Nevada Hails Delay of Nuclear Dump, Vows to Keep It Out

State officials in Nevada on Wednesday welcomed a newly announced delay in the federal government’s plans to build a nuclear waste dump beneath a mountain in their desert, saying the move validates objections they have repeatedly raised about scientific work at the site.

Gov. Bob Miller and other politicians, however, warned that the Department of Energy’s new approach to studying Yucca Mountain, unveiled Tuesday along with news of the delay, would not overcome the site’s fundamental unsuitability as a permanent home for highly radioactive waste.

“This new plan is tacky window dressing” and will not dilute Nevadans’ opposition to placement of the nation’s only high-level nuclear waste dump in their state, Sen. Richard Bryan (D-Nev.) said.

Leaders in the nuclear energy industry, meanwhile, lamented that the opening of a permanent home for their rapidly accumulating waste had been put off by at least seven years. But they expressed hope that changes in the DOE’s plan for evaluating the site’s environmental fitness would ultimately get the faltering Yucca Mountain project back on track.

“We have long recognized that the repository would be delayed,” said David Swanson, senior vice president of the Edison Electric Institute. “We just hope that the new schedule is realistic.”

In a speech to a nuclear industry group Tuesday, DOE Deputy Secretary W. Henson Moore announced that a permanent nuclear waste dump would not open by 2003, a deadline set by Congress. Instead, Moore estimated the earliest opening date at 2010.

Because of the delay, the DOE will ask Congress to authorize construction of a temporary storage facility to handle the radioactive spent fuel rods piling up at the nation’s 112 commercial nuclear power plants. The DOE said that facility could enable the department to fulfill its statutory commitment to begin accepting waste from the nuclear utilities by 1998.

Quick construction of the interim storage depot--favored by the power plants because they are running out of space to house the rods--would require new legislation, as current law bars such a facility until work on the permanent waste dump is well on its way. Debate over such legislation is likely to be fierce as lawmakers--fearful a temporary dump might become a permanent one--fight to keep the facility out of their states.

In announcing the delays, the DOE in part blamed legal obstacles erected by Nevada, where state legislators and the congressional delegation are virtually unanimous in their opposition to the proposed dump.

To conduct tests to evaluate the geology, hydrology and other aspects of the mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the DOE needs several environmental permits. State agencies have refused to issue those, citing action by the Legislature in April that formally “vetoed” the siting of any nuclear waste repository in Nevada. The state argues it was granted such veto power under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

On Tuesday, Moore announced the DOE would give Nevada 30 days to cooperate before filing a lawsuit. Gov. Miller said Nevada would not buckle under such threats and would gladly meet federal officials in court.

“Once again the DOE has used threats and politics to make decisions that should be based on science,” Miller said. “They want us to be good little boys and girls, but they’re not asking us to swallow castor oil. They’re asking us to swallow poison.”

On top of the political difficulties encountered in Nevada, DOE officials concede there have been troubles with research at the site, troubles previously noted not only by state scientists but by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the body charged with issuing a federal license for the dump.

In early 1988, for example, the NRC called the DOE’s quality assurance program inadequate and said virtually all of the scientific data collected during 10 years of studies at Yucca Mountain would be useless for licensing purposes. The DOE now acknowledges such criticisms and agrees a fresh start is needed.

“They have admitted that all of that data has to go out the window, that they must start from square one,” said Robert Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office. “They have validated what our technical people have been saying all along.”

The NRC--joined by some maverick DOE scientists--has also criticized the department’s plan to sink an expensive shaft beneath the desert floor, a move skeptics say is unwarranted before more studies are done at surface level. On Tuesday, the DOE agreed and postponed work on the shaft until 1992. The department wants to sink the shaft to conduct a detailed examination of volcanic ash flow at the site.

Yucca Mountain’s selection as the likely home for the nation’s first high-level radioactive waste dump dates to 1987, when Congress abruptly scrapped two other sites under consideration and directed the DOE to study only the one in Nevada.

State officials, who refer to that action as the “Screw Nevada Bill,” argue that the DOE has sought only scientific evidence that supports the selection of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste burial ground, ignoring possible disqualifying factors.

DOE officials, however, say they have an open mind and will abandon plans for a dump there should studies prove it would be unsafe.