Progress toward opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump remains hindered by questions regarding the quality of scientific and engineering work. And the Energy Department’s reorganization of the project has yet to put the problems to rest — and may even create new issues.

Earlier this month, the Bush Administration sent legislation to Capitol Hill attempting both to clear obstacles and to speed licensing and construction of the long-delayed and much-controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

According to Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman, as reported by Chemical & Engineering News, “This proposed legislation will help provide stability, clarity, and predictability to the Yucca Mountain project and will help lay a solid foundation for America’s future energy security.”

Among other things, the bill proposes lifting the 77,000-ton storage limit on the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and allowing as much waste as the mountain can safely hold. That figure has been estimated by federal environmental impact studies at 132,000 tons. The DOE says removing the cap would allow “maximum use of the mountain’s true technical capacity and safely isolate the nation’s entire commercial spent-nuclear-fuel inventory from existing reactors.”

Currently, more than 50,000 metric tons of nuclear waste destined for the dump is now waiting at 72-100 sites in 39 states around the country, mostly at commercial power plants. Every year, commercial U.S. reactors produce an additional 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel. Lifting the waste cap would postpone indefinitely the need for the Energy Department to find a site for a second nuclear waste dump, the department said.

The department also proposed dedicating money in a special nuclear waste fund, which is paid for by utilities, to the dump to try to ensure adequate funding. The bill also would allow federal officials, who hope to ship nuclear waste to the dump by rail, to pre-empt state and local transportation regulations.

Four years ago (2002), President George W. Bush and Congress agreed that Yucca Mountain was the best location for a permanent repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Federal officials had hoped to open the facility in 2010. But after a series of setbacks, 2020 is now the approximate target date, although no exact date has been given.

At a nuclear power industry conference, Bodwan said that his department was redoing research and design for Yucca, which was supposed to start accepting civilian power-plant waste in 1998. But it is a first-of-a-kind project, making cost estimates difficult, he said, and the best that the department may be able to do is publish an estimate with a very wide range of error.

Last October, DOE announced a “new path forward” to improve Yucca Mountain by, among other things, redesigning waste storage containers to minimize handling of nuclear waste and designating an outside national lab to oversee scientific work. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office said it is too soon to determine whether this new effort has resolved quality assurance issues enough to move toward submitting a license application.

The dump, which thus far has cost $9 billion, has suffered a series of setbacks. They include a criminal investigation into accusations that government scientists flouted quality control requirements, and a federal court’s invalidation of the government’s proposed radiation safety standards for the dump. The delays are causing major financial liabilities for the government, which was contractually obligated to begin accepting spent fuel from nuclear utilities starting in 1998.

Sources

Yucca Mountain Overhaul Proposed
by Glenn Hess
Chemical & Engineering News, April 6, 2006

Push on to raise limits at Yucca Mountain
The Associated Press, April 4, 2006

Yucca nuclear site faces big hurdles, report says
The Associated Press, March 23, 2006