A Timeless Marvel--or Madness?

Squinting against the enveloping gloom, engineer Jim Niggemyer boards the dusty yellow mining train for its long, slow descent into the depths of America’s nuclear solution--through the twisting tunnel that may one day lead to a nuclear-age pharaoh’s tomb.

Far out in the bleak desert 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, government researchers are busy drilling, heating and analyzing the depths of this ancient mountain for its likely future as the nation’s first high-level nuclear graveyard.

They toil for a long-term goal: to transform Yucca Mountain by 2010 into the permanent home to 77,000 tons of highly lethal waste--spent uranium and plutonium byproducts from nuclear power plants, nuclear submarines and government test projects dating back to the testing of the first atomic bomb.

Housed in corrosion-resistant alloy canisters the size of compact cars, the fearsome cargo--so radioactive that momentary exposure would mean death within days, if not hours--would fill the bottom of the Rose Bowl to a height of 12 feet.

The nation’s spent nuclear fuel is now stored at military bases and in cooling pools and dry storage at more than 100 reactors in 34 states--including California, which has four active and three closed reactors. These sites require constant monitoring and repair.

Niggemyer and his colleagues know that the government is banking on the Yucca Mountain Project to hold the fuel for a virtual eternity. With its remote location and arid climate, officials estimate that the desert repository can isolate the waste for at least 10,000 years--at the end of which, they predict, much of the radioactivity will have diminished.

Still, researchers are trying to gauge the mountain’s suitability for a seemingly unfathomable 100,000--and even 1 million--years into the future.

For Niggemyer, the project is a permanent answer to a nagging nuclear waste problem that has perplexed the nation for generations. Since the 1950s, researchers have recommended pie-in-the-sky disposal solutions ranging from launching the waste into the sun to burying it beneath the ocean floor or the Earth’s polar ice caps.

Niggemyer is among scores of researchers who have devoted years and even decades of their lives to the project. They hope they are working on mankind’s most enduring engineering achievement, one that for a time at least will defy nature’s fierce destructive powers.

“When it’s finished, this repository will be unlike anything that’s ever been accomplished in human history,” Niggemyer shouted over the train engine’s drone. “We erect buildings to last maybe a couple hundred years. And while the Great Sphinx and the pyramids have been around for 13,000 years, they’re no longer functional.

“This site will still be doing its job 100,000 years from now.”

Critics Say Project Poses Health Threat

Critics are less sure of that legacy. They say the $35-billion project--to be funded mostly by fees paid by nuclear energy customers--is a laughable combination of high-level waste and low-level logic that will pose a serious health threat to future generations.

Haunted by earlier detonations among these forlorn-looking mountains at the Nevada Test Site, locals say it’s easy for the government to think it can dump more lethal waste in an area already tainted by nuclear bomb tests.

Angry Nevadans, some of whom have become quick studies in the rarefied realm of nuclear physics and soil geology, say the mountain is too porous to hold nuclear waste and that over the eons surface water will penetrate the protective casings and enter the water table, carrying radioactive particles to California’s Death Valley and beyond.

They say the government’s chosen site is prone to earthquakes. Pointing to a magnitude 5.6 quake 12 miles away at Little Skull Mountain in 1992, locals say the Yucca site sits amid a seismic minefield. One good temblor, they say, could crack open the waste containers like peanut shells.

Worse, critics are concerned about the danger of transporting spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain from reactors nationwide, past 51 million people in 43 states, including California. The chance of an accident or terrorist attack moved U.S. Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.) to dub the transport scenario “Mobile Chernobyl.”

But project researchers say the present generation has an ethical obligation to deal with the nuclear waste in its lifetime. “We’re the ones who made it, so we’re responsible for its disposal,” said Michael Voegele, a senior project engineer. “We can’t just pass this problem on to our children.”

And they argue that any nuclear disposal plan would be unpopular. “On most issues you deal with the NIMBYs--the Not in My Back Yard types,” said project spokesman Allen Benson. “With nuclear waste, you face the NOPEs--the Not on Planet Earth crowd.”

In the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy settled on three states as the most likely sites to bury the nation’s nuclear waste: Texas, Washington and Nevada. But in 1987, Congress called the selection process too costly and zeroed in on Yucca Mountain.

Still, the location has yet to be approved by Congress. The 5.4-mile, U-shaped tunnel was bored into the side of the mountain at a cost of $80 million solely to allow access for tests. Only after winning congressional blessing would the Energy Department construct a honeycomb of 35 miles of additional tunnels to house the waste.

The agency will report to the president in 2001 on whether Yucca Mountain is suitable for “deep geologic disposal.” Congress is scheduled to vote on the project in 2005. At any point, it could be shelved.

But if all goes well for the scientists, the first waste would arrive in 2010, loaded by remote control locomotives. After 20 years, the mountain repository would be sealed, essentially forever.

Scientists describe Yucca Mountain’s unknown parameters with the kind of breathless excitement once reserved for early NASA projects. Many liken the gravity of their work to the seriousness of the moon race; the exhausting hours and team spirit are similar as well, they say.

For many, the project is the pinnacle of long academic careers.

“We’re pushing science to new realms, accomplishing things only possible if you really believe that you’re doing something historic,” said John Rosenthal, a senior project scientist. “And sometimes we think, ‘What does it take to get this across to the public?’ We’re not mad scientists. We’re doing something we think is moral and right.”

As Niggemyer’s mining train lumbers deeper into the main tunnel entrance, the light and heat of the Nevada desert quickly recede. Dusty air fills the lungs and grabs the throat. At a diameter of 25 feet, the tunnel is the size of most subway projects, carved by a huge, $14-million boring machine that scientists nicknamed the “Yucca Mucker.” Illuminated by the weak electric light, the tunnel walls are jagged and chalky, more like the interior of some carnival fun house than an underground laboratory.

The main tunnel makes a gradual descent to the 1.7-mile mark, where it cuts left for two miles and then left again and out for another 1.7 miles--making the shape of a giant, squared-off horseshoe. If the project goes ahead, the 10,500 waste containers will be stored in more than 100 16-foot-diameter cavities that will be drilled inside the horseshoe loop.

Wearing earplugs and safety goggles, engineers communicate in manic sign language as Niggemyer leads a tour group past experimental sites deep within the Yucca Mountain rock.

‘Most Studied Piece of Rock in . . . History’

Since the main tunnel was bored in 1992, Yucca Mountain has become what Niggemyer calls the “most studied piece of rock in human history,” probed around the clock by the scientists and engineers who labor inside the jagged mountain ridge that rises about 1,000 feet above a dusty southwestern Nevada plain known as Jackass Flats. Japanese, French and Russian scientists have also examined the research going on inside the mountain.

Scientists have conducted countless tests to determine how water, earthquakes and glacial invasion would alter the buried nuclear waste.

“We’re examining climates a million years past to see what might happen in the distant future, to determine the behavior of this mountain when the bulk of North America will be under ice,” said Abe Van Luik, a senior project scientist who added that glaciers should next dominate North America 10,000 years from now.

Van Luik embodies the loyalty the Yucca Mountain Project has inspired. The 54-year-old Dutch-born geochemist has been with four contractors at Yucca Mountain, changing firms as each contract ended to stay with the project. He now works for the Department of Energy.

“I’ve been disloyal to some employers but loyal to this project,” he said. “People who leave return begging for their old jobs. The vision of this venture takes over your life. You’re creating something with a role to play for the rest of the age of the Earth. And that’s simply mind-boggling.”

Researchers have studied the dung piles of ancient pack rats, looking for clues to past climates and vegetation that can be used for a glimpse into the future. They’ve monitored heaters set at 350 degrees to simulate how the waste will literally cook the mountain, changing its rock layers in ways scientists still seek to understand.

On Friday, project officials expect to release a draft study outlining how burying nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain will affect the environment.

After assuming for years that most surface water would evaporate in the desert, project scientists acknowledge that water will, in the end, have its way. Tens of thousands of years from now, surface water will invade the canisters and--after being exposed to the decaying waste--be carried away by the underground water table.

Under the plan, the fuel containers will each be protected from erosion by a drip-resistant cover shaped like the roof on a shed.

But the researchers believe that communities around the site may be able to live with some degree of radioactivity. To gauge the waste water’s effect on future generations, they’ve used a computer to invent a fictional farming community in nearby Amargosa Valley 10,000 years from now. They’re studying the possible radioactive exposure of residents and livestock that might drink water tainted by nuclear waste.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed limiting the annual radioactive exposure of local residents to 25 millirems from their water--the equivalent of two X-rays--and Yucca Mountain scientists are considering alternative waste package designs to meet or exceed the proposed standard.

“In the end, waste packages will fail,” senior project engineer Voegele said. “Water will leak in and radioactive particles will escape. We’re working hard to keep seepage to a minimum.”

Project opponents say any water seepage resulting in increased radiation exposure is unacceptable. “There shouldn’t be any exposure whatsoever,” said Judy Treichel, director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, a public advocacy group that opposes the project.

“If this is the disposal solution for radioactive material, that should mean it’s gone, that it’s not accessible anywhere in the biosphere. But that’s not the case. The government shouldn’t call this disposal. They should call it delayed release.”

Scientists have also tried to account for the person they call “the world’s unluckiest human,” who may one day stumble across the toxic dump on a misguided dig for water or buried gold.

Before building the exploratory tunnel, they determined that few mineral resources existed near Yucca Mountain to attract such excavators. Scientists conducted geological surveys, interviewed veteran miners and studied satellite photographs of the area.

They’re even considering the inscription they’ll place on the mountainside monument that will one day mark the site after the repository is sealed. “How will people communicate in 100,000 years?” asked Van Luik. “What language will they speak? Will it be mental telepathy? One thing we assume is that subsequent generations will be smarter than we are.”

One government report included notions that a project scientist termed “a cross between a ‘Star Trek’ episode and a Grimm’s fairy tale,” including ideas such as a monument featuring a pictograph of universal symbols, much like those used on space probes.

Other proposals include everything from a futuristic skull and crossbones to threatening black spikes--anything connoting extreme danger.

At a government lab in New Mexico, researchers are also testing the canisters for resistance to possible terrorist attacks while the containers are en route to Nevada--pushing them off cliffs, ramming them with Humvees, even firing missiles from rocket launchers at them.

And although they await word on the project’s future, scientists remain convinced that they’ve found their mountain, that the Yucca site is the best place to bury the fallout from three generations of nuclear power.

“I really do believe this country will solve this problem,” said Voegele, a 20-year project veteran. “And I believe that Yucca Mountain is the answer. Call me an optimist. I refer to myself as a bona fide believer.”

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Nuclear Waste Storage

Scientists are testing a proposed site for a nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The nuclear graveyard would house waste essentially forever.

STORAGE PROCESS

1. Spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste would be transported to Yucca Mountain by truck or rail in shielded shipping containers.

2. The nuclear fuel and waste would be removed from the containers and placed in corrosion-resistant canisters for disposal.

3. Using a remotely operated crane, waste packages would be placed on supports in tunnels.

4. Shed-like covers would protect against surface water penetrating the canisters.

5. The waste packages would be monitored

until repository is closed and sealed 20 years after the storage process begins.