Burying Our Heads in the Radioactive Sand: The Yucca Mountain Crisis |
By Peggy Skemp |
This
December, the Department of Energy (DOE) is resubmitting the licensing application
that will allow 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to be shipped from 133 locations
around the United States to Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Within the next few years
this radioactive waste �disguised� as semi-trucks, freight trains and barges
will begin to traverse the countryside using all of America�s important trade
routes, including Interstates 90 and 94, and Lake Michigan, coming within 1/2
mile of at least fifty million Americans.
�It's going to take 28 years to ship all of the waste to Yucca Mountain,� says
Peggy Maze Johnson of Citizen Alert, a Las Vegas-based activist group. �By then
they are going to need a new place to put it, so who are they going to put it
on next?�
No one wants the waste in their backyard. Some states, including Colorado, are
lobbying the government not to allow the waste transportation routes to permeate
their state lines because of the high possibility of an accident occurring over
the many years of the relocation.
Transportation workers have expressed concerns over safety issues relating to
the waste relocation, most of which will be conducted by rail. According to
Johnson, �Employees of Burlington Northern have filed suit against the Burlington
Northern Santa Fe Railroad because they have not disclosed all of the accidents
involving hazardous wastes that have occurred on the routes and the employees
feel they are being placed at risk.�
While some say transporting the waste is a necessary evil, the benefits of contaminating
a new site are few. The common misconception is that rather than having the
radioactive waste contaminating our own backyards it will be safely tucked away
deep within Yucca Mountain. The reality is that the material will still be stored
in all of the current 133 sites. According to the Environmental Protection Agency�s
report, �Public Health and Environmental Radiation and Protection Standards
for Yucca Mountain, Nevada,� an analysis of the environmental threats posed
by the project, spent commercial nuclear fuel must cool for five years before
solidifying and becoming suitable for storage within Yucca Mountain.
There is no end in sight for the creation of this dangerous waste, and no way
of ensuring its safe storage. While most of Europe is looking to safer energy
sources for the future, with Germany recently phasing out their nuclear program,
the U.S. has increased reliance on nuclear energy. Nuclear power currently accounts
for over 20 percent of our total energy expenditure, a number that is steadily
rising in spite of our history of unsafe nuclear storage and disposal. Several
of America�s long-term nuclear storage facilities have contaminated their surrounding
environments, such as Illinois� own Midwest Fuel Recovery Plant in Morris, just
west of Chicago. It endured a spill that contaminated Morris�s environment and
ground water. That facility holds only 745 tons of waste. Imagine the magnitude
of a disaster at Yucca Mountain, where 77,000 tons of waste will be stored.
Yucca Mountain is just 90 miles Northwest of Las Vegas on the Western Shoshone
Indian Nation�s reservation. The DOE has been considering it as the premiere
repository of the nation�s most toxic waste since 1976, pouring money into the
project without investigating any other possible sites for the burial.
After having their licensing application for the project rejected once by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission due to non-compliance with simple safety standards
and overall design flaws, the DOE is planning on reapplying for licensure in
December 2004.
While proponents of nuclear expansion dismiss any potential for another Chernobyl
or Three Mile Island disaster, the EPA and the Office of Civilian Radioactive
Waste Management are skeptical about several aspects of the Yucca Mountain project�s
design. The casks meant to store the spent nuclear fuel are metal tubes in an
alloy-22 casing, protected by a titanium shield or �drip guard.� The casks are
required by the EPA to hold the lethal fuel without leaking for 10,000 years,
although according to Citizen Alert, �Congress wanted the limit set at 300,000
years, the standard set by the National Academy of Science� because high level
radioactive waste remains dangerous for 240,000 to one million years after its
initial recovery.
The EPA knows that the canisters are unreliable. �It is reasonable to expect
that individual container failures will occur over a long period of time,� says
the EPA, going on to say that the canisters were expected to fail in �as little
as 200 to as much as 1,800 years� in spite of the designated requirements. �One
of the first things we�ve asked for is that the casks be tested to failure,�
said Johnson of Citizen�s alert. But that is not on the agenda. When questioned
on this, Allen Benson, an employee of the DOE, would not answer directly, but
did say, �we estimate that the casks will last for longer than 200 years.�
The mountain�s geographic location is also an important consideration. It sits
in a volcanic field and over two active fault lines that could endanger the
casks. According to Benson, �The block of rock [Yucca Mountain] sits between
two fault lines,� with the state of Nevada being �the third most active site
for seismic activity in the U.S.� Kenny Guinn, the Governor of Nevada, testified
to the House of Representatives in 1999 that since the DOE first began investigation
of the site as a possible geological waste repository in 1976, �over 620 earthquakes
with a magnitude greater than 2.5� have occurred in Nye County, where Yucca
Mountain is located.
While the Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, stated that �sound science�
is behind the plan, this doesn�t match the concerns of scientists or even the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The Advisory Committee of the NRC issued
a report describing the decision to use the site as �relying on modeling assumptions
that mask a realistic assessment of risk,� and stated that �computations and
analysis are assumption-based, not evidence-supported.� The Nuclear Waste Technical
Review Board estimated the project�s performance rate to be �weak to moderate.�
Scientists found that the casks had great potential to become corroded when
exposed to an environment with a similar acidity as that within Yucca Mountain.
The precious surface water that percolates through the mountain�s aquifers could,
over time, cause the casks to deteriorate to the extent that the water table,
area crops, and drinking water would become contaminated. If this happened,
radiation exposure would not only affect Nevadans but people around the country
who are exposed to animal or agricultural products from the region.
With the imminence of an accident at the poorly planned Yucca Mountain site,
it is hard to comprehend how the DOE and Bush Administration could possibly
justify the health risks and huge expense of the project. According to Nevada
Governor, Kenny C. Guinn, the project�s �total cost for development, operation
and closure will be $53.9 billion dollars. The Nuclear Waste Fund, at maximum,
will generate only about half of the necessary funds,� leaving American consumers
to pick up the tab.
It isn�t hard to imagine an energy crisis of California-like proportions resulting
from the ill-advised Yucca Mountain Project, with corporations like Exelon,
Lockheed Martin and Reliant at the wheel. Because the construction of new nuclear
plants has already begun, the nuclear industry has been putting pressure on
the DOE to speed the initial design testing along.
�The reason they rushed to Yucca Mountain without the research being done was
because the deals [for new nuclear power plants] had already been done behind
closed doors by the Vice President,� said Johnson. She continues, �The nuclear
energy industry is suing the DOE for not having a place to put all their nuclear
waste.�
In discussing the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming waste relocation, the
problem of land ownership cannot be ignored. Historically, the U.S. government
has treated Native Americans as expendable, so it should come as no great shock
that the only area considered for this project, Yucca Mountain, is located on
property belonging to the Western Shoshone Indian Nation. Yucca Mountain and
the surrounding area have belonged to the Shoshone since it was deeded to them
in the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863. The Shoshone Tribe has lived near Yucca Mountain
since prehistoric times and the mountain is an important part of their traditional
religious beliefs. Julie Fishel of the Western Shoshone Defense Project says
the Shoshone people believe that �water is sacred, air is sacred, land is sacred�
and that they �were placed there to take care of the land for all life.�
Fishel also claims that the Ruby Valley Treaty was violated by President Bush
when he worked in cooperation with a private interest group, the Western Shoshone
Claims Steering Committee, which not only isn�t a federally recognized group,
but has been declared as null and void by a resolution of the recognized government
of the Western Shoshone. She says that �while tribal councils opposed money
distribution,� Bush signed a deal with the private interest group to contaminate
the Shoshone�s sacred land. When the Shoshone Indian Nation said that it was
their collective decision not to sell Yucca Mountain to the federal government,
Congress was unwilling to deal with the tribe.
�We�ve tried to reason with the government,� said Raymond Yowell, Tribal Chief
of the Western Shoshone Indian Nation. �Yucca Mountain is in Western Shoshone
territory and the U.S. has failed to show how it acquired the territory.� It
doesn�t seem to matter whether or not they acquire the land legally, as long
as they are able to start building. In the meantime, the Western Shoshone tribe
isn�t receiving a penny for their property.
Since the initial bomb testing at the Nevada Test site on and near Shoshone
territories, the Shoshone people have suffered from a slew of health defects
related to radiation exposure. According to Chief Yowell, Shoshones have frequently
struggled with �various forms of cancer. Diabetes is rampant among our people.
Heart attack and liver and kidney failure is attributed to at some point being
exposed to high level radiation.� Burying a high volume of radioactive waste
in such uncertain conditions is undoubtedly a health risk, made worse by the
fact that President Bush is seeking the renewal of legislation protecting nuclear
companies from unlimited liability for accidents.
The problem of nuclear burial at Yucca Mountain will have consequences that
affect all Americans and for many generations to come. Scientifically, the project
is deeply flawed and the risks of long-term waste transportation are alive in
each hazardous shipment. Rather than re-burying the problem of our dangerous
radioactive waste, the U.S. could expend its money and efforts developing effective
ways of containing existing nuclear waste without creating more.
F Newsmagazine
September 2004