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DOE Changes Yucca Mountain Rules
FYI
Norm
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22799-2001Dec10.html
>
> DOE Amends Rules on Nevada Nuclear Waste Site
> By Eric Pianin and Peter Behr
> Washington Post Staff Writers
> Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A09
>
> The Department of Energy has changed the rules for a proposed permanent
> nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada so that the government no longer
> must prove that the site's underground rock formations would prevent
> radioactive contamination of the environment.
>
> The new rule, which takes effect Friday, permits energy officials to rely on
> a combination of advanced storage containers and natural geological barriers
> to satisfy new, rigorous environmental standards for protecting ground water
> and the atmosphere from the release of dangerous levels of radioactive
> material.
>
> DOE officials said yesterday they were justified in making the changes based
> on an extensive review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the
> Environmental Protection Agency, but Nevada's governor and attorney general
> accused the DOE of lowering standards to win approval for the long-debated
> Yucca Mountain storage site. They said they plan to challenge the new rules
> in court.
>
> "The Department should not be evaluating the suitability of the site based
> on rules that were transparently reconfigured at the eleventh hour because
> DOE could not meet the statutory demands of Congress nor the scientific
> recommendations" of other agencies and groups, said Gov. Kenny Guinn (R) and
> state Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa in a letter to Energy Secretary
> Spencer Abraham.
>
> They and other critics argued that under the changed rules, downgrading the
> importance of the geological barriers, the nuclear waste repository could be
> placed just as easily in the basement of DOE headquarters in Washington as
> in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
>
> In ordering the DOE to begin studying Yucca Mountain as the repository site
> in 1982, Congress specified that decision should be based primarily on
> geological characteristics that would ensure that the nuclear waste would be
> safely isolated for thousands of years. But Congress authorized a subsequent
> review, and as the government has moved closer to a final decision,
> significant problems have turned up with the site.
>
> These include earthquake fault lines and areas of loose rock that, instead
> of acting as a barrier, could actually channel water and spread radioactive
> material.
> Now the DOE is considering an approach that would store the nuclear waste in
> pellet form in cylindrical casks in a series of parallel tunnels, in the
> hope that the combination of engineered and geological barriers would
> provide adequate protection from pollution and meet tough standards set by
> the Environmental Protection Agency last summer.
> "We are basing the decision both on the science of the mountain and the
> engineered barriers that would be put in place," said Joe Davis, a spokesman
> for the Energy Department. "We believe we have to rely on both."
> But Victor Gilinsky, a Cal Tech-trained physicist and a former member of the
> Nuclear Regulatory Commission, charged yesterday that the DOE's rule,
> published Nov. 14, "is a radical and imprudent departure from the current
> rule . . . and is inconsistent with Congress's mandate for safe and
> environmentally acceptable disposal of high-level radioactive waste."
>
> In an affidavit he prepared for the state of Nevada, Gilinsky noted that the
> 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act required that detailed geologic considerations
> "shall be primary criteria for the selection of sites" and that the law
> imposed separate performance requirements for each of the natural barriers.
>
> "The new rule lumps all of the natural and engineered barriers together and
> applies only one overall requirement -- that the computer model estimates of
> the future radiation dose to a population some distance away from the Yucca
> Mountain site meet the licensing standard for 10,000 years," he said.
>
> Gilinsky's affidavit and the threat of legal action by Nevada officials are
> the latest in a series of challenges to the administration's aggressive
> schedule, which calls for Abraham to recommend to President Bush this winter
> whether to formally designate Yucca Mountain as the site for 78,000 tons of
> radioactive waste. Abraham is certain to urge Bush to move ahead with the
> project, according to administration and industry sources.
>
> Industry officials are pressing the administration to move ahead to remove
> spent reactor fuel from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants because of the
> vulnerability of temporary storage facilities to terrorist attacks.
> Administration officials have predicted that the site could be opened as
> soon as 2010.
>
> But the General Accounting Office, in a recently completed draft report,
> urged the administration to indefinitely postpone a decision because of
> uncertainties over the planning, design and cost estimates. The project is
> widely unpopular in Nevada and has drawn strong opposition from lawmakers
> and state officials, including Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D) and
> Guinn.
>
> Some anti-nuclear activists argue that the DOE's new rule would permit
> Abraham to approve the Yucca Mountain site on the grounds that improved
> storage systems offset uncertainties about the site's geological sturdiness
> over the thousands of years that fuel would be in storage.
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