Fri May 18, 2012
Debra Reid, AP Images
Progressive Leadership Alliance President Bob Fulkerson at a Nevada is not a Wasteland anti-nuclear dump rally in Reno (NV).
Nuclear Disaster
By Samantha Luce, Florida – May 2010
Travel 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas into Nye County (NV) where the land is open, less populated, and wilder. There, edging on the boarder of California’s Death Valley is Yucca Mountain, an embankment of volcanic tuff baking under a near constant sun in a desert that heats up to temperatures of up to 130° F. These roasting temperatures however, don’t even come close to the political heat that has scorched the federal government’s plans for Yucca Mountain since the 1980s.
Intended to be a geological repository that would permanently store 77,000 tons of the nation’s spent nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain, according to the Department of Energy (DOE) “was the most studied piece of real estate on the planet.” After designating its function in the 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, coined the “Screw Nevada” Bill, the federal government poured $3.8 billion and 15 years worth of research into the site. And, because Yucca Mountain is located close to the federally run Nevada Test Site where nuclear weapons were tested, few questioned the location’s presumably ideal suitability.
Yet, after 27 years and nine billion dollars, the Yucca Mountain Project has officially been deemed a failed project and the site is no longer considered viable to hold nuclear waste.
This announcement came as a triumph for activists like Abby Johnson, a community nuclear waste advisor from Nevada who, from the moment the announcement was made, began resisting DOE’s decision to make Yucca Mountain the country’s repository for spent nuclear waste. For over two decades, local community concerns expressed by activists like Johnson however, were pushed aside as a byproduct of the expected “not in my backyard” mentality.
“The [government] thought they could manipulate Nevadans’ acceptance [of Yucca Mountain] based on their previous acceptance of the nuclear industry in the state,” said Johnson. “A big part of Nevada’s economy was the activity at the Nevada Test Site, so they thought there was already a predisposition to [people] being quite accepting of things nuclear.” Yet to Johnson and others this didn’t make sense.
“We were being asked to take the commercial spent fuel from nuclear power plants without actually having [a nuclear power plant] ourselves,” she said.
People involved with the project didn’t think that would pose a problem because, Johnson said, “We had a very weak congressional delegation and a small population and so it made [Nevada] a fairly easy target for a project that nobody else wanted.”
Failing to engage the public, the DOE held meetings addressing the guidelines for the new repository out of state. This posed additional concerns for Johnson who, at her own expense, made the 10 hour drive to Salt Lake City (Utah) to learn how her state and its citizens were going to be affected.
The facts, as laid out by the DOE, seemed to justify their decision. Yet tests showed that granite, a geological component used in the functional nuclear disposal plants seen in Sweden and Finland, is a far more suitable material for storing nuclear waste than Yucca Mountain’s volcanic tuff. While granite is typically found in high concentrations along the East Coast, the DOE anticipated a well-coordinated public outcry from residents there – knowing they could successfully end any nuclear waste repository ambitions in that region of the country.
Other scientific studies at Yucca Mountain demonstrated it wasn’t an ideal location. Specifically, water moves faster through the volcanic tuff rock than what scientists believed. And with so little water in the area, any contamination would negatively affect the entire community’s water supply – poisoning humans and animals.
Other geological findings, like the proximity of the site to volcanoes and earthquake faults with a high potential for activity, as well as the likelihood that water could drip into the areas where waste was to be stored corroding the nuclear waste canisters were also troubling. But with so much time, research and money poured into Yucca Mountain, the DOE pushed forward headstrong and in the process, tried to minimize Nevadans’ fears and concerns.
“In the early days the Department of Energy had these little sample pellets that they passed out in public meetings – maybe about the diameter of your thumb. They were gray and round and they weren’t a real fuel rod, but they were supposed to show [Nevadans] what the diameter of a fuel rod looks like, to try to minimize the dangers… because if you could hold a pellet in your hand, then you kind of think it might be safe,” Johnson said.
Yet show-and-tell demonstrations like these didn’t allay everyone’s concern. Historical indicators seemed to tell a different DOE story.
“If you look at the Department of Energy’s track record, it has polluted 124 of 127 sites that it’s been involved with,” Johnson said.
And so as the DOE pressed forward, Johnson and others helped to raise concerns about safety issues and “sleeper issues,” like how waste would be transported to Yucca Mountain. Nevadans wanted to understand why high-level nuclear waste that began at the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, New York should have to travel across no fewer than eight states before it ever crossed the border into Nevada.
“I have maintained for a decade now that transportation is one of the weakest links in the scheme,” Johnson said. “To take the waste and drive it almost 3000 miles to Nevada doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Over the years, Johnson’s efforts were augmented by others, like Judy Treickle, the Executive Director of a public-interest group, the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force and Steve Frishman a geologist who has been a policy and technical consultant to the state of Nevada since 1987. Frishman actually was the head of a governmental agency in Texas that oversaw the state’s nuclear projects.
For the past 23 years, Treickle and Frishman have fought against the recommendations for nuclear waste to be stored at Yucca Mountain – a battle for which they both have been highly honored. Treickle was recognized by Nevada Senator Harry Reid for her work against Yucca Mountain, and both Treickle and Frishman received awards from the American Alliance for Nuclear Accountability – Trieckle for her leadership in working with community organizations to raise awareness about Yucca Mountain, and Frishman for exposing legal and technical inadequacies in the site that effectively led to the shut-down of the project.
These accomplishments however, were not enough to merit an invitation to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, which is meant to lead the country forward on managing nuclear waste. But the two activists went anyway, paying their own way cross-country for the opportunity for the few minutes they would be allocated o make public comments following the meeting.
This raised a red flag for Frishman who said that in Sweden and Finland waste repositories have been constructed with public support. “We have to sort of just be party crashers,” he said. Nonetheless, both Frishman and Trieckle felt committed to sharing their expertise and experience as the the management of nuclear waste is too important.
Held in Washington, DC in April, the first Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future was designed to address the development of a safe, sustainable solution to disposing of used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. And yet, according to Frishman, it was striking that there were no representatives from state, local communities, or public interest groups on the Commission. “Virtually none of them with the exception of one member of the Commission have any experience at all with the disposal dilemmas,” he said. In fact, for the nuclear-friendly commissioners, waste seemed to be an “impediment to promoting and enhancing the nuclear industry.”
Instead of tackling the issue of what to do with nuclear waste, the course of the discussion veered toward creating new nuclear facilities – essentially giving the green light to creating more waste without repository considerations.
Indeed Trieckle called the disposal issue the “elephant in the room” at the commission. With much to be learned from the experience of Yucca Mountain no one seemed particularly interested in the problematic nature of nuclear waste disposal and the factors that can lead to failure.
“When you have had a really miserable, expensive, long-term failure, the first thing I would think you would want to know is what had gone wrong,” said Trieckle. “When a plane crashes the National Transportation Bureau shows up to find out exactly what went wrong… and I think they could have autopsied the Yucca Mountain Project. But there didn’t seem to be much appetite for what they did wrong.”
Yet given a country-wide push for more energy production to meet demand, it remains to be seen if any state will want to take on nuclear waste. Frishman warned that like those sitting on the Blue Ribbon Commission, the public is also shortsighted – dazzled by technology rather than being concerned about the effects of people living near nuclear plants and most importantly, the waste that is produced there. “It’s a lot more fun to look at [new technologies], whereas looking after the byproducts and garbage end isn’t very glamorous or rewarding,” he said.
Nuclear power is likely to remain part of the government’s sustainable energy policy especially now in light of the massive oil spill in the Gulf that is killing wildlife and destroying industries as well as the recent mining tragic disasters. Johnson, Triechle and Frishman believe that responsible nuclear waste disposal must be a part of any discussion about nuclear energy. Moreover, this kind of discussion is imperative so as to avert possible tragedy and loss of life.
Triechle prefers to see the country focus on renewables like solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, wave energy and other natural and safer means of providing energy.
“[In Nevada] we look out the window and see hot sunshine almost every day of the year and think what a missed opportunity it is not to be running all of Nevada and parts of the Southwest and maybe other places too on solar energy,” she said. “We could be a huge energy exporter here in Nevada rather than a waste importer.”
Ultimately, though, America’s energy future will be based on political will. In three decades of examining the nuclear industry, one fact has become clear to Abby Johnson. “It’s always been politics, it’s never been science.”
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