Copyright 1999 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
The
Plain Dealer
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April 4, 1999 Sunday, FINAL / ALL
SECTION: SUNDAY MAGAZINE; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 2170 words
HEADLINE:
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT;
YOUR ELECTRIC BILL HELPS PAY FOR A MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR
FEDERAL STUDY TO DETERMIND IF A REMOTE MOUNTAIN CAN SAFELY HOLD HIGHLY
RADIOACTIVE WASTE FOR 10,000 YEARS.
BYLINE: By JOHN C.
KUEHNER; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
DATELINE: YUCCA
MOUNTAIN, NEVADA
BODY:
Don't call it a
dump, urges Max Powell, a U.S. Department of Energy spokesman. Call it a
repository, a resting place or a waste emplacement facility. It's not a dump.
Yet strip away all the elaborate trimmings, and a dump emerges. With an
estimated price tag of $18.7 billion, it's probably the most expensive and
controversial dump built. And electric customers in Ohio are helping to pay for
it. Deep within this mountain in the Nevada desert, the federal government plans
to bury 77,000 tons of lethal trash accumulated from one of the 20th century's
great legacies, nuclear fission.
The bulk of the waste will come from
the nation's nuclear power plants. So far, enough used-up radioactive waste fuel
has accumulated that if it were put end-to-end, it would cover a football field
to a height of 12 feet. The waste is stored in secured vaults at more than 100
plants in 34 states, including Ohio, which has two plants. The remainder of the
waste will come from government nuclear projects, such as defense programs. This
waste, which dates back to the atomic bomb's development in World War II, is
stored at federal sites in Idaho, South Carolina and Washington.
Finding
a permanent method to dispose of radioactive waste has been one of the main
obstacles to nuclear power. In the mid-1950s, scientists began studying ways to
dispose of radioactive waste. Ideas ranged from dumping the waste into the ocean
to launching it into space. By the late 1970s, scientists had settled on "deep
geologic disposal," aka burial in a dump.
Twelve years ago, Congress
selected Yucca Mountain for an in-depth study to determine if
it was a suitable site to bury the waste. The mountain straddles the Nellis Air
Force Base Bombing and Gunnery Range and the Nevada Test Site, where until seven
years ago the government exploded more than 900 atomic bombs, first in the air
and then underground.
With its remote location, arid climate and deep
ground water, Yucca Mountain appears to have the right
conditions to isolate the deadly waste for 10,000 years, when most radioactivity
is predicted to fade. If all goes according to plan, the first shipment of
radioactive waste will arrive in 2010.
Environmentalists, anti-nuclear
groups and Nevada officials want to stop the opening of the nation's first
high-level radioactive waste graveyard. The Energy Department is betting that
Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, comes
up a winner. There is no alternative site.
A roller coaster-style train
lurches forward and trundles mining engineer Doc McNeely and several visitors
into a 25-foot-diameter hole carved in the side of Yucca
Mountain. Miners finished boring this 4.9-mile, U-shaped passage two
years ago to provide scientists and engineers access to the mountain's interior.
Off the main tunnel extend several cavities where scientists conduct
tests. Here, as well as in off-site laboratories, scientists study how water,
volcanic activity, earthquakes and climate change might affect the buried
radioactive waste.
The tests must show that future Nevada residents will
be safe if the radioactive waste is buried in Yucca Mountain.
Scientists are under the assumption that all records will be lost and future
generations will be unaware the radioactive waste is [buried] there.
Water poses the biggest threat to the buried waste even though the area
averages only about 6 inches of precipitation a year. Over centuries, water
could corrode the stainless-steel waste casks, expose the depleted uranium and
carry away radioactive particles.
"If we have a problem here, it will be
related to hydrology," says R. James Niggemyer, a senior field operations
manager with Science Applications International Corp., a project contractor.
Scientists' concern is threefold: Will the underground water be
contaminated by radioactivity? If so, how long will it take for the ground water
to move off-site? And finally, will the contamination be within acceptable
limits to be set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?
The site
could be disqualified if scientists determine that in less than 1,000 years
ground water under the radioactive waste site is "likely and significant" to
reach Amargosa Valley, the nearest community about 15 miles away, says Russ
Patterson, a government hydrogeologist at Yucca Mountain.
"We have not seen any indication that we would not meet the
qualifications," Patterson says.
The speed that surface precipitation
reaches the waste became a concern two years ago when scientists found an atomic
bomb radionuclide - a molecule that has been ionized through a nuclear chain
reaction - about 800 feet deep in the mountain. Scientists determined the
radionuclide came from an atomic bomb test conducted in the Pacific in the
1950s. Rainwater probably carried it via a vertical crack into the heart of the
mountain.
That finding showed surface water could reach inside
Yucca Mountain in just 40 years. Scientists had estimated it
would take hundreds to thousands of years to reach the cavity where waste will
be buried.
"We take that seriously," says Allen B. Benson, an Energy
Department spokesman at Yucca Mountain.
As they should,
says Joe Strolin, an opponent of the project and an administrator with the
Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, which was created in 1985 to oversee the
Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project. Fractures cover
Yucca Mountain, he says, and provide fast entries for water.
"It's a sieve," Strolin says. "Water pours through the mountain to the
ground water."
Niggemyer disagrees with Strolin's characterization of
Yucca Mountain. And he dismisses other site concerns, such as
earthquakes and volcanic activity. While volcanic ash from nearby eruptions
created Yucca Mountain about 13 million years ago, major
eruptions stopped about 7.5 million years ago. The last eruption occurred about
75,000 years ago.
The proposed repository lies between two fault lines.
An earthquake presents a problem for surface buildings, Niggemyer says, not for
casks stored underground.
But from 1976 to 1996, 621 earthquakes with a
magnitude of 2.5 or greater occurred within 50 miles of Yucca
Mountain, according to Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C., watchdog
group. An earthquake could damage the waste containers and speed the time
radioactivity could reach the water table.
"It's an area of earthquake
risk," says Steve Frishman, a geologist with the Nevada Agency for Nuclear
Projects. In late January, for example, more than 20 earthquakes occurred within
25 miles of Yucca Mountain, Frishman says. "It's an active
area."
The tunnel gradually descends into the mountain until reaching
the 1.7-mile mark. Here the main tunnel cuts left, then continues for two miles.
It's at this level that an estimated 10,500 containers of radioactive
waste will be buried. If the project goes ahead, miners will bore a series of
16-foot-diameter parallel tunnels off the main tunnel. The waste tunnels will
cover about 100 miles.
"You can see we have a real water problem here,"
McNeely says sarcastically, scraping the cracker-dry ashen soil with his boot.
About 1,000 feet over McNeely's white hard hat stretches the flat crest
of Yucca Mountain. About 800 feet below is ground water.
Miners have carved a large alcove here so scientists can conduct a
thermal test to see how heat from the radioactive waste will affect nearby rock.
Five years of laboratory tests preceded this field test.
Heat generated
from radioactive decay would raise the temperature inside the repository above
water's boiling point. That would be like putting a heating pad inside a thermos
bottle - the heat builds up and cannot escape, says McNeely, who works for
Morrison-Knudson Corp., a Yucca Mountain contractor.
Using large heaters, scientists simulate the anticipated thermal
conditions within the repository. For more than a year, they have heated a
sealed area to 212 degrees Fahrenheit to show how heat flows through the rock,
how heat changes the rock and what happens to moisture trapped within the rock.
Scientists have not yet determined the temperature to maintain where the
waste is buried, but are considering ventilating the tunnels, which would
control the temperature.
So far, the federal government has spent $5.9
billion on the Yucca Mountain project, with another $1.1
billion needed - but not yet appropriated by Congress - for the project.
"We've been criticized for studying too much by some and criticized by
others for studying too little," says Benson, the Energy Department spokesman.
"We're in one of those positions where we are damned if we do and damned if we
don't."
Chris Trepal lives near a rail line in Lakewood. She fears
radioactive waste will roar by her house on its way to Yucca
Mountain.
"We're between a rock and hard place, facing two bad
choices," says Trepal, co-executive director of the Earth Day Coalition in
Cleveland, which was one of more than 200 groups to sign a petition last
December urging Congress to reject Yucca Mountain as a
radioactive waste dump. "We leave it on-site at Perry and Davis-Besse [nuclear
power plants] or put it on a trailer or rail car and send it to our neighbors in
Nevada. Neither solves the issue. The answer is to stop making it."
The
safest solution is to keep the waste where it is, says Lee Dazey, a director
with Citizen Alert, a Nevada environmental group. Moving the waste would put 51
million Americans in 43 states along the anticipated transportation routes at
risk of radioactive exposure if an accident occurred.
Rather than rush
to move the radioactive waste in the next few years, the government and nuclear
utilities should leave it in the utilities' hands until they develop technology
that ensures it will be safely contained, says Diane D'Arrigo, a director with
the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, D.C.
"The
utilities decided to make this mess and continue to downplay the hazards. But
they want the government to sign a blank check and be responsible for the waste
for perpetuity. Pretending it's solved by shipping it by road and rail does not
solve it. I don't think it's safe where it is, and I don't think it will be safe
on the roads and the rails, and I don't think it will be safe at Yucca
Mountain."
Environmentalists call pending legislation "Mobile
Chernobyl." The irradiated fuel contains 10 times the long-lived radioactivity
released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb, D'Arrigo says.
Benson says the
Energy Department will not focus on the transportation issue until Yucca
Mountain is deemed a suitable site.
Ted J. Myers, a director at
the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Sandusky, believes the industry's
record over the past 30 years shows it can move radioactive waste without
endangering the public.
"The public seems distracted by the waste issue
and the perception is we don't know how to handle it," Myers says. "We do. We
just can't seem to get [the waste] in place."
Disposing of the waste at
one site makes more sense than leaving it at 74 sites, argues Scott Peters, a
spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group.
"It's got to be moved someday somewhere. So why not move it now while
you have utilities operating and money coming in?" Peters says. "Many of these
sites are not ideal. They are along rivers and lakes and near population
centers. They are not specifically designed for long-term waste disposal. You're
just increasing the problem."
By late July, the government expects to
release a draft study that will outline how burying nuclear waste at
Yucca Mountain could impact the environment. In mid-2001, the
Energy Department secretary is to report to the president on whether
Yucca Mountain is a suitable site for "deep geologic disposal."
If found suitable, Congress has the final say. Nevada could block the
project, but a majority of Congress could override Nevada's objection.
If scientists find Yucca Mountain unsuitable, the
tunnel will be filled and the Energy Department will return to Congress for a
new directive.
"We're not asking anyone to take anything on trust,"
Benson says. "We will have to demonstrate that we can protect the environment
and the public. We will have to demonstrate we can deal with this."
GRAPHIC: ;BOX 1: WHAT IT COSTS YOU; Every time you
flick on a light, blow-dry your hair or turn on your air conditioner to cool
off, you're chipping in to dispose of high-level nuclear waste.; The average
customer pays about $2.40 a year toward waste fuel disposal, says Todd
Schneider, spokesman for FirstEnergy Corp., the parent company of the Cleveland
Electric Illuminating Co., Toledo Edison and Ohio Edison.; Nationally, it adds
up. So far the federal government has collected more than $15 billion.; In 1982,
Congress charged the U.S. Department of Energy with "locating, building and
operating an underground geologic repository" to permanently dispose of
high-level radioactive waste. Ninety percent of that waste will come from the
country's nuclear power plants.; To pay for disposal, the Nuclear Waste Policy
Act adds a fee to all electric customers who draw their power from the plants.
That includes the 2.2 million FirstEnergy customers, who receive power from
Ohio's two nuclear power plants, and Beaver Valley, a nuclear power plant
outside Pittsburgh.; John C. Kuehner; BOX 2: PASSING THE BUCK; Carter's Decision
Still Felt Today; Instead of burning coal to make electricity, nuclear power
plants use uranium for fuel. A pound of uranium about the size of a golf ball
packs the same energy as 15 freight cars of coal.; But once uranium fuel is used
up, a lethal waste remains that could quickly kill a person exposed to it.;
Disposing of this dangerous waste fuel was not supposed to be a problem. Until
the mid-1970s, commercial nuclear power plants expected to send their used fuel
waste to reprocessing plants where it would be recycled into new fuel.;
Reprocessing recovers uranium, radioactive-fission product wastes and a
byproduct of the reactor fission process, plutonium, the key component in an
atomic bomb.; Jimmy Carter believed if plutonium was separated by reprocessing,
foreign nations could make it into nuclear bombs. He made proliferation an issue
in the 1976 presidential campaign, says A. David Rossin, a retired nuclear
engineer living in California who is writing a book about the issue.; Five days
before the November election, President Gerald Ford, in a speech in Portsmouth,
Ohio, announced he would hold up the license for a $300 million reprocessing
plant in South Carolina. Ford hoped his decision would woo voters in the pivotal
Buckeye State, but it did not.; Two months after Carter took office, he signed
an executive order that "deferred indefinitely" reprocessing commercial nuclear
fuel, says Rossin, a Cleveland Heights native who served a year as assistant
secretary for nuclear energy in the Reagan Administration.; Carter's order
"threw a monkey wrench into the industry," explains Ted J. Myers, a director at
the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Sandusky.; Anticipating fuel
reprocessing, engineers had designed nuclear power plants to hold the waste fuel
temporarily. Waste started piling up quickly.; Davis-Besse has amassed 372 tons
of radioactive waste fuel in 22 years. When the plant ran out of space in its
holding pool six years ago, workers moved some waste fuel into three monstrous
steel casks, which are stored outside in monitored concrete bunkers.; Myers says
Davis-Besse no longer will store waste fuel in casks, which proved costly and
time-consuming to load. Instead, additional space will be created in the storage
pool to hold the waste fuel until 2017, when the plant's 40-year operating
license expires.; "We expect to have the fuel on-site until the end of the
plant's life," Myers says.; At that time, the plant would be dismantled and torn
down. If the waste fuel remains on-site after the plant is stops generating
electricity, owner FirstEnergy Corp. would have to maintain a security force and
ensure the environment is safe.; "We hope Yucca Mountain is
well in place by 2021, which is when Davis-Besse would finish decommissioninng
under its present schedule," plant spokesman Todd Schneider says.; Perry nuclear
power plant, which started generating electricity in 1986, has accumulated 277
tons of waste fuel. Perry can hold all its waste fuel until its license expires
in 2026.; As long as both plants generate electricity, they will create
high-level radioactive waste. Perry was scheduled to start a 40-day shutdown
last weekend to remove about 52 tons of depleted fuel from its reactor. New fuel
will replace it.; Last month, FirstEnergy announced it would increase the amount
of electricity Perry generates from 1,205 megawatts to 1,265 megawatts. While
the increase will produce more waste, the fuel will remain in the reactor
longer, so Perry will not run out of storage space any quicker.; Utilities are
eager for the federal government to take their waste, and some have sued to
force the government to remove and store it in an interim facility until
Yucca Mountain opens. Such a move would reduce spent fuel
storage costs, increase safety by putting all the waste in one site and fulfill
the government's obligation under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, they argue.
House Bill 45, which would create an interim storage facility adjacent to
Yucca Mountain, is pending in Congress.; John C. Kuehner; BOX
3: DON'T DUMP ON ME; Nevada Handed The Short Straw; Federal scientists initially
considered nine locations in six states as potential disposal sites for the
radioactive waste. In 1985, that number was pared to three: Hanford, Washington;
Deaf Smith County, Texas; and Yucca Mountain, Nevada.; Two
years later, Congress singled out Yucca Mountain. Some folks in
Nevada, which has no nuclear power plants, dubbed it the "The Screw Nevada
Bill."; "It's our home," says Jack Finn, press secretary for Governor Kenny
Guinn. "Keep [the waste] where is is."; Polls show that 75 percent of residents
oppose the project. But Nevada, with only two U.S. representatives and two U.S.
senators, has little political clout in Washington. The state's only hope is to
get political support from states through which the waste will be hauled to
Yucca Mountain.; How and where Americans dispose of their
nuclear waste will continue to be an issue.; Yucca Mountain can
take only 77,000 tons of high-level waste, according to the 1982 Nuclear Waste
Policy Act. That is about half the amount of high-level radioactive waste the
country is expected to produce by 2035, says Abe Van Luik, a senior technical
adviser for the U.S. Department of Energy.; Either Congress must permit
Yucca Mountain to take more waste, says Van Luik, or another
site must be found. And that site, as specified in the 1982 act, will be in the
East.; John C. Kuehner; PHOTOS: NO CREDIT; PHOTO 1; Volcanic eruptions created
Yucca Mountain and the surrounding region millions of years
ago, says R. James Niggemyer, a senior field operations manager at the site.;
PHOTO 2; About 1,000 feet below Niggemyer, miners head toward the heart of the
mountain.; PHOTO 3; Yucca Mountain technicians measure changes
in the rock's moisture level caused by a heater that mimics conditions expected
when radioactive waste is buried there.; MAP: Nevada; Yucca
Mountain / Nevada Test Site; PHOTO 4 BY PLAIN DEALER FILE / 1979; The
Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Sandusky.; GRAPHIC; Yucca
Mountain; SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy; PHOTO 5; The Perry nuclear
power plant.; PHOTO 6 BRYNNE SHAW / PLAIN DEALER PHOTOGRAPHER; Lakewood mother
and anti-nuclear activist Chris Trepal fears an accident involving nuclear
waste, "the grandaddy of all hot potatoes," will occur in a residential area
along the route to Yucca Mountain.; PHOTO 7 BY ASSOCIATED
PRESS; Yucca Mountain "should have been disqualified from
further consideration in 1992," Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn testified in
February before a congressional subcommittee.; PHOTO 8; "This is probably the
most studied site in the western United States," says mining engineer Doc
McNeeley, one of the project's contractors.
LOAD-DATE:
September 20, 2000 
