Yucca rejection would prompt repeat, board told

With the Obama adminstration's stance that Yucca Mountain is not an option for disposing the nation's highly radioactive waste, Congress will revisit the process for choosing another repository site, one that probably will draw opposition similar to Nevada's wherever it is.

That was the upshot Thursday of a presentation to an independent review board by Mark Holt, a specialist in energy policy for the Congressional Research Service.

During his talk to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, Holt stressed that his agency, a branch of the Library of Congress, doesn't make policy recommendations.

But given the direction from Energy Secretary Steven Chu to find alternatives to entombing 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and defense waste in Yucca Mountain, Holt predicts Congress will have to change the nuclear waste law, especially if the Energy Department permanently withdraws its license application from review by nuclear safety regulators.

If the Yucca Mountain Project were halted without a change in law, the federal government probably would face more lawsuits from nuclear utilities that could trigger repayment of funds for the project from the ratepayers' account.

Since 1983, the fund has raised $29.7 billion in fees and investment interest, of which $7.1 billion has been spent.

In all, counting waste fund money and funding from government agencies, more than $10 billion has been spent on the Yucca Mountain Project over more than two decades.

Rescinding the license application could trigger repayment of the ratepayers' nuclear waste money -- "either funds that haven't been spent, or all funds including those that have been spent plus interest and penalties," Holt said.

With more years of disposal delays, the nuclear waste program's impetus is expected to shift toward long-term, above-ground storage and development of reprocessing to reduce the amount of waste and the duration that it is dangerous.

Chu is enlisting a panel to explore alternatives, including long-term storage.

"At what point does it become an unacceptable risk?" Holt asked.

Industry experts later said they think spent fuel assemblies could be stored in dry storage casks at reactor sites for up to 120 years.

Regardless, the Department of Energy is compelled by law to pursue a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct and operate a repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

A Nevada consultant, Victor Gilinsky, who served as a Nuclear Regulatory Commission member from 1975 to 1984, argued that plans by DOE to install expensive, titanium drip shields to prevent water from corroding waste containers inside the mountain is a flawed idea.

What's more, DOE does not intend to install drip shields until after the repository has operated for a century.

He views the drip shields as the project's "Achilles' heel" and "show-stopper."

"Their own calculations show they couldn't meet the (radiation safety) standard without the drip shields," Gilinsky said during a break in the meeting.

"Where in the world do we rely on the government to fulfill a promise in 100 years? It seems to me to be an unreasonable basis for handing out a license," he said.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.