Senators to DOE: Get hint from quakes?

Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan said Monday's earthquake on the Nevada Test Site should shake up the government's plans to store highly radioactive waste at nearby Yucca Mountain.

"Mother Nature has delivered another wake-up call that Nevada is not geographically suitable to be a repository for high level nuclear waste," Bryan said. Yucca Mountain's growing problems should disqualify Nevada as a dumpsite, he said.

"Today's earthquake not only shook things up at the Nevada Test Site but also shook up the nuclear industry's faulty efforts in Washington to argue that interim storage of the world's most poisonous substance at the Test Site is safe and sound public policy," Reid said.

The area has rattled at least 621 times from earthquakes measuring more than 2.5 magnitude on the Richter scale within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain since 1976, the senators, both Democrats, said.

Monday's temblors, measuring 4.5 and 3.5, struck about 30 miles east of the proposed repository site.

The senators argued that the nuclear industry is threatening public health and safety by planning to store the wastes at the Test Site. "Especially when the nuclear lobbyists want to stack those containers of poison above the ground on cement pads, 80 miles north of the nation's and the world's most popular resort destination," Reid said.

At least 33 known earthquake faults exist at Yucca Mountain, Bryan said.

A 5.8 magnitude earthquake rattled Little Skull Mountain in June 1992, less than 12 miles from Yucca Mountain, causing at least $500,000 in damage to buildings at the surface. A 1994 quake registered 4.3, and one in 1995 hit 4.2.

A Nevada Test Site worker said she had a "weird feeling" Monday as she grabbed for the trembling potted plants on her desk at the hazardous materials spill facility on the eastern edge of the Test Site during the earthquake.

"I'd never want to do this again," the woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told Department of Energy spokesman Darwin Morgan after the first temblor jolted Frenchman Flat Monday, about a mile from the facility.

Workers in Area 5 of the Test Site thought that first jolt was a sonic boom from nearby Nellis Air Force Base jet training exercises.

"Another worker, a man, said, 'Where do I sign up for this, it was wonderful,' " Morgan said.

The main temblor quaked about four miles underground at 10:52 a.m. and the aftershock struck about an hour later, UNLV seismologist David Weide said.

The same area experienced 3.7 magnitude and a 3.3 magnitude temblors at 7 p.m. and 11:11 p.m., respectively, on Friday, Weide said.

"If you look at the earthquake map of Nevada, there have been thousands of earthquakes up there," Weide said. Nevada is the third most active state for earthquakes, behind California and Alaska.

The quakes were too small for Las Vegas Valley residents to feel, Weide said.

The Test Site workers at the spill facility felt both quakes, Morgan said.

No injuries or property damage were reported. Workers in a tunnel 900 feet beneath the Test Site's surface didn't feel anything.

That isn't surprising, said University of Nevada, Reno seismology professor emeritus Burt Slemmons. "Very often people underground do not feel quakes that shake the surface," he said from his Las Vegas home.

Even the Las Vegas Valley can produce temblors that people feel.

A temblor measuring 2.7 magnitude shook residents in the northwest valley on Dec. 14. It was the first earthquake recorded from in the valley in 14 years.

That quake occurred about eight miles east of the Strip on an unknown fault. At least 20 known faults can cause earthquakes in the Las Vegas Valley.

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