 AP Photo |
Posted on 07/23/2002 12:59:13 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON (AP) - After two decades of study and fervent protests from Nevada, President Bush ( news - web sites) signed a bill Tuesday making Yucca Mountain the nation's central repository for nuclear waste.
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"The successful completion of the Yucca Mountain project will ensure our nation has a safe and secure underground facility that will store nuclear waste in a manner that protects our environment and our citizens," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer ( news - web sites) said in a statement.
The project had been studied for more than 20 years, and Bush signed the measure with no fanfare. Reporters were not allowed to witness the bill-signing.
The House and Senate voted earlier this year to entomb thousands of tons of radioactive waste inside Yucca Mountain — in the desert some 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Nevada's senators, who tried for months to rally their colleagues against the Yucca waste dump, argued that the issue was much broader than Nevada. They hoped concerns over thousands of waste shipments crossing 43 states would sway some lawmakers, but they were defeated.
On Tuesday, Bob Loux, the chief Nevada state official involved in the anti-Yucca Mountain effort, said: "We knew after the Senate vote that this was going to happen. This was a mere formality. For us, it's on to the legal arena."
Bush has long backed Yucca Mountain as a repository site, formally recommending it in February.
Nevada filed a formal protest — as was its right under a 1982 nuclear waste law — leaving it for Congress to make a final decision. The House approved it in May, the Senate this month.
The state has five lawsuits pending against the project, and the Energy Department must still get a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That process could take up to five years.
Even some Yucca supporters admit that plans to open the site by 2010 may be too optimistic.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ( news - web sites) said he was convinced that 77,000 tons of waste destined for Yucca could be stored there safely for the tens of thousands of years that it will remain highly radioactive.
The Bush administration and other Yucca site supporters said leaving the radioactive garbage at 131 power plants and defense sites in 39 states would pose an even greater risk than hauling it to Nevada. And they said waste has been transported for years without radiation releases.
But critics, including Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., complained that there were still "far too many questions" about the Yucca site and transportation safety issues
Environmentalists dubbed the planned waste shipments "mobile Chernobyl" — a reference to the nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union. They see a disaster in the making as the radioactive cargo moves past major cities, over bridges and through tunnels on its way to Nevada.
Abraham promised a transportation plan before the end of next year and said stringent safety requirements will provide an "effective first line of defense" against terrorist threats. "We've proven we can move it safely," he said after the Senate vote.
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On the Net:
Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov
Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
The enabling act which set up the whole mechanism for a Nevada veto which could be overturned by Congress mandated that it had to be brought to the floor at that time.
I did find this note in the CHRONOLOGY :
October 8, 1981; The Reagan Administration announces a nuclear energy policy that anticipates the establishment of a facility for the storage of high-level radioactive waste and lifts the ban on commercial reprocessing of nuclear fuel.
Checking thru the INEEL website for items of interest:
Waste Treatment and Disposition
The national lab sites have a serious cleanup problem hence represent a serious security issue.
Ready made material for a terrorists dirty bomb !
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The DOE weapons complex has a significant inventory of legacy wastes that was generated during the Cold War. Treatment and disposition of many of these waste streams--transuranic waste, mixed waste, and high-level waste--present a wide variety of technical and regulatory challenges.
The INEEL's Waste Treatment and Disposition Initiative is an aggressive, cooperative R&D and waste operations effort focused on technology development, demonstration, and deployment both at the INEEL and throughout the DOE Complex.
A primary driver for this Initiative is the Settlement Agreement between the State of Idaho and DOE. The Agreement mandates that all high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel at the INEEL must be treated and ready for shipment to a final disposition repository by December 31, 2035. The agreement also requires that all transuranic waste be shipped off the INEEL for disposal by 2018.
Although the Settlement Agreement provides specific milestones for managing INEEL spent nuclear fuel, spent fuel remains a DOE complexwide challenge. DOE has the responsibility to develop a system for safe, final disposition of all spent nuclear fuel under its purview. Accomplishing these goals will require a comprehensive decision-making process that effectively involves stakeholders.
Because of the diverse waste streams present at the INEEL, the laboratory has developed strong capabilities in managing a variety of waste types and continues to expand that capability through the ongoing integration of INEEL R&D into waste treatment and disposition operations.
Through these efforts, the INEEL has become a leader in developing management strategies for its mixed waste inventory as required under the Federal Facilities Compliance Act and the associated Site Treatment Plan. The unique expertise in analyzing Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulations, interpreting the requirements, and developing effective compliance plans continues to benefit the INEEL, as well as other DOE sites, in establishing waste management strategies. INEEL expertise has been evidenced through successful management of the DOE Transuranic and Mixed Waste Focus Area national program for the past 5 years.
To accomplish the milestones defined by the Settlement Agreement, the INEEL is showing leadership in understanding of the scientific underpinnings associated with buried waste remediation and contaminant fate and transport as defined in the Subsurface Science Initiative. Another example involves the INEEL High-Level Waste Program, which is completing technology development roadmaps that will establish the detailed strategy for developing, demonstrating, and deploying the characterization, material handling, pretreatment, immobilization, and packaging capabilities necessary to meet the applicable Settlement Agreement milestones. A crucial element of this strategy is the INTEC Technology Development Facility, which will provide the capability to perform pilot-scale technology development and demonstration using both surrogate and actual radioactive waste samples. This facility can be leveraged to provide test beds for evaluating multiple technologies with applications throughout the DOE complex. The facility can also be used to assist other, non-EM, DOE customers in addressing and resolving their waste treatment technology development and demonstration needs.
The INEEL was one of the first sites in the DOE complex to ship transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. To support this effort, the INEEL has developed unique capabilities in performing nondestructive assay of transuranic waste containers, and repackaging and processing of transuranic wastes. These efforts will enable compliance with the Settlement Agreement while increasing worker safety and reducing transuranic waste management costs. These technologies and capabilities have beneficial application to multiple sites in the DOE complex. In addition, many of the remote-handled characterization capabilities have application to managing spent nuclear fuel.
This will be accomplished through program integration and directed R&D.
Key areas of R&D may include:
| Contact: | Mike Connolly 208-526-0238 mjc@inel.gov |
It's worse than that. It is my concern that our current policy is causing us to overuse an aging reactor population, in effect, manufacturing a domestic variation of Chernobyl. A vibrant nuclear industry would replace those old reactors with newer and safer technologies. They would consume those stored wastes as fuel and make us all less liable to use military power to secure our access to foreign sources of energy.
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