- YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev. (www.nando.net) -- Yucca Mountain isn't much of a mountain.
It's more like a long, dusty berm at the end of a long, straight road that
cuts across the vast and barren Nevada Test Site.
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- There, at the southwestern edge of this
rocky desert spot, where 925 nuclear bombs have been detonated since 1951,
the government wants to store the nation's nuclear waste.
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- At best, the huge mound of rock that
makes up Yucca Mountain will be ready to house that waste by 2010 and will
stay open for at least 40 more years.
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- At worst, the site will be closed; it's
$2.1 billion tunnel abandoned. Fifteen hundred people working for 17 government
contractors, four national labs and the U.S. Geologic Survey will have
nothing to show for more than two decades of research and construction.
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- At stake is the future of 107 operating
nuclear reactors in 34 states, which collectively provide more than 20
percent of the nation's electricity in the 48 continental states. Since
1982, rate payers in those states have paid more than $14 billion into
a fund to build a central nuclear waste dump, which was supposed to be
ready by Jan. 31. They will continue to pay indefinitely until the issue
is resolved.
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- The atom-splitting fission process that
creates nuclear power leaves behind highly radioactive, ceramic-like black
pellets the size of chalk pieces. They are being stored in cylindrical
rods in storage pools at each reactor, but space is running out.
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- To that end, 46 utilities and state public
service commissions are suing the Department of Energy over its failure
to collect the waste by January, as required under a 1982 law.
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- Scientists with the department are assembling
a report for Congress this fall that will determine whether Yucca Mountain
is the right place to store the waste. They must prove that the rock 800
feet below the mountain's surface can safely isolate at least 70,000 metric
tons of radioactivity for thousands of years. That amount would fill the
area of a football field 24 to 30 feet deep.
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- The project might never come to fruition
because of the political and licensing problems it faces. And there is
no Plan B. A law passed in 1987 directed the Department of Energy to evaluate
Yucca Mountain exclusively.
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- "At this point, the law prohibits
DOE from looking at any other sites," said Frank Randall, external
affairs officer for the federal Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board in
Arlington, Va. "Their hands are tied. They can't look anywhere else."
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- The prospect of burying massive quantities
of radioactivity -- not to mention transporting it to Nevada across the
nation's roads and rails -- has fueled debate between Congress, local and
state governments, and public interest groups across the country.
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- The opposition movement has grown to
the point where even federal regulators are unsure of the project's future.
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- "Three or four years ago, it looked
like pretty much things would go right through, scientifically and technologically,
and everything would work out just fine," Randall said. "I'm
not so sure anymore. I think public confidence and trust are going to have
a much larger impact than we thought."
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- No Protests At Site
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- There isn't much evidence of outright
protest at the Mercury exit off Highway 95, 100 miles northwest of Las
Vegas. One wouldn't even know the radioactive history behind this place
based on the entrance sign that reads "Nevada Test Site: An Environmental
Research Park."
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- The only sound is the wind that whips
across the desert flats. The area is populated only by joshua trees and
creosote bushes, desert mice and rattle snakes.
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- The low-lying mountains in this area
are monuments to a prehistoric volcano that erupted more than 12 million
years ago. The rock of Yucca Mountain is dense and hard because it was
formed by a blanket of thick volcanic ash from that eruption, geologist
Tim Sullivan says.
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- That's why it was supposed to be the
perfect place to bury nuclear waste. Stable, impermeable rock. A thousand
feet below the mountain crest, yet still at least 800 feet above an unusually
deep water table. An "unsaturated zone," scientists say. Far
removed from anything living.
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- This hypothesis, however, is slowly being
refuted through continued experiments on the mountain's geology. What started
as impermeable is turning out to be permeable. What started as stable is
turning out to be unstable.
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- The result: water might corrode the nuclear
waste storage containers. Earthquakes might break them. In either case,
radioactive particles would wash down into an aquifer 50 miles long and
20 to 30 miles wide. It serves farming communities in western Nevada and
eastern California.
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- Shocking Discovery
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- When scientists tested the rock excavated
from a five-mile tunnel drilled into the mountain, they found a strain
of chlorine 36, a chemical byproduct from nuclear bomb testing that dated
back to the 1960s. The only way it could have found its way down through
the rock is by water. In less than 50 years, this element has washed down
through rock that was supposed to block its passage for more than 1,000
years.
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- "There are some fast paths"
for the water, geologist Sullivan said. Faster paths than current Environmental
Protection Agency standards allow.
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- "I think they have a major problem
on their hands. I don't think they can license the site under current regulations,"
said Robert Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the
appointed state overseer of the Yucca Mountain project.
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- In response, the EPA is looking to change
the standards, to the chagrin of many who oppose the project.
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- "They will now change the guidelines
to make sure the site will pass," said Mary Olson, a nuclear waste
specialist with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear
group in Washington. "It's like moving around the goalpost in a football
game so the ball will go through."
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- The EPA is changing the standards because
of the technology of the containers being designed to hold the waste, government
officials say. They don't need to rely 100 percent on geology to contain
the radioactivity, they say.
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- "The board is of the opinion that
(safety) can still be achieved," said Randall of the Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board.
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- Earthquake Danger Far Worse
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- Water is not the only concern at Yucca
Mountain. Recent tests show the mountain, which lies between two fault
lines, is 10 times more prone to an earthquake than previously thought.
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- A recent article in Science magazine
cited calculations that the earth's crust over Yucca Mountain is moving
about 1 millimeter per year. That's a tiny amount, but it becomes larger
considering previous estimates were about one-tenth of a millimeter.
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- Besides the mountain, the region is marked
by fault lines every two to three kilometers, which is considered a higher
density than elsewhere in that part of the state, Sullivan said.
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- "We don't regard earthquakes as
a significant impact on the overall performance of the system," Sullivan
said, citing global examples where underground mines have survived earthquakes
that otherwise devastated surface structures above.
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- "We would expect the same to be
true at Yucca Mountain," Sullivan said.
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- Opponents are not so sure.
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- "There's a serious strain problem
on the crust that's pulling Yucca Mountain apart," Loux said.
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- Science Seeking Solution
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- The environmental flaws of Yucca Mountain
can be overcome through modern technology, Department of Energy officials
say. Scientists are designing double-layered containers made of metal alloys
that are highly resistant to corrosion and strong enough to withstand surrounding
ground movement. The design should isolate the radioactive waste for at
least 10,000 years and up to 100,000 years, officials say.
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- But the specific metals haven't been
chosen. A prototype hasn't been built. And the endurance estimates of the
containers are extrapolated from experiments that have lasted only six
months to a year.
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- Bob Fish, a specialist in this area with
subcontractor Booz Allen Hamilton, says he is "relatively confident"
of his estimates. Continued testing will make him more confident, he said.
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- But no one can second-guess Mother Nature,
geologist Sullivan said.
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- "I'm certainly confident about the
metal, but less certain about what the conditions will be over a long period
of time," he said.
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- Which begs the questions, are there any
conditions anywhere that can be judged safe? And is radioactivity necessarily
worse than damaging "green house" gases produced by other forms
of energy?
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- "We're not trying to demonstrate
that Yucca Mountain is perfect. We're trying to demonstrate that Yucca
Mountain is suitable," said Leigh Ann Marshall, spokeswoman for the
Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington. "Everyone's looking for this
perfect answer, but every energy source has its limitations."
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