DOE has work to do at Yucca, report says

A technical review board charged with evaluating research into Yucca Mountain says that the Department of Energy needs to do much more work at the site before it can consider putting a high-level nuclear waste repository there.

Its report, released this week, agrees with a recent evaluation of the site by independent scientists, adding to the scientific evidence casting doubt on the project. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied as a possible repository for the highly radioactive waste piling up at nuclear power plants all over the country.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a panel of scientists established by Congress in 1987 and paid by DOE funds, criticizes the 2001 deadline to decide whether the site is scientifically sound as "very ambitious."

The independent scientists last month also raised doubts about the federal government's ability to finish in-depth studies on such a tight deadline.

Sketchy information about the stability of tunnels that would hold the waste deep inside the mountain, the failure rates of canisters that would contain the waste and how fast water moves through the mountain call into question the site's ability to keep 77,000 tons of nuclear waste safe for hundreds of thousands of years, the board's report says.

"Of course, there is no guarantee that completion of these studies will lead to successful development of a repository at the site," the board's report concludes. "The studies could show the site to be unsuitable, or they could raise new questions about potential repository performance."

In the report "Moving Beyond the Yucca Mountain Viability Assessment," the board expresses concern that some of the studies the DOE proposed in a viability assessment -- its 1998 report card to Congress -- might be delayed because of a funding shortage.

Without studies to change the design of the repository as well as expand experiments on water flows and heat effects on the rocks at the site, the DOE does not have a scientific basis to license Yucca Mountain, the report says.

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