Nuclear Waste:  Abraham Formally Recommends Yucca Mountain Site

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday formally recommended Yucca Mountain in Nevada to President George W. Bush as the site of a long-term high-level nuclear waste repository (see GSN, Feb. 13).

“I have considered whether sound science supports the determination that the Yucca Mountain site is scientifically and technically suitable for the development of a repository,” Abraham wrote in a letter to Bush that accompanied the recommendation.  “I am convinced that it does.”

As the basis of his decision that Yucca Mountain is scientifically suitable as a repository site, Abraham cited the results of a study that lasted more than 20 years and cost $4 billion.  There are also compelling national interests, such as homeland security, nuclear nonproliferation issues and environmental cleanup operations at former nuclear weapons plants, that increase the need for a waste repository, Abraham said.

“More than 161 million people live within 75 miles of one or more of these sites,” Abraham said.  “The facilities housing these materials were intended to do so on a temporary basis.  They should be able to withstand current terrorist threats, but that may not remain the case in the future.  These materials would be far better secured in a deep underground repository at Yucca Mountain” (Energy Department release, Feb. 14).

Nevada Officials Prepare to Fight

“I told the president that if he decides to go forward with a recommendation to designate Yucca Mountain as a nuclear repository, I will exercise my veto power,” said Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn (Associated Press/Reno Gazette-Journal, Feb. 15).

Some opponents of the Yucca Mountain plan said they believe Bush would act on Abraham’s recommendation as early as today, according to the New York Times.  Once Bush makes his decision on Yucca Mountain, Nevada has 60 days to veto the plan, which would require Congress to make the final decision.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman reacted to Abraham’s recommendation with sarcasm (see GSN, Feb. 8).

“What a Valentine’s Day gift,” Goodman said in a statement before Abraham’s recommendation was made public.  “Cupid shot nuclear-tipped arrows at the 43 states along the proposed transportation routes.  What an expression of love for the country” (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Feb. 15).

Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.), citing studies conducted by the General Accounting Office, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and the Inspector General of the Energy Department, said he challenges Abraham’s claim that the science behind Yucca Mountain is sound (see GSN, Feb. 6).

“These experts all say that the science is not sound,” Reid said yesterday on the floor of the Senate.  “No one can challenge the credibility of this all-star team of experts.”

“Secretary Abraham has made a hasty, poor and really indefensible decision,” Reid said.  “Now the questions of whether a high-level nuclear waste dump will be built in Nevada lies with the president of the United States.  The president should demand sound science — peer-reviewed scientific evidence of the highest caliber — and wait” (Congressional Record, Feb. 14).

Yucca Mountain Could Become Energy Source

After touring Yucca Mountain yesterday, Geraldine Ferraro, former Democratic vice presidential candidate, and former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu said they support Abraham’s recommendation.

Sununu and Ferraro, who have lobbied for the Yucca Mountain plan on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said they believe Nevada citizens’ fears over the site would be addressed during the licensing phase of the repository.

“Most potent poisons last forever,” Sununu said, referring to the tons of nuclear waste expected to be stored within Yucca Mountain.  “This stuff doesn’t.”

In the future, new technological advances could develop ways to turn the waste that would be stored within the mountain into an energy source, Sununu said.

“It will turn out to be the most economically viable source of energy in the future,” he said.

“Everything I saw confirms … it’s a very appropriate selection,” Sununu said.

Ferraro agreed that Yucca Mountain is the best site for a nuclear waste repository.

“To me, it’s the one place on this Earth that seems appropriate,” she said (Las Vegas Review-Journal, Feb. 15).

Back to top

Radiological Weapons:  Westchester County Wants Potassium Iodide

Officials in Westchester County, New York, said yesterday they will ask the state for more than 500,000 potassium iodide pills to protect people living near the Indian Point nuclear power plants from thyroid cancer risks in the case of radiation exposure.

Some people have expressed concern about Indian Point because it is near a heavily populated area and could be vulnerable to terrorist attack, according to the New York Times (see related GSN story, today).

New York is requesting 1.2 million potassium iodide pills from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is offering six million pills to states (see GSN, Feb. 5).  Eight other states have also requested pills.

Andrew Spano, the county executive, met with 150 school and municipal officials and emergency workers yesterday to discuss plans for distributing the pills.  He outlined a plan with a goal to place pills in people’s homes before any emergency occurs.  The county does not plan to distribute pills from a central location during an emergency, because it could inhibit evacuation procedures.

The county would also try to teach people how to use the pills and inform the population that the pills do not provide a panacea for radiation sickness.

Some people at the meeting expressed concern that providing the pills would detract attention from improving evacuation plans, the Times reported.

Indian Point Radiation Leak

Meanwhile, Entergy, the company that operates the two active reactors at Indian Point, told Spano yesterday that the Indian Point 2 reactor has a small radioactive leak, although it does not pose any public health threat (see GSN, Oct. 19, 2001).  The reactor is leaking four ounces of water a day, which is below the five gallons a day of leakage allowed under an Entergy-Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreement and far below the 432 gallons a day allowed under general rules established by the U.S. government and nuclear industry, according to the New York Times (Randal Archibold, New York Times, Feb. 15).

Back to top

Nuclear Waste:  Yucca Mountain Will Do Little to Protect Waste, Makhijani Says

Construction of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository would do little to reduce the risk of a terrorist attack on a spent-fuel cooling pool at a U.S. nuclear power plant, said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, in an op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post (see GSN, Feb. 12).

Makhijani wrote that officials have called spent-fuel pools at U.S. nuclear plants major security concerns and have said a single repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada would help alleviate that risk by consolidating all the spent fuel in one location.

Makhijani argued, however, that because spent fuel must be cooled in water for several years before it can be shipped anywhere, cooling pools must remain at nuclear plants as long as such plants are in operation.

A completely new approach to nuclear waste security is needed, according to Makhijani.

“To end the security vulnerability of spent fuel-pools, existing nuclear power plants must be phased out,” he wrote.  He added that while this would be difficult, since nuclear power accounts for about 20 percent of U.S. energy supplies, it could be done in an orderly fashion.

The Bush administration, however, is considering relicensing the more than 100 U.S. nuclear power plants far beyond their current licenses, according to Makhijani.  This would effectively defeat the idea of Yucca Mountain as a consolidation point, since it would result in dozens of nuclear plants continuing to operate throughout the country, needing on-site spent-fuel pools, Makhijani wrote.

“Given relicensing, Yucca Mountain, which is crisscrossed with geological faults, may well run out of room before it can take the spent fuel from existing power plants, to say nothing of new ones,” Makhijani wrote.

Yucca Mountain itself is not a suitable site for a waste repository, according to Makhijani.  The computer models used by the Energy Department have several uncertainties and regulations have been changed or removed to accommodate the site, Makhijani wrote.

“It’s possible to do a far better job, but the Energy Department seems incapable of it,” Makhijani wrote.  “President Bush should declare both Yucca Mountain and the Energy Department unsuitable for the job and create a blue-ribbon commission to recommend a new program for him” (Arjun Makhijani, Washington Post, Feb. 13).

Back to top

Correction

A story in the yesterday’s Global Security Newswire incorrectly spelled the name of arms control analyst Kathy Crandall and misidentified her as working for the Physicians for Social Responsibility.  She is the director of the Nuclear Disarmament Partnership.

Back to top

Nuclear Waste:  Tunnel Fire Would Have Ruptured Casks, Report Says

A new report prepared for the state of Nevada says the casks to be used to ship nuclear waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository could not have withstood a fire such as the one in a Baltimore railroad tunnel last summer, the Baltimore Sun reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 8).

The Baltimore rail tunnel fire burned for three days and that duration, along with the intense heat, would have been enough to rupture the two types of storage containers used to transport spent nuclear fuel, according to the report compiled by Radioactive Waste Management for Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects (see GSN, Feb. 4).

“While these containers are strong … they are not designed to withstand everything that could happen on a transportation route,” said Matthew Lamb, a co-author of the report.  “People who live along these routes should know what the possible consequences are.  I don’t want to be a fear monger.  The probability of these accidents is small, but it is not zero.”

If such an accident had occurred in Baltimore’s Howard Street Tunnel more than 300,000 people would have been exposed to radioactive materials leaking from the casks, according to the Sun.  Officials would have been forced to destroy entire sections of Baltimore to reduce radiation to safe levels, Lamb said.

“It’s either that, or the risk of a serious cancer hazard for the people who live close to where the accident took place and downwind,” he said.

Nuclear power supporters dismissed the report, according to the Sun.  Mitch Singer of the Nuclear Energy Institute said spent fuel has been safely transported by highway and railroad for 35 years.

Eileen Supko, an Energy Resources International nuclear engineer, said the storage containers are subjected to a strenuous testing program that includes thermal tests.  The thermal test submits the container to a fire of more than 1,400 degrees for 30 minutes, conditions that go beyond a real-life scenario, Supko said.  She added that containers would be transported on a flatbed truck or rail car, and in the event of a fire, the heat would be transferred from the container to the flat surface.

“Truthfully, the purpose of that report from the state of Nevada and its contractors was to stir things up and to scare people,” Supko said.  “A lot of the rhetoric from the anti-nuclear groups is to generate fear.  If you look at the history of spent nuclear shipments, not just in the United States but internationally, there has never been a release of radioactive materials from the containers” (Mike Adams, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 11).

Back to top

About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines

HOME  |  CONTACT US  |  GET INVOLVED  |  SITE MAP