Experts and the nuclear industry seek a long-term, safer dump than the over 100 pools that now hold nuclear waste.
Yucca Mountain was chosen because it is located in a desert setting far away from population centers and is bordered by government territory.
Republicans and some Democrats in Congress want the project reopened, claiming that shutting it down was a waste of billions of dollars already spent on the facility’s construction.
Why is Yucca Mountain such an attractive location for nuclear waste storage?
Yucca Mountain was chosen as the site for the nation’s nuclear waste dump in a process that began in 1982 and ended in 1987 when the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was revised by Congress (NWPA).
The National Nuclear Waste Program Act (NWPA) created a comprehensive policy for permanent geologic disposal of the country’s spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
The Act outlined a step-by-step process for the government to look for, investigate, select, and eventually build a nuclear waste site by 1998.
The NWPA authorized the Department of Energy (DOE) to pick three viable geologic disposal sites, study them thoroughly, and suggest the most suitable to the President.
The governor of the site’s state could veto the decision if the President agreed with the suggestion and officially designated the site, but the governor’s veto could be overturned by a simple majority in both chambers of Congress.
All of this was meant to happen before 1998, when the government committed to begin collecting trash from nuclear power plants around the country.
By December 1984, the DOE had narrowed the list of potential repositories to Texas, Washington State, and Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
However, the expected characterisation cost of $60 million per site has already risen to almost a billion dollars.
As a result, Congress opted to focus its research on just one site.
In 1987, Congress revised the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to designate Yucca Mountain as the exclusive site for a nuclear waste repository.
The question of whether Yucca Mountain is the optimum location for a nuclear waste dump in the United States is still being debated.
Yucca Mountain, according to the DOE, was chosen because it regularly ranked as the location with the best technical and scientific attributes for serving as a repository.
According to the Department, Yucca Mountain is an ideal location for waste storage since the repository would be:
- Isolated from the rest of the world (Las Vegas, the nearest metropolitan area, is 90 miles away)
The State of Nevada and other groups, on the other hand, feel politics played a significant part in the decision. The Speaker of the House of Representatives at the time of the 1987 NWPA amendments was Jim Wright of Texas, and the House majority leader was Tom Foley of Washington State. Nevada was the smallest and least politically powerful of the three states.
With the 1987 NWPA changes, the State feels Congress compromised fairness for expediency.
Gary Taubes, a science and technology writer, described it this way: “Congress put the DOE in an untenable position by selecting Yucca Mountain as the only option for a nuclear-waste site. In effect, it sent the agency out to prove that Yucca Mountain could work as a repository, rather than doing an objective assessment of whether it could or was the best feasible location.”
(By Dawn Stover) (More History & Commentary Yucca Mountain’s “scientification”)
There’s also a question over whether Yucca Mountain’s geologic features and proposed constructed barriers will provide enough isolation for permanent disposal. A lot of stakeholders feel Yucca Mountain has particular qualities that make long-term isolation of highly radioactive material problematic. The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects is concerned about a number of Yucca Mountain’s geology features, including:
- Numerous earthquake faults (at least 33 in and around the site) as well as volcanic cinder cones are present at the site.
- the presence of routes (many interconnected faults and cracks) that might quickly transport groundwater (and any escaping radioactive chemicals) through the site to the aquifer underneath it and hence to the accessible environment
What are the pros of Yucca Mountain?
Yucca Mountain has a role in this. Many people have pointed out its shortcomings, but considering the billions of dollars spent on the investigation, vulnerabilities were bound to be discovered. There hasn’t been a single one that hasn’t been a show-stopper.
However, the amount of water available is a fraction of what is available in most of the United States. There are earthquake-producing faults in the area, but the chances of these earthquakes compromising the facility’s security are slim. Volcanoes have erupted throughout geologic history, although none are currently active.
Some have suggested that moving the waste to Yucca Mountain will result in a “mobile Chernobyl.” This is a fabrication. The spent fuel rods, unlike liquid and gaseous dangerous chemicals that are frequently transported in railroad tank cars through our country’s towns and cities, are metallic solids that will be transported in crash-hardened railroad wagons.
Beyond the shortcomings, there are undeniable benefits. Yucca Mountain is 90 miles from the nearest major city. It is close to the current high-security Nevada Test Site and can be secured against terrorists. The mountain is steady, so we’ll be able to keep an eye on it and, if required, rescue it.
Yucca Mountain is, in fact, a compromise between some who urge for a centralized surface storage facility and others who favor irreversible geologic disposal at considerable depth. This is a one-of-a-kind plant, and there will very certainly be issues that only become apparent decades after it has been operational. The Yucca Mountain site’s design provides for continual monitoring and maintenance; if we store waste there, we must be cautious of both.
Many have urged that we should not use Yucca Mountain and instead wait for a technical solution that ensures the safe storage of waste indefinitely. This is wishful thinking at its finest. For the past 50 years, we’ve been seeking for a magic pill to fix the waste problem. There have been none thus far.
This country has arrived at Yucca Mountain after decades of research and politics. Science and engineering have given us some reassurance about the site’s safety. Additional research and time, on the other hand, will not ensure a solution. Yucca Mountain is an acceptable solution in an imperfect world.
What is the Yucca Mountain controversy?
The state’s concerns about Yucca Mountain stem from how it was selected in the first place. The country’s nuclear weapons program had left tons of radioactive waste, and spent fuel from nuclear power reactors was piling up when Reagan signed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. The statute required the Energy Department to investigate many locations across the country, but legislators refused to fund the costly and time-consuming technical assessments of all viable sites. As a result, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was revised in 1987 to designate Yucca Mountain as the sole permanent storage location.
What makes Nevada so special? Texas, Washington, and Nevada were the three finalists. The speaker of the House at the time represented Texas, while the majority leader represented Washington. The Screw Nevada Bill was the name given to the amendment. “Clearly, the mistake we did in 1987 was forcing it down Nevadans’ throats,” a government official told Nature later.
Nevadans are likewise concerned about their safety. In 2014, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal body in charge of approving nuclear waste storage sites, released a long-awaited report declaring Yucca Mountain safe. However, detractors fear that groundwater in Yucca Mountain may corrode the nuclear waste canisters, resulting in a radioactive spill.
A 10,000-year storage facility will undoubtedly be difficult to plan; if completed, it will have to last longer than any other piece of infrastructure in history. However, after Reid became Senate majority leader and Obama gained president, both of whom are opposed to the project, efforts stalled. Despite Reid’s boasting, they never had enough votes to destroy it completely since Yucca Mountain was inscribed into law. As a result, they came to a halt.
How is waste stored at Yucca Mountain?
Currently, the majority of the waste for which the Yucca Mountain site was built is held at commercial nuclear power stations across the country; a smaller amount of waste is stored at DOE facilities. Currently, spent nuclear fuel is stored in specially built, water-filled pools and above-ground dry storage facilities at nuclear power stations; however, some of these storage spaces are nearing capacity. These locations were intended for temporary storage but have been used as long-term storage while a repository is built. The wastes produced by the Department of Energy are mostly the result of processing spent nuclear fuel for military purposes.
This material may change when new information about the Yucca Mountain project becomes available; the EPA will continue to update the Frequent Questions about Radiation Protection as new information becomes available.
Please see the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) webpage, Operating Nuclear Power Reactors, for a list of all currently operational nuclear power reactors (by Location or Name).
Why is Yucca Mountain Safe?
Proponents argue that Yucca Mountain is safe since the TSPA computed dose does not exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation limit for discharges from the repository. Relying on the TSPA for a safety claim has two major drawbacks.
Is Yucca Mountain on a fault line?
Evenden, the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects’ technical division administrator, said all three earthquakes and Yucca Mountain are on the same Walker Lane fault line.
What are the cons of Yucca Mountain?
Yucca Mountain generates a lot of debate let’s face it, if it didn’t, a four-part blog series wouldn’t be necessary. Part of the dispute stems from concerns about the impact of spent fuel disposal on the environment and the health of people living and working in the vicinity as well as along traffic routes. So, to wrap up this series, I’d like to take a look at some of these worries to see which ones are valid and which are exaggerated. A website created by the State of Nevada in 1998 is a good place to find a lot of these concerns.
This is correct, but it has no bearing on the matter of Yucca Mountain’s safe disposal because no one will ever come into contact with the spent fuel. As I explained in my last piece, the spent fuel will be stored in heavy-duty casks that are meant to reduce radiation to less than 10 mR/hr at a distance of 2 meters from the cask. The fact that the fuel is highly radioactive doesn’t matter as long as it stays inside the casks no one can be hurt by radiation to which they are not exposed. In terms of the wasted fuel still inside the casks, keep in mind that the casks are tough; they’re built to withstand strikes from rapid locomotives, and they won’t even be exposed to that risk after they’re buried. Finally, while the fuel remains radioactive for millennia, the radiation levels decline rapidly over time; after a few decades (much shorter than the design lifetime for the waste site or the casks), radiation dose rates are a fraction of what they were.
True, but not to the extent that it appears. Yes, plutonium is present in spent fuel because it is formed when uranium-238 atoms capture neutrons during nuclear fission. Yes, plutonium is a highly poisonous heavy metal. However, plutonium is far from the most deadly element known to man; a toxicologist with whom I used to work could identify a dozen compounds that are far more dangerous (including shellfish toxins and fungal toxins). In fact, plutonium was given to humans to help researchers figure out how it behaves and moves within the body, and those who received it lived to tell the tale (and yes, many of these tests would be considered unethical today, and they have sparked a lot of debate but that doesn’t change the fact that those who were tested were unharmed).
Consider what must happen in order for the plutonium in the fuel to reach a person who could be injured by it. To reach the spent fuel containers, groundwater would have to seep down hundreds of feet of rock. Then it would have to corrode the metal and soak through the concrete layers to get through the casks. It would have to dissolve the fuel ingredients, including the highly intractable plutonium, once within the barrels, and then escape. Finally, it would have to transport the dissolved plutonium several hundred feet through further rock to the water table, where it would have to be transported however many miles to the nearest human with a well drilled into the aquifer. Possible? Yes. Is it plausible, especially in millennia-scale time? Not at all.
Casks can fail due to geologic phenomena such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, hastening the release of radiation into the environment.
Let’s start with the easy one. Volcanic eruptions have occurred in the American Southwest during the last several thousand years, and Yucca Mountain is formed of volcanic rocks. So it’s reasonable to expect more of these eruptions in the next few tens of thousands of years. However, there are two types of eruptions: those that produce lava and those that do not. The American Southwest has a history of ashfalls rather than lava eruptions; a lava eruption would just serve to encase the used fuel even deeper, while the ash is too chilly to melt the spent fuel casks. The casks are more likely to be damaged if they are submerged in lava, although the lava itself is unlikely to spread as far as the Las Vegas suburbs. To expose people to high amounts of radiation, the lava would have to submerge the casks long enough to melt them, then continue to flow, carrying the fission products with it and continue far enough to expose people. Lava flows have covered hundreds of miles in the past, but not in millions of years. While it’s possible that volcanic eruptions could leak radioactivity into the environment, the debris or lava is more likely to bury the waste even deeper than it is to discharge it into the environment.
Earthquakes are a little more problematic; there are concerns that an earthquake will open up new fractures, speeding up the flow of water from the surface to the casks and from the casks to the water table. Another risk is that an earthquake could burst the casks, allowing radiation to escape. Both of these scenarios are feasible; we know that earthquakes may fracture rock and affect groundwater flows, and Yucca Mountain is no exception. We know they can fracture rock, therefore we’re confident they can also fracture old fuel casks. As a result, it’s reasonable to believe that an earthquake could discharge radionuclides from spent fuel casks. But we must also consider the possibility that an earthquake will develop a fissure in the precise rock the exact portion of the rock in which the casks are housed. It’s conceivable, but the chances are stacked against you.
Plutonium might seep from the canisters and build up to a critical mass in the environment, causing an explosion.
This is a personal favorite of mine. Not only must we get the plutonium out of the casks (water leaking into the waste repository, penetrating into the casks, dissolving plutonium, contaminating the environment), but we must also get enough plutonium out of solution in the same place and under the same conditions to form a critical mass. It’s also vital to remember that a critical mass isn’t something that will explode; rather, it’s something that will maintain a fission chain reaction in the correct conditions. It’s difficult enough to get plutonium into the environment as it is, and it’s unlikely to happen. The risk of plutonium precipitating out of solution in a critical mass is increased. And putting something together that could go off is nearly impossible.
Putting all of the spent fuel which contains plutonium in one location attracts terrorists and poses a proliferation danger.
Placing all of the spent fuel in one spot undoubtedly increases the amount of plutonium in that one site. On the other hand, we must consider whether having only one place at risk is preferable to the 50+ that exist presently. We can make a good case that guarding and making impenetrable a single place is easier than trying to defend every reactor facility in the country.
In terms of non-proliferation, anyone trying to build a nuclear weapon would have to first get to the spent fuel casks, then either steal some very large and heavy casks or open them up at the waste site and remove the fuel both actions that would be hampered by high radiation levels in the coming decades. Did I mention that the wasted gasoline has to be moved off-site and out of the country? The alleged terrorists (or infiltrators from a potential nuclear power) would then have to remove the fuel, break it up, dissolve it in acid, and chemically treat it to extract the plutonium. The main truth is that neither a terrorist group nor most countries have the resources to pull this off. So…possible? Maybe, in the sense that winning the lotto with a single ticket is a possibility. No, it’s not plausible. This is another another one that fails to materialize.
I could go on and on about why spent nuclear fuel should not be disposed of at Yucca Mountain; there have been several reasons made in support of this position. Some of these arguments, such as the one about plutonium leaking out, building a critical mass, and blowing boom, are either intentionally disingenuous or worst-case wishful thinking; they will very likely not occur in the real world. Others are feasible, such as the potential of an earthquake rupturing the used fuel casks, but the odds are stacked against them. But here’s the bottom line: we’ll be able to come up with a long list of arguments for and against dumping spent nuclear material almost anyplace. We must say one of three things at some point:
- We’re content with the current scenario and will continue to do so indefinitely.
- We’re either going to take it and dispose of the waste in a location where our best science tells us it will be safe under any reasonable set of circumstances, or we’re going to suck it up and dispose of the waste in a location where our best science tells us it will be safe under any reasonable set of circumstances.
- We’re going to abandon nuclear power in favor of finding another way to meet 20% of our electrical needs.
The bottom line is that nuclear energy benefits the entire country – again, nuclear energy accounts for 20% of our electricity generation. There are plenty of areas where the waste from these reactors can be stored safely without endangering the environment or people. We may never find a single location that we can certify as “best,” and the nit-pickers among us will always be able to find arguments no matter how irrational, spurious, or ill-informed that appear to mitigate against any given site. However, the nation will eventually need to identify a location that, while not perfect, is good enough to suit our needs because it meets all realistic trash disposal standards in the actual world.
Whether the country continues to use nuclear energy or not, we will need to find a place to store the spent reactor fuel that has amassed and is now being kept across the country at some point. It makes sense for this region to be dry and sparsely populated, close to major transportation routes, and geologically and hydrogeologically ideal for isolating the hazardous waste while it is still harmful. These places do exist, and one of them is Yucca Mountain. The technical issues of long-term radioactive waste disposal, I believe, are modest the natural nuclear reactor at Oklo has demonstrated that even damp and broken rock can keep radioactive waste for millennia it is the political issues that have proven insurmountable thus far. But don’t be fooled: the ostensibly scientific arguments to Yucca Mountain are only pretexts for the underlying political objections. Our trash disposal solution is being held up by politics rather than science or engineering. And, until these political issues are resolved, we will continue to store our waste in a variety of susceptible sites across the United States.
The article Yucca Mountain: Questions and Concerns first appeared on ScienceWonk, FAS’s blog for expert and thought leaders.
How do you dispose of nuclear waste?
Low-level garbage disposal is simple and may be done practically anyplace in a safe manner. Used fuel is typically stored for at least five years under water and subsequently in dry storage. The best solution for eventual disposal of the most radioactive waste produced is deep geological disposal, according to most experts.