In hearings, many ask why just one site is being studied

Mary Manning covers environmental issues for the Sun. She can be reached a (702)259-4065 or by e-mail at [email protected].

Public meeting

The Department of Energy has added another public meeting for comments on the draft Environmental Impact Statement on Yucca Mountain.

The meeting is scheduled for Feb. 22 in San Bernardino, Calif.

The DOE has also extended the written comment period through Feb. 28.

Nevadans are not alone in their opposition to a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Of 900 people who commented at nationwide hearings on building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, most asked why only one site was being studied, a Department of Energy official said.

People wondered why the DOE failed to offer another way to manage 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste, the DOE's Wendy Dixon told a legislative committee Friday in Las Vegas.

Congress ordered the DOE to study environmental impacts at Yucca Mountain without considering other sites or methods such as reprocessing or transforming the wastes, she said.

The DOE reviewed what would happen if the wastes went to Yucca and what would happen if they remained at 77 sites, both commercial nuclear power plants and DOE sites where the radioactive remnants are now stored.

If left on site, federal caretakers would have to monitor wastes stored in dry casks for 100 years, Dixon said. DOE fears that risk.

"There is no known basis for what will happen to a society after 100 years," Dixon said.

Yucca Mountain or another geological repository would not rely on people to monitor it generations from now, the DOE maintains. The waste would have to be stored safely for 10,000 years.

The proposed repository at Yucca is important, Dixon said, because no other options currently exist to deal with the nuclear waste. Congress would have to create other options.

"If the Yucca Mountain program does not go forward, we don't know what the next step will be," Dixon said.

Although there is no tally of how many people do not want Yucca to open, Dixon said opinion at public hearings so far is split.

"There have been people that would rather keep it in their state than transport it," she said.

In St. Louis, vocal opponents ranged from the governor to the Archdiocese of St. Louis, according to news stories made available to Nevada lawmakers on the High-Level Nuclear Waste Committee. A nuclear power plant is located in Missouri.

Most people were concerned about heavy truck or rail cars loaded with radioactive casks from other states crossing the Mississippi River on the way to Nevada, according to the news reports and letters to the DOE.

Nevada state Sen. Lawrence Jacobsen, R-Minden, the chairman of the High-Level Nuclear Waste Committee, said he hears people say that a repository at Yucca is a foregone conclusion.

"I don't have the same foregone conclusion," Dixon said. "There are many arduous steps before a decision is made."

One of those steps became more arduous last week when Mike Turnipseed, the state engineer, refused to give the DOE rights to use 430 acre-feet a year of Nevada's ground water to build and operate the repository, saying it was not in the public interest. The DOE has temporary water use to study the mountain until March 2002.

Although a repository at Yucca would not be ready until 2010, Dixon said the project faces political challenges and a rigorous licensing process as formal as a court hearing before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

At least one lawmaker said he is ready to talk to the DOE about what benefits the state will get if a repository comes.

Sen. Bill O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas, chairman of the Senate Transportation Commission, said he wished that Nevada's leaders would begin talking to the DOE about road improvements and alternate routes.

"If we don't start this process, we will have to live with whatever Washington decides," he said.

Sen. Bob Price, D-North Las Vegas, leaned across the table at the Sawyer State Office Building and replied, "I believe the state of Nevada has submitted comments on a preferred route and it ends in Texas."

"There has never been anyone who has shown this assemblyman that anyone is offering money, Senator," Assemblyman John Lee, D-Las Vegas, told O'Donnell.

Nuclear physicist and Assemblyman Harry Mortenson, D-Las Vegas, said he supports keeping the wastes at the reactor sites in dry casks.

"In 100 years we would know how to solve the problem," he said. "We will have the technology. We will be smarter. We will know how to handle it."

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