DOE’s
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is a critical component
of the Yucca Mountain decision-making process.
The
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) mandates that
all federal agencies and departments take into consideration
the impacts their actions may have on the environment. In the
case of the Yucca Mountain repository, due to the large scope
of the proposed project, the most comprehensive and detailed
form of environmental review is called for by NEPA—an
Environmental Impact Statement. The U.S. Department of Energy
issued a draft EIS in 1999 and a supplemental EIS in 2001 to
provide decision-makers and the public an opportunity to
consider and better understand the environmental impacts of
the proposed repository.
DOE's
supplemental Environment Impact Statement provides an
opportunity for the public to consider recent design changes
and the latest scientific evidence and provide additional
comments. DOE has opened an additional 45 day public
comment period to receive input on the supplemental EIS. This
should further augment the extensive comment record that
already exists. DOE made the draft document available to the
public for comment over a 190-day period extending from August
of 1999 to February of 2000. During this time, DOE received
thousands of written comments as well as verbal comment at 20
hearings held across the country, including 10 in Nevada. DOE
is currently reviewing and considering all of these comments
in preparing the final Environmental Impact Statement, which
will be made available to decision-makers and the public,
along with responses to all the comments—on both the draft and
the supplement—at the end of the year.
DOE’s draft
and supplemental Environmental Impact Statements are based on
extensive scientific study. DOE has spent nearly two
decades characterizing the Yucca Mountain Site. During this
time, Yucca Mountain has become the most extensively studied
piece of land on the earth. This research has resulted in a
wealth of knowledge that DOE first summarized in the Viability
Assessment of 1998 and further built upon to construct the
Science and Engineering Report. The supplemental EIS brings
the Environmental Impact Statement up to date so as to be
consistent with the Science and Engineering Report.
Environmental
impacts of the proposed repository that in 1999 were projected
to be so small as to have essentially no adverse effect on
public health and safety have now shown to be even smaller.
The 1999 draft EIS indicated that radiation levels
associated with the repository 10,000 years in the future
would be less than 1% of naturally occurring background. It
was then thought to be likely that real impacts would be even
smaller. As DOE stated in the 1999 document, estimates of
potential radiation doses "should be viewed as conservatively
high; in fact, the uncertainties are such that the actual
level of impact could be zero." In the supplement, DOE found
that it's projections were in fact very conservative. In fact,
DOE's latest results show that there will be no radiation
exposures for 10,000 years and, even over a million years,
peak radiation levels associated with the repository will be
well below natural background and substantially less than
projected in the draft EIS.
