Yucca Mountain Project Radioactive To Nevadans

The Bush administration will press forward with its plan to bury much of the nation's nuclear waste beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a top Energy Department official told the Senate Energy Committee on Tuesday.

Opponents of the plan say a federal court ruling issued last week effectively derailed the project, but Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow hailed the court's decision as "an enormous victory."

The court found the federal government's 10,000-year federal safety requirement for the highly radioactive waste is illegal because it is inconsistent with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.

But the court also rejected Nevada's constitutional challenge to the repository and McSlarrow said this overshadows the concern about the safety standard.

"Everything regarding site selection and standards was upheld except for one thing," he said.

The project is "still on track" and the administration will submit a license application for the site by the end of the year," McSlarrow told Senators.

The Yucca Mountain site was first identified as a possible location for storage of the nation's nuclear waste in 1987, but the project has been beset with criticism and skepticism.

The facility is the intended destination for a total of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from Defense Department sites and spent nuclear fuel from the 103 operating nuclear reactors across the United States.

The Deputy Energy Secretary said he expects the facility will open and begin receiving shipments of nuclear waste in 2010.

But even some supporters of the project do not share McSlarrow's optimism.

"This is an ominous situation," Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, said of the court ruling.

The court did not specify how far out into the future the government must assure the safety of the site, but noted that the National Academy of Sciences report recommended a standard that would cover 300,000 years, when some project radioactive releases from the site to peak.

Critics of the project say this standard cannot be met and Domenici agrees.

He told colleagues it is impossible for scientists to determine the safety requirements for the site beyond 10,000 years.

"That is almost as far out as civilization has been in existence," Domenici said. "There was essentially nothing in the world 10,000 years ago that had to do with mankind."

A key concern for supporters is that the law that identified the Yucca Mountain site for the repository blocks consideration of any other site.

Sustained delay to or failure to proceed with the Yucca Mountain project would force state governments to deal with the waste.

And the nuclear waste problem is growing in scope and expense.

As of 2003, nuclear reactors in the United States had generated some 54,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and by the year 2035, the United States will have produced more than twice that amount.

Several court cases have ruled that the federal government is liable for the costs of storing the nuclear waste until the Yucca Mountain site is ready.

The industry says that total bill could be some $56 billion - the first of several cases that could determine that figure began this week.

States are in no position to oversee or regulate long-term waste storage, Domenici said, and this could cause some to begin to shut down nuclear power plants.

"It is terrifically important that we find a solution to this," said Domenici. "The entire nuclear power industry in the United States could stand or fall with this interpretation."

McSlarrow said the administration is still reviewing the court's ruling, but told the committee he could not see why the project could not proceed.

"It is unlikely that anything that might occur on a post 10,000-year standard would cause us to revise the 10,000 year standard," said McSlarrow, who noted that the ruling approved of the 10,000 year standard.