Nevada residents give take on Yucca Mountain report

Oct 25 - Aiken Standard (SC)

South Carolina is celebrating recent news that Yucca Mountain has been deemed safe as a nuclear waste repository. But officials and residents of Nevada are echoing similar sentiments of those near the Savannah River Site, stating that they don't want nuclear waste in their backyards.

Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects took action Oct. 16 , the same day the Nuclear Regulatory Commission published Volume 3 of its safety evaluation report, or SER, on the proposed underground geologic nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain , a volcanic structure near the former Nevada Test Site, about 100 miles from Las Vegas .

Agency director Bob Halstead wrote in the official statement that moving beyond the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project is essential to solve the nation's problem because the project was previously deemed unsustainable.

"The NRC recently affirmed that dry storage of spent nuclear fuel at existing reactor sites is safe for 120 years or more, so there is no urgent need to move forward with Yucca Mountain . Forcing the NRC to restart the Yucca Mountain licensing process impedes progress towards finding workable solutions by diverting our focus," Halstead said.

After the Aiken Standard posted an Oct. 17 web burst about the NRC report, Carson County, Nevada , resident Randy Carlson contacted the paper to give his take on the issue. Carlson said that despite the report, the Yucca Mountain site has been demonstrated to be incapable of retaining nuclear waste for the roughly 1 million years necessary to render long-lived nuclides safe.

"Test tunnels have encountered numerous fault zones and free-flowing water within the areas proposed for the repository -- neither of which were deemed within acceptable criteria when the project began," he said.

Another resident, David Gissen , had the opportunity to tour the Yucca site about a decade ago. Gissen said the site is impressive and might have been viable at one point; however, politics got in the way of the scientists and the ones hired to do the work, he said.

"My main thing is that it may or may not be viable," Gissen said. "I don't want this in my back yard; but anywhere you put it, this stuff needs to be retrievable, it may need to be reprocessed and it has to be done on a scientific basis instead of a political one."

Aiken residents have argued the same point, claiming that it's no surprise that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is opposed to the Yucca project because he represents Nevada .

Still, Carlson added, Reid and others are protecting the interests of the state.

"If you're a Nevada politician, you had not better say the words, 'Yucca Mountain' without curling your lips if you want to run for office," he said. "It's never been popular here."

The controversy issue dates back to 1994 when the Department of Energy began drilling a 5-mile tunnel through Yucca Mountain . The federal government poured more than $10 billion into the project before funding was cut in 2010 because of a belief that the site was not suitable to house nuclear waste. The decision left several DOE sites holding unwanted waste, including SRS.

Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the paper since June 2013 . He is originally from Vidalia, Ga. , and a graduate of Georgia Southern University . Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.

___

Visit the Aiken Standard (Aiken, S.C.) at www.aikenstandard.com

http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=34097635&