26 March 2002

Byliner: Energy Secretary Abraham Says One Safe Site Is Best

This byliner by Spencer Abraham, U.S. Secretary of Energy, first appeared in the Washington Post March 26 and is in the public domain. No republication restrictions.

One Safe Site Is Best

Spencer Abraham

Imagine that at the dawn of the nuclear age, President Truman and Congress had agreed to bury all the radioactive waste that this new source of energy would produce in sturdy casks covered by a secure shield 800 feet beneath a barren desert owned by the government, guarded against intruders, under federally restricted airspace and located 90 miles from the nearest major population center.

Had that choice been made, would anyone today argue that it would be safer to remove all this high-level nuclear waste and scatter it around the nation to 131 sites located near cities and waterways, and to place the waste in temporary, above-ground storage facilities?

Of course not. But this is essentially what the critics of the decision to select Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the nation's permanent site for nuclear waste are asking us to believe -- that the current temporary surface storage system for high-level nuclear waste is preferable to the permanent underground solution offered by the Yucca Mountain site.

Scientists have studied the safety and suitability of Yucca Mountain for the past 24 years at a cost of more than $4 billion. Experts from around the world have mapped the mountain's geologic structure, collected 75,000 feet of core samples and more than 18,000 geologic and water samples, and built more than six miles of tunnels to map its interior features at the repository level.

After all this analysis, the scientists concluded that Yucca Mountain would be safe. In fact, extensive studies prove the repository will secure this material so well that tough Environmental Protection Agency standards will be met for 10,000 years. Here's what this means: Someone living 11 miles away from the site 10,000 years from now would be less exposed to radiation than he would be on a normal plane flight from Las Vegas to New York.

In making this determination, the experts used worst-case assumptions. We took earthquakes into account: Yucca Mountain would still meet EPA radiation protection standards. Volcanic eruptions affecting the repository? The likelihood is one in 70 million per year. And Yucca Mountain would still meet the EPA standards. What about corrosion from water that might drip 1,000 feet down into the cavern? Yucca Mountain is located near Death Valley and has an average precipitation of under 8 inches a year, less than half an inch of which actually makes it below the surface. We even analyzed what would happen during the next ice age when Nevada's climate changed and rainfall increased dramatically: Yucca Mountain would still meet the EPA standards.

This project is critical for national security. Spent fuel from our nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines must be permanently disposed of if we are to continue using these valuable systems. And Yucca Mountain is indispensable to joint U.S.-Russian efforts to secure nuclear materials.

The project is critical for energy security as well. Nuclear power provides 20 percent of the nation's electricity, emits no airborne pollution or greenhouse gases and now gives us one of the cheapest forms of power generation we have. Securing these benefits requires finding a permanent, safe and secure site for nuclear waste.

Yucca Mountain is essential for homeland security. More than 161 million people live within 75 miles of one or more nuclear waste sites, all of which were intended to be temporary. We believe that today these sites are safe, but prudence demands we consolidate this waste from widely dispersed above-ground sites into a deep underground location that can be better protected.

The science is sound, and the national interests served by a permanent repository are compelling. That's undoubtedly why opponents of Yucca Mountain have now resorted to scare tactics. They argue, for example, that transporting materials to the site would be unsafe because of potential accidents or terrorist attacks. But we've transported radioactive materials for more than 30 years, covering some 1.6 million miles, without any harmful release of radiation. Europe has already safely moved about as much nuclear material from place to place as we expect to ship over the entire active life of the Yucca Mountain Project.

So far as terrorists are concerned, why wouldn't they first attack stationary, above-ground facilities that lie in known locations near heavily populated cities, rather than wait 10 years until the material is being moved -- in secret -- in secure containers surrounded by heavily armed guards?

If the critics think a "no" on Yucca Mountain means this material will stay put, they are dreaming. Already, the Goshute Indian Tribe in Utah, in consortium with a group of electric utilities, is moving forward on approval of a temporary above-ground nuclear waste storage site on its reservation. Whether or not the Goshutes are successful, sooner or later others will open new sites, and this material will move.

At this point, the administration is simply seeking permission to have independent experts at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission objectively and scientifically decide whether to approve construction of the repository. That will take at least three years and yet more scientific studies.

But those who oppose Yucca Mountain don't even want the NRC to bring its widely recognized impartial and detached scientific judgment to the table to make an independent determination. They would cut short this extended process in the vain hope a miracle will occur and this problem will just go away. It won't -- and it's our responsibility to solve it.

The writer is U.S. Secretary of Energy.