Nevada Lament: First the Bomb--Now the Waste?

When Richard Bryan was 13, he used to awaken before dawn and scan the northwestern sky, watching intently for a brilliant flash of light above the Nevada desert.

A new age had dawned, one that seemed to offer unlimited promise, and Bryan and his classmates were clearly caught up in the excitement of the moment. Indeed, their math teacher made kind of a game out of it.

By counting the seconds that elapsed between the nuclear flash and the thunderous sound wave that followed, the students were told they could calculate how close they were to ground zero.

“We were up in the morning. The windows in the house rattled,” Bryan, now 48 and governor of Nevada, recalled. “We were very excited to be part of the nuclear age.”

Ever since a one-kiloton bomb was dropped by the Air Force over Frenchman Flat on Jan. 27, 1951, Nevada has been on the cutting edge of the nation’s nuclear weapons research.

But the innocence of those early days is giving way to a new skepticism--and in some cases outright hostility--as the nation again looks to Nevada, this time as a possible burial ground for the unwanted legacy of the nuclear dawn: radioactive waste.

The U.S. Department of Energy has designated Yucca Mountain, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as one of three possible sites for the nation’s first geologic high-level nuclear waste repository. Its intended function: to protect humans and the environment from 70,000 metric tons of highly radioactive commercial and military waste for 10,000 years--longer than the recorded history of mankind. Delivery would begin in 1998.

The President will not choose a site until 1991, after five years of extensive geologic, hydrologic and other scientific studies, at a cost of $500 million. The other two potential sites are in Hanford, Wash., and Deaf Smith County, Tex.

The prospect that Nevada may be selected has sent a tremor through the state, and not since the debate over the basing of the MX missile has an issue stirred so much public interest.

Many people in this state of 944,000 people, from the governor to waitresses in this city’s posh casinos, are asking just how much of the nation’s nuclear burden Nevada should carry.

Residents Opposed

A poll conducted recently for the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington indicated that 56.5% of Clark County voters (Las Vegas area) and 63.5% of Washoe County (Reno area) voters “strongly disagreed” with proposals to open a high-level nuclear waste dump in the state.

Today, not a single major political figure in Nevada is willing to endorse a high-level nuclear waste dump. If they are not already against the plan, the most that any will say is to urge their constituents to keep an open mind and wait until the Yucca Mountain studies are completed.

In short, Nevada--which once welcomed and even boasted about its role in America’s nuclear development--is at a crossroads. The nation’s search for a solution to the ever-growing problem of nuclear waste and the state’s determination to assert its own interests have collided at a place called Yucca Mountain.

Rising 1,200 feet above the alluvial flats, the mountain presides over a vast and barren land. Here the rabbit brush and creosote cling closely to the parched surface. The landscape is stark and only the morning and evening shadows that creep into the folds of weathered hills give the land definition. There is an other-worldly stillness here, broken by a chill wind and the sound of lizards’ feet over broken stone.

Volcanic Ash

Since 1978, the U.S. Department of Energy has considered the 10 million-year-old host rock of Yucca Mountain, a solidified volcanic ash known as tuff, to be a potential candidate as a nuclear waste repository.

It is thought that tuff may be an ideal medium for burying nuclear waste. It is highly absorbent and contains zeolites--a group of minerals that the department said can remove radioactive material from water much like a water softener removes minerals from drinking water.

Yucca Mountain lies just outside the Nevada Test Site where nuclear weapons are detonated underground. And the Department of Energy has announced that Yucca Mountain will be subjected to intensive geologic, hydrologic and other scientific investigations during the next five years.

The region itself is arid. Rainfall averages just six inches annually. It is estimated that only 5% of the rain would eventually find its way to a repository that would be carved deep into the mountain at a depth of 1,200 feet. There is no water table above the repository site. Thus, there is preliminary assurance that the stainless steel canisters in which the radioactive waste would be stored would be essentially free from the corrosive moisture that could cause it to leak radiation.

The department’s scenario further speculates that the 500 feet of the zeolite-rich tuff separating the repository floor from an existing water table below would absorb any radioactivity. Moreover, it is estimated that it would take between 20,500 and 50,000 years for any contaminated water to reach the nearest discharge point about 30 miles away in the Amargosa Desert. By that time, the radioactive hazard presumably would be virtually nil.

If Nevada is at a crossroads in assessing its role in America’s nuclear future, a conjunction of events brought the issue to a head.

Finalist in Sweepstakes

The first was the Energy Department’s announcement earlier this year that Yucca Mountain was a finalist in the repository sweepstakes.

The second was the Union Pacific railroad’s announcement several months later that New Jersey planned to ship to Las Vegas by train 7,200 tons of soil contaminated with low levels of radioactivity. The soil, packed in steel drums, was to be unloaded in Las Vegas and then trucked to Beatty, Nev., the site of one of the nation’s three operating low-level nuclear waste dumps.

The soil contained radium that was dumped by an old factory operating in the 1920s. Later, homes were built over the contaminated soil. The radium had been used to coat the faces of clocks and watches to make them glow in the dark.

The train controversy had the effect of condensing the complex and often esoteric nuclear waste issue into a frightening symbol that was readily grasped--radioactive dirt was coming to downtown Las Vegas.

“That’s something you can put your hand on. That’s big! All of a sudden, people were paying attention,” said Brian Greenspun, president of the Las Vegas Sun, which for years has campaigned against the low-level dump at Beatty.

The train debate, said William E. Isaeff, chief deputy attorney general, “focused attention on every aspect of the nuclear waste disposal problem.”

It didn’t seem to matter that the train issue blurred the important distinction between low-level and high-level waste. High-level wastes, including spent atomic reactor fuel rods and residues from weapons manufacturing, is extremely radioactive and must be heavily shielded. It can last for thousands of years. Low-level wastes require little shielding and include rags, papers, filters and protective clothing used in commercial and medical processes.

Moved by Truck

Nor did it matter that low-level wastes had been moving by truck through Las Vegas since the Beatty dump site opened in 1962. In the minds of many residents, nuclear waste was nuclear waste.

The Sun, with a daily circulation of 60,000, has been printing coupons that readers were urged to mail to the chairman of the Clark County Commission, the county’s legislative body. “I vehemently protest making Clark County a nuke waste dumping ground for New Jersey or any other state,” the coupon said.

Depicted on the coupon was a huge mushroom cloud rising over the Las Vegas skyline. One caption read, “Heck no, we won’t glow!” While the low-level dirt could have been held at the downtown tracks until it was shipped to Beatty, there has never been a plan to open a nuclear waste dump in Clark County.

Thalia M. Dondero, chairman of the Clark County Commission, so far has received 25,000 coupons. “If it’s any indication of what I’ve been getting through the mail, I would say the people that live here have some grave concerns. I guess you have to pay attention to that,” she said.

Greenspun’s father, editor and co-publisher Hank Greenspun, has vowed to hold every politician accountable. Greenspun, 76, one of a diminishing breed of old-time practitioners of personal journalism, said in an interview: “We’ll be against any candidate, regardless of party, who doesn’t firmly do everything in his power, not just rhetoric . . . to stop Nevada from becoming a dumping ground for the rest of the nation--even if it means lying down and tying himself to the goddamn track! I’ll speak from any rostrum! I’ll run front-page editorials and columns! We’ll hit them with everything we have to defeat them! We’ll contribute to anyone who will oppose it.”

Competing Newsman

Tom Keevil, executive editor of the competing Las Vegas Review-Journal, observed: “The level of hysteria of the thing has transcended the level of importance almost completely. It’s a fundamental Greenspun tactic. He just loves to stir things up. We tried to maintain a sane attitude.”

Still, Keevil is among those who now say that the issue has become highly political. “It is bound to be brought up in the coming election,” Keevil said.

Few believe that any single factor has caused Nevada to reassess its role in the nation’s nuclear development. Some suggest parochial interests. Rep. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he was primarily concerned about hurting the state’s tourist industry. Others suggest that politicians who oppose a repository are simply playing to frightened voters.

“This is an issue the Democrats feel they can work with,” said Robert C. Dickinson of the pro-repository Nuclear Waste Study Committee, which has ties to the nuclear industry.

But many believe that Nevada has been treated unfairly and that it has carried more than its fair share of the nation’s nuclear burden.

Said Bryan, “One can make a damn persuasive case that Nevada has not been fairly treated.”

Former Gov. Mike O’Callaghan said he was especially irritated by the prospect that East Coast utilities, which sell nuclear power at a profit to customers, may send their waste to Nevada.

“I resent the hell out of that!” he said.

Bryan, in a separate interview, added: “There is strong resentment--bipartisan, rural and urban groups which oftentimes do not have a coextensive community of interest--that Nevada is being viewed particularly at the federal level and particularly in the East as this great vast wasteland.

‘Covetous Scenario’

“So the covetous scenario unfolds. ‘Look at all of that space! Look at that desert! And if we’ve got a toxic program, if we’ve got a nuclear program, if we’ve got something that politically nobody else is prepared to swallow, send it to Nevada,’ ” Bryan protested.

While not denying the local interests and politics, many here believe that more fundamental issues are involved in Nevada’s reassessment.

“I just think the whole environmental climate has changed, and people are much more aware and much more frightened by what’s happening with waste of all kinds, and nuclear power. I don’t think it’s going to go away,” Republican Rep. Barbara Vucanovich observed.

Perhaps an equally important factor in Nevada’s growing opposition to becoming a high-level nuclear waste site is the federal government’s own credibility. Several Nevada officials said they simply don’t believe the Department of Energy’s assurances that a nuclear waste repository can be made safe.

Such doubts are born out of experience and the manner in which the federal government is thought to have mishandled the toxics issue in general.

Dondero, chairman of the Clark County Commission, recalled: “I was around here when they tested. I’ve watched those clouds. . . . The government kept saying they’re not going to hurt you. Take your kids out on a family picnic and watch the mushroom cloud.” Only later, she said, did the cancer risks from radiation exposure become apparent.

The department readily admits that it and its forerunners such as the old Atomic Energy Commission may have been guilty in the past of not paying enough attention to public concerns.

Now federal officials insist that they are doing more than ever to accommodate local concerns while at the same time undertaking the most rigorous scientific investigations before making a final decision on a repository site.

Scale Model

For example, not far from Yucca Mountain, in a granite formation 1,400 feet below the surface, the Energy Department constructed a small-scale model of a nuclear waste repository in an existing tunnel known as the Climax mine. Climax mine has become a centerpiece of the department’s ongoing public relations campaign.

There, guests on tours walk within inches of vaults that between 1980 and 1983 housed highly radioactive spent fuel rods. Those on the tour are told that there are no radiation leaks.

But skeptics fear that many things can happen in 10,000 years that might not happen in three. What effect would the intense heat have on surrounding tuff formations over the long term? There are faults in the area and some of the tuff is fractured. Could water move more rapidly through the area than thought possible? What about the possibility that the climate will change and rainfall will increase? Could there be earth movement caused by volcanic or tectonic activity?

Energy Department officials stress that they are keeping an open mind. Said Thomas R. Clark, manager of the department’s Nevada Operations Office, “If we were sure Yucca Mountain is the right place we wouldn’t be talking about spending half a billion dollars in five years finding out if it’s the right place.”

Still, local and state officials complain that more needs to be done by the department to address their concerns. The state has filed suit in federal court to compel the department to release more than $1 million to underwrite separate state studies at Yucca Mountain.

Clark has reconciled himself to the fact that while all the geologists, hydrologists and other experts in the world may be unanimous in recommending Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository, it will still be necessary to confer with mayors and state legislators, and show up at the local Chamber of Commerce or service club luncheon to rub a few elbows.

Times Have Changed

“We do things a lot differently today than we did, and that’s part of the speech,” Clark said. “Favorable public opinion would certainly make the job a lot easier,” he said.

Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the governor can veto the federal government’s selection of his state. But that veto is subject to being overridden by both houses of Congress.

In the end, the Energy Department’s mandate is clear. The nation’s 93 licensed power plants have already produced more than 10,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, and that figure is expected to climb to 50,000 by the turn of the century. Military wastes will further swell the figure.

In finding a place to bury that waste, the department’s mission plan declares: “The national interest must take precedence over parochial concerns.”

How much weight will the Energy Department give public opinion in Nevada as opposed to geological, hydrological and other issues?

Said Clark: “As far as making the decision, I think relatively little. As far as dealing with the consequences after the decision, which would likely involve the so-called veto by the governor, that becomes a slightly different matter.

“Then you’ve got the political process that has to follow,” Clark said.

For many in this state, the political process has already begun.