Posted on 02/07/2007 7:31:07 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON - The longest serving member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is stepping down, and, on his way out, saying something about Yucca Mountain that few in government dare to suggest out loud: "It may be time to stop digging."
The reason Commissioner Edward McGaffigan Jr. gives for his conclusion, however, is not that the mountain is a bad site or the science of storing radioactive fuel is unsound, two of the major arguments critics have mounted.
Rather, Yucca Mountain is unlikely to ever open as a storage site for nuclear waste largely because the politics were flawed at the start, he said. Nevada never wanted it.
The state has fought the project for two decades, finding allies in science and environmental quarters, and elsewhere. Together, those critics have created a machine dedicated to one purpose. The only option McGaffigan sees at this point - $9 billion later - is to start over.
"There is no chance Yucca can go forward under current statute," McGaffigan said. "I would go back to the beginning. When you go out of process it's a problem, it's a huge political problem. If a process is done fairly, I think you have a shot."
McGaffigan feels free to speak his mind because he is dying.
The cancer he knocked back six years ago returned last summer with new aggression. What started as a bout of melanoma now checkers his brain.
McGaffigan notified President Bush in January that he could not finish his term on the commission, where he has served since 1996.
In an interview with the Sun last week, as McGaffigan sat with his back to a window on suburban Rockville, Md., it was clear that cancer drugs have taken a toll. They have robbed him of the flop of preppy gray hair seen in pictures on the hallway walls and the ID card dangling from his neck.
His departure from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will end a distinguished career for the 58-year-old Harvard-trained physicist, one that included two years in Moscow as an American diplomat and a second master's degree, in public policy. The experiences have shaped a mind that answers questions nimbly, in a soft voice that moves nonstop, the words tumbling from history to science to public policy.
After returning from Moscow, he worked in President Ronald Reagan's science office in the 1980s. He was there when Congress passed the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act that set the course for creating a repository, officially kicking off the hunt for a site.
McGaffigan said he barely remembers passage of the 1987 legislation dubbed by the state as the "Screw Nevada Bill." In it, Congress designated Yucca Mountain the only site for the nuclear waste repository. After joining the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a decade later, McGaffigan began studying Yucca Mountain. He says he didn't like what he found.
He doubted that downwinders in Nevada could be protected for 1 million years from cancer-causing radiation, as required by the law. He thought it was an impossible standard.
His doubts grew as scientists and bureaucrats were found not documenting their work with the rigor required by the regulatory community, forcing do-overs, including the $25 million now being spent on water infiltration data that may have been falsified. "Rework is not a good sign of a healthy project," he said.
Through those early years, he saw Yucca directors come and go. He got the feeling their strategy at the Energy Department was "to promise dates - and good luck to our successors in making those dates work."
The original 1998 opening date had long since been abandoned, burdening the government with a projected $7 billion liability from utility company lawsuits. The department next missed its 2000 deadline for applying for a license.
By 2002 McGaffigan's thinking shifted further. President Bush gave final approval on years of study, moving Yucca Mountain forward as the nation's repository. The state, under the original law, was offered an extraordinary veto power, which then-Gov. Kenny Guinn exercised that year.
When Congress used its ability to override the veto, "I knew it had problems," McGaffigan said.
That year was a turning point for him, he said. Here was the chance for the Energy Department to face up to the opposition by admitting shortcomings and push for changes needed in land and water rights, funding, transportation and storage capacity.
But no one spoke up. Energy Department officials seemed to operate on the vague idea that "someday Nevada's going to sue for peace, and we'll make this all part of the package."
McGaffigan calls that naive.
"They weren't telling Congress - their friends, the people who wanted to help them, 'Here's what's needed to open the repository.' There was a time when they might have gotten it done."
McGaffigan started speaking out a bit during these years. He was quoted in the Sun in 2003 as saying the 2010 opening date was just about impossible. He wonders now whether he should have said more.
As a commissioner, he was bound to stay neutral or forgo participation in Yucca Mountain issues. But by 2004, he said he knew the law as written could never work - and he suspected the Energy Department officials realized as much 15 years earlier.
"They managed to lock themselves into solutions that didn't work. I grew more frustrated over time that we weren't honestly dealing with the issue."
Last year, the department brought many of the problems to Congress with its "Fix Yucca Bill" that drew little support on Capitol Hill. With Democrats, led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, now in charge, the bill is given virtually no chance of passing.
As McGaffigan prepared last fall for his latest rounds of chemotherapy, he decided he had to speak out. He told Reid as well as the boss he had before he took the commission job, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., of his plans.
McGaffigan said he believes that Congress should set up a bipartisan commission to study new sites and hand a report to the new president in 2009.
"This is not that hard a problem," he said. "We need to put this on a path where states are treated from the get-go with great respect and deference - and I don't believe that will result in 50 states saying no.
"If you chose a course that is hostile to the state ¦ if you try to jam something down a state's throat, it won't work."
After McGaffigan began speaking out, the Energy Department attacked him initially, then softened its criticism in deference to the commissioner's health.
Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell told reporters this week the department still has "some level of confidence" it can meet the new deadline to apply for a license by 2008. The opening, now scheduled for 2017, could well be put off until 2020, he said.
But Sell said there's "no question in my mind" the Nevada site can work. At the Nuclear Regulatory Commission office, McGaffigan's cadence quickens and his eyes light up as he strives to make a point: He supports nuclear power, always has. He sees it as critical to solving global warming and meeting the nation's rising energy needs.
It's just that he no longer supports Yucca Mountain. "I knew I had a very limited time left, and this was one of the first things that came into my mind," he said.
"I didn't want my legacy just to be that, 'He and his colleagues did a good job managing NRC for a decade.' I wanted this issue to be dealt with." Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
Minor issue not mentioned.
If you don't put it in Yucca, where will you put it?
Politically, nobody wants it. Does this mean that we'll never build one anywhere because nobody wants it?
... Pikes Peak?
$9 billion and 25 years. Once again, the fedgov gets it done.
New Orleans?
This stuff has to be stored somewhere. Obviously it makes sense to store it in a relatively unpopulated area, so it isn't going to be stored in southern CA. You can argue about which area is best, but it is pretty unlikely that the locals anywhere will welcome it.
Every discussion I have seen on this topic is about how X isn't a good place. Never about why Y is a good place.
Probably. We'll leave the stuff sitting around in drums, the worst possible "solution," because no solution is perfect.
UK: Science backs nuclear burial plan ~ now where to do it is the question...
I think we should reprocess it....
Your solution works well for the immediate future. However, the theory behind Yucca Mountain was that it would continue to work, keeping the radioactivity out of the environment, even if our technological society collapsed. It was intended to provide reasonably safe storage for many thousands of years, not just for the next few decades.
Obviously a fenced enclosure on the grounds of a nuclear power plant located on a river in PA doesn't meet those criteria.
--us clear heads so--unfortunately, we are drowned out in the clamor of idiots--
Put it along the US - Mexico border.
Possibly. But chemical plant contamination wouldn't still be causing problems 1,000 or 10,000 years later. Nuclear contamination would.
I'm not claiming that the original criteria set up for the Yucca Mountain Project are the right ones to implement.
I'm saying that our present system of refusing to implement any rational storage plan until a flawless plan can be developed and implement is utterly irrational. No such plan is possible.
Actually yes they would, Nuclear waste products at least have half lives, many of the toxic chemicals found at the various chem plants don't and left alone will pretty much be here until the sun goes red giant
But this is a sad day, hysteria beats common sense once again, it's been happening way to much in this country and world recently
Wow! A rational suggestion. Going back to a few ideas, I worked on the Shearon Harris plant in NC, it had onsite water storage for 150% of spent rods projected to be used over its life span.
Any spent fuel hot enough to be hazardous is by definition a richer source of "ore" than any ocurring in nature and could be reprocessed more cheaply than refining new ore. Only problem is once again, political. Our peanut farming, nuciar engineer Jimma Cahter made this perfectly reasonable solution illegal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Well, that certainly worked, at least as well as his Middle East peace plan.
Bury it hell! Keep this valuable resource above ground where we can watch it and moniter any leakage until we get the balls to spin old rods into new. I would use the gold analogy, but nuclear fuel is worth far more than its weight in paltry gold, if we are only wiiling to use it.
Since 1989 we've had CF/LENR as nuclear transmutation/remediation technology. No, it isn't pathological science, that venom comes from the CTNF/hot fusion boys who own the DOE. They see CF/LENR as a competitive threat to their federal funding stream. They have gobbled up YOUR tax dollars for 50 years now and never once have produced a single overunity WATT. It is truly said that CTNF, like the future socialist utopia of the former USSR, is 50 years in the future, and always WILL be 50 years in the future....
Before he was murdered in may 2004, Eugene Mallove edited Infinite Energy Magazine, WORLD'S FULL of info on CF/LENR. One device by Stan Gleason in cincinnati OH uses zirconium pipe w/end caps, center stainless steel disc on rod, thorium nitrate liquid : with 3 KWH of input, 90% of the Th is transmutated into copper and titanium isotopes in 3 hours.
Thus no need for yucca mountain, simple CF/LENR technology solves the nuc-rad-waste on site for pennies vs the BILLIONS spent on yucca mtn. Example : the nuclear glassification plant being built at hanford(hot nuc isotopes cast in glass blocks). $4B price tag in 2000, now up to $11.55B.
See how it works? Public FEAR of nuc waste is translated into BIG BUCKS by these con artists. CF/LENR is too quick, easy and cheap to do = no real MONEY in it. The ONLY reason the DOE is taking a reluctant 2nd look at CF is because it produces tritium in great abundance. By beta decay the H3 in hydrogen bombs has a half life of 12.5 years(into He3*). Thus the H3 has to be periodically replaced or your 150 megaton bomb doesn't go POP.
*He3 is worth about $40,000/kg on the commercial market, research and go figure.
Anyway, infinite_energy.com is the website, and I can tell you the "recipe" for doing your own CF experiment for under $100, in a private reply; to PROVE to your own satisfaction that it really works.
It seems to me that lots of Nevadans have some very valid reasons for not wanting to become "downwinders" again.
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"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'." – Ronald Reagan
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