Ken Silverstein EnergyBiz Insider Editor-in-Chief

The U.S. Department of Energy says that "sound science" is on its side and that it has the will to see the Yucca project through to its finish. But it is up against some strong opponents that include key congressional leaders. If the country decides that nuclear energy's prominence should grow, a national repository will get built.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission okayed in September a temporary waste site on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation that is about 45 miles from Salt Lake City. It's a move that some say is a major step on the road to developing Yucca Mountain that would store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste in an area about 90 miles away from Las Vegas. "Skull Valley," which would house 44,000 tons in steel containers, would warehouse such spent fuel until it is ready to be sent to Yucca. Meantime, the U.S. House has voted to allocate $10 million to move nuclear waste out of the hands of utilities and toward a more permanent location.

"We ensure that Yucca Mountain is as safe as any other disposal system that could be developed for high-level waste," says Elizabeth Cotsworth, director of the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air for the Environmental Protection Agency, before the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board. The EPA is accepting public comments until Oct. 21, all on the proposed radiation protection standard released in August.

The Energy Department, meanwhile, must meet those standards if it is to win approval to develop the Yucca site. Officials there hope to begin delivering waste to the proposed national repository by 2012. To get that point, however, it must complete an application for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is way behind schedule. The Energy Department says that it prefers not to give a timeframe for the application and says instead that it is focused on quality and safety for the nuclear waste project.

"The schedule is very important, but doing it right is even more important," says Paul Golan, acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management for Energy Department.

The Yucca Mountain site did get a nod from the General Accounting Office with regards to safety and possible terrorist activity. The likelihood of any such attack having success as the spent fuel is transported is "very low" and "extremely unlikely" because the material is hard to disperse and is stored in protective containers, the GAO says. Proponents of Yucca Mountain point out that in the last 40 years, more than 2,700 shipments of nuclear waste have been transported 1.6 million miles, all safely.

Determined Opposition

Opponents of the plan and particularly Nevada officials want government money used to store spent waste on site where it is generated. They also favor investing in waste "reprocessing" that is used by other nations. Such nascent technology recycles nuclear waste, extracting usable plutonium and uranium from spent fuel.

While the energy bill "made clear" that the nation is headed toward a nuclear future, it left unresolved the question of what to do about nuclear waste and in particular the creation of a permanent waste site, says Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah. Yucca Mountain has been challenged at every turn and specifically on scientific grounds; it will take 108,000 truck shipments or 3,000 train trips to deliver the waste to Yucca Mountain by 2038 -- trips that are rife with risks that include terrorism.

"The nuclear power is here to stay, the nuclear plants that we have are going to be re-commissioned and re-licensed...," says Bennett, in a statement for the Senate floor. "It doesn't make sense, from a practical point of view, to move the material all across the country, store it in Yucca Mountain for the purpose of ending storage in place, and then have storage in place come back."

Bennett and fellow Utah Republican Senator, Orrin Hatch, had been supportive of developing Yucca Mountain into a permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. But, the recent decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow Utah to be used as a temporary storage site caused the two to change gears. It is unlikely that this new-found opposition will sway the entire U.S. Senate, although there are still legal and scientific hurdles.

Others, meanwhile, say that the current plans to use Yucca Mountain as a permanent nuclear waste site are inadequate. In an article titled Rush to Judgment at Yucca Mountain, Paul Craig, former official at the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, draws parallels between the mistakes made by NASA leading up to the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters and the Energy Department's plans to dispose of high-level radioactive waste. The current blueprint is not just ill-founded, Craig says, it is harried and fraught with "institutional arrogance."

The issue of whether to proceed with Yucca Mountain appears to be trapped in a never-ending quagmire. Nevada was considered an "ideal" spot for such storage given the aridity of the land. At the same time, more than 100 nuclear bomb tests had already been set off underground there. Opponents counter that volcanic activity is ever-present in the region, which could enable radioactive materials to escape.

In any event, the matter is not going to disappear. Currently, 103 nuclear reactors generate 20 percent of the electricity in the United States. Those generators store 70,000 tons of waste at 72 commercial and military sites in 39 states. The Energy Department says that it will take 24 years to get the Yucca site stockpiled -- a step that the administration says is essential so that current repositories do not become permanent facilities. More than 20 years and $4 billion have been spent studying the idea.

"Under all scenarios, the nation will need to establish a permanent geological repository to deal with radioactive waste resulting from the operation of nuclear power plants," says William Magwood, the recently-departed director of the Energy Department's nuclear energy program, during congressional hearings.

The debate over whether to implement more nuclear energy comes at a time when the country -- indeed the world -- is determined to wean itself from fossil fuels and to work toward an environmentally friendly energy program. But, it would appear more nuclear energy will remain out of reach as long as the controversy swirling around Yucca continues. The legal, political and scientific impediments are formidable but not insurmountable.

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