DOE's report on Yucca not final

A federal official's announcement that a report card to Congress will show Yucca Mountain could be a viable dump site for the nation's most radioactive waste is not the final word from the U.S. Department of Energy, Secretary Bill Richardson said today.

A DOE technical review team will provide an indepth analysis on the report before it is sent to Congress. Any other public review of the report before that time would be inappropriate, Richardson said.

Lake Barrett, acting chief of the DOE's civilian radioactive waste program, said Thursday he has reviewed the viability assessment requested by Congress and he found nothing that disqualifies the site.

Richardson said he will be visiting the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain next week.

The DOE prepared the report, which doesn't carry any scientific weight, as more intensive field studies continue at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada officials had asked to review and comment on the report before it becomes public, but the DOE refused to release it. DOE spokeswoman Jacqueline Johnson said the assessment will be released at the end of this year.

Bob Loux, Nevada nuclear projects chief, asked Barrett to allow the state to review the viability assessment in August. Barrett refused the request and said the public will have adequate time to review the voluminous document once it goes to Congress.

Loux has said he feared the assessment would be used politically to bolster arguments for the temporary storage on nuclear waste in Nevada before the Yucca Mountain permanent repository opens.

Bulky reports included in the assessment are based on computer models, not work from the site. Many of them are available on the DOE's website.

Barrett denied today that he had said in a published report the department decided to wait until after the Nov. 3 election to release the study so it would not become political fodder in hotly contested races such as the campaign between Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev., who is challenging Reid for his Senate seat.

Congress actually delayed the release of the report until the end of the year, Barrett said is a written statement today.

Barrett made his first comments about the study after a Thursday morning session in Washington at the National Press Club. Barrett did not comment today on the timing of his Thursday statement.

The viability assessment carries no scientific clout with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that will license a high-level radioactive repository. The DOE has set a deadline of July 1, 2001, to produce scientific evidence that the mountain is safe for nuclear waste storage. The federal agency had expected to have a dump site ready by 1998.

The DOE is studying how Yucca Mountain's rock reacts to heat above the boiling point of water, how water moves through the ridge and if rainwater can invade the tuff formed in a volcanic explosion 12 million years ago.

Barrett noted that the viability assessment does not put the DOE's seal of approval on the Nevada mountain to become the nation's nuclear repository. The DOE would prefer to allow access into the repository for 100 years, rather than seal it after the current 50-year limit set by Congress, to continue studying the rock's performance because the site is sliced by earthquake faults and ground water is not well understood.

Reid said that Yucca Mountain is not the main threat to Nevada. A move by Congress for temporary nuclear waste storage at the Nevada Test Site is the immediate danger, he said. The entire Nevada congressional delegation united to keep nuclear waste out of the state.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry's lobbying arm, is pushing bills that support temporary storage. Joe Colvin, NEI chief, told the National Press Club Thursday that Yucca Mountain is 15 years away.

The viability assessment gives Congress a chance to re-assess the temporary storage legislation that have failed in the past two sessions, he said. Colvin is optimistic that temporary storage will pass next year.

Congressional efforts to store the wastes in Nevada have failed because President Clinton has threatened to veto any temporary storage measure, fearing fund cuts for Yucca Mountain studies. The president has said that permanent storage is the goal.

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