What's Wrong With Yucca Mountain???

It will contaminate groundwater

Water moves rapidly down through the mountain. Tracers related to atmospheric nuclear weapons tests have been found at the underground level at which waste would be placed. This means rain water on the surface can reach the waste 800 feet underground in less than 50 years; then carry the radioactive contamination in the groundwater to people downgradient from Yucca Mountain in as little as possibly a few hundred years.

Downgradient from the site, groundwater is pumped from wells for drinking water, irrigation water, and stock water for the largest dairy in Nevada, in Amargosa Valley. The dairy uses alfalfa grown in the valley, and waters its own organic alfalfa crop to produce organic milk.

To delay the potential for rapid contamination of the groundwater supply, the Department of Energy (DOE) is proposing to place the waste in "corrosion resistant" metal containers, which it claims will contain the wastes for more than 10,000 years, the duration of the regulatory period set by the Environmental Protection Agency and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The radioactive wastes remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.

The claim for corrosion resistance of the containers is based on about 2 years of laboratory experiments under conditions less severe than would be expected in the repository. These laboratory results have been extrapolated to predict thousands of years of waste containment.

It is not geologic disposal

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires that the geology of a repository site be the primary barrier to loss of waste isolation. This is not possible at Yucca Mountain, so an engineered barrier (the metal container), of unproven durability, is the basis of DOE's case for the safety of a Yucca Mountain repository. The State of Nevada has filed suit against DOE claiming this is a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requirement for geologic isolation. The suit also alleges that the DOE's newly revised site recommendation rules violate the Act because they do not contain required geologic factors that would qualify or disqualify the site.

There is a chance for volcanos

If the metal waste containers perform as predicted by DOE, the only factor that could result in loss of waste isolation in 10,000 years, according to DOE, is a recurrence of nearby recent volcanism in the Yucca Mountain area. Despite the possibility of lethal radiation doses to individuals in Amargosa Valley from a volcanic eruption impacting the repository, the DOE has claimed the probability is so low that renewed volcanism is not an important consideration.

It is an active earthquake zone

Nevada is seismically active (the third most active state in the continental US, after Alaska and California). In the past 20 years, there have been over 600 earthquakes within 50 miles of Yucca Mountain - the largest at Magnitude 5.6, in 1992, about 10 miles from Yucca Mountain - causing damage to DOE's Yucca Mountain field office. Another, at Magnitude 4.4, occurred in 2002.

There are unacceptable levels of uncertainty, and the studies are incomplete

The known large uncertainty in DOE's assessment of the safety of a Yucca Mountain repository, and the method of assessing the safety is such that assurance of limiting groundwater contamination to "acceptable levels" is questionable, based on existing predictive models and data.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires that site characterization be complete at the time of a site recommendation to the President by the Secretary of Energy. The DOE still has at least 293 studies of Yucca Mountain site and design factors that it has agreed to complete before it submits a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It plans to complete these studies by late 2004, but, in February 2002, the Secretary recommended Yucca Mountain to the President for development of a repository, and the President forwarded the recommendation to Congress. The Governor of Nevada objected to the designation, as allowed by law, but was overridden by a Congressional vote. DOE plans to have the repository accepting waste for disposal in 2010.

Transportation would endanger over 50 million people

The Department of Energy has not even begun analyzing the specific risks it would be imposing by transporting the waste during a 30 year period to Yucca Mountain, through 43 states, more than 100 cities with population over 100,000, and within one-half mile of over 50 million people. .

It is undemocratic

The people of Nevada have already experienced the effects of radiation from activities at the Nevada Test Site. During atmospheric nuclear weapons testing the residents downwind of the site were told that there was no danger. It has taken forty years to gain compensation for the illness and deaths resulting from those tests.

After 15 years of Yucca Mountain being the only site considered, recent polls show that over 80% of Nevadans, who host no nuclear power plants, continue to oppose the project.
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Prepared by the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, a non-profit public advocacy organization. 4550 W. Oakey Blvd., Suite 111, Las Vegas, NV 89102 - Telephone 702-248-1127. Judy Treichel, Executive Director, E-mail: Visit our website: