Yucca: Science vs. politics

A pellet of nuclear waste the size of a pencil eraser can kill an unprotected person in less than five minutes.

So when the Department of Energy says it can safely bury tons of high-level radioactive waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevadans are skeptical. Many remember when the government deemed atomic blasts at the Nevada Test Site as "safe."

Eleven years after Congress narrowed the potential repository sites, the DOE wants to bury that waste in only one place -- Yucca Mountain, an ancient volcano. There is no backup plan.

Most Nevadans don't want the waste, particularly since none of it was produced here. They say the state was targeted for the repository because of politics, not science.

"We're dealing with an element that nobody really understands or has a handle on," Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams said. "We're a state that doesn't use it (nuclear power) but we're expected to have all the liabilities."

Williams and other repository opponents believe the high-level radioactive waste should be stored at the more than 100 commercial nuclear reactors and government weapons facilities where it is produced.

The DOE and the nuclear industry, which is running out of storage space, believe a central repository makes more sense.

The DOE maintains that scientific studies are being conducted at Yucca Mountain to make sure the repository is safe and that there will be no threat to health, safety or the environment.

"The engineering, designed to complement the geology, will make it (the repository) safe," Allen Benson, DOE spokesman for the Yucca Mountain project, said. "The material is in solid form. It will be in specially designed canisters; it will be protected."

He objects to the term nuclear waste dump.

"That connotes a hole in the ground that you throw things in. Nothing could be further from the truth," Benson said. "The material will be placed in rigorously designed and tested casks and placed in a fashion that engineers determine will be suitable for the future."

One environmental and consumer watchdog group -- the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in New York City -- believes the waste problem should have been solved before nuclear power plants were even opened.

"The current nuclear waste policy is flawed and needs to be overhauled," staff scientist Anna Aurilio said. "It's not based on sound science. What we've seen in Congress is to do the most politically expedient thing."

It's unlikely the national policy will change. And "political expediency" may be the reason Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., is urging Congress to pass a bill that would make the Nevada Test Site next to Yucca Mountain a temporary disposal site for the waste as the repository study continues.

Despite vows from President Clinton to veto such a measure, Congress is close to having enough votes to override the president. If a bill passes by a veto-proof margin this year, nuclear waste could show up in Nevada as early as 2002.

Also stirring the nuclear waste pot is a call for Congress to dismantle the Energy Department because it no longer protects the nation's energy supply as intended when it was created during the 1977 energy crisis.

Benson said administration of the Yucca Mountain project could be disrupted if the department is eliminated, but he said the study would continue.

A.C. Robison, a Las Vegas consultant for the nuclear power industry, said he believes it's only a matter of time before nuclear waste is shipped here and that Nevada should negotiate for benefits.

"I really do get tired of the anti crowd that uses their definitions of what's right and wrong as a litmus test for everyone," he said. "I get tired of people who question my motives about what is good for this state.

"All things being equal, do I want nuclear waste in Nevada? No. I would rather it was buried in a New York subway or some other ridiculous place. But not all things are equal and they never have been. Nevada, and specifically Yucca Mountain, will probably be determined by scientists to be the best place for nuclear waste."

How Yucca Mountain came to be the only site studied by the federal government is a story more than 40 years in the making.

It began in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration's "Atoms for Peace" initiative. With the Cold War in full throttle, Americans became increasingly fearful of nuclear weapons, so much so that many people constructed bomb shelters beneath their homes.

With politicians increasingly pressured to find alternative applications for uranium and plutonium, the initiative encouraged utilities to use nuclear fuel to help generate electric power. As many nuclear power plants came on line, their operators assumed they would be able to recycle the spent radioactive material when necessary. But recycling was never attempted because radioactive material was in plentiful supply.

The National Academy of Sciences, meanwhile, recommended in 1957 that the utilities bury nuclear waste in deep geologic salt domes shaped like caverns. The academy reasoned that salt was thick and flexible but wouldn't crack or leak.

While scientists embraced the concept of deep geologic disposal, influential congressmen with salt domes in their states eliminated them from consideration because they didn't want the waste in their back yards.

From 1960 through 1996, the federal government issued licenses for 110 commercial nuclear reactors, which have served 34 states and combined to produce 20 percent of the nation's electricity. None of this power has been generated in Nevada. Most of the plants are east of the Mississippi River.

With nuclear waste piling up at commercial reactors and at government weapons facilities, the Carter administration in the late 1970s caused an upheaval among utilities. The administration, fearful that rogue nations would obtain radioactive material, believed that recycling facilities at nuclear power plants would make easy targets for terrorists. So nuclear waste recycling was banned, forcing at least three recycling plants under construction to close down.

With no other options readily available, Congress in 1982 passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, compelling the federal government to find a place for the waste. The act called for one permanent waste repository in the West and another in the East, with the first one opening by this year.

Yucca Mountain, which is owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the Air Force, was initially chosen as one of nine potential sites in six states. Also in the mix were Utah, Louisiana, Mississippi, Washington and Texas. The list was pared in 1985 to three -- Yucca Mountain; Deaf Smith, Texas; and the Hanford, Wash., weapons facility. About that time, the Environmental Protection Agency also ruled that a permanent nuclear waste repository should last at least 10,000 years.

In what came to be known as the "Screw Nevada" bill, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was amended by Congress in 1987 so that only Yucca Mountain would be studied. The proposed opening date for a repository also was moved back to 2010. The bill's author, then-Sen. J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, earlier had a hand in eliminating his state from contention.

Why Nevada was singled out, with no backup plan by the government, is still subject to considerable debate.

Proponents argue that Yucca Mountain made the most sense because of its desert isolation and close proximity to the Test Site. Given the nuclear weapons explosions at the Test Site since 1951, Nevada was thought to have few worries about handling nuclear waste.

Opponents maintain that Yucca Mountain was tabbed because Nevada had a small and politically weak congressional delegation. Nothing signified that more than then-Nevada Republican Sen. Chic Hecht, who drew national media attention for his malaprops, including his infamous "nuclear suppository" speech on the Senate floor. Hecht's inadequate defense of Nevada was the main reason he lost his re-election bid in 1988 to then-Gov. Richard Bryan.

In contrast, some of the nation's most powerful politicians helped eliminate Texas and Washington from consideration. Consider at the time that then-Rep. Jim Wright, a Texan, was speaker of the House, and then-Rep. Tom Foley of Washington was its majority leader. Also fighting against Nevada was then-Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon, whose state shares the Columbia River with Washington.

"The siting process was obviously a political process," UNLV history professor Hal Rothman said. "Science is irrelevant. Anybody who thinks that bad science will stop it (the nuclear dump) is fooling himself."

Nevada politicians have spent the past 11 years trying to halt implementation of the federal law. They say there could be transportation accidents or terrorist attacks before the nuclear waste even gets to the dump site. Plans have been to transport the waste through 43 states by road and rail using thousands of casks.

That's why Bryan has called legislation before Congress to establish temporary disposal at the Test Site the "Mobile Chernobyl" bill. The Russian town of Chernobyl was contaminated by a nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, accused the federal government of seeking to lower safe environmental standards to obtain a repository license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The EPA is reviewing radiation standards involving the mountain.

But Loux, whose agency monitors the mountain study for the state, is worried that unsafe levels of radiation will be allowed to escape into the environment.

"They have a major problem," Loux said of the federal government. "I don't think they can license the site under current regulations.

"The Department of Energy is also engaged in advocacy science. This isn't calculating and analyzing data and letting the chips fall where they may. They aren't calculating data in a lot of areas where we believe there is proof that the site is not a good one."

The Energy Department maintains that it is neutral on the suitability of Yucca Mountain and is conducting a fair study. Spokesman Erik Olds added that the department has no control over radiation standards.

"We have to follow whatever the Environmental Protection Agency sets by law," he said.

But Dennis Bechtel, manager of the Clark County Nuclear Waste Division, complained that local governments have difficulty obtaining information about the mountain study from the Energy Department. Bechtel's agency is tasked with monitoring the study for the county.

"Sometimes, because of the size of the program, it's difficult to know what information is out there," he said. "We had to elbow into (Yucca Mountain) meetings in years past."

The Energy Department's response is that Clark County and nine other counties have received millions of dollars from Congress to monitor the study and have access to all the information they need.

According to the DOE, Nye County is conducting its own scientific study of Yucca Mountain and even is drilling there. The state, Benson said, does only technical review of DOE reports.

There are also concerns that nuclear waste disposal would bring with it negative publicity that would damage Southern Nevada's tourism industry.

But the concerns from the anti-dump camp haven't swayed the restless nuclear power industry. Utilities and state agencies have sued the Energy Department, contending that the federal law directed the government to begin accepting nuclear waste by last Jan. 31.

In its lawsuit before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the utilities want to place in escrow their payments to the Nuclear Waste Disposal Fund until the government complies with the law. The fund, which includes contributions from nuclear power customers, is the main source of financing for the Yucca Mountain study. Those customers also are expected to foot the majority of the cost to build a repository, with the price tag estimated to be at least $34 billion.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power industry's lobbying arm in Washington, estimated that 27 commercial reactors will run out of on-site waste storage space by the end of this year and will be forced to shut down.

Anti-dump proponents disagree, suggesting instead that the industry wants to get rid of its waste to save money and appear as a friendly neighbor in the communities served by nuclear power.

About 33,000 metric tons of waste have accumulated at commercial reactors -- that's enough to fill a football field four yards deep. An additional 5,000 metric tons of waste have piled up at government weapons sites.

Benson termed the accumulation of waste an environmental problem.

Environmentalists such as Richard Nielsen, executive director of Citizen Alert in Las Vegas, say the Energy Department has mismanaged nuclear waste. He cited hazardous federal weapons facilities such as Hanford and Rocky Flats, Colo., that have threatened the environment.

Russ Dyer, the DOE's acting Yucca Mountain project manager, said his agency takes its nuclear waste role seriously.

"We are the ones who created this," he said. "It is our responsibility to take care of it, and not leave the problem hanging out for future generations."

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