Search Terms: yucca mountain
Document 90 of 241.
Copyright 2000 The Columbus Dispatch
The Columbus Dispatch
March
19,2000, Sunday
SECTION:
NEWS - INSIGHT, Pg. 7B
LENGTH:
402 words
HEADLINE:
ROCK ILLUSTRATES POLICY DILEMMA
BYLINE:
Dale Gnidovec
BODY:
On my desk is a rock from one of the most controversial places in America. It is pink, with small, dark-gray streaks and angular fragments of light-gray material. It is called a welded tuff. It formed from material thrown out of a volcano, material that was still so hot when it landed that it fused. The layer the rock came from is called the Topopah Spring Member of the Paintbrush Tuff. Formed at the surface about 13 million years ago, it now lies nearly 1,000 feet below ground.
It came from a place that may hold the answer to a major question, one that has involved science, politics, economics and public safety in one big muddle. The question is where to store the nation's high-level radioactive waste.
My rock is from
Yucca Mountain,
deep in the Nevada desert. That area has been under consideration as a waste repository since 1976.
Yucca Mountain
was chosen as the final candidate in 1987.
America has about 70,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste, stored at more than 100 sites in 40 states. It came from the nuclear-weapons program and the nuclear-power industry.
A storage facility must hold the waste for 10,000 years, until its radioactivity has faded to safe levels. The waste must be isolated, not only from the air, which is probable at depths of 1,000 feet, but also from water.
The worry is that water might corrode the waste canisters and carry radioactivity out into the environment. With average precipitation of only 6 inches per year, the water table lies 800 feet below the proposed storage zone. Water levels could rise, however, if the climate changes.
Is
Yucca Mountain
a perfect nuclear-waste repository? No. Is it the best we have? I think so. Whether we're considering a medical operation, an education or the food we eat, we can't always wait for perfection. Like everything else in life, this issue involves trade-offs.
A pound of uranium fuel, about the size of a golf ball, packs the same energy as 15 freight cars of coal. Do we burn the coal, with its resulting pollution, or do we use nuclear energy, which is much cleaner in the short term but poses problems in the long term? Or do we do without the electricity that lights our homes and hospitals and runs our refrigerators and computers?
Dale M. Gnidovec (who is reachable online at: gnidovec@orton.mps.ohio-state. edu) is curator of Ohio State University's Orton Geological Museum.
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