Friday, February 13, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Test shows no dust hazard

State environmental inspectors find tailings from tunnel stable, in compliance

A pair of state environmental inspectors checked a massive tailings pile near the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste burial site Thursday to see if it posed a blowing dust hazard but found the project to be in compliance with the Clean Air Act.

Caren Campbell, an environmental scientist for the Nevada Environmental Protection Division's Bureau of Air Pollution Control said the tailings of fragmented rock are stable and site records were in order. She said she observed no dust blowing in a 25 mph wind.

"There was certainly nothing out there that indicated a violation or even a possible violation. Everything looked impeccably well kept," she said after returning from the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

But Campbell said neither she nor her colleague, Greg Rabb, an environmental scientist for the division's federal facilities bureau, collected samples from the pile to analyze for toxic materials.

"That is something that is not in my scope. We don't take samples of rock or materials," she noted.

Former workers from the five-mile, 25-foot-diameter tunnel that loops through the mountain have said they encountered a potent, cancer-causing fibrous mineral, erionite, during the excavation between 1994 and 1997. They believe they contracted silicosis and other chronic lung ailments from inhaling dust inside the tunnel and they fear that the tailings from the excavation which are piled outside still contain erionite and other materials covered by the Toxic Substances Control Act.

The state's inspection Thursday didn't include the tunnel because the division has no jurisdiction inside it.

Campbell said she has routinely inspected the site once a year about this time, taking notes and photographs for an annual report. She said she had intended to visit the Yucca Mountain site later but the inspection was moved up in the wake of the allegations raised by the former tunnel workers.

Department of Energy spokesmen in Las Vegas and Washington noted there is ongoing air monitoring at the site, including a monitoring tower by the muck pile. Prior to Thursday, the site was last inspected for air quality in April 2003.

DOE spokesman Joe Davis in Washington said the state Environmental Protection Division has conducted five tests since 1994 on air quality at Yucca Mountain with respect to silica "and we have never been out of compliance."

Allen Benson, a spokesman for DOE's Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas said on any given day there are about 150 workers on site, mostly maintenance workers but also scientists from national laboratories. The scientists continue to gather data from ongoing tests on how the mountain can sustain heat from 77,000 tons of decaying spent reactor fuel and highly radioactive defense wastes that will be entombed there.

He said said current workers in the program have been notified of upcoming opportunities for free silicosis screening, and DOE continues to track former workers.

Davis said workers and former workers who test for silicosis can get assistance from DOE in reconstructing their industrial health records and for seeking workers' compensation from the state.

Regulations to guard the health and safety of workers from exposure to erionite at Yucca Mountain appear to have fallen through the cracks of agencies typically charged with those duties.

Bob Loux, who directs Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, said federal environmental officials have informed him that their agency doesn't have jurisdiction over erionite fibers in the form that they're found at Yucca Mountain.

"They say while the material is listed in the TSCA (Toxic Substances Control Act) they only enforce it as it is used in pharmaceuticals and pesticides," Loux said about his conversation with an Environmental Protection Agency official in San Francisco.

What's more baffling, he said, is why years ago the Occupational Safety and Health Administration relinquished its authority to police activities at the Department of Energy site through a memorandum of understanding.

A copy of that 1992 memo says, in part, "Nothing in this agreement will relieve DOE of its responsibility for the safety and health of employees. Any safety and health program documentation developed with OSHA input remains the sole responsibility of DOE."

Richard Fairfax, national director of OSHA's enforcement programs, said the memo, like similar agreements OSHA has forged with other agencies, pertains to employees of contractors at government-owned facilities.

"We do have jurisdiction over Department of Energy federal employees but not contractors," he said.

As for the agreement with DOE, Fairfax said, "We've had some conversations about the need to update it but neither of us has started working on it yet."