Obama’s sensible Yucca Mountain decision

Obama’s sensible Yucca Mountain decision

May 21, 2009

Chicago Tribune  Bruce H. Breslow
“………………………….Yucca Mountain is not coming to grief merely for political reasons. The fundamental problem is that Department of Energy picked a bad site for its proposed nuclear waste dump. It has earthquake faults and is located on a young volcanic field.
Worse, there was much more dripping water (which promotes corrosion of the containers intended to isolate the waste), and water moves faster through Yucca Mountain than the Department of Energy expected. Instead of abandoning the site over this and many other problems uncovered by scientists over the past two decades, the Department of Energy invented what it calls a “drip shield” — the name says it all — to protect each waste package. The department’s design now requires 11,000 titanium “drip shields,” each using five tons of exotic alloy.

Without them, the department’s calculations show the repository would exceed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s standards for releasing radiation into the environment by about a factor of 10. Worse, the Department of Energy is putting off installation of these mythical “drip shields” for at least 100 years, when they predict futuristic robots will be invented to do the job in radioactive tunnels where humans could not survive. That is a bureaucratic farce that should not continue.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing boards have just certified that an unprecedented 299 unresolved technical and other issues, put forward by Nevada, California and other hearing participants, would have to be addressed in any licensing hearing for this project to move forward. In short, by backing away from this project, the president acted sensibly and responsibly.
If rail and truck shipments to Yucca Mountain are as safe as past spent nuclear fuel shipments in the Unites States, and if they experience similar accident rates, about 30 to 80 rail accidents and three to six truck accidents would be expected over its 50-year transportation program. The Department of Energy states that the probability of rail accidents would be one for every 300 to 400 shipments, or an estimated seven to 25 rail accidents, involving casks carrying high-level nuclear waste.

Obama’s sensible Yucca Mountain decision — chicagotribune.com

May 22, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized