Nevada Senator Backs Off on Nuclear Dump : Lethal wastes: Richard Bryan says his bill may require storage of material beside the nation’s commercial nuclear power plants.

Suspecting that the nuclear power industry is losing faith in the federal government’s ability to construct a permanent dump for nuclear waste below the Nevada desert, Sen. Richard Bryan (D-Nev.) said Friday that he is drafting legislation that would steer national policy away from the concept of underground disposal of the lethal waste.

Bryan, in an interview after his appearance here before the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, said his legislation would probably require storage of the radioactive waste in steel or concrete casks beside the nation’s 114 commercial nuclear power plants.

The bill, which Bryan said he will introduce next spring, would be a dramatic departure from the U.S. Department of Energy’s current mandate to build a single subterranean disposal facility capable of safely holding waste from the reactors for 10,000 years.

Bryan said he is convinced that scientific doubts will ultimately kill the government’s proposal to build the nation’s first nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain and that some “bridge over the gap that will remain” is needed.

While acknowledging that his proposal could not be viewed as a “permanent solution” to the waste disposal problem, Bryan said the temporary storage approach would “buy us time to further study the logic of underground disposal” or to hunt for a better technological answer.

“The costs continue to mount and the doubts about this site continue to grow among independent scientific experts,” Bryan said. “When the utilities become persuaded this thing isn’t going to materialize . . . then they’ll be pressuring Congress for an alternative.”

The senator’s plans prompted neutral to negative responses from the nuclear industry.

“It is true the nuclear utilities are not 100% pleased with the DOE’s progress on the waste repository,” said Steven Kraft, director of nuclear waste storage and transportation for the Edison Electric Institute in Washington. “But to say we are ready to walk away from it is ludicrous.”

Kraft said utilities in several states already are storing spent fuel in steel or concrete casks beside their nuclear reactors, and many other plant operators plan to do so. The casks, which sit on concrete pads, can safely hold nuclear waste for up to 100 years, DOE officials estimate.

“It’s perfectly safe, but it is not a substitute for permanent disposal,” Kraft said.

Dry cask storage is not a new concept. Indeed, in the late 1970s the idea of using the large vaults to store waste at a central location was backed by the nuclear power industry, Kraft said.

“But Congress didn’t buy it,” Kraft said, “because it was viewed as irresponsible to let it pile up without a permanent disposal program.”

Given that history, Bryan’s bill is likely to encounter stiff opposition among lawmakers, who believed that they had solved the waste disposal dilemma in 1987 when they designated Yucca Mountain as the probable dump site.

In California, spokesmen for the state’s three nuclear power plants were noncommittal about Bryan’s plan. Each said they either had taken no position on the issue of long-term disposal of wastes or were counting on the federal government to find a solution.

Bryan does, however, have the support of Nevada state leaders.

“We’ve only had nuclear waste for about half a century, and here we are rushing to find a way to dispose of it for 10,000 years,” Gov. Bob Miller said Friday. “The sensible thing to do is store it on site while the experts find a better, safer solution.”

Yucca Mountain sits on a forbidding stretch of desert 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. While cautioning that their scientific work is far from complete, DOE scientists say the mountain’s remote location in an arid region makes it an attractive spot for the $30-billion repository.

Under their plan, 70,000 metric tons of waste would be buried 1,000 feet below ground level in a series of tunnels resembling a mine. The waste canisters and surrounding rock would theoretically imprison the waste for 10,000 years, at which point most of the radioactive elements will have decayed.

Nevada officials--claiming that they were “singled out” for the dubious distinction because their state lacks political clout in Washington--contend that Yucca Mountain is not a safe place for a nuclear waste tomb. As evidence, they cite the presence of earthquake faults below the mountain, the potential for volcanic activity in the area and predictions that moisture could seep through fractures in the bedrock, corrode the waste canisters and usher radioactivity into the water table.

Recently, federal researchers have echoed some of those arguments, and advanced new ones. In a June memorandum, a senior geologist with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission--the body charged with licensing the waste dump--raised concerns about potential volcanic releases at the site and said Yucca Mountain “should be dropped from consideration for a nuclear waste repository.”

Even a DOE scientist assigned to the project has publicly advocated abandoning the site, theorizing that any number of natural events could cause the water table to rise and flood the caverns containing the waste, possibly leading to the expulsion of radioactive water at the surface.

In response, embattled DOE officials say they will not build a dump at Yucca Mountain unless studies show it is scientifically suitable.

“To quote Mark Twain, the reports of Yucca Mountain’s death are greatly exaggerated,” Carl Gertz, DOE Yucca Mountain project director, told the commission Friday. But, he added, “if it’s not safe, we don’t want it.”

Though Congress has set an opening deadline of 2003 for the underground dump, the DOE last month announced new delays in its program. Officials now say the facility will open in 2010 at the earliest.