Senate Approves Yucca Mountain, but Nevada Continues to Fight

A major battle in the ongoing war over storing 70 000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was won by President Bush and the US Department of Energy on 9 July when the Senate approved the administration’s plan to build the waste repository. The Senate vote of 60–39, combined with overwhelming approval of the Yucca plan in the House in May, overrides an earlier veto by Nevada’s governor and moves the project into the review and licensing phase at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

DOE plans to deliver its licensing application to the NRC in December 2004, and the regulatory agency is then expected to take several years to review the request, an NRC spokesman said. The earliest that radioactive waste could actually be moved to the mountain is 2010.

Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.) both worked for months to derail the Yucca Mountain plan but were unable to overcome growing concerns about the safety of nuclear waste now being stored at 131 sites around the country—mostly at commercial nuclear power plants. Without the Yucca Mountain site, the buildup of waste at power plants would make it difficult for private utilities to renew operating licenses for existing nuclear power plants or push for a new generation of nuclear power facilities (see Physics Today, November 2001, page 23 ).

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham termed the concerns about the safety of transporting thousands of tons of waste to Nevada “scare tactics employed by those opposed to Yucca Mountain.” Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn contends that, despite more than 20 years of study, DOE has failed to show that waste can safely be stored in the mountain for 10 000 years, as required by federal regulations. Nevada, which generates no nuclear waste, is being used as a dumping ground by other states and the nuclear power industry, the governor claims.

Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa has filed seven lawsuits to try to stop the project, and state officials say more are planned. “Governor Guinn and I, and our congressional delegation, have vowed that we will not rest until this project is totally exposed for the dangerous albatross that it is,” Del Papa said.