Thursday, November 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Crash concerns discussed

Nuclear waste advisory panel urged to take another look at Nellis, test site risks

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Energy Department officials said Wednesday calculations of aircraft hazards need to be revised at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository based on increased military flights over Nellis Air Force Range and the Nevada Test Site.

The discussion during a session of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste in Las Vegas came less than a day after an A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jet crashed on the Nellis range, 20 miles north of Indian Springs. Capt. John Dyer ejected safely, and a board of Air Force officers is probing the cause of the crash.

Travelers reported seeing smoke from the downed plane as far away as Yucca Mountain, the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas where the government wants to entomb 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste stored at 131 other locations.

The meeting at Texas Station had been set long before the accident. Tuesday's crash was the third in as many years in or near a 30-mile radius from the mountain. In one crash, the aircraft, a Navy F/A-18C Hornet, was carrying two 500-pound bombs.

Energy Department plans call for storing more than 20,000 tons of spent fuel casks on pads outside the repository where the decaying waste will age before it is put below ground. Given current circumstances, the casks could be vulnerable to an aircraft crash, explosion and fire.

"One of the design parameters ... might have to include aircraft crash resistance," said Paul Harrington, system engineering leader for the Department of Energy's Office of Repository Development.

He said Air Force officials have advised planners on the Yucca Mountain project that they anticipate increasing the number of training flights over the 4,562-square-mile Nellis range and in the airspace of the adjacent 1,375-square-mile Nevada Test Site.

The test site, the nation's nuclear weapons proving ground, is operated by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a DOE agency. Yucca Mountain sits along the test site's southwestern edge.

"That will certainly have an effect on probabilities," Harrington told the panel.

Harrington said previous aircraft hazard risk calculations were based on historic data that didn't account for the possibility of increased military activity in the area. Those calculations showed the probability of an aircraft crash at the mountain to be less than 1 in 10,000, or too low to require analyzing the consequences of plane exploding and catching on fire there.

"We had no reason to believe beforehand that it would become a problem," he said.

Harrington said Air Force officials have not objected to having a 'no fly zone' over Yucca Mountain, similar to the restricted flight area over a facility on the test site where nuclear devices are assembled and taken apart.

He acknowledged Tuesday's Thunderbolt crash.

"Yes, they lost an A-10, but there is an awful lot of real estate out there that hasn't had an A-10 crash," he said.

Another project official, Russ Dyer, said analyzing the potential for aircraft accidents ranks among the most urgent tasks to complete as scientists attempt to have a license application for the repository ready for Nuclear Regulatory Commission review by December 2004.

"Aircraft crash (analysis) is relatively higher than the others" in priorities for licensing to be completed, Dyer said.

Nevada Nuclear Project Agency officials have been skeptical that the repository's surface facilities can be designed to prevent an aircraft crash turning the site into a disaster area ripe with radioactive contamination. They stress that military operations are not compatible with nuclear waste transportation and storage.