Nuclear waste a mountain of a problem

The government wants to do it. Science says it'll work. But burying the nation's stockpile in Nevada takes "not in my back yard'' to a whole new level.

By DAVID BALLINGRUD and ALEX LEARY
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 28, 2002

Feeling angry and forsaken, the citizens of Nevada stand alone.

Alone against Congress and a popular president.

Alone against Florida and most other states, which see in Nevada's plight a solution to a problem of their own.

Alone against the money and political power of the nuclear power industry.

And alone, some think, against common sense and the national interest.

After 20 years and $4-billion in research, the federal government has decided to make Nevada home to the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository.

It has chosen Yucca Mountain, a 6-mile-long, 1,200-foot-high volcanic ridge about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

There, over time, the government plans to entomb 77,000 tons of extremely dangerous radioactive material, most of it from the nation's 110 commercial nuclear power plants.

Most of those plants are east of the Mississippi -- an irritating reminder to westerners that political power is concentrated there, too. Five of the nuclear reactors are in Florida.

Nevadans say they are mad as hell. They are fighting back, and they think they are going to win.

Nevada has suffered enough, they say, at the hands of distant bureaucrats anxious to take advantage of its open spaces and modest political clout.

"Show me another state, another population that has done as much for this country's nuclear programs as Nevada has done," said Robert Loux, executive director of the state's Nuclear Waste Project Office.

"We were the guinea pigs for the last big nuclear experiment in this country -- the above-ground nuclear weapons testing program," he said. "The government is still paying compensation to the people they irradiated."

The state's 2-million people are so irked, Loux said, that Gov. Kenny Guinn is routinely challenged to call out the National Guard to occupy the mountain, should the feds try to build the facility.

According to a recent poll sponsored by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, 83 percent of Nevadans disagree with the decision to build the facility on Yucca Mountain, even if the state would win favors from the government in return.

More startling is that 73 percent -- nearly three of every four people -- don't think the government is being honest in its scientific research.

More than one-fifth of those polled, 21 percent, said they will consider moving out of state if waste is buried beneath Yucca Mountain.

The government plan calls for the repository to begin accepting shipments in 2010, though some think it unlikely everything could be in place by then.

For now, the nation's nuclear waste is piling up around the country. It comes from power plants, nuclear aircraft carriers, bomb factories and university labs. Over time, it will emit thousands of times more radiation than was released at Chernobyl and millions of times more than the bomb that fell on Hiroshima.

Nevada officials scoff at the government's assurances that such material can be stored safely under their mountain.

"In this state no one trusts the DOE (Department of Energy)," Loux said. "No one believes a thing they say."

But the nation is running out of time and choices.

"There is no more (storage) space, there are deteriorating storage conditions and you have the challenge that so much of it is located near population centers and waterways," Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said. "No one believes you can bring in David Copperfield, wave a wand and it all goes away."

At Florida Power's Crystal River nuclear facility, every atom of uranium fuel split since 1977 remains in underwater storage, and space will run out by 2016.

"If the spent fuel can't be moved from its current location or we can't add additional storage, there would come a point where we couldn't operate the plant," spokesman Mac Harris said.

Florida has four other commercial nuclear reactors, all owned by Florida Power & Light: two at St. Lucie, outside Fort Pierce, and two at Turkey Point, 25 miles south of Miami.

Limitations at those plants are even more pronounced, with space expected to run out between 2005 and 2011.

"Something has to be done," Harris said.

Bombs on wheels?

Yucca Mountain is on dry, unoccupied land the federal government owns.

The repository design calls for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to travel there by truck or rail in specially designed, shielded containers called casks.

The routes generally will follow rail lines and the interstate highway system, but will be adjusted in consultation with the states, said DOE spokesman Joe Davis.

"Gov. Bush could suggest preferred routing," he said, "but the NRC will have the final say."

Once the materials arrive at the repository, they would be removed from the casks and placed in double-layered, corrosion-resistant packages for burying underground. Special rail cars would carry the waste underground, and remote-controlled equipment would place it on supports in a tunnel.

And there it would sit, for no one knows how long.

Yucca Mountain's dryness is important because water could carry radioactive material from the repository. To counter that, the repository would be about 1,000 feet below the surface. At that level it would be another 1,000 feet above the water table.

Rain or melted snow would have a long way to go to the repository, and then another long journey to the water table.

That's how DOE scientists see it.

Nevada scientists note that tunnels bored deep into the rock a few years ago revealed that the inside of the mountain was wetter than expected. They say the rock is laced with fissures, some that move water in very small amounts, some that flow like a hose.

The uncertainties of the project trouble many people, and they don't all live in Nevada.

Who knows what our planet will look like millions of years from now, when plutonium and other deadly wastes still pack a wallop, they ask? Engineers don't know how to build a container that outlasts radioactive waste.

"This is not an issue we've faced on this scale before," said Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. "We're doing things with consequences we don't understand."

To make the safety issues resonate nationally, Nevada officials lately have been saying that terrorists might find the transportation casks tempting targets.

Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, argued earlier this month that the whole plan should be put on hold until the casks have been more thoroughly tested.

"One of the things that immediately got my attention after (Sept. 11) is the potential of each one of these casks to be a dirty bomb," said Hall, who led the safety board under former President Bill Clinton.

Hall is a paid consultant to the state of Nevada, and his impartiality was quickly questioned. "The opponents of Yucca Mountain paid for that opinion, and I'm sure they are happy with it," DOE spokesman Davis said.

But others have expressed concerns, too.

"We will create thousands of weapons for terrorists," said U.S. Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif.

"Mobile Chernobyls," said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas.

Those concerns were dismissed by U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who said there have been 3,000 shipments of nuclear waste, and "not one threatened the environment or public safety."

"We have done it safely, and we will do it safely," Davis said. "Besides, if you leave it where it is being stockpiled, it is still vulnerable."

Loux is not convinced.

The government would make 108,000 shipments over 38 years to "load" Yucca Mountain, he said, and highways and rail lines "are convenient targets for people who want to make mischief." The large casks that would carry the waste materials are susceptible to the hand-held missiles that a terrorist might be able to get, he said.

"A TOW antitank rocket would penetrate like a hot knife through butter," he said.

A showdown comes this summer

In February, President Bush, acting on a recommendation from Abraham, the secretary of energy, designated Yucca Mountain as the nation's choice for a nuclear waste repository.

Following procedures spelled out by Congress in 1987, Nevada Gov. Guinn vetoed the selection in April. Congress was then given 90 legislative days to sustain or override the veto.

The House overwhelmingly voted against the governor, and the battle has moved to the Senate.

If the Senate overrides the veto, the Energy Department will be free to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license.

"But we still have a chance to stop this in the political arena," Loux said.

The Senate's energy committee is expected to take up the issue in June, and it could be heard by the full Senate in July.

"Let me be clear," warned DOE spokesman Davis. "There is no other alternative (to Yucca Mountain)."

If Congress approves the choice, Nevada will take the fight to federal court, where a handful of lawsuits have been filed against various government agencies.

For now, however, the battle is for public opinion, and the money is flowing freely.

Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen says U.S. senators and senatorial candidates have taken more than $5-million from the nuclear power industry in political action committee contributions since 1997.

Sen. Bob Graham received $55,787 and Sen. Bill Nelson $30,478, according to the group's survey. Neither senator, both Florida Democrats, was among the top 20 recipients.

Nevada is spreading money around, too. "We've spent several million so far in lobbying and ad campaigns in Utah and Vermont," Loux said, "and in other states where we think we still can win support."

When Nevada lobbies a senator it provides him or her a list of the highways in their states that might carry waste shipments, along with a description of how accidents might happen.

Fiscal conservatives are told that Yucca Mountain's estimated cost could run as high as $58-billion.

Asked if there is a better location than the one in his state, Loux answers, "I don't really know. I just know they never really looked anywhere else."

Stable granite formations run through parts of the Midwest and the Northeast, he said, but those never received serious government consideration.

"Yucca Mountain was attractive because it was on government land, and it was politically easier to do. We've always said that the only real science DOE knows is political science."

Florida's stake: How long can Crystal River wait?

Early this spring, Florida Power threw a party to mark the 25th anniversary of its nuclear plant in Crystal River.

Rock music blared from under a big white tent, where workers ate barbecue chicken and baked beans. Commemorative coffee mugs were handed out, veteran employees honored with plaques.

"I think the future is bright for Crystal River," said Scotty Hinnant, chief nuclear official for Florida Power's parent company, Progress Energy.

He then announced, to the cheers of the crowd, that the nuclear plant would seek a 20-year license extension with the NRC.

Among the obstacles in the way of that bright future, none might be more basic or more frustrating to Florida Power than its growing pile of radioactive waste.

To the nation's nuclear plants, which together produce 2,000 metric tons of waste each year, the answer to these space woes has long been a national repository.

When the plants were constructed, the idea was that waste would be stored there temporarily until the government came to take it away. The industry has spent millions to remind lawmakers of that.

"Developing the Yucca Mountain repository is an important and necessary step in following through with the commitment Congress made in 1982 for the nation to have a central location for used nuclear fuel and defense wastes," said Dale Young, vice president of the Crystal River plant.

Since Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the utilities and their customers have contributed about $17-billion toward the development of a national repository -- $788-million, including interest, coming just from Florida utilities. The money is earmarked for research and construction.

With 3-foot-thick concrete walls reinforced with steel bars the diameter of a Coke can, a nuclear plant is an imposing construction. But despite the heft, the power behind the system can fit on the tip of your finger.

Nuclear fuel consists of uranium pellets the size of a pencil eraser. Thousands of these pellets -- each of which contains the same amount of energy as nearly a ton of coal or 3.5 barrels of oil -- are encased in 12-foot-long metal rods bundled together in fuel assemblies. There are 208 rods in each fuel assembly and 177 assemblies, each weighing 1,550 pounds, in the Crystal River reactor core.

The fuel bundles produce nuclear energy when tweaked by control rods, unleashing a chain reaction of neutrons within the uranium. Heat produced by the splitting of atoms is used to generate steam for turning turbines that are connected to electrical generators.

In a reaction, the chain reaction is managed by control rods and water. The rods, which penetrate the 18-ton steel lid of the reactor, are made of special metals that absorb neutrons released by fission.

When inserted into the core, they will stop the chain reaction. Water in the core contains boron that absorbs neutrons, preventing the reaction from occurring too quickly.

Every 18 months to two years, fuel that can no longer effectively generate heat is taken from the reactor and placed in racks in giant concrete pools also filled with 25 feet of water, which acts as a radiation shield.

During its last outage in fall 2001, Florida Power replaced a third of the assemblies, using a mechanical arm to guide the used fuel through a water-filled channel and into open racks in the pool.

Today 824 bundles, two decades of waste, sit in the pool, with 650 spaces remaining. Florida Power gained 117 slots a few years ago by adding racks.

Other nuclear operators have done the same or are considering doing so. Florida Power & Light says it can add up to five more years of space at St. Lucie by reracking.

Companies don't consider it much of a solution, though.

"Reracking is like putting new shelves in a library," Harris said. "You might get some space but there is a limit to how many books you can put in there."

The industry says new fuel pools are not an option because they are costly and hard to fit into existing plant layouts.

Increasingly power companies are forced to store excess waste in steel-lined concrete "dry casks." Twenty utilities use casks and 19 others plan to, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Building a dry storage facility requires an initial investment of between $10-million and $20-million, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying arm.

"The costs," Florida Power & Light spokeswoman Rachel Scott said, "are ultimately going to be borne by customers."

-- Times researchers Cathy Wos and Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Some information from Times wires was used.

Key events leading to Yucca Mountain decision

1946: Atomic Energy Act establishes a federal monopoly over the use, control and ownership of nuclear technology.

1957: National Academy of Sciences recommends the best way to protect the environment and public health and safety would be to dispose of nuclear waste in rock deep underground. Also calls for study of salt domes as storage medium.

1964: Congress amends Atomic Energy Act to allow private ownership of nuclear materials (i.e. fuel) but maintains certain controls over its possession and use in the interest of public health and safety, including the obligation for disposal.

1970: Atomic Energy Commission proposes salt deposits near Lyons, Kan., for permanent repository. Idea is withdrawn two years later because of concerns that drilling in the vicinity might have compromised the salt deposits' geologic integrity.

1974: Energy Reorganization Act creates two new agencies: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to regulate the nuclear power industry and the Energy Research and Development Administration (forerunner of the Department of Energy) to manage the nuclear weapon, naval reactor and energy development programs.

1981: After evaluating numerous alternatives, Department of Energy opts for geologic disposal of civilian high-level nuclear waste.

1982: Congress passes Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which calls for permanent repository for nuclear waste. Utility customers are charged a fee (about $1 per month for residential customers) to help prepare facility to be ready by Jan. 31, 1998.

1983: Department of Energy selects nine locations in six states for consideration as repository sites.

1986: President Ronald Reagan approves three sites for intensive scientific study: Hanford, Wash.; Deaf Smith County, Texas; and Yucca Mountain, Nev.

1987: Congress amends Nuclear Waste Policy Act and directs government to study only Yucca Mountain.

1994: Utilities, including Florida Power and Florida Power & Light, and 20 states sue the DOE for violating its contractual obligation to begin accepting waste by 1998.

DECEMBER 2001: General Accounting Office urges Bush administration to indefinitely postpone construction of repository at Yucca Mountain because of unresolved technical issues. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham calls the report's conclusions "fatally flawed" and maintains that "it was assembled to support a predetermined conclusion."

FEBRUARY 2002: Acting on recommendation from Abraham, President Bush declares Yucca Mountain project scientifically sound and says it is essential to the future of the nuclear power industry and the nation's security.

APRIL 2002: Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoes President Bush's decision, his right under federal law. "I am outraged, as are the citizens of Nevada, that this decision would go forward with so many unanswered questions," Guinn said.

MAY 2002: U.S. House votes 306-117 to override Nevada veto. Senate expected to take up the issue this summer.

-- Source: Nuclear Energy Institute, Department of Energy, news reports and Times files.

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