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Sen. David Long > Media Center > Published Articles > 11/30/03: Memorandum on Yucca Mountain 11/30/03: Memorandum on Yucca Mountain

Memorandum on Yucca Mountain

Several years ago, Senators Riegsecker and Weatherwax visited the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Facility in southern Nevada . Sen. Riegsecker subsequently prepared an excellent and informative report on the progress of the facility.

In October, Senator Wyss and I also had the opportunity to visit the Yucca Mountain facility. We both felt that it was an exceptional experience, and that we should share what we learned with the rest of the Senate.

1. History. Nuclear waste has been accumulating over the past 50 years in the United States . The sources are varied: defense activities and the US military; the cleanup of WWII era nuclear weapons plants; nuclear power plants, and reduction of the national nuclear arsenal.

In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, seeking a solution to the waste problem. In 1987, the Act was amended, instructing the Dept. of Energy (DOE) to study only Yucca Mountain .

2. Current location of nuclear waste. We have a massive amount of radioactive waste in the U.S.---- nearly 100,000,000 gallons of high level nuclear waste and more than 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, with more being created every day.

This waste is currently stored at 131 aging surface sites, scattered across 39 different states. These locations were constructed to be temporary in nature, and are therefore significant security risks. More than 161 million Americans live within 75 miles of these facilities.

3. Why Yucca Mountain was chosen. Over 20 years and $8 billion dollars has gone into analyzing potential sites, especially Yucca Mountain . Yucca Mountain is adjacent to the Nevada National Weapons Testing site, where over 800 nuclear bomb tests were conducted up until the early 1990's. The entire region is under federal government control, with heavy security and strictly limited access.

Some of Yucca Mountain 's key attributes:

  • It is in a remote desert location, in one of the driest climates in the world.
  • It is isolated away from population centers, and is surrounded by military and federal lands.
  • It is located in a closed hydrologic basin, one of the few in the entire world. This means that the aquifer in this hydrologic basin does not mix with any other aquifers, and the water from Yucca Mountain does not flow into any rivers or oceans. The ground water is therefore uniquely isolated.
  • The rock formation in Yucca Mountain is made up of ancient volcanic materials that have few fractures, thereby significantly slowing whatever limited water seepage might occur.
  • The storage site would be in a secured location 1,000 feet below the surface.

4. How would the waste be stored? From the surface, the waste would be transported by special rail cars to a location 1,000 feet below. There, a series of side “finger” tunnels would hold the waste itself.

The waste would be stored in huge corrosion resistant canisters made of titanium grade 7 and a special, nickel-based alloy know as Alloy 22. Alloy 22 is so corrosion resistant general corrosion could penetrate only about 0.03 inches in 10,000 years! Only about 1% of the canisters are projected to lose some of their integrity during the first 80,000 years !

The canisters would be placed on special corrosion resistant flatbed rail cars and slid back into the mountain. This would allow them to be retrieved in case the world of the future finds a profitable use for the material, or a better way to dispose of it

5. What is the timeline for opening the facility? The State of Nevada had the right to disapprove the President's recommendation of Yucca Mountain as the national repository site, and it did so. Congress then had to vote to override Nevada's objections, which it recently did. There are now two licenses which must be obtained by the facility before waste can be accepted.

The DOE must first go through a multi-year review of the process before it can receive construction authorization from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). This would take a minimum of 3 years. If NRC approval is received, the DOE must complete construction and then apply for a new license from the NRC in order to be able to receive and emplace the waste.

The entire process is expected to take a minimum of 8 years, and that assumes no legal actions filed by those opposed to the project. If and when the facility opens, its life expectancy would be anywhere from 50-300 years.