," said Buckley, an attorney with Clark County Legal Services.
The federal government has constitutional powers over states -- such as regulating interstate commerce -- that supersede the states' rights arguments of the 10th amendment.
The state is already bracing for a lawsuit from the Energy Department stemming from the recent decision by the state engineer not to extend water permits to the DOE at the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"Certainly there are ways we can try to mess with them," said Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas. "But, most attempts have been pretty quickly shot down.
"Can we do something? Yes. Will it work? I don't know. That's quite an opponent."
Beers is even more skeptical of battling Washington, D.C. with a 10th amendment argument, "since they've lost that document back there."
Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said the Legislature must support the congressional delegation's efforts and pass resolutions.
"Some people say it's just paper, but it shows we're unified in our opposition," Titus said.
Titus also said she worries about moving beyond an anti-Yucca resolution by crafting bills regarding transportation routes or other related matters before the state exhausts its fight.
"You have to be careful that you don't get into that implied consent problem," Titus said.
During the 2001 Legislature, state Sen. Jon Porter, R-Boulder City, introduced a resolution urging Congress to find transportation routes outside of the Las Vegas Valley in the event Yucca Mountain was approved.
Another resolution, sponsored by state Sen. Bill O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas, urged the Energy Department to transport waste on a rail line outside of the Las Vegas if the dump were approved.
Critics said both issues could give the federal government the impression Nevada was willing to accept the waste.
(There is more to this article...we will post it soon).
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Researcher Discusses Nuclear Waste
By: Karen Bossick
Times-News correspondent
Jan. 17, 2002
KETCHUM -- Mention the idea of poison in the Snake River Aquifer and people perk up their ears.
Mention plutonium and other byproducts of the work that's been done at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and a few people's eyes glaze over as they contemplate a lot of technological mumbo jumbo.
But Arjun Makhijani says the threat of radioactive poisoning in the Snake River Aquifer is serious business -- serious enough to make him leave his home in Washington, D.C. and journey nearly 3,000 miles across the country; serious enough to prompt him to spend a week traveling through Idaho in temperatures cold enough to make his nose sting on a Paul Revere-like ride from Idaho Falls to Mackay to Ketchum to Buhl to Boise to sound the alarm.
"Right now there are no large amounts of radioactivity in the aquifer," he says. "But if the plutonium that's in the ground at INEEL gets out of hand and starts migrating, it would be death to the water. And death to Idaho's economy.
"It's extremely unlikely that this would happen overnight or in a few weeks or even a couple years, but it's not out of the question. An earthquake, for instance, could create new migration pathways. That's why you want to fix it now."
Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, has spent most of his life researching the nuclear industry. At least ever since he received a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972 where he specialized in plasma physics as applied to controlled nuclear fission.
He has written a number of reports and books on nuclear weapon-related issues, including the de-alerting of nuclear weapons, nuclear disarmament and environmental problems associated with nuclear weapons productions and testing.
His latest report, "Poison in the Vadose Zone -- Threats to the Snake River Aquifer from Migrating Nuclear Waste," has been circulating among concerned Idaho activitists as if it were a Stephen King bestseller since the report came out in October.
At stake, Makhijani says, is the most important underground water resource in the Northwest United States.
The Snake River Aquifer is the only source of drinking water for 200,000 people in southern Idaho, including the Magic Valley. It's a major source of irrigation water for Idaho's trademark potatoes, which make up a fourth of all potatoes eaten in the United States, and for Idaho's barley crop, used to make a quarter of America's beer.
What's more, it supplies the water for trout farms that raise 75 percent of the commercial rainbow trout eaten in the United States.
Only 35 years ago, scientists estimated it would take 80,000 years for plutonium waste to travel through the vadoze zone -- a region of rock and soil between the surface and the water table -- to the aquifer. Now, scientists estimate it could take only 30 years, he said.
Makhijani's work has raised the angst of at least a couple of engineers with the U.S. Geological Survey -- most notably, Joseph Rousseau and L. DeWayne Cecil. They claim that the amount of plutonium in water off site is 300 times less than the maximum contaminant level set by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
But that's only because the standard is believed to be 100 to 150 times more lax than it should be, counters Makhijani. And the level of plutonium in the water would come close to setting off alarms under Colorado's more restrictive standards, he said.
Makhijani's statements rang an alarm with Ginna Lagergren, one of a handful of Ketchum residents who turned out to listen to Makhijani at a hastily announced meeting that followed other presentations around the state.
"Even if the aquifer wasn't actually contaminated, just the perception of contamination could wipe out Idaho's potato industry," Lagergren said.
The best fix, Makhijani contends, is to recover and stabilize buried waste, discontinue shallow land burials and solidify liquid high-level waste and store it properly.
Idaho and a handful of other states also face the threat of having high-level waste reclassified as "incidental waste," so it can be treated differently than it should be, she added.
Still, Makhijani says, this could be a golden moment for those who have been concerned about nuclear waste cleanup. Gov. Dirk Kempthorne publicly demanded last week that INEEL needs to take care of buried waste, and the state's other leading politicians, Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson, have backed him up.
"We've never had this kind of political support before," said Margaret Stewart of the Snake River Alliance, a watchdog organization.
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Yucca Mountain
Nuclear Waste
Containers Corrode In Water
By: Mary Manning
The Las Vegas Sun
Energy Department scientists are wrestling with potential weaknesses in the metal chosen to store highly radioactive waste in a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.
The alloy that will make up containers holding rods of spent nuclear fuel showed signs of corrosion after worst-case exposure to water from the mountain, DOE scientists told a seven-member scientific review team in Las Vegas.
Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied to hold 77,000 tons of waste from nuclear power plants and defense activities. (YMP/SW Insert: Not true. See above article which reveals that there are several sites already being used to store even more tons than Yucca Mountain; Savannah River, South Carolina & Georgia; Snake River, Idaho; Carlsbad, New Mexico to name a few...there are others).
The mountain must be proven safe for a repository, and so far no studies have presented insurmountable obstacles, according to a DOE report on the research released in January.
The DOE is expected to make its recommendation on Yucca Mountain later this year. An independent scientific team began reviewing DOE's work on proposed nuclear waste containers last March. The team expects to finish its final report by April, Chairman Joe Payer said.
(YMP/SW Insert: No report has been released as of this date: 8-14-2001).
The containers made of C-22 alloy are considered the first line of defense to protect the environment and nearby residents from radiation. The mountain's volcanic rock is the other.
Scientists also are researching the potential for water to reach the repository level and for radiation to escape the mountain through ground water.
The containers are being designed to keep the highly radioactive spent fuel and defense wastes intact for 10,000 years, the planned lifetime of the repository.
The metal planned for the containers has been used in corrosive environments such as pulp bleaching and flue gas stacks, said Gerald Gordon of Framatome Advanced Nuclear Power, a DOE contractor. A sheet of an earlier form of the metal exposed to sea air since 1941 is still shiny, he said.
However, in some laboratory tests using water from a well near Yucca Mountain containing lead, arsenic or mercury, some stress cracks in the metal were recorded, he said.
The temperature of the water was above boiling -- 212 degrees Fahrenheit -- in the experiments, Gordon said. Other studies have predicted that the preferred design for a repository would allow the mountain to get that hot.
In September (2000) scientific consultants for Nevada who studied the metal alloy said C-22 corroded in samples of the same water in 14 days.
The danger of corrosion from water inside the desert mountain is not remote.
Although the repository would be built 500 feet above the water table, the mountain's pores and cracks contain plenty of water, Gregory Gdowski of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said. "That is quite a bit of water you can generate."
The water, as it flows through Yucca's rock, could become saltier, possibly corroding the metals proposed for containers, he said. It can also bring naturally occurring lead, arsenic or mercury into contact with the containers, speeding corrosion, Gdowski said.
In addition to water, scientists have discovered organisms in Yucca's soils that can live in high heat and salty water. Some of the microbes can eat through carbon steel, which would be used for frames holding the containers, Gdowski said.
"There are bugs in the mountain," Gdowski said. They can survive temperatures up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, considered warm, but not boiling water, he said.
While radiation from nuclear waste buried in the mountain is expected to kill those organisms, water seeping into the drifts where the containers are stored could bring more microbes, he said.
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