Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
June 2, 1999, Wednesday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. A13
LENGTH: 309 words
HEADLINE:
PROPOSED SITE FOR NUCLEAR WASTE FLOODED THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO, RUSSIAN;
GEOLOGIST SAYS AT MEETING;
U.S. GEOLOGIST CHALLENGES THEORY, BUT SAFETY
OF NEVADA FACILITY IS IN QUESTION
BYLINE: The
Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON
BODY:
Groundwater flooded the proposed
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in Nevada thousands of years
ago, a Russian geologist said Tuesday, raising questions about the project's
safety.
The Energy Department hopes to seal off the radioactive waste
undergr ound for 10,000 years or more, when the radiation will have decayed to
safer levels. But geologist Yuri Dublyansky of the Russian Academy of Sciences
said the flooding problem he found may be a "potential show-stopper."
James Paces, who has studied the site with the U.S. Geological Survey,
challenged the finding. He said the evidence indicates there has been seepage of
rainwater, not water welling up from below.
The scientists were speaking
during a panel discussion on Yucca Mountain at a conference of
the American Geophysical Union, a group of astrophysicists, geologists and other
Earth and space scientists.
The Energy Department is studying whether to
bury spent, highly radioactive fuel from the nation's nuclear plants and weapons
programs at Y ucca Mountain, about 90 miles from Las Vegas.
Around the
country, more than 42,000 tons of lethal commercial waste is being kept at
nuclear plants, mostly in cooling pools not designed for permanent safekeeping.
Yucca Mountain is the only site under consideration for
permanent storage. The waste would be sealed in metal containers within rock
tunnels about 1,000 feet underground and 1,000 feet above the water table. The
site would begin operations in 2010 at the earliest.
Fears of
earthquakes, water seepage and nuclear waste have slowed progress. Government
officials have acknowledged they cannot be certain the site will keep waste
totally sealed for thousands of years. But they have said the site appears
workable.
In his work, Dublyansky studied the formation of calcite
mineral crystals beneath the mountain.
LOAD-DATE: July
17, 1999 
