Decision on U.S. Nuclear Dump Will Fall to Bush

For more than two decades, U.S. scientists have poked and prodded a hulking hump of rock in western Nevada known as Yucca Mountain, eyeing the desolate spot as the final burial ground for America’s growing stockpile of nuclear waste.

But the long years of study, a flurry of court battles and repeated rounds of political wrangling in Washington over the barren ridge could be headed toward a final chapter with the election of George W. Bush.

The new president’s leanings on nuclear issues and his choice for energy secretary, a longtime backer of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, worry many Nevada residents who are weary of being the nation’s atomic wastebasket.

Sitting astride the Nevada Test Site, ground zero for hundreds of nuclear explosions since the dawn of the Atomic Age, Yucca Mountain has galvanized the state like few issues. Politicians from both parties almost universally oppose the plan.

As envisioned by backers, highly dangerous radioactive waste would be sheathed inside thick steel casks tucked in tunnels deep in the mountain. The enclosures are expected to survive 1,000 years at most. After that, the rock of the mountain would be counted on to encase the waste for the 10,000 years needed to reduce it to safe levels.

But foes say even this bone-dry mountain is too porous to shield the nuclear waste. Over the millenniums, they contend, surface water would trickle down to wash radioactive particles into the water table, causing untold problems.

What has Silver State residents worried recently are the links between Bush and the energy industry, as well as the unabashed support that Energy Secretary nominee Spencer Abraham showered on Yucca Mountain during his single term as a U.S. senator from Michigan.

“The future looks scary,” said Kalynda Tilges, nuclear issues coordinator for Citizen Alert, a Nevada environmental group. “We made some headway with the Democratic administration. But I don’t see anything but lip service from Bush.”

Abraham, who failed to win Senate reelection last November and now will face a panel of former colleagues at a confirmation hearing Thursday, consistently sided with Republican-led efforts to open up Yucca Mountain despite lingering questions about its suitability.

“We’re very concerned about what’s going to happen under a Bush administration,” said U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who has led the charge in Washington against Yucca Mountain.

“Abraham voted against us on everything we did. Our best hope at this stage is to keep the nuclear power industry out of this and let the site be determined on good science.”

Bush officials reject the notion of bias on the part of the president-elect and say the former Texas oilman will make a final decision on the nuclear repository grounded in science and policy, not politics or prejudice.

“I don’t think it’s a fair assumption that because the president-elect has a background in a particular industry, it means he’s going to be favorable one way or another,” said Angela Flood, a Bush spokeswoman. “He’s going to base his decisions on good policies.”

In a September letter to Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican who steadfastly opposes nuclear shipments to his state, Bush promised to reject any attempt by Congress to push a final repository site unless it has been deemed “scientifically safe.” He vowed to resist proposals to temporarily store nuclear waste at a spot near Yucca Mountain until environmental questions are resolved.

Abraham, meanwhile, will prove to be a team player savvy in the ways of Washington, Flood said. “It’s not as if we’ll have rogue Cabinet officials implementing policies of their own.”

Though the current timetable calls for Bush to make a final decision on Yucca Mountain this summer, congressional insiders predict that nagging delays may allow the new president to sidestep the contentious issue during his freshman year.

The most notable battle this year could find Congress wading into the esoterica of radiation standards for the site, analysts say. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established a standard about half as high as that proposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Environmentalists say the tighter restrictions could weaken the site’s chances for passing muster.

Meanwhile, operators of the nation’s nuclear power plants have been left to grumble about the growing stockpiles of nuclear waste. About 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel have piled up at the nation’s more than 100 nuclear reactors.

A federal law approved in the 1980s anticipated that Yucca Mountain would be up and running in time to accept spent nuclear fuel from power plants and waste from weapons labs by January 1998. To finance the scientific studies, utility companies were tapped for billions of dollars.

Faced with the delays and mounting stockpiles, 14 utilities filed suit against the federal government alleging breach of contract, estimating that the total liability could be as high as $50 billion.

“Whether or not the ultimate site is Yucca Mountain, the industry’s feeling is that the government has to fulfill its statutory requirement,” Singer said.

But under the most ambitious timetable, the Energy Department doesn’t expect to have Yucca Mountain ready to accept waste until 2010.

Meanwhile, a simmering debate continues over how big the storage problem is at the nation’s power plants.

Opponents of the Yucca Mountain project say the power plants have room for storage at each nuclear facility until a permanent solution is found. Utilities insist that they are running out of room, and that the mounting costs of adding storage space are being passed on to consumers.

Some utilities aren’t waiting for the long-running dispute over Yucca Mountain to be resolved. Southern California Edison is seeking permission to store radioactive waste at its San Onofre nuclear power plant for as long as 50 years.

Delays have dogged the project. The latest came last month, when federal energy officials were expected to issue a final recommendation on Yucca Mountain’s fate.

But the site recommendation report was put on hold while the Energy Department’s inspector general launched a probe into allegations of bias brought by Nevada officials against the federal agency’s staff and contractors.

“We operate in a fishbowl here,” said Allen Benson, the Energy Department’s Las Vegas-based director of institutional affairs for the project. “Everything sort of gets magnified.”

Benson said scientists have “found nothing at this point which would prove the mountain unsuitable.”

But others say questions remain.

Officials at the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a watchdog agency set up to monitor the Yucca Mountain project, raised concerns in a December letter to key federal lawmakers.

The Energy Department, the letter suggested, has yet to “demonstrate a firm technical basis” for design of the repository and suggested that “scientific uncertainty” will inevitably shadow so monumental an undertaking.

Such conclusions only embolden opponents of the storage plan.

“We’ve been sacrificed for the nation’s nuclear testing from the beginning of the nuclear age,” Citizen Alert’s Tilges said. “We’re not willing to be a sacrifice zone anymore.”