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General Information
Overview: Yucca Mountain Project
Some of the electricity used in homes across our nation is made
with nuclear fuel in reactors at power plants. When the fuel that is
used to make electricity at the power plants can no longer produce
electricity efficiently, it is removed from the reactors. This used
fuel is called spent fuel. Nuclear materials used for national
defense create waste. This waste is called high-level radioactive
waste.
These highly radioactive materials must be protected so they
won’t harm people or the environment.
What should we do with radioactive waste to protect people and
the environment?
Scientists have studied different ways to dispose of this
radioactive material. Currently, it is stored at the power plants
where it is made. However, a permanent disposal place is needed.
Most scientists around the world agree that the best place to put
this radioactive material is in a facility deep underground. This
type of facility is called a geologic repository. The U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) is studying Yucca Mountain to see if it
is a suitable place to build a geologic repository.
Why Yucca Mountain?
Yucca Mountain is about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada,
on land owned by the federal government. No one lives on Yucca
Mountain. The area has a very dry climate — receiving a combined
average of seven inches of rain and snow per year. Some of this
moisture runs off, some of it soaks into the rock, but most of it
evaporates. This dry climate is an important feature because water
is the primary way by which radioactive material could move from a
repository. Yucca Mountain has a very deep water table. If a
repository is built at Yucca Mountain, it would be located about
1,000 feet below the surface and 1,000 feet above the water table.
So, any rain or snow that does not run off or evaporate at the
surface would have to move down nearly 1,000 feet before reaching
the repository and then another 1,000 feet before it reached the
water table.
How would a repository work?
The basic idea of geologic disposal is to place carefully
packaged radioactive materials in tunnels deep underground. This
method relies on a series of barriers to large amounts of
radioactive materials moving quickly from a repository. These
barriers include natural ones, the geology and climate of the area,
and man-made, or engineered, ones. These barriers also would reduce
the amount of radioactive material that could reach areas where
people live.
The current design for the potential repository calls for spent
nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to travel to Yucca
Mountain by truck or rail in specially designed, shielded shipping
containers. Once these materials arrive at the repository, they
would be removed from the shipping containers and placed in
double-layered, corrosion-resistant packages for burying
underground. Special rail cars would carry it underground, and
remotely controlled equipment would place it on supports in an
underground tunnel. Once the materials are placed in the repository,
scientists would continue to check that everything is working the
way it should.
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accompanying graphics
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Update May 2000 | 
