Yucca Mountain to Be at Capacity Before Opening

Yucca Mountain to Be at Capacity Before Opening

Oct 22 - Las Vegas Review - Journal

By KEITH ROGERS

REVIEW-JOURNAL

More nuclear waste than the planned repository at Yucca Mountain can hold will pile up at reactor sites as the government continues to approve license extensions for power plants, an environmental research organization claimed in a study to be released today.

If a repository is built by 2010 in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, its 77,000-ton capacity will be filled by existing spent fuel awaiting shipment. That's not counting another 9,900 tons that will have accumulated in the meantime from license extensions, according to the study by the Environmental Working Group.

"A more realistic estimate based on the 20-year average license extensions being granted, means that over 18,000 more metric tons (19,800 tons) of nuclear waste will cross the country to Nevada for disposal than estimated," the group's report states, referring to estimates by the Department of Energy.

"To accommodate all this high-level nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain will have to be expanded, and getting it there, by whatever means, will take decades longer than even the government's longest predictions," according to the study.

The increased inventory of spent fuel stems from reactor license extensions that were "quickly and quietly approved" by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the group claims.

The group said nuclear power plant re-licensing doubled after Congress approved the Yucca Mountain repository in 2002. There are renewal applications pending for 18 more reactors.

That means there will be more waste to store at reactor sites or above-ground facilities and more risks involved with thousands of more waste shipments than DOE has calculated, said Richard Wiles, senior vice president of the nonprofit group.

"The risk compounds itself, and they're not being truthful with the public about what their real plans are for the waste," Wiles said.

Allen Benson, a spokesman for DOE's Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas, noted that between 2007 and 2010 the agency is required to report to Congress on the need for additional disposal capacity.

In September 2002, two months after Congress approved the repository, DOE officials acknowledged there will be more high- level waste than space for it in Yucca Mountain as liquid waste in tanks at nuclear weapons facilities is converted into glass logs. Agency spokesman Joe Davis said at the time that Congress would have to decide on expanding the repository, if it's built, or finding a site for a second one.

DOE figures show that once the conversion task is completed in 2035, only 8,275 glass logs out of 23,475 will fit in the repository. The cost of converting liquid waste into glass logs will be $9 billion more than the repository's $58 billion price tag.

Wiles said the solution to the capacity dilemma is to stop making more waste and explore on-site storage at reactors as compared to risks involved with hauling it to Yucca Mountain.

"We're not saying shut down all the reactors today because we're too dependent on them as an energy source," he said.

Reliance on nuclear power can be reduced through more efficient use of electrical power and through environmentally sound operation of coal and natural gas plants until alternative energy sources are developed, he said.

The DOE contends that for security reasons it's better to put all the waste at a single location rather than have it scattered across the country.

Critics, including Nevada's delegation, have said that logic is flawed because some amount of spent fuel always will be at reactor sites as they continue to operate.

For far more extensive news on the energy/power visit: http://www.energycentral.com .