Nuclear Expert Tells AP Yucca Mt. Unsafe
Feb 18 - Associated Press
The nation's nuclear waste dump proposed for Nevada is poorly designed and could leak highly radioactive waste, a scientist who recently resigned from a federal panel of experts on Yucca Mountain told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is planned to begin
receiving waste in 2010. Some 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at
commercial and military sites in 39 states would be stored in metal canisters
underground in tunnels.
"The science is very clear," Craig told the AP in an interview
before his first public speech about the Energy Department's design for the
canisters.
"If we get high-temperature liquids, the metal would corrode and that
would eventually lead to leakage of nuclear waste," Craig said.
"Therefore, it is a bad design. And that is very, very bad news for the
Department of Energy because they are committed to that design," he said.
Craig, who was appointed to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board by
President Clinton in 1997, spoke to about 100 people later Wednesday night at a
community forum in Reno sponsored by the Sierra Club.
"I would never say Yucca Mountain won't work. What I would say is the
design they have won't work," he said Wednesday night. He said he's
convinced the Energy Department will have to postpone the project and adopt a
different design.
"It would require years of delay and my guess is that is what is going
to happen. The bad science is so clear they will be unable to ignore it
forever," Craig told the AP.
The 11-member technical review board outlined its concerns about the
potential for corrosion in a report to the Energy Department in November about
the metal for the canisters, called Alloy-22 - "an upscale version of
stainless steel," Craig said.
It was the most important report the board has produced since Congress
created the panel in 1987, he said, but largely has been ignored by Congress and
the department.
"The report says in ordinary English that under the conditions proposed
by the Department of Energy, the canisters will leak," Craig said. "It
was signed by every single member of the board so there would be no
confusion."
Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson defended the design plans for the
repository and the metal in the storage casks.
"We stand by our work," he said Wednesday in Las Vegas. He said the
department was preparing a formal response to the board's November report. He
had no further comment.
In Washington, D.C., officials with the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute
did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment.
The board's report in November said the government had failed to take into
account "deliquescence" - a phenomenon regarding the reaction of salt
to moisture - in its plans to operate the dump at temperatures well above
boiling water, or about 200 degrees.
At those temperatures, the metal canisters would heat up, causing salts in
the surrounding ground to liquefy, thus leading to corrosion, Craig said.
"It turns out the metals which look like they act pretty good at
temperature levels below boiling water - those same metals act badly with
temperatures that could exist" at Yucca Mountain, he said.
Craig, who also has served as a member of National Academy of Sciences
National Research Council Board on Radioactive Waste Management, said he sent
his resignation letter to the White House in January before his term was to
expire in April so he could shine more light on the government's plans.
"When you serve as a member of one of those boards, you cannot talk
about the political consequences of the science or the big picture. You are
supposed to stick to the science and you should stick to the science,"
Craig said.
"You cannot have the kind of conversation we are having now if I was
still on the board."