Delegates say quakes near Yucca should be a 'warning'

The strongest of five earthquakes to rock the Nevada Test Site in as many days tipped over file cabinets and knocked pictures off walls Wednesday at a low-level nuclear waste storage facility.

Nevada's congressional delegation renewed demands to disqualify neighboring Yucca Mountain as a place to bury the nation's most radioactive wastes as a 4.7 magnitude temblor struck about 30 miles away at 2:44 a.m. Wednesday.

"The Department of Energy must recognize this latest seismic activity for what it is -- a warning," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who has a master's degree in geology.

Gibbons noted that Yucca Mountain itself formed thousands of years ago during earth convulsions and volcanic activity in the area.

"This latest instance shows the geologic instability of the area, and the DOE must consider these recent events as warning signs that Yucca Mountain is unsuitable for storage of nuclear waste," Gibbons said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said nuclear industry lobbyists "cannot endanger the lives of Nevadans or the millions of tourists who visit our state each year with political gamesmanship meant solely to prop up the bottom line of the nuclear waste industry."

The senator noted that only California and Alaska have more earthquakes than Nevada. "Each time another earthquake hits the Test Site, it becomes clearer and clearer to the American people that this is not the place to ship 70,000 tons of nuclear waste," Reid said.

"As earthquakes rip through the Test Site, the nuclear industry stays hell-bent on putting nuclear waste there," Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said. "The heavens are with us. It's hard for them to ignore what Mother Nature is offering us."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., sent a letter with eight colleagues to kill a House bill proposing temporary nuclear storage at the Test Site. Representatives from Massachusetts, Ohio, Colorado, California and New York signed along with her. "Our message is dump H.R. 45, not nuclear waste," Berkley said.

Geologists said the latest earthquake is part of a swarm of temblors along the Rock Valley Fault zone, which runs very close to Yucca Mountain's system of 36 known faults.

At least seven earthquakes with a magnitude of 3 or more have jolted the Frenchman Lake plateau, scene of the latest temblors, this year.

In the past five days, quakes ranging from 3 to 4.7 have struck the same area at the eastern edge of the Test Site, UNLV geoscientist David Weide said.

"It's a swarm, right in the Southern Nevada seismic belt," Weide said. In fact, Test Site geologists had predicted such activity on a computer model months ago, he said.

The entire area has had up to 2,000 quakes since geologic recording began in the 1860s, Weide said.

Workers arriving at the Test Site's low-level waste storage facility and the hazardous spills facility, about a mile away from the quake, discovered file cabinet drawers open and pictures on the floor instead of on the walls, DOE spokesman Derek Scammell said. "Of course, no one was there to feel anything," he said.

The Rock Valley Fault zone may have been the same one that triggered a 5.6 magnitude quake on June 29, 1992, at Little Skull Mountain, about 12 miles from Yucca Mountain, the proposed permanent national nuclear waste repository.

The earth's shaking that time caused almost $500,000 damages by knocking out windows, cracking walls and bringing down ceiling panels at the Yucca Mountain Project field operations office.

There was no damage to the five-mile tunnel bored into Yucca Mountain, where scientists are exploring the rock and water conditions for storing high-level nuclear waste.

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