Yucca Mountain
Encyclopedia
Deep geological repository
A deep geological repository is a nuclear waste repository excavated deep within a stable geologic environment...
storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel
Spent nuclear fuel
Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor...
and other high level radioactive waste, until the project was canceled in 2009. It was to be located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site
Nevada Test Site
The Nevada National Security Site , previously the Nevada Test Site , is a United States Department of Energy reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of the city of Las Vegas...
in Nye County, Nevada
Nye County, Nevada
-National protected areas:* Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge* Death Valley National Park * Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest * Spring Mountains National Recreation Area -Demographics:...
, about 80 mi (128.7 km) northwest of the Las Vegas metropolitan area
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
. The proposed repository was within Yucca Mountain
Yucca Mountain
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other high level radioactive waste, until the project was canceled in 2009. It was to be located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County,...
, a ridge
Ridge
A ridge is a geological feature consisting of a chain of mountains or hills that form a continuous elevated crest for some distance. Ridges are usually termed hills or mountains as well, depending on size. There are several main types of ridges:...
line in the south-central part of Nevada near its border with California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
Although the location has been highly contested by both environmentalists and non-local residents in Las Vegas, which is over 100 miles (160.9 km) away, it was approved in 2002 by the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
. However, under the Obama Administration funding for development of Yucca Mountain waste site was terminated effective with the 2011 federal budget passed by Congress on April 14, 2011. The US GAO stating that the closure was for policy not technical or safety reasons. This leaves United States civilians without any long term storage site for high level radioactive waste, currently stored on-site at various nuclear facilities around the country, although the United States government can dispose of its waste at WIPP
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world's third deep geological repository licensed to permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years that is left from the research and production of nuclear weapons...
, in rooms 2150 feet (655.3 m) underground. The Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
is reviewing other options for a high level waste repository. In the meantime, failure to perform to contractual requirements will cost the taxpayer $11 billion by 2020.
Background
Electric power
Electric power is the rate at which electric energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt.-Circuits:Electric power, like mechanical power, is represented by the letter P in electrical equations...
generation
Electricity generation
Electricity generation is the process of generating electric energy from other forms of energy.The fundamental principles of electricity generation were discovered during the 1820s and early 1830s by the British scientist Michael Faraday...
at commercial nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
plants, and high-level radioactive waste is the by-product from reprocessing
Nuclear reprocessing
Nuclear reprocessing technology was developed to chemically separate and recover fissionable plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. Reprocessing serves multiple purposes, whose relative importance has changed over time. Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing...
spent fuel to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. In 1982, the United States Congress established a national policy to solve the problem of nuclear waste disposal. This policy is a federal law called the Nuclear Waste Policy Act
Nuclear Waste Policy Act
During the first 40 years that nuclear waste was being created in the United States, no legislation was enacted to manage its disposal. Nuclear waste, some of which remains dangerously radioactive with a half-life of more than one million years, was kept in various types of temporary storage...
, which made the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for finding a site, building, and operating an underground disposal facility called a geologic repository. The recommendation to use a geologic repository dates back to 1957 when the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
recommended that the best means of protecting the environment and public health and safety would be to dispose of the waste in rock deep underground.
The Department of Energy began studying Yucca Mountain in 1978 to determine whether it would be suitable for the nation's first long-term geologic repository for over 70000 metric tons (68,894.2 LT) (150 million pounds) of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste currently stored at 121 sites around the nation. An estimated 10000 metric tons (9,842 LT) of the waste would be from America's military nuclear programs. On December 19, 1984, the Department of Energy selected ten locations in six states for consideration as potential repository sites. This was based on data collected for nearly ten years. The ten sites were studied and results of these preliminary studies were reported in 1985. Based on these reports, President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
approved three sites for intensive scientific study called site characterization. The three sites were Hanford, Washington
Hanford Site
The Hanford Site is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, operated by the United States federal government. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works or HEW, Hanford Nuclear Reservation...
; Deaf Smith County, Texas; and Yucca Mountain. In 1987, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and directed DOE to study only Yucca Mountain, which is already located within a former nuclear test site. The Act provided that if during Site Characterization the Yucca Mountain location is found unsuitable, studies will be stopped immediately. This option expired when the site was actually recommended by the President.
On July 23, 2002, President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
signed House Joint Resolution 87, allowing the DOE to take the next step in establishing a safe repository in which to store the country's nuclear waste. The Department of Energy was to begin accepting spent fuel at the Yucca Mountain Repository by January 31, 1998 but did not do so because of a series of delays due to legal challenges, concerns over how to transport nuclear waste to the facility, and political pressures resulting in underfunding of the construction.
On July 18, 2006 the DOE proposed March 31, 2017 as the date to open the facility and begin accepting waste based on full funding. On September 8, 2006 Ward (Edward) Sproat, a nuclear industry executive formerly of PECO energy in Pennsylvania, was nominated by President Bush to lead the Yucca Mountain Project. Following the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections, Democratic Nevada Senator Harry Reid
Harry Reid
Harry Mason Reid is the senior United States Senator from Nevada, serving since 1987. A member of the Democratic Party, he has been the Senate Majority Leader since January 2007, having previously served as Minority Leader and Minority and Majority Whip.Previously, Reid was a member of the U.S...
, a long time opponent of the repository, became the Senate Majority Leader, putting him in a position to greatly affect the future of the project. Reid has said that he would continue to work to block completion of the project, and is quoted as having said: "Yucca Mountain is dead. It'll never happen."
In the 2008 Omnibus Spending Bill, the Yucca Mountain Project's budget was reduced to $390 million. Despite this cut in funding, the project was able to reallocate resources and delay transportation expenditures to complete the License Application for submission on June 3, 2008. Lacking an operating repository, however, the federal government owes to the utilities somewhere between $300 and $500 million per year in compensation for failing to comply with the contract it signed to take the spent nuclear fuel by 1998.
During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
promised to abandon the Yucca Mountain project. After his election, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Obama he did not have the ability to do so. On April 23, 2009, Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Olin Graham is the senior U.S. Senator from South Carolina and a member of the Republican Party. Previously he served as the U.S. Representative for .-Early life, education and career:...
(R-South Carolina) and eight other senators introduced legislation to provide "rebates" from a $30 billion federally managed fund into which nuclear power plants had been paying, so as to refund all collected funds if the project was in fact cancelled by Congress.
The facility
Radioactive waste
Radioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material. Radioactive wastes are usually by-products of nuclear power generation and other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology, such as research and medicine...
storage. The management and operating contractor as of April 1, 2009 for the project is USA Repository Services (USA-RS) (a consortium of government contractors, URS Corporation, Shaw Corporation and Areva Federal Services LLC). Following the layoff of 800 employees on March 31, 2009, the consortium had about 100 employees remaining on the project prior to all being laid off by the end of the 2010 financial year due to zero funding in President Obama's 2011 budget for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia National Laboratories
The Sandia National Laboratories, managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation , are two major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratories....
had the scientific responsibility for post closure analysis and ensuring compliance with the NWPA for one million years. The main tunnel of the Exploratory Studies Facility is U-shaped, 5 mi (8 km) long and 25 ft (7.6 m) wide. There are also several cathedral-like alcoves that branch from the main tunnel. It is in these alcoves that most of the scientific experiments are conducted. The emplacement drifts (smaller diameter tunnels branching off the main tunnel) where waste would have been stored were not constructed since they required a construction authorization by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The repository has a statutory limit of 77000 metric tons (84,878 ST). To store this amount of waste requires 40 miles (64.4 km) of tunnels. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act further limits the capacity of the repository to 63000 metric tons (62,004.8 LT) of initial heavy metal in commercial spent fuel. The 104 U.S. commercial reactors currently operating will produce this quantity of spent fuel by 2014, assuming that the spent fuel rods are not reprocessed. Currently, the US has no civil reprocessing plant.
By 2008, Yucca Mountain was one of the most studied pieces of geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
in the world with the United States having invested US$9 billion on the project. The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that it has over 100 million U.S. gallons of highly radioactive waste and 2500 metric tons (2,755.8 ST) of spent fuel from the production of nuclear weapons and from research activities in temporary storage. The cost of the facility is being paid for by a combination of a tax on each kilowatt hour of nuclear power and by the taxpayers for disposal of weapons and naval nuclear waste. Based on the 2001 cost estimate, approximately 73 percent is funded from consumers of nuclear powered electricity and 27 percent by the taxpayers.
The latest Total System Life Cycle Cost presented to Congress on July 15, 2008 by Director Sproat is $90 billion. This cost, however, cannot be compared to previous estimates since it includes a repository capacity about twice as large as previously estimated over a much longer period of time (100 years vs 30 years). Additionally, the cost of the project continues to escalate due to the lack of sufficient funding to most efficiently move forward and complete the project. In 2007, the DOE announced it was seeking to double the size of the Yucca Mountain repository to a capacity of 135000 metric tons (148,812 ST), or 300 million pounds.
The tunnel boring machine
Tunnel boring machine
A tunnel boring machine also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from a metre to almost 16 metres to date...
(TBM) that excavated the main tunnel cost $13 million and was 400 ft (121.9 m) in length when in operation. It now sits at its exit point at the South Portal (south entrance) of the facility. The short side tunnel alcoves were excavated using explosives.
Opposition
Because of delays in construction, a number of nuclear power plants in the United States have resorted to dry cask storage
Dry cask storage
Dry cask storage is a method of storing high-level radioactive waste, such as spent nuclear fuel that has already been cooled in the spent fuel pool for at least one year.. These casks are typically steel cylinders that are either welded or bolted closed. When inside, the fuel rods are surrounded...
of waste on-site indefinitely in nearly impervious steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
and concrete cask
CASK
Peripheral plasma membrane protein CASK is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CASK gene. This gene is also known by several other names: CMG 2 , calcium/calmodulin-dependent serine protein kinase 3 and membrane-associated guanylate kinase 2.-Genomics:This gene is located on the short arm of...
s. To keep these plants operating, it may be necessary to construct a temporary facility at the Yucca Mountain site or somewhere else in the West
Western United States
.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
if opening of the underground storage continues to be delayed.
The project is widely opposed in Nevada and is a hotly debated national topic. A two-thirds majority of Nevadans feel it is unfair for their state to have to store nuclear waste when there are no nuclear power plants in Nevada. Many Nevadans' opposition stemmed from the so-called "Screw Nevada Bill," the 1987 legislation halting study of Hanford and Texas as potential sites for the waste before conclusions could be met. However, the local county in which the proposed facility is located, Nye County, supports the development of the repository.
In addition, the Nevada Test Site
Nevada Test Site
The Nevada National Security Site , previously the Nevada Test Site , is a United States Department of Energy reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of the city of Las Vegas...
(NTS), which borders Yucca Mountain to the east, is the location where over 1000 nuclear weapons have been detonated and continues to function as the location for nuclear weapons testing. The NTS currently hosts a variety of research activities, both nuclear and otherwise, and is the host to two low-level radioactive waste sites.
One point of concern has been the standard of radiation emission from 10,000 years to 1,000,000 years into the future. On August 9, 2005, the United States Environmental Protection Agency
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
proposed a limit of 350 millirem per year for that period. In October 2007, the DOE issued a draft of the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement in which it shows that for the first 10,000 years mean public dose
Absorbed dose
Absorbed dose is a measure of the energy deposited in a medium by ionizing radiation per unit mass...
would be 0.24 mrem/year and that thereafter to 1,000,000 years the median public dose would be 0.98 mrem/year, both of which are substantially below the proposed EPA limit.
On February 12, 2002, U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham
Spencer Abraham
Edmund Spencer Abraham is a former United States Senator from Michigan. He served as the tenth United States Secretary of Energy, serving under President George W. Bush. Abraham is one of the founders of the Federalist Society....
made the decision that this site was suitable to be the nation's nuclear repository. The governor of Nevada had 90 days to object and did so. However, the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
overrode the objection. If the governor's objection had stood the project would have been abandoned and a new site chosen. In August 2004, the repository became an election issue, when Senator John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
said that he would abandon the plans if elected.
In March 2005, the Energy and Interior
United States Department of the Interior
The United States Department of the Interior is the United States federal executive department of the U.S. government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal land and natural resources, and the administration of programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native...
departments revealed that several U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists
Hydrology
Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth and other planets, including the hydrologic cycle, water resources and environmental watershed sustainability...
had exchanged e-mails discussing possible falsification of quality assurance
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance, or QA for short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process...
documents on water infiltration
Infiltration (hydrology)
Infiltration is the process by which water on the ground surface enters the soil. Infiltration rate in soil science is a measure of the rate at which soil is able to absorb rainfall or irrigation. It is measured in inches per hour or millimeters per hour. The rate decreases as the soil becomes...
research. On February 17, 2006, the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) released a report confirming the technical soundness of infiltration modeling work performed by U.S. Geological Survey
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology,...
(USGS) employees. In March 2006, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Majority Staff issued a 25 page white paper
White paper
A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions, and are often requested and used in politics, policy, business, and technical fields. In commercial use, the term has also come to refer to...
"Yucca Mountain: The Most Studied Real Estate on the Planet." The conclusions were:
- Extensive studies consistently show Yucca Mountain to be a sound site for nuclear waste disposal
- The cost of not moving forward is extremely high
- Nuclear waste disposal capability is an environmental imperative
- Nuclear waste disposal capability supports national securityNational securityNational security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II...
- Demand for new nuclear plants also demands disposal capability
On January 18, 2006, DOE OCRWM announced that it would designate Sandia National Laboratories as its lead laboratory to integrate repository science work for the Yucca Mountain Project. "We believe that establishing Sandia as our lead laboratory is an important step in our new path forward. The independent, expert review that the scientists at Sandia will perform will help ensure that the technical and scientific basis for the Yucca Mountain repository is without question," OCRWM’s Acting Director Paul Golan said. "Sandia has unique experience in managing scientific investigations in support of a federally licensed geologic disposal facility, having served in that role as the scientific advisor to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world's third deep geological repository licensed to permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years that is left from the research and production of nuclear weapons...
in Carlsbad, New Mexico
Carlsbad, New Mexico
Carlsbad is a city in and the county seat of Eddy County, New Mexico, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 26,138. Carlsbad is the center of the designated micropolitan area of Carlsbad-Artesia, which has a total population of 55,435...
." Sandia began acting as the lead laboratory on October 1, 2006.
Because of questions raised by the State of Nevada and Congressional members about the quality of the science behind Yucca Mountain, the Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
announced on March 31, 2006 the selection of Oak Ridge Associated Universities
Oak Ridge Associated Universities
Oak Ridge Associated Universities is a consortium of American and British universities headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with an office in Washington, D.C., and staff at several other locations across the country.- History :...
/Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education is a U.S. Department of Energy institute headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tennessee focusing on scientific initiatives to research health risks from occupational hazards, assess environmental cleanup, respond to radiation medical emergencies, support...
(a not-for-profit consortium that includes 96 doctoral degree-granting institutions and 11 associate member universities) to provide expert reviews of scientific and technical work on the Yucca Mountain Project. DOE stated that the Yucca Mountain Project "will be based on sound science. By bringing in Oak Ridge for review of technical work, DOE will seek to present a high level of expertise and credibility as they move the project forward... This award gives DOE access to academic and research institutions to help DOE meet their mission and legal obligation to license, construct, and open Yucca Mountain as the nation’s repository for spent nuclear fuel."
There was significant public and political opposition to the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository project in Nevada. An attempt was made to push ahead with the project and override this opposition. But for large projects which would take decades to complete, there is every chance that sustained local opposition will prevail, and this happened with the Yucca Mountain project. Successful nuclear waste storage siting efforts in Scandinavia have involved local communities in the decision-making process and given them a veto at each stage, but this did not happen with Yucca Mountain. Local communities at potential storage and repository sites "should have early and continued involvement in the process, including funding that would allow them to retain technical experts".
On March 5, 2009, Energy Secretary
United States Secretary of Energy
The United States Secretary of Energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the President's Cabinet, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was formed on October 1, 1977 with the creation of the Department of Energy when President Jimmy...
Steven Chu
Steven Chu
Steven Chu is an American physicist and the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and...
reiterated in a Senate hearing that the Yucca Mountain
Yucca Mountain
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other high level radioactive waste, until the project was canceled in 2009. It was to be located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County,...
site was no longer considered an option for storing reactor waste.
On March 3, 2010, the DOE filed a motion with the NRC to withdraw its license application, however multiple lawsuits to stop this action have been filed by states, counties, and individuals across the country as being unauthorized by the NWPA.
Original standard
The United States Environmental Protection AgencyUnited States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
(EPA) established its Yucca Mountain standards in June 2001. The storage standard set a dose limit of 15 millirem per year for the public outside the Yucca Mountain site. The disposal standards consisted of three components: an individual dose standard, a standard evaluating the impacts of human intrusion into the repository, and a groundwater
Groundwater
Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock...
protection standard. The individual-protection and human intrusion standards set a limit of 15 millirem per year to a reasonably maximally exposed individual, who would be among the most highly exposed members of the public. The groundwater protection standard is consistent with EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act
Safe Drinking Water Act
The Safe Drinking Water Act is the principle federal law in the United States intended to ensure safe drinking water for the public. Pursuant to the act, the Environmental Protection Agency is required to set standards for drinking water quality and oversee all states, localities, and water...
standards, which the Agency applies in many situations as a pollution prevention
Pollution prevention
Pollution prevention ' describes activities that reduce the amount of pollution generated by a process, whether it is consumer consumption, driving, or industrial production...
measure. The disposal standards were to apply for a period of 10,000 years after the facility is closed. Dose assessments were to continue beyond 10,000 years and be placed in DOE's Environmental Impact Statement
Environmental impact statement
An environmental impact statement , under United States environmental law, is a document required by the National Environmental Policy Act for certain actions "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment". An EIS is a tool for decision making...
, but were not subject to a compliance standard. The 10,000 year period for compliance assessment is consistent with EPA's generally applicable standards developed under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act
Nuclear Waste Policy Act
During the first 40 years that nuclear waste was being created in the United States, no legislation was enacted to manage its disposal. Nuclear waste, some of which remains dangerously radioactive with a half-life of more than one million years, was kept in various types of temporary storage...
. It also reflects international guidance regarding the level of confidence that can be placed in numerical projections over very long periods of time.
Court of Appeals finds standard inconsistent with NAS recommendations
Shortly after the EPA first established these standards in 2001, the nuclear industry, several environmental and public interest groups, and the State of NevadaNevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
challenged the standards in court. In July 2004, the Court of Appeals
Court of Appeals
A court of appeals is an appellate court generally.Court of Appeals may refer to:*Military Court of Appeals *Corte d'Assise d'Appello *Philippine Court of Appeals*High Court of Appeals of Turkey*United States courts of appeals...
for the District of Columbia Circuit found in favor of the Agency on all counts except one: the 10,000 year regulatory time frame. The court ruled that EPA’s 10,000-year compliance period for isolation of radioactive waste was not consistent with National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
(NAS) recommendations and was too short. The NAS report had recommended standards be set for the time of peak risk, which might approach a period of one million years. By limiting the compliance time to 10,000 years, EPA did not respect a statutory requirement that it develop standards consistent with NAS recommendations.
EPA's rule
EPA published in the Federal Register a final rule in 2009. The new rule limits radiation doses from Yucca Mountain for up to 1,000,000 years after it closes. Within that regulatory time frame, the EPA has two dose standards that would apply based on the number of years from the time the facility is closed.For the first 10,000 years, the EPA would retain the 2001 final rule’s dose limit of 15 millirem per year. This is protection at the level of the most stringent radiation regulations in the U.S. today. From 10,000 to one million years, EPA established a dose limit of 100 millirem per year. EPA's rule requires the Department of Energy to show that Yucca Mountain can safely contain wastes, considering the effects of earthquakes, volcanic activity, climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
, and container corrosion
Corrosion
Corrosion is the disintegration of an engineered material into its constituent atoms due to chemical reactions with its surroundings. In the most common use of the word, this means electrochemical oxidation of metals in reaction with an oxidant such as oxygen...
, over one million years. The current analysis indicates that the repository will cause less than 1 mrem/year public dose through 1,000,000 years.
Geology
Caldera
A caldera is a cauldron-like volcanic feature usually formed by the collapse of land following a volcanic eruption, such as the one at Yellowstone National Park in the US. They are sometimes confused with volcanic craters...
volcano
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
and is composed of alternating layers of ignimbrite
Ignimbrite
An ignimbrite is the deposit of a pyroclastic density current, or pyroclastic flow, a hot suspension of particles and gases that flows rapidly from a volcano, driven by a greater density than the surrounding atmosphere....
(welded tuff), non-welded tuff, and semi-welded tuff. The tuff surround the burial sites is expected to protect human health as it provides a natural barrier to the radiation. It lies along the transition between the Mohave and the Great Basin Desert
Great Basin Desert
The Great Basin Desert is an area of nearctic high deserts across parts of Nevada, California, and Utah that extends into the Colorado River watershed , but which is mostly a portion of the central Nevada desert basins of the Great Basin.It along with the Escalante Desert, Mohave Desert, the...
s.
The volcanic tuff
Tuff
Tuff is a type of rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash ejected from vents during a volcanic eruption. Tuff is sometimes called tufa, particularly when used as construction material, although tufa also refers to a quite different rock. Rock that contains greater than 50% tuff is considered...
at Yucca Mountain is appreciably fractured and movement of water through an aquifer below the waste repository is primarily through fractures. While the fractures are usually confined to individual layers of tuff, the faults extend from the planned storage area all the way to the water table 600 foot below the surface. Future water transport from the surface to waste containers is likely to be dominated by fractures. There is evidence that surface water has been transported down through the 700 ft (213.4 m) of overburden to the exploratory tunnel at Yucca Mountain in less than 50 years.
Some site opponents assert that, after the predicted containment failure of the waste containers, these cracks may provide a route for movement of radioactive waste that dissolves in the water flowing downward from the desert surface. Officials state that the waste containers will be stored in such a way as to minimize or even nearly eliminate this possibility.
The area around Yucca Mountain received much more rain in the geologic past and the water table was consequently much higher than it is today, though well below the level of the repository.
Earthquakes
Nevada ranks fourth in the nation for current seismic activity Earthquake databases (the Council of the National Seismic System Composite Catalogue and the Southern Great Basin Seismic Network) provide current and historical earthquakeEarthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
information. Analysis of the available data in 1996 indicates that, since 1976, there have been 621 seismic events of magnitude greater than 2.5 within a 50 miles (80.5 km) radius of Yucca Mountain. Reported underground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site have been excluded from this count.
DOE has stated that seismic and tectonic effects on the natural systems at Yucca Mountain will not significantly affect repository performance. Yucca Mountain lies in a region of ongoing tectonic deformation, but the deformation rates are too slow to significantly affect the mountain during the 10,000-year regulatory compliance period. Rises in the water table caused by seismic activity would be, at most, a few tens of meters and would not reach the repository. The fractured and faulted volcanic tuff that Yucca Mountain comprises reflects the occurrence of many earthquake-faulting and strong ground motion events during the last several million years, and the hydrological characteristics of the rock would not be changed significantly by seismic events that may occur in the next 10,000 years. The engineered barrier system components will reportedly provide substantial protection
Earthquake engineering
Earthquake engineering is the scientific field concerned with protecting society, the natural and the man-made environment from earthquakes by limiting the seismic risk to socio-economically acceptable levels...
of the waste form from seepage water, even under severe seismic loading
Seismic loading
Seismic loading is one of the basic concepts of earthquake engineering which means application of an earthquake-generated agitation to a structure...
.
In September 2007, it was discovered that the Bow Ridge fault line ran underneath the facility, hundreds of feet east of where it was originally thought to be located, beneath a storage pad where spent radioactive fuel canisters would be cooled before being sealed in a maze of tunnels. The discovery required several structures to be moved several hundred feet further to the east, and drew criticism from Robert R. Loux, then head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, who argues that Yucca administrators should have known about the fault line's location years prior, and called the movement of the structures “just-in-time engineering.”
In June 2008, a major nuclear equipment supplier, Holtec International, criticized the Department of Energy's safety plan for handling containers of radioactive waste before they are buried at the proposed Yucca Mountain dump. The concern is that, in an earthquake, the unanchored casks of nuclear waste material awaiting burial at Yucca Mountain could be sent into a "chaotic melee of bouncing and rolling juggernauts".
Transportation of waste
The nuclear waste is planned to be shipped to the site by rail and/or truck in robust containers known as spent nuclear fuel shipping caskSpent nuclear fuel shipping cask
Spent nuclear fuel shipping casks are used to transport spent nuclear fuel used in nuclear power plants and research reactors to disposal sites such as the nuclear reprocessing center at COGEMA La Hague site...
s, approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. While the routes in Nevada will be public, in the other states the planned routes, dates and times of transport will be secret for security reasons. State or tribal representatives will be notified before shipments of spent nuclear fuel enter their jurisdictions.
Nevada routes
Within Nevada, the planned primary mode of transportation is via rail through the Caliente Corridor. This corridor starts in CalienteCaliente, Nevada
Caliente , formerly known as Culverwell and Calientes is a town in Lincoln County, Nevada, United States. Its elevation is 4,300 feet . The population was 1,123 at the 2000 census...
, Nevada, traveling along the western and northern borders of Nevada for approximately 200 miles (321.9 km). At this point, it turns south.
Other options that are being considered include a rail route along the Mina corridor. This rail route would originate at the Fort Churchill Siding rail line, near Wabuska
Wabuska, Nevada
Wabuska is an unincorporated community in Lyon County, Nevada, United States. The zip code is 89447.Wabuska was established in the early 1870's. In 1881, the town served as the principal Mason Valley supply center on the newly constructed Carson and Colorado Railroad...
. The proposed corridor would proceed southeast through Hawthorne
Hawthorne, Nevada
Hawthorne is a census-designated place in Mineral County, Nevada, United States. The population was 3,311 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Mineral County...
, Blair Junction
Nevada State Route 265
State Route 265 is a state highway in Esmeralda County, Nevada, USA. Referred to as Silver Peak Road, it connects the community of Silver Peak to U.S. Route 6 and U.S. Route 95 . The route formerly existed as State Route 47.-Route description:SR 265 starts at Silver Peak Road just southwest of...
, Lida Junction and Oasis Valley. At Oasis Valley, the rail line would turn north-northeast towards Yucca Mountain. Use of this rail corridor by the Department of Energy would require permission from the Walker River Paiute Tribe in order to cross their land. As the first 54 miles (86.9 km) of the proposed corridor is owned by the Department of Defense, additional permission from the DoD would have to be granted.
Impacts
Since the early 1960s, the U.S. has safely conducted more than 3,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuelSpent nuclear fuel
Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor...
without any harmful release of radioactive material. This safety record is comparable to the worldwide experience where more than 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel have been transported since 1970 — an amount approximately equal to the total amount of spent nuclear fuel that would be shipped to Yucca Mountain. However, cities are still concerned about the transport of radioactive waste on highways and railroads that may pass through heavily populated areas. Dr. Robert Halstead, who has been a transportation adviser to the state of Nevada since 1988, stated regarding transportation of the high level waste, "They would heavily affect cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, in the Chicago metropolitan area, in Omaha." "Coming out of the south, the heaviest impacts would be in Atlanta, in Nashville, St. Louis, Kansas City, moving across through Salt Lake City, through downtown Las Vegas
Downtown Las Vegas
Downtown Las Vegas is the central business district of Las Vegas, Nevada. It is the original gambling district of Las Vegas, prior to the Strip, and the area still incorporates downtown gaming.-Tourism:...
, up to Yucca Mountain. And the same cities would be affected by rail shipments as well." Spencer Abraham (DOE) on the other hand has stated, "I think there’s a general understanding that we move hazardous materials in this country, an understanding that the federal government knows how to do it safely."
Cultural impact
Archaeological surveys have found evidence that Native Americans used the immediate vicinity of Yucca Mountain on a temporary or seasonal basis (Stoffle et al. 1990, p. 29). Some Native Americans disagree with the conclusions of archaeological investigators that their ancestors were highly mobile groups of hunter-gatherers who occupied the Yucca Mountain area before Euroamericans began using the area for prospecting, surveying, and ranching. They believe that these conclusions overlook traditional accounts of farming that occurred before European contact.Yucca Mountain and surrounding lands were central in the lives of the Southern Paiute, Western Shoshone
Shoshone
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....
, and Owens Valley Paiute and Shoshone peoples, who shared them for religious ceremonies, resource uses, and social events.
Cancellation of project
In May 2009, Secretary Steven Chu stated:"Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table. What we're going to be doing is saying, let's step back. We realize that we know a lot more today than we did 25 or 30 years ago. The NRC is saying that the dry cask storage at current sites would be safe for many decades, so that gives us time to figure out what we should do for a long-term strategy. We will be assembling a blue-ribbon panel to look at the issue. We're looking at reactors that have a high-energy neutron spectrum that can actually allow you to burn down the long-lived actinideActinideThe actinide or actinoid series encompasses the 15 metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers from 89 to 103, actinium through lawrencium.The actinide series derives its name from the group 3 element actinium...
waste. These are fast-neutron reactors. There's others: a resurgence of hybrid solutions of fusion fission where the fusion would impart not only energy, but again creates high-energy neutrons that can burn down the long-lived actinides. ...
"Some of the waste is already vitrified. There is, in my mind, no economical reason why you would ever think of pulling it back into a potential fuel cycle. So one could well imagine—again, it depends on what the blue-ribbon panel says—one could well imagine that for a certain classification for a certain type of waste, you don't want to have access to it anymore, so that means you could use different sites than Yucca Mountain, such as salt domeSalt domeA salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when a thick bed of evaporite minerals found at depth intrudes vertically into surrounding rock strata, forming a diapir....
s. Once you put it in there, the salt oozes around it. These are geologically stable for a 50 to 100 million year time scale. The trouble with those type of places for repositories is you don't have access to it anymore. But say for certain types of waste you don't want to have access to it anymore—that's good. It's a very natural containment. ...whereas there would be other waste where you say it has some inherent value, let's keep it around for a hundred years, two hundred years, because there's a high likelihood we'll come back to it and want to recover that.
"So the real thing is, let's get some really wise heads together and figure out how you want to deal with the interim and long-term storage. Yucca was supposed to be everything to everybody, and I think, knowing what we know today, there's going to have to be several regional areas."
In July 2009, the House of Representatives voted 388 to 30 on amendments to HHR3183 to not defund the Yucca Mountain repository in the FY2010 budget.
See also
- Anti-nuclear movement in the United StatesAnti-nuclear movement in the United StatesThe anti-nuclear movement in the United States consists of more than 80 anti-nuclear groups which have acted to oppose nuclear power or nuclear weapons, or both, in the United States. These groups include the Abalone Alliance, Clamshell Alliance, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research,...
- Bullfrog County, NevadaBullfrog County, NevadaBullfrog County was a short-lived county in the U.S. state of Nevada, created by the Nevada Legislature in 1987. It consisted of an uninhabited area around Yucca Mountain, completely enclosed by southern Nye County, the county from which it was created. Its creation was ruled in violation of the...
- Gudmundur S. (Bo) BodvarssonGudmundur S. (Bo) BodvarssonGudmundur Svavar Bodvarsson was director of the Laboratory’s Earth Sciences Division since 2001 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Bodvarsson was a pioneer in 3-D mathematical modeling of unsaturated zone flow and transport...
- High-level radioactive waste managementHigh-level radioactive waste managementHigh-level radioactive waste management concerns management and disposal of highly radioactive materials created during production of nuclear power and nuclear warheads. The technical issues in accomplishing this are daunting, due to the extremely long periods radioactive wastes remain deadly to...
- List of nuclear waste treatment technologies
- Nuclear semioticsNuclear semioticsNuclear semiotics was created in 1981 when a team of engineers, anthropologists, nuclear physicists, behavior scientists and others was convened on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy and Bechtel Corp...
- Yucca Mountain JohnnyYucca Mountain JohnnyYucca Mountain Johnny is a cartoon miner created by the United States Department of Energy to present information to children on nuclear waste disposal and the Yucca Mountain Project. Serving as the virtual guide for the DOE's Youth Zone web site and appearing "live-action" in Nevada schools,...
, a controversial cartoonCartoonA cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
character used to promote the Yucca Mountain Project to children
Books
- Macfarlane, Allison M. and Ewing, Rodney C., editors, Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation's High-Level Nuclear Waste MIT Press, 2006. Set of articles by technical experts on numerous scientific and technical issues that are unresolved; presents arguments that Yucca Mountain has not been and may never be shown to be an appropriate repository for high-level radioactive waste. Does not pass judgment on suitability of the site.
- The book About A Mountain by John D'Agata focuses on the mountain as well as the city of Las Vegas.
External links
- Annotated bibliography for the Yucca Mountain repository from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
- Complete archive of Yucca Mountain news coverage from the Las Vegas Review-Journal
- Environmental Protection Agency – Yucca Mountain (documents)
- Google Maps Google Maps satellite image
- Nuclear Files.org – Yucca Mountain (documents)
- "Nuclear Waste" – Sierra ClubSierra ClubThe Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...
fact sheet in opposition to Yucca Mountain project - Real time earthquake map for the vicinity of Yucca Mountain-- Southern Nevada and California (U.S. Geological Survey)
- Russia plans to take world's spent nuclear fuel
- State of Nevada Nuclear Projects Position and activities of the Agency, with links to Federal, State, local government, and private organization websites providing a balanced picture of the controversy and facts surrounding the project.
- The Monumental Task of Warning Future Generations (Yucca Mountain warning signs) (archive link)
- "Time to Think the Unthinkable", Testimony before EPA by David Comarow, Esq.
- U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 107th Congress – 2nd Session July 9, 2002 cloture vote on S.J. Res. 34
- Yucca Mountain Project (Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, United States Department of EnergyUnited States Department of EnergyThe United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
) (archive link) - Yucca Mountain Could Face Greater Volcanic Threat (State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, Office of the Governor)
- Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management
- More on the Yucca Mountain Repository