Radioactive Waste

April 26, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

“Strike Two” Against Canadian Radioactive Waste Dumpsite Proposal

By John LaForge, 18 April 2017

Nuclear power supporters like to say, “Nuclear waste disposal is a political, not a scientific problem.” Scientists refute this slogan every day.

A case in point is the Canadian Environment Minister’s second “do over” order issued to Ontario Power Generation regarding the company’s waste dump idea. The 15-page order, issued April 5, rejected the company’s sophomoric answers to a previous “not good enough” finding by Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna.

OPG wants to bury 7 million cubic feet of radioactive waste in a deep hole less than a mile from Lake Huron, on its own property on the Bruce Peninsula, northwest of Toronto. It’s there that OPG runs the world’s biggest rad’ waste production complex — the Bruce Nuclear Station — eight old power reactors in varying states of repair and disrepair.

The company proposes digging 2,231 feet down into part of its 2,300-acre compound on Lake Huron, and burying all sorts of radioactive material (everything except waste fuel rods), including a “significant amount” of carbon-14, a cancer agent with a deadly radioactive “life” of 57,300 years — i.e. ten 5,730-year radioactive half-lives. After two years of public hearings into the question of placing long-lasting poisons next to a major source of drinking water, a federal Joint Review Panel in 2015 recommended approval of the project to Minister McKenna.

McKenna was to make a decision by March 1, 2016, but instead demanded better work from OPG. On Feb. 18, 2016, the Minister ordered the company to produce details about alternate dump sites. OPG submitted shockingly shabby generalizations Dec. 28, 2016, and McKenna’s April 5 reply is an understated denunciation of OPG’s obfuscations and evasions. Beverly Fernandez, founder of Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump, told Clinton, Michigan’s The Voice, “OPG has been given a failing grade on its most recent report regarding burying its radioactive nuclear waste less than a mile from the Great Lakes. OPG has now been issued a strong set of new challenges to answer.”

For example, the company has the nerve to that, “All underground facilities (office, tunnel, emplacement room) will be constructed in accordance with the seismic requirements of the latest edition of the National Building Code at the time of the construction.” In fact, as the Minister’s rejection of OPG’s attempted snow-job pointed out, “There are no specific seismic requirements in the National Building Code for underground facilities…. Provide a revised version…”

A public servant doing her job

In requiring a study of alternate potential sites for deep disposal, Minister McKenna ordered OPG to make “specific reference to actual locations.” Instead, OPG tried to get away with citing two enormous geological regions that it said might be suitable. As Jennifer Wells and Matthew Cole reported in the Toronto Star , OPG’s “actual locations” covered an area of 726,052-square-kilometres — about 75% of the Province of Ontario. This blatant attempt at scamming the government didn’t fool McKenna, a public servant who is actually doing her job.

In one of OPG’s more garish displays of environmental racism, the company’s Dec. 2016 report failed to analyze or even acknowledge the land use Treaty Rights of Indigenous or First Nation peoples. Minister McKenna’s April 5 rebuke rightly demands that OPG provide “a description of the land and resource uses for the alternative locations that highlight the unique characteristics of these locations from the perspective of Indigenous peoples.

McKenna’s lengthy critique amounts to “strike two” against OPG, and the Minister’s refutation was praised by community leaders and watchdogs around the Great Lakes. So far, 187 cities, townships, counties, states and provinces in the Great Lakes Basin have passed resolutions opposing the dump — including Duluth, Minn. Columnist Jim Bloch in The Voice asked, “How many swings will the Canadian government give Ontario Power Generation before the firm strikes out in its request to build a nuclear waste dump on the shores of Lake Huron?” The answer may be “no more.”

As befits questions of persistent cancer agents and how to package and keep them out of drinking water for thousands of years, McKenna’s April 5 rebuke lists 23 complex and technically dumbfounding dilemmas that could doom the Lake Huron dump plan. Professor Erika Simpson at the University of Western Ontario reviewed McKenna’s critique and wrote April 7, “It will take OPG perhaps a decade to come up with all the information that is now required … given all the overwhelming problems identified.”

Beverly Fernandez summed up the opposition as well as anyone. “Given the overwhelming opposition to this plan and the potential for massive consequences to the Great Lakes, no responsible government would approve a plan that endangers the drinking water of 40 million people, and a $6 trillion Great Lakes economy.”

March 15, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima: Six Years On

A five-year-old undergoes a thyroid exam in February 2015 at a clinic at a temporary housing complex in Nihonmatsu, about 40 miles from the devastated Fukushima reactor site. Photo: Toru Hanai, Reuters.

By John LaForge

Spring 2017 Quarterly

March 11 marks the 6th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear reactor disaster: the 2011 meltdown of three large power reactors on the Pacific Coast of Japan—Fukushima Daiichi—following a staggering 9.0 magnitude earthquake—the biggest in recorded Japanese history—and its 50-foot tsunami. The “station blackout” or total loss of electric power and cooling in six reactors, and the consequent hydrogen explosions and uncontrolled overheating and “melt-through” of three reactors, has resulted in the most devastating and complicated radiation catastrophe in history.

Fukushima is regularly misreported as less drastic than the singe-reactor catastrophe at Chernobyl, in Ukraine, in 1986. But France’s Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, reported five years ago that Fukushima was already the biggest single spill of man-made radioactive materials into to the marine environment ever seen or recorded.¹ At least 300 tons of highly contaminated runoff have poured daily into the Pacific ever since.

Dr. Helen Caldicott says in the documentary short “Fukushima: Beyond Urgent,” that aired Feb. 13 says, “Japan is by orders of magnitude many times worse than Chernobyl.” In Crisis Without End (2014), Caldicott warned: “The Fukushima disaster is not over and will not end for many millennia. The radioactive fallout, which has covered vast swaths of Japan, will remain toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. It cannot simply be ‘cleaned up,’ and it will continue to contaminate food, humans, and animals.”

The disaster of “Fukushima squared” (earthquake + tsunami + station blackout times three melted reactor cores) was caused by deliberate decisions made by General Electric, Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the government: to build reactors in earthquake zones; to place emergency back-up generators in flood-prone basements; and to ignore long-standing warnings about inadequate seawall protection.

For these reasons, Nukewatch never calls what’s happened at Fukushima an accident. Rather, we believe with Mayor Tamotsu Baba, of the town of Namie, who said in August 2011 that his “people were unnecessarily exposed….” and that the government’s withholding of warnings about radioactive fallout was comparable to “murder.”²

Radiation-caused illnesses, cancers and fatalities that result from reactor disasters (Windscale in England, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Fukushima) are scientifically predictable and known in advance. Researcher Arnie Gunderson noted two years ago that “Two reports recently released in Japan, one by Japanese medical professionals and the second from Tokyo Electric Power Corp., acknowledged that there will be numerous cancers in Japan, much greater than normal, due to the radioactive discharges from the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi… I believe, as do many of my colleagues, that there will be at least 100,000 and as many as one million more cancers in Japan’s future as a result of this meltdown… The second report received from Japan proves that the incidence of thyroid cancer is approximately 230 times higher than normal in Fukushima Prefecture… So what’s the bottom line? The cancers already occurring in Japan are just the tip of the iceberg. I’m sorry to say that the worst is yet to come.”³

**Japanese soldiers collect contaminated leaves in Fukushima Prefecture. AFP/Getty Images.**

Japanese authorities now overseeing Fukushima’s disaster response are pressuring citizens to live in or return to areas that are contaminated with up to four times the annual radiation exposure allowed in similarly contaminated areas around Chernobyl.⁴ Thousands of Japanese incinerators are burning thousands of tons of contaminated debris collected in clean-up efforts—spreading radiation to the winds; and millions of tons of related debris will reportedly be used in road construction throughout Japan, exposing highway workers and nearby residents to long-term radiation risks.

On this somber anniversary, we remember the 19,000 people killed by the tsunami, the 160,000 evacuees who fled radiation zones contaminated by wreckage, and the infants, children and parents who endlessly endure examinations and treatments for thyroid problems stemming from the disaster.

The total cost of decommissioning the destroyed reactor complex and providing compensation to victims has repeatedly doubled. A December 2016 estimate puts the cost at $250 billion.⁵

The Japan Times reported this February that “Scientists still don’t have all the information they need for a cleanup that the government estimates will take four decades….. It is not yet known if the fuel melted into or through the containment vessel’s concrete floor, and determining the fuel’s radioactivity and location is crucial to inventing the technology to remove the melted fuel.”⁶

According to Dr. Shuzo Takemoto, a professor of Geophysics at Kyoto University, “The problem of Unit 2… If it should encounter a big earth tremor, it will be destroyed and scatter the remaining nuclear fuel and its debris, making the Tokyo metropolitan area uninhabitable. The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 will then be utterly out of the question.”⁷

Dr. Caldicott wrote this February, “should there be an earthquake greater than 7 on the Richter scale, it is very possible that … structures could collapse, leading to a massive release of radiation as the building falls on the molten core[s] beneath.”⁸

“Voluntary” evacuees to lose housing support

Some 27,000 so-called “voluntary evacuees”—people who fled their homes in areas beyond mandatory evacuation zones after the disaster began—were to lose their six-year-old housing subsidies at the end of March, 2017.

Thousands of Japanese, wary of government assurances that radiation was limited to official exclusion zones, chose to leave their homes. Many families reported suffering health problems beyond the officially contaminated area, including nose bleeds and nausea.

A local Fukushima Prefecture government spokesman told the news agency AFP that areas not covered by the original evacuation orders have been deemed safe, so housing subsidies were no longer necessary. “The environment is safe for leading a normal life and that means we are no longer in a position to provide temporary housing,” he told AFP.⁹

Greenpeace has said, “This amounts to economic coercion of those individuals and families that are victims of a nuclear disaster they had no part in creating. The group called on the Japanese government to cease its return policy, provide full financial support to evacuees, and “allow citizens to decide whether to return or relocate free from duress.”¹⁰

Groundwater from the mountains behind Fukushima gushes into the quake-smashed reactor foundations, pours over the melted fuel and becomes highly contaminated. This water then runs to the Pacific Ocean which is undergoing the largest radiation dump in recorded history.

A deeply trenched and drilled underground wall of ice that was supposed to divert ground water away from the reactors failed. Nuclear Engineering International reported last August 23 that according to experts, “little or no success was recorded in the wall’s ability to block the groundwater and the amount reaching the buildings has not changed after the wall was built.”

The Pacific covers more than 30% of the Earth’s surface, and with a surface area of more 62 million square miles, its basin is larger than the landmass of all the continents combined.

Part of the reason that whole-sea contamination can result from Fukushima was revealed last February when radiation gauges for the first time got near the melted fuel.

What the Tepco called “astounding” and “unimaginable” levels of radiation were recorded in January and February inside reactor 1. The radiation reading 530 sieverts per hour in January and 650 sieverts/hr on Feb. 9, Tepco said.¹¹

News accounts first called this a “spike” in radiation levels, since the highest reading even during the disaster’s first days was 73 sieverts/hr.

The Washington Post reported that Azby Brown of the citizen science group Safecast, said “It doesn’t necessarily signify any alarming change in radiation levels at Fukushima. It’s simply the first time they’ve been measured that far inside the reactor.”¹²

On Safecast’s website, Brown wrote: “While 530 Sv/hr is the highest measured so far at Fukushima Daiichi, it does not mean that levels there are rising.” Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear also said “The 530 sieverts or 53,000 rems per hour has probably been there the whole while since March 2011.”

Further, the 530 sievert reading was taken some distance from the melted fuel, so the actual lever could be 10 times higher than recorded, according to Hideyuki Ban, of Japan’s Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, who spoke to the Washington Post.

Dr. Caldicott writes that “These facts illustrate why it will be almost impossible to ‘decommission’ units 1, 2 and 3 as no one could ever be exposed to such extreme radiation.”

Exposure to just one sievert is enough to result in infertility, hair loss and cataracts. According to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, a mere four sieverts can kill a person.

Notes

¹ “Fukushima Disaster Produces World’s Worst Nuclear Sea Pollution,” Maritime Executive.com, Oct. 28, 2011

²“Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril,” New York Times, Aug. 9, 2011

³GreenMediaInfo.org, Nov. 18, 2015

⁴ Editorial Board, “Fukushima’s voluntary evacuees,” Japan Times, Dec. 3, 2016

⁵ “Tepco: Fukushima nuclear clean-up, compensation costs nearly double previous estimate at $250 billion,” Australian Broadcasting Corp./ABC News Online, Dec. 16, 2016

⁶ Emi Urabe, “Fukushima Fuel-Removal Quest Leaves Trail of Dead Robots,” Japan Times, Feb. 17, 2017

⁷Shuzo Takemoto, “Potential Global Catastrophe of the Reactor No. 2 at Fukushima Daiichi,” Feb. 11, 2017

⁸ “The Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown Continues Unabated,” Independent Australia, Feb. 13, 2017

⁹AFP, Straight Times, Jan. 17; and Japan Today, Jan. 18, 2017

¹⁰Greenpeace, “Nuclear Scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima,” March 2016, p. 22

¹¹Japan Times, Feb. 9, 2017

¹²Washington Post, Feb. 8, 2017

March 15, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

First Nations Condemn High-Level Liquid Waste Shipments

By Arianne Peterson and John LaForge

Spring 2017 Quarterly

On February 22, both the Iroquois Caucus and Anishinabek Nation in Canada declared their opposition to plans to transport more than 5,812 gallons of extaordinarily radioactive waste in liquid form through their territories. The US Department of Energy (DOE) plan, backed by Atomic Energy Canada Limited and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, intend to send 100 to 150 truckloads of waste, over the course of four years, roughly 1,300 miles from Chalk River, Ontario to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina using public roads and bridges.

The never-before-attempted long range transports of high-level liquid waste are set to start this spring, following US District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s Feb. 2 ruling in favor of the DOE and against a challenge brought by a coalition of environmental groups led by Beyond Nuclear. The exact shipment routes for the waste are being kept secret due to terrorism concerns, but the convoys must pass over at least one waterway directly tied to the Great Lakes—the drinking supply for 40 million people. The waste liquid is so extremely toxic that just one quart of it, evenly dispersed, is enough to contaminate the entire drinking water supply of Washington, DC (a reservoir of just over 140 million gallons) above the safe drinking water standards of the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We assert inherent ownership of the water and jurisdiction within our regions and traditional territories,” said Patrick Madahbee, the Grand Council Chief of 40 Anishinabek First Nations. “We will stand with our Iroquois allies to protect the drinking water. Water is the lifeblood of Mother Earth. Why would we put our precious resource in jeopardy? A spill into any of the waterways would have a tremendous impact on the Great Lakes. Millions of people would be affected—on both sides of the border.”

The weapons-grade waste material, which originated in the US and has been made almost 17,000 times more toxic and more radioactive through processing in Canada, will be “down-blended” at the Savannah River Site into a form that cannot be used for weapons. But critics point out that the process can be done onsite in Canada without putting dozens of communities and the Great Lakes environment at unnecessary and repeated risk of contamination.

The 6,000 gallons are so radioactively volatile that they cannot be shipped all at once, but sent in small, radioactive containers. The total has so much uranium-235 that combing it in a large shipment would risk a “criticality” accident—the uncontrolled chain reaction of nuclear fission—that would look like a bomb blast.

So much gamma radiation is expected to be emminating from the casks that extra long tractor-trailers are intended to separate drivers from the deadly hazard.

“The Iroquois Caucus is well aware that liquid of a very similar nature has been routinely solidified and stored at Chalk River since 2003,” Kahnawà:ke Grand Chief Joseph Tokwiro Norton explained.

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples mandates that states ensure no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent. The Anishinabek Chiefs in Assembly in 2010 passed resolutions opposing the exporting and storage of nuclear waste by either land or water across the Anishinabek Nation, and Canada is a signatory to the UN Declaration.

The indigenous governments are joined by more than 22 municipal councils in the Niagara Peninsula that have passed resolutions opposing the transports.

Seven plaintiffs had urged the court to either suspend the shipments or require a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) in compliance with US environmental law, because such highly radioactive material has never before been transported over public roads in liquid form. But the February ruling deferred to the DOE’s earlier claims that transport of this deadly waste in liquid form poses no more dangers than hauling it in solid form—even without an EIS.

Mary Olson, Director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service’s Southeast Office, one of the plaintiffs, said,“Even without any leakage of the contents, people will be exposed to penetrating gamma radiation and damaging neutron radiation just by sitting in traffic beside one of the transport trucks.”

—Dr. Gordon Edwards, “Radioactive Roads: Transportation of Highly Radioactive Liquid Waste,” Feb. 21; Anishinabek News, Feb. 22; Iroquois Caucus, Feb. 22; WBFO News (Toronto) Feb. 21; and Aiken Standard, and BeyondNuclear.org, Feb. 3, 2017

March 15, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Borehole Test Proposals Repeatedly Rejected by Local Communities

The Energy Dept. has been met with broad opposition from communities targeted for a borehole “test site” to study the theory of deep disposal of certain radioactive wastes. If a demonstration confirms the theoretical basis for the concept, waste could be placed “in the bottom mile” of a 3-mile-deep hole, under a “plug” of as-yet-undetermined material. Competing designs of potential “plugs” are among dozens of unresolved borehole questions.

By Kelly Lundeen

Spring 2017 Quarterly

Since early 2016, the Department of Energy (DOE) has been looking for a site for a Deep Borehole Field Test for radioactive waste. Over a period of nine months, proposals were rejected in half of the targeted locations due to public opposition, so in December the DOE wrote a new contract to make people believe that there would be no radioactive waste in their future. The DOE revised its request for proposals to appear more “consent-based.” Four contractors were chosen to help this proposal gain public acceptance in four locations. At all four sites there has been public outcry, but in Quay County, New Mexico the resistance was so strong that the County Commission rescinded its previous approval. The three remaining sites are Otero County, New Mexico; Haakon County, South Dakota; and Pecos County, Texas.

Borehole background

The first test borehole will be eight inches wide and three miles deep, with mock “waste” to be placed only in the bottom mile. Borehole disposal is being considered for compact packages of radioactive waste that have no potential for reuse, such as cesium and strontium capsules from Hanford, Washington’s nuclear weapons production; untreated calcine high-level radioactive waste currently stored at the Idaho National Laboratory (IDL); salt wastes from electro-metallurgical treatment of sodium-bonded fuels; and some DOE-managed waste reactor fuel currently stored in cooling pools at IDL and at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Other forms of rad waste have not been ruled out for borehole disposal, including deadly used reactor fuel.

Why a borehole?

Boreholes are promoted by the DOE and the contractors that could profit from their development. Since the radioactive waste would be two miles below the surface, borehole proponents claim it is too far from the overlying rocks to affect the water table or surface environment, and it won’t be affected by the climate or human activities. Contractors promise between five and 20 local jobs in the test period alone. Before the plan was rejected in Quay County, New Mexico, project representatives hoped some $30 to $40 million would come into the county. They said that a borehole study gives local schools a unique learning experience in science and technology.

Reno Red Cloud, Natural Resources Regulatory Agency Director of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, addresses a Rapid City, South Dakota mining firm. The Haakon County, South Dakota borehole proposal is located in unceded 1851 and 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty territory, between the Oglala, Rosebud, and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribes’ reservations—all of which are nuclear-free zones. Photo by Tatyana Novikova, *Native Sun News Today*.

What could go wrong?

Despite all the advertised benefits of accepting a borehole “test,” some sites have refused to let their land be a science experiment. The DOE insists that the boreholes will not contain radioactive waste. However, the assurances have left many local residents and politicians skeptical. Commissioner Ronny Rardin of Otero County, New Mexico, described the public’s opposition in his district. “They not only said no, they said hell no.”

A panel of experts that joined the DOE in presenting to the US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) in December 2015 expressed concerns about the complexities of the structural and scientific properties of the Earth at the level the waste would be placed. “Surprises should be expected,” the panel said. Surprises found in previous deep borehole drilling included active water flows, tectonic stress, irregular permeability, and microbial activity which can corrode steel casings and degrade seals on canisters. The NWTRB complained, “It does not appear that the DOE sufficiently considered how one might recover from an accident involving a waste emplacement package stuck in the borehole… It is not clear whether a stuck [and] leaking waste package could be retrieved during operations, as DOE assumes, or whether such waste package would be left in place.” This was the concern in Sweden when its deep borehole research was halted.

Leaving much to be desired, the DOE responded to this NWTRB concern by simply saying that the agency would “develop a description of the handling operations… prior to implementation. Risk analyses will be conducted for handling and emplacement operations and important potential accident scenarios.”

Borehole disposal is the renewal of a once-abandoned scheme developed by the DOE for its mounting problem of radioactive waste. With three remaining potential borehole test sites, the agency may be able to move to the next phase of permitting and draft some work plans. However, the DOE has yet to verify boreholes’ clear advantages over other radioactive waste disposal possibilities, or to guarantee that testing sites won’t become permanent dumps.

—Exchange Monitor, Feb. 17; Native Sun News Today, Feb. 15, 2017; Alamogordo Daily News, Feb. 10, 2017 & May 27, 2016; US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, June 9, Jan. 2016 & Oct. 21, 2015; Albuquerque Journal, Nov. 4, 2013; Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, January 2012.

February 23, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Yucca Mountain Scientifically Unsuitable for Rad Waste Repository

Yucca Mountain poses risks beyond Nevada communities. Because of its distance from the majority of radioactive waste in the country, the transport routes would impact a wide swath of the United States. Rail accidents are not rare, so the risks posed from the transport of this material involve millions of people along shipping routes.

By John LaForge

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) sets strict standards that must be met before a high-level radioactive waste repository can be licensed. The licensing process for the Yucca Mountain dump site, which has cost $9 billion to date, was halted in 2010 because the site can no longer be defended on scientific grounds. In its current location, 90 miles from Las Vegas, the dump would also be unlawful because according to the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, the Western Shoshone Nation holds title to Yucca Mountain and the Western Shoshone overwhelmingly oppose the dump.

While Congressional leaders talk today about reconsidering Yucca, crucial scientific findings (some listed below) should permanently disqualify it. Principle among them is that the geology of Yucca Mt. doesn’t meet the original statutory requirements established by the NWPA. Even after hydrological, geological, volcanic and seismological show-stoppers have been revealed, the licensing process was not halted (until 2010). Instead, NWPA specifications have been repeatedly weakened, leading one Nevada Governor, Kenny Guinn, to accuse the Energy Dept. of lowering standards to win approval for the site.

In 2014, Allison Macfarlane, a former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), warned that when the licensing process was halted, there were still hundreds of “contentions” challenging the application. The General Accounting Office reported that the project’s former managing contractor, Bechtel SAIC, had in 2001 identified 293 unresolved technical issues to further analyze before licensing could proceed. Each contention must be argued before a panel of administrative law judges. Macfarlane wrote in Science magazine that the “[Dept. of Energy] will not be able to submit an acceptable application to NRC within the express statutory time frames for several years because it will take that long to resolve many technical issues.” Macfarlane concluded that “disposal of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is based on an unsound engineering strategy and poor use of present understanding of the properties of spent nuclear fuel.”

In 2007, the Bow Ridge earthquake fault was discovered by the US Geological Survey’s Yucca Mt. Project Branch to be hundreds of feet east of where it had estimated. It passes directly under a planned pad where waste canisters would be kept for years before they are entombed in tunnels inside the mountain, according to the USGS’s May 21, 2007 letter. The error means designers must revamp or scrap their plans. Yucca Mt. project officials said they are still developing repository design, construction and operating ideas. The DOE has never produced blueprints that Nevada state officials can review and critique.

In 2004, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the National Academy of Sciences found “no scientific basis for limiting the time period of the individual risk standard to 10,000 years…” The Academy reported instead that “repository performance” must be judged on “a time scale that is on the order of [one million] years at Yucca Mountain.” It’s been known for decades that some of the waste, as a New York Times science writer said, “remains radioactive for millions of years,” that it “would be hazardous for millions of years,” and, as the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported, that “nearly 100 million pounds” of high-level waste “will remain lethal for millions of years.” The National Academy of Sciences found in 1983 that the “chemical characteristics of the water at Yucca Mt. are such that the wastes would dissolve more easily than at most other places.” The NAS also “make[s] the assumption that a nuclear waste repository will eventually leak,” and “The wastes would … most likely reach humans through water flowing underground through the wastes and eventually reaching the surface through springs or wells.”

In 2002, a mild earthquake on June 14, about 12 miles southeast of Yucca Mt. fueled opposition to plans for the dump. The magnitude-4.4 quake was called a “wake-up call” by critics who pointed to the potential for damage to above-ground storage facilities, where thousands of tons of waste brought to the site would be kept for decades while it cools. “If anyone ever wondered about the wisdom of locating an underground radioactive dump site on an active fault line, this shows why,” Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said after the quake.

In 1999, a DOE report declared that leaving the waste in storage at reactor sites is just as safe as moving it to Yucca Mt. — as long as the waste is repackaged every 100 years. Given the uncertainties about Yucca Mt. and the risks of moving waste fuel, it makes sense to leave the material were it is generated at the reactor sites while developing alternatives. Independent scientists suggest on-site, above-ground, monitored storage, hardened against terrorism, along with additional measures for safety and security.

In 1998, evidence that the inside of the mountain is periodically flooded with water came in the form of zircon crystals found deep inside. “Crystals do not form without complete immersion in water,” said Jerry Szymanski, formerly the DOE’s top geologist at Yucca. Szymanski’s finding that deep water rises and falls inside Yucca Mt. means “hot underground water has invaded the mountain and might again in the time when radioactive waste would still be extremely dangerous. The results would be catastrophic.” In 1998, the Yucca Mt. site was found to be subject to earthquakes or lava flows every 1,000 years — 10 times more frequently than earlier estimated — according to a California Institute of Technology study. The finding meant that radiation dispersal from the site is much more likely during the dump’s radioactive hazard period.

In 1997, DOE researchers announced that rain water had seeped down 800 feet from the top of Yucca Mt. into the repository in a mere 40 years (as dated by chlorine-36). Government scientists had earlier claimed that rainwater would take hundreds or thousands of years to reach the waste caverns. Federal officials have long required that the existence of fast-flowing water would disqualify the site.

In 1995, government physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory warned in an internal report that the wastes might erupt in a nuclear explosion and scatter radioactivity to the winds or into groundwater, or both. Dr. Charles D. Bowman and Dr. Francesco Venneri found that staggering dangers will arise thousands of years from now — after steel waste containers dissolve and plutonium begins to disperse into surrounding rock. Dr. John Browne, head of energy research at Los Alamos National Lab, said about the research paper, “Our feeling is that the subject is so important that it deserves additional peer review outside the laboratory.” The DOE’s former top geologist Jerry Szymanski said to the Washington Post, “You’re talking about an unimaginable catastrophe. Chernobyl would be small potatoes.”

In 1990, the National Research Council said in a study that the DOE’s Yucca Mt. plan is “bound to fail” because: a) requiring predictions of safety for even 10,000 years is a scientific impossibility; and b) the Nuclear Waste Policy Act demands a level of safety that science cannot guarantee. The US Circuit Court of Appeals later ordered the government to judge dumpsite performance based not on a 10,000-year, but a one-million-year time scale.

In 1989, sixteen scientists from the US Geologic Survey charged that the DOE was using stop-work orders “to prevent the discovery of problems that would doom the repository.” The geologists reported that, “There is no facility for trial and error, for genuine research, for innovation, or for creativity.” Even the NRC complained that, “work at Yucca Mt. seemed designed mostly to get the repository built rather than to determine if the site is suitable.”

If Yucca Mt.’s containment puzzles can be solved or ignored and it is rehabilitated and licensed after sitting unattended for seven years, gamblers in Las Vegas and scores of other cities around the country will have a problem of health science to face. Fred Dilger, a Clark County, Nevada planner and former state transportation analyst, has warned that when waste trains go through town, “All of the casinos on the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard would be bathed in gamma radiation.”

“Strike Two” Against Canadian Radioactive Waste Dumpsite Proposal

Yucca Mountain Scientifically Unsuitable for Rad Waste Repository

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