Waste war? - Earth news - residents opposing radioactive waste dumping on Yucca Mountain, Nevada - Brief Article - Illustration

Science World, Oct 15, 2001 by Nicole Dyer

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) needs a permanent home for 77,000 tons of trash. Want to volunteer your backyard? Neither do the citizens of Nevada. But the DOE claims Yucca Mountain, which looms 5,000 feet above a remote range of Nevada desert, makes an ideal storage site. Why are residents up in arms over a garbage dump? This garbage is radioactive (emits deadly high-energy rays); it's generated by the nation's 104 nuclear power stations, which harness energy from the breakdown of atomic nuclei to create electricity.

Presently, nuclear waste is stored around the country in radiation-proof casks. But experts predict the waste will remain dangerously radioactive for millennia and eventually erode the containers. Excessive high-level radiation can penetrate and even burn human body tissues, leading to diseases and death.

Many DOE scientists think Yucca is the safest place to store nuclear waste: The terrain is forged of dry volcanic rock rugged enough to entomb nuclear waste for 10,000 years. Their plan is to carve out 100 miles of tunnels wedged between two faults, rock fractures created by shifting land (see diagram, below). The tunnels would store up to 17,000 waste-filled barrels, each made of a 2-inch-thick stainless steel wall and coated with a layer of the element titanium, which resists corrosion (being dissolved by chemical action).

But is Yucca really safe for nuclear storage? Opposing scientists contend that water seeping through rocks and crevices could corrode canisters. In turn, radioactive leakage could spill into ground water used by nearby farmers. "This is a really complex project, maybe more complex than the Manhattan Project [which built the atomic bomb]," says Harvard University scientist Allison Macfarlane.

Still, the DOE maintains the mountain is safer than current scattered storage spots. And last spring the department issued a report to President Bush claiming the new canisters could safely hold nuclear waste for at least 11,000 years. They've also devised a drainage system to shuttle potentially contaminated water to nearby Death Valley, not to major rivers or oceans.

The DOE is seeking licensing to begin construction at Yucca as soon as 2005. The waste war is far from over.

A Safe Waste-Storage Plan?

A vast network of tunnels bored 1,000 feet below the surface of Yucca Mountain may be the safest place to store up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste.

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