Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
be based purely on science and safety rather than politics. Working under the 1982 act, DOE had
narrowed down the search for the first nuclear waste repository to three western states: Nevada,
Washington, and Texas. The amendment repealed provisions of the 1982 law calling for a second
repository in the eastern United States. No one from Nevada participated on the House-Senate
conference committee on reconciliation ( Congressional Quarterly 1987, 307-311). The amend-
ment explicitly named Yucca Mountain as the only site where DOE was to construct a permanent
repository for the nation's highly radioactive waste. Although years of study and procedural steps
remained, investment of an estimated $1-$2 billion to test the geological suitability of the site
was viewed as a virtual commitment to put the waste there. The amendment also authorized a
monitored retrievable storage facility, but not until the permanent repository was licensed ( Con-
gressional Quarterly 1987, 307-311).
Early in 2002 the secretary of energy recommended Yucca Mountain for the only repository
and President Bush approved the recommendation. Nevada exercised its state veto in April 2002,
but the veto was overridden by both houses of Congress by July (Vandenbosch and Vandenbosch
2007, 21, 3-4). In 2004 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a
challenge by Nevada, ruling that EPA's 10,000-year compliance period for isolation of radioactive
waste was not consistent with National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommendations and was
too short (Vandenbosch and Vandenbosch 2007, 21, 111, 190-191; Nuclear Energy Institute, Inc.
v. EPA , 373 F.3d 1251, D.C. Cir. 2004). The NAS report had recommended standards be set for the
time of peak risk, which might approach a period of one million years (NRC 1995). By limiting the
compliance time to 10,000 years, EPA did not respect a statutory requirement that it develop stan-
dards consistent with NAS recommendations (Vandenbosch and Vandenbosch 2007, 21, 111).
Subsequently it was revealed that volcanic tuff at Yucca Mountain is appreciably fractured
and that movement of water through an aquifer below the waste repository is primarily through
fractures (USDOE 2002). Future water transport from the surface to waste containers is likely to
be facilitated by fractures. Moreover, there is evidence that surface water has been transported
through the 700 vertical feet of overburden to the exploratory tunnel at Yucca Mountain in less
than fifty years (Vandenbosch and Vandenbosch 2007, 21, 12, 106-107; Fabryka-Martin et al.
1998, 264-268; Levy et al. 1997, 901-908; Norris et al. 1990, 455-460).
President Obama rejected use of the Yucca Mountain site in the 2009 federal budget, which
eliminated all funding except that needed to answer inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commis-
sion “while the Administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal” (Executive
Office of the President 2009, 65). On March 5, 2009, the secretary of energy told a Senate hearing
the Yucca Mountain site is no longer viewed as an option for storing reactor waste (Hebert 2009),
leaving the United States without a permanent high-level radioactive waste repository.
PREREQUISITES FOR EFFECTIVE RADIOACTIVE
WASTE MANAGEMENT
Many years ago, Hannes Alfvén, Nobel laureate in physics, described the as yet unresolved di-
lemma of permanent radioactive waste disposal:
The problem is how to keep radioactive waste in storage until it decays after hundreds of thou-
sands of years. The [geologic] deposit must be absolutely reliable as the quantities of poison
are tremendous. It is very difficult to satisfy these requirements for the simple reason that we
have had no practical experience with such a long term project. Moreover permanently guarded
storage requires a society with unprecedented stability. (Abbotts 1979, 14)
 
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