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New Findings Could Affect U.S. Nuclear Waste Facility Plan
Two teams of U.S. Energy Department-funded scientists have discovered that buried spent fuel rods could experience previously unknown chemical reactions — a finding that could affect the department’s plans to build a long-term nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today (see GSN, Nov. 12). Over the past year, scientists at the University of California-Davis and the University of Notre Dame have found that as spent fuel rods are exposed to groundwater, the resulting chemical reactions would create new forms of uranium minerals, according to the Chronicle. These minerals would have a positive benefit by trapping radioactive elements such as plutonium and preventing them from leaking into the groundwater supply, the Chronicle reported. The scientists published their findings Friday in Science. What has some scientists concerned, however, is that the discovery was made after decades of Energy-funded research into buried spent fuel rods, which has raised questions about what other types of currently unknown chemical reactions could occur over the thousands of years waste will be stored at Yucca Mountain. “What I find amazing in this story is that the Yucca Mountain story had gone this far without (anyone previously) finding out that these (chemical events occur),” said University of Notre Dame geology professor Peter Burns, co-author of the Science article. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d want big surprises before (you seek) your licensing application,” he said. Energy officials have said the scientists’ findings would not affect the department’s schedule to apply for a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission license for the repository by the end of next year. The scientists “have done a good job” and their work is “an interesting addition to what is known already about the behavior of spent fuel in a system that has (ground)water available to it,” said Abe Van Luik, a physical chemist who is senior policy adviser for performance assessment at Energy’s Las Vegas office (Keay Davidson, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov, 17).
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