Senate Approves Yucca Mountain Project

APA director says project is her most challenging

By Andrew Chow
AsianWeek Staff Writer

Thousands of tons of radioactive waste may soon be stored inside a mountain in the Nevada desert, despite objections from the state’s residents and lawmakers.

The Senate last week voted 60-39 to override a veto by Nevada’s governor of the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The vote clears the way for President Bush to proceed with the project that has been studied for more than two decades, at a cost of more than $4 billion.

Margaret Y.S. Chu, director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) that will oversee the project, declined verbal and written requests for an interview. Chu was busy working on budgetary items, Energy Department spokeswoman Jacqueline Johnson said.

But since her swearing-in as head of the OCRWM in March, Chu has defended the project’s goals and emphasized safety concerns, according to published reports.

OCRWM will be prepared to begin accepting nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain by 2010, Chu told the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board at a hearing in May. The site will contain about 77,000 tons of nuclear waste.

The review board — established by Congress — agreed with Chu when she characterized the Yucca Mountain project as the biggest challenge of her life, according to Nuclear Waste News.

Chu also told the board she would prefer shipments of nuclear waste by rail, as opposed to trucks. That issue remains open for discussion, Chu said, as Nevada does not currently have an adequate rail system to handle the necessary transport trains.

Chu’s assurances weren’t enough to convince Judy Treichel of the project’s safety when the two met for about an hour in May. It was Chu’s first visit to Las Vegas as OCRWM’s director, and her first meeting with concerned residents such as Treichel.

“We told her we were very concerned that this project was being rushed, that decisions were being made too quickly,” said Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, which has been fighting the project for 15 years. “She just listened to us and said everything would be safe and they would take care of everything.”

Treichel’s heard that one before. When the Energy Department first began studying Yucca Mountain more than 20 years ago, it told residents if the mountain didn’t fit scientific standards as a waste site, it would leave, she said.

Though questions about Yucca Mountain’s suitability remain, seven different Energy secretaries have continued to press the issue, Treichel said.

“I told [Chu] every time someone new comes in, they tell us, ‘Now that I’m here, everything’s going to be all right,’” Treichel said. “She sort of giggled and said, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s what I just told you.’”

But Chu’s expertise comes from experience. At the hearing in May, Chu touted her prior stint as deputy manager of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in her native New Mexico, where she forged interstate agreements on transportation issues. Chu has also served as director of nuclear waste management at Sandia National Laboratories.

The transportation of nuclear waste to Nevada from 31 sites across the country would bring hazardous waste through 43 states. Some of the isotopes will not lose their radioactivity for a million years; the government must give reasonable assurance the waste will not pose an environmental or health threat for only 10,000 years.

Chu, who holds a doctorate in physical chemistry, maintained the site’s geology would prevent the release of radioactive materials. “There is a lot more credit we can take in the natural environment,” she told the review board, as reported in Energy Daily.

A view from the summit ridge of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump near Mercury, Nev., looking west towards California.

Nevada’s senators, who tried for months to rally their colleagues against the Yucca waste dump, argued that the issue was much broader than Nevada. The waste — most of it from nuclear power plants — can be kept safely where it is, avoiding the transportation risks, insisted Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

But if Congress did not act, countered Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, lawmakers would have to start looking all over again for a waste site with no indication where the search might lead.

Fifteen Democrats voted with almost all the GOP senators for the waste site. Only three Republicans — Sens. John Ensign of Nevada, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado — opposed the dump. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., did not vote.

Some senators worried that waste shipments might become terrorist targets or lead to radiation releases in a severe accident. But the Bush administration and other supporters of the Nevada waste dump said leaving the radioactive garbage at power plants and defense sites in 39 states would pose an even greater risk. And they said waste has been transported for years without radiation releases.

The fight over Yucca Mountain does not end with the vote on Capitol Hill. Nevada has filed six lawsuits challenging the project, and the Energy Department must still get a license for the facility from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a process that that could take up to five years. Even some Yucca supporters admit plans to open the site by 2010 may be too optimistic.

“It certainly isn’t over,” Treichel said. “Now they’ve finally made these decisions, declared the site usable, [but] they’ve built their case on a house of cards. Now they have to prove the house of cards holds up, and I don’t think it will.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.