Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
For example, areas with abundant rainfall are likely to have high water
tables that might feed corrosive water into the repository, so Florida and
Louisiana were out of contention; California was eliminated because of
frequent earthquakes; Hawaii and Washington have active volcanoes
and so escaped serious consideration. Most states that might be suitable
as possible sites found grounds (some technical but usually political) to
have themselves ruled out of the running.
Ultimately Nevada, a state with relatively few people and no powerful
representatives in Washington in the 1980s, drew the short straw. The
location was to be at Yucca Mountain, 87 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Movement of high-level waste was set to begin in 1985. The state ener-
gized its legal apparatus immediately and has launched repeated lawsuits
against the government. Gambling casinos in Las Vegas mobilized against
the choice, fearing the repository would scare away the fl ow of customers
to casinos. In addition, Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing cities in
the country, a growth that might be seriously slowed by the prospect of
trains carrying dangerous materials passing through the city for decades
on the way to Yucca Mountain. As a result, the planned opening in 1985
was pushed back to 1989, then 1998, 2003, 2010, and most recently to
2017.
Objections to locating the storage facility at Yucca Mountain are
scientifi c as well as political. Although southern Nevada is dry and the
water table is located 1,000 feet below the 1,000-foot depth of the
repository, climates change over time, with or without global warming.
Fifteen thousand years ago, much of the western United States was rainy,
had high water tables, and contained many lakes (fi gure 8.4). The largest,
of which the Great Salt Lake is a remnant, was 1,000 feet deep and was
as large as Lake Michigan. Much of the Sahara Desert was fertile only
5,000 years ago. Climate regimes cannot be predicted thousands of years
into the future.
Another worrying factor is volcanic eruptions. Eight volcanoes have
erupted within 30 miles of Yucca Mountain in the past 1 million years.
And there are concerns about earthquakes as well. Although the areas
most likely to have earthquakes are well known, their exact locations
cannot be predicted. A magnitude 5.2 earthquake struck near Yucca
Mountain in 1992, and hundreds of smaller quakes have occurred within
a 50-mile radius of the site during the decades that such records have
been kept. And keep in mind that we are talking about a cavity in the
ground that needs to be stable for at least tens of thousands, if not
hundreds of thousands, of years.
