Vol. 3, No. 16
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June 15, 2006
Nevada's Online State News Journal
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Opinion Column:
Yucca Mountain: Propaganda Versus The Truth
by Bob Loux
It’s no secret why Nevada opposes the Energy Department’s plan to build a deep underground nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain—we don’t think the project meets elementary safety standards. We also think that storage of spent fuel in dry casks at reactor sites, and perhaps later at centralized storage facilities, is far preferable for the country in terms of economics and safety.
By contrast, the reasons why DOE rejects this approach and is wedded to the Yucca Mountain project are murkier. Of course, we know the gargantuan project has taken on a life of its own, supported by interested contractors and propelled by interested bureaucrats. But what is the underlying reason the administration supports it so avidly? Some of the White House’s recent statements let the cat out of the bag, and the real reasons aren’t at all what most people think or what DOE usually tells the public. They ought to make people ask why the government is headed down this road.
You would think that, however wrong-headed they are about the adequacy of the site, the government’s motive for moving spent fuel to Yucca Mountain would be to protect public health and safety. But that’s not it at all, as is made clear in the White House fact sheet on its proposed international nuclear program—the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership—in which Yucca Mountain plays a central role. The real reason is that: "Making Yucca Mountain fully operational would inspire confidence among builders and entrepreneurs that the government fully supports the expansion of nuclear power." It's all about inspiring confidence so that we can build more nuclear plants. It’s not about collecting the waste to protect the public from irradiation—DOE knows the storage option is perfectly adequate from that point of view. It’s about public psychology. They think that public concern over waste is what is holding nuclear power back. The nuclear crowd wants to be able to claim the waste problem is “solved”—so we can make lots more of it. In other words, the $100 billion Yucca Mountain project is not designed to deal with a real physical need but rather to serve the needs of pro-nuclear propaganda.
It’s not surprising that a project with a corrupt rationale would also ignore basic safety guidelines and cut corners on quality and then try to muscle its way through the governmental approval process. That is what DOE has done with Yucca Mountain, as we have laid out in numerous documents. Fortunately, the federal courts—that last bastion of independence—have agreed with us and this has been crucial in keeping the project from rushing forward and threatening the safety of Nevada’s citizens. But what I am saying about real rationale for the project—to serve as a giant nuclear billboard to “inspire confidence” so we can build more nuclear plants—and the enormous expense, should make citizens in the rest of the country say, this is crazy, stop.
Yucca Mountain plays a central role in the administration’s GNEP program. It is slated to be the repository to serve a hugely expanded US nuclear program as well as for foreign reactors. The way they plan to make this work is by separating the spent fuel into its individual chemical components and leaving the most radioactive ones—strontium and cesium—on the surface for many hundreds of years. These are the same people who are saying it is not acceptable to leave spent fuel on the surface for a shorter time. In fact, the stuff is much safer locked in the ceramic spent fuel in dry casks because the process of chemically extracting and handling the most dangerous radioactive components increases the risks.
The issue of surface storage safety was addressed at a May 2006 meeting of the international parties to the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel and Waste Management. The conference president Andre-Claude Lacoste, who heads France’s nuclear safety authority, said the conference review found that interim storage facilities “are quite safe, so we have sufficient time to wait until the final solution of this (final disposal) issue.” What this means is that in their haste to pursue Yucca Mountain, despite its obvious deficiencies, DOE and the administration are fundamentally out of step with the international waste management community. It’s time to put an end to it.
(Mr. Loux is the Director of the Nevada State Nuclear Projects Agency)
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