Gambling with tomorrow - Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository - includes related articles

Sierra, Sept-Oct, 1992 by William Poole

CAN LETHAL WASTE BURIED TODAY REMAIN ISOLATED FOR 10,000 YEARS? POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY IS FORCING THE PEOPLE OF NEVADA TO PLAY THE HIGHEST-STAKES GAME OF ALL.

By Nevada measure, Yucca Mountain is scarcely a mountain at all. One hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas, scattered with creosote and ankle-high scrub, its undistinguished ridge trends north to south about 1,000 feet above the bordering valleys. Views are open and spare: to the east the Nevada Test Site, to the west abrupt Solitario Canyon, and to the southwest Crater Flat, a broad expanse of desert punctured by the dark, inverted funnels of several small volcanoes. * But during the last decade Yucca Mountain has become the most studied--and disputed--landform in the history of the Silver State. That record may have formerly been held by Mt. Davidson, from which, beginning in 1859, the state's founders removed $400 million in silver and gold. At Yucca Mountain, however, it is not a withdrawal that is being contemplated, but a deposit: 70,000 metric tons of the nation's highest-level nuclear waste. * The U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) hopes that before long the "characterization," or formal study, of Yucca Mountain's suitability as a nuclear-waste repository will be fully under way. If all winds favor the DOE, the dump is expected to open by the year 2010. But that's a big "if" Local hostility to the project has been building since 1987, when Congress elected Nevada odd-state-out after a dithering, decades-long search for a politically acceptable site. The Nevada legislature has passed one law and two resolutions against the dump, and the state has attempted to slow the study through lawsuits and by denying key environmental permits--efforts eventually thwarted by the federal government.

Under the law that sentenced Nevada, the state was given money--$45 million so far--to monitor the Yucca Mountain study. Officials have put some of the funds to work to inflame the public revolt, greatly peeving the nuclear-power industry, which is paying the bill for the state's vigilance, as well as for the characterization. The last thing the industry wants is a protracted dispute: More than 20,000 metric tons of irradiated fuel assemblies sit in cooling ponds and aboveground storage at U. S. nuclear reactors, and seven states have banned new nuclear facilities until waste disposal can be secured.

With no other sites under consideration, Nevada's biggest fear is that the dump will be licensed regardless of any drawbacks the ten-year, $6-billion investigation might uncover. "The industry is providing pressure across the board," says Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects. "There's just too much political and economic incentive for the DOE to approve this site no matter what the actual conditions might be." While the state does have veto power should Yucca Mountain be sanctioned, Congress can override that veto--a move that few Nevada residents doubt would occur.

Forty driving miles from Yucca Mountain, Beatty, Nevada, is the nearest town to the potential dumpsite with anything approaching a residential identity. (A few years back, after a big gold mine opened down the road, the population doubled to 1,800.) It is the kind of vest-pocket desert community where retired couples from Michigan park their RVs for the night, or for the winter. Beatty, which bills itself as The Gateway to Death Valley, is on average one of the drier hamlets on the continent, but I visited on a soggy, blowing, cloud-covered day.

I stopped at the DOE's local public-information office, where I pocketed a couple of free Yucca Mountain Project keyrings and some imprinted pens ("I'm Smart About Nuclear Energy"). I also picked up ten pounds of official DOE newsletters, briefing papers, backgrounders, flow charts, and overview documents, and surveyed the 6,300-page Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Plan.

Beyond the Stagecoach Hotel and Casino, beyond the Burro Inn and Casino, beyond the Exchange Club Casino, I stopped at a Chevron station, one of the very few Beatty businesses without a slot machine. The man who pumped my gas was contemptuous when I asked about Yucca Mountain. Didn't I understand that the dump would border the Nevada Test Site, where scientists have been exploding atomic bombs for four decades? "Just 18 miles over that hill, you stick your head in the ground, you're dead in ten seconds. What difference does it make? It's already 53-million-years polluted."

However hyperbolic, this mix of resignation and macho recklessness did not surprise me. Around Beatty and Amargosa Valley, a one-saloon settlement down the road ("Home of Yucca Mountain, Champagne Air, and Million-dollar Sunsets"), there is some sentiment toward accepting the dump and mining the brief prosperity it might provide. But most Nevadans --75 percent at last count--are repulsed by the idea. A more characteristic response was the one I got from a secretary in the governor's press office when I called to set up an interview. "Can I tell him what this is about?" she asked. And then, on hearing my answer: "Yucca Mountain? Oh, yuck!"