Jan. 6, 2000

Contact: Amy Shollenberger (202) 454-5118

Science. High-level radioactive waste is produced at commercial nuclear power plants and at nuclear materials production defense facilities. Nuclear fuel is made of solid pellets of enriched uranium. The pellets are sealed in tubes, which are bundled together to form a nuclear fuel assembly. The assemblies are put inside a nuclear reactor and used to generate heat to make electricity. The fuel will be used until it is spent or no longer efficient in generating heat. Once a year, approximately one-third of the nuclear fuel inside a reactor is removed and replaced by new fuel assemblies. The used fuel is called spent fuel (i.e., nuclear waste). It is highly radioactive and is the primary form of high-level nuclear waste.

When spent fuel is removed from a reactor, it is extremely hot, so all reactors have "spent fuel pools," where tubes of spent fuel are placed to cool them and allow some of the radioactivity to decay. Each reactor is allotted only a certain amount of pool space, and when the pools are full, the reactors either must shut down or store some of the cooled spent fuel above ground on site, in concrete or steel containers called dry casks. When the spent fuel is moved into dry cask storage, it is still highly radioactive.

Storage. On-site storage of nuclear waste is very expensive. The nuclear industry has never been expected by the government to figure out what to do with the waste. Rather, the government has accepted responsibility. Past claims that nuclear energy would be "too cheap to meter" have been proven false. Instead, nuclear power plants add fees to their ratepayers’ bills for spent fuel storage and for the Nuclear Waste Fund, established by the federal government in 1982 to research ways to dispose of nuclear waste. The money in this fund is being used to pay for activities at Yucca Mountain, located near Las Vegas.

Yucca Mountain is the only site being considered by the Department of Energy (DOE) as a "permanent disposal" site for the United States’ highly radioactive nuclear waste. This spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste is currently located at 77 sites across the country (see map next page) and would have to be transported by truck or rail to Yucca Mountain if that site is approved as a geologic repository.

Under current law, 70,000 metric tons of waste would be allowed to be stored at Yucca Mountain, with 63,000 tons of that being commercial waste and the rest being DOE waste. However, that still would not accommodate all the waste projected to be produced by the time the repository opens (an estimated 107,500 metric tons of both commercial and DOE waste).

Timeline

The DOE is now in a "site characterization" phase, which means that it is performing tests at the Yucca Mountain site to determine whether it is a suitable site for the disposal of radioactive waste. If the DOE determines that the site is acceptable, it will apply in 2001 for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). If the license is granted, construction will begin. If all goes according to the DOE’s plan, waste will be accepted at Yucca Mountain beginning in 2010 and will continue to arrive at Yucca Mountain for 24 years, with the final "emplacement" activities ending in 2035.

Below is the DOE’s timeline of activities for Yucca Mountain:

Concerns with the Yucca Mountain Plan

Groundwater. The DOE talks about "disposing of" nuclear waste. But nuclear waste cannot be disposed of; it only can be stored. When stored, there is always the danger that radiation will escape.

DOE has made numerous changes to its design documents relating to keeping the waste separate from the groundwater. The DOE is finding more and more problems with the "natural barrier" system at Yucca Mountain, and the agency appears to be scrambling to piece together an engineered barrier system that will sufficiently protect the groundwater. It is unclear whether the agency has been able to do this.

If radioactive waste leaks and contaminates the groundwater beneath Yucca Mountain, it would jeopardize the health of nearby residents, who depend on that aquifer as their sole source of drinking water. The National Academy of Sciences has identified the groundwater pathway as one of the significant pathways of exposure in the vicinity of the Yucca Mountain site. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a standard to limit groundwater radiation to 4 millirem (10 millirems is equivalent to one chest X-ray), a strong effort is being led by the nuclear industry to take the standard-setting authority away from the EPA and give it to the NRC. The NRC’s proposed radiation standard contains no specific groundwater standard. This lack of a standard, coupled with the DOE’s refusal to seriously and honestly characterize the impacts of groundwater contamination, can only lead to disaster for one of our nation’s most precious resources.

Earthquakes. Should an earthquake hit the Yucca Mountain area while nuclear waste is stored there, disastrous consequences could result. The groundwater table could rise, coming into contact with the stored waste and contaminating it. Or the storage canisters themselves could break open. Also, portions of the mountain could collapse, permitting no access to the broken canisters inside.

Nevada ranks third in the nation for current seismic activity (see maps below).

Since 1976, there have been more than 600 seismic events of a magnitude greater than 2.5 within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain. Native Americans in the area call Yucca Mountain a rolling hill and speak of its constant movement. In 1992, an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.6 occurred that caused damage to a DOE field office building in the area. Further, some scientists believe that a significant rise in groundwater levels could occur as the result of an earthquake, possibly flooding the repository. This type of event would surely compromise the integrity of the nuclear waste containers and contaminate the groundwater beneath Yucca Mountain. Despite the evidence to the contrary, the DOE has said it considers it unlikely that an earthquake would strike the region.

Transportation of Radioactive Nuclear Waste

If the Yucca Mountain site is approved and licensed, waste will be transported from the 77 previously mentioned sites to Yucca Mountain. The DOE has not indicated whether it will transport the nuclear waste by truck or by train, but either way, the transportation will take 24 years and thousands of shipments. Nuclear waste will travel through 43 states, past the homes, workplaces and schools of 50 million Americans. A 1997 survey conducted by Decision Research of Eugene, Ore., found that 66.4 percent of Americans are opposed to shipping high-level radioactive waste to Nevada for temporary storage.

Transporting nuclear waste poses inherent dangers, particularly in the event of an accident (e.g., if an equipment failure or human error causes the waste to roll off the truck or leak) or crash. Public Citizen advocates storing the waste on site, in pools or dry casks until a satisfactory national solution to the nuclear waste is found. Leaving the waste on site has an added advantage; it allows for the natural decay of elements to lower the radiation and thermal heat content of the waste, thus inherently making future transportation safer.

Although the DOE has refused to name the transportation routes it will use to haul this extremely hazardous material across the country, Department of Transportation regulations strictly limit the potential routes. Public Citizen has teamed with the state of Nevada’s Nuclear Waste Project Office to determine which routes would be most likely candidates for the transportation of nuclear waste. Maps and descriptions of these routes can be found at http://www.citizen.org/cmep by following the Atomic Atlas link.

The DOE’s own estimates suggest that at least 50 accidents and as many as 310 accidents could occur during shipment of radioactive waste. As part of the 1986 Environmental Assessment for the Yucca Mountain repository site, the DOE conducted a study that found that a severe accident in a rural area involving a high-speed impact, lengthy fire and fuel oxidation would contaminate a 42-square-mile area, require 462 days to clean up and cost $620 million. The health, economic and environmental impacts of such an accident could devastate a community.

These casks have never been fully tested. The NRC sponsored a study in 1987 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. This study, commonly referred to as the "Modal Study," used computer modeling to predict cask responses to accident conditions. The study was inadequate in that it did not use full-scale testing of the casks, and the conditions that were used in the computer analysis did not represent real-life scenarios. The NRC has contracted with Sandia National Labs to complete another study ("Modal II"), and Sandia is currently gathering comments from interested parties. However, the study will not be completed before the 2001 date for the Yucca Mountain license application. More information about the original Modal Study and Modal II can be found at http://ttd.sandia.gov/nrc/modal.htm.

Roles of the Federal Government and Agencies