New tests show water history in Yucca

The latest test results from crystals dug out of Yucca Mountain confirm that water is getting into an area planned for the storage of high-level nuclear waste, the scientist conducting the investigation says.

If water invades the volcanic rock periodically, it poses a threat to thousands of casks that would be used to store highly radioactive waste. The water could corrode the casks, releasing radiation to the environment.

The tests performed on 50 samples collected from the mountain's 5-mile-long exploratory tunnel in June show that the hot water came from deep underneath the mountain, geochemist Yuri Dublyansky said.

"This confirms my previous results and gives me more information than before," he said. Dublyansky has joined with geologist Jerry Szymanski, a former Department of Energy scientist who once worked on the project, to work for the state of Nevada at Yucca Mountain.

The two scientists are offering evidence for a legal battle mounted by the state against the DOE, which wants to begin burying radioactive wastes at Yucca Mountain after 2010. The state maintains the mountain is not fit to keep 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste intact.

Other geochemists from Austin, Texas, Albuquerque, N.M., and Oxford University have agreed with Dublyansky's findings.

Dublyansky sent the test results to Nevada officials last week. The Nevada attorney general's office hired Dublyansky and Szymanski to conduct tests on those crystals trapped inside the mountain.

Szymanski believes that water rushed into the mountain from deep within the Earth after the mountain was formed by a volcanic eruption about 13 million years ago.

Crystals of calcite, quartz and opal glitter in veins lacing the mountain.

"We need to restore the history of Yucca Mountain," Dublyansky said as studies of the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas continue.

The site is under study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the DOE, whose scientists say the crystals formed from rain and snow trickling through cracks and faults in the rock from the surface.

Dublyansky said many questions remain. "How much water came into the mountain? When? How often?" he said.

He expects to continue work on the samples this summer, hoping to find the extent of deep water activity throughout the tunnel.

The independent Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board became interested in the crystal studies after Szymanski presented the board with earlier work performed by Dublyansky.

The board has spent almost a year reviewing the studies and could recommend more research to the DOE, review board spokesman Frank Randall said, if the panel's experts find the evidence "compelling."

Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Projects Office, said it is critical that extensive experiments continue on the crystals.

"If the board considers Dublyansky's work important, then it gives it new life," Loux said.

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