May 2009

U.S. Water News Online

CARSON CITY, Nev. —While heartened by the Obama administration's opposition to a high-level nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a state panel fighting the project was told it can't let up on its efforts.

“We really can't relent until we know for certain we've accomplished what we set out to do,” Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams told the state Nuclear Projects Commission.

Adams said the proposed federal dump “is on its way to dying” but added the problem, “like a prisoner on death row, is now we've got endless appeals” aimed at keeping the federal Department of Energy project alive.

The Bush administration had applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a construction and operating license. But President Obama's 2010 budget calls for scrapping all spending on Yucca Mountain except for what is needed to answer questions from the NRC on the license application “while the administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal.”

Bruce Breslow, the state commission's new executive director, said he believes that given the Obama administration's stance on the dump “a political decision will lead to the licensing application being withdrawn before any hearing begins some time next year.”

But, Breslow added, the state must be “prepared to do battle in court” if need be to keep the project, which already has cost $13.5 billion, from moving forward.

Bob Halstead, a longtime transportation consultant to the state commission, said the DOE in January released a plan for transporting the waste across the country, but added the plan is badly flawed.

“Nowhere in the plan does DOE mention that spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are dangerous,” Halstead said in a report to the commission, adding that many train and truck shipments would come through the Las Vegas area.

For two decades, Yucca Mountain has been the sole focus of government plans for storing the nuclear waste. But Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu, said last month that Yucca Mountain is no longer viewed as an option for storing reactor waste.

Instead, Chu said the nearly 60,000 tons of used reactor fuel can remain at nuclear power plants around the country while a new, comprehensive plan for waste disposal is developed.

In 1982, Congress declared that the government has responsibility for reactor waste. Five years later, Congress passed what Nevada officials termed the “screw Nevada bill,” which singled out Yucca Mountain as the only site to be considered for the waste dump.