Yucca Mountain stalemate leaves state holding radioactive material
Greenville News, Paul Alongi
Published December 26, 2005
A nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert has bogged down in funding cuts and legal challenges, but even if it is built, it won't have enough room for all of the nation's radioactive waste, a former U.S. Energy Department official said.
The delays come as 37 million gallons of dangerous defense waste sits at Savannah River Site near Aiken and as utilities nationwide, including three in South Carolina, consider building the first nuclear power plant in three decades.
In the absence of a national dump, nuclear power plants store waste in pools and above-ground dry casks. This includes Duke Power's Oconee Nuclear Station, which sits about eight miles from Clemson University and on the same lake as some of the Upstate's most upscale neighborhoods.
Robert Alvarez, a former Energy Department senior advisor, said even if Yucca Mountain opened today, it would take 40 years to empty the pools. He added that an often-overlooked Energy Department decision in 2002 would leave defense waste at SRS indefinitely.
With waste stored at nuclear power plants, Alvarez has warned that an attack could leave the land for miles around uninhabitable for years. About 75,000 residents of Pickens and Oconee counties live within ten miles of Oconee Nuclear Station.
"Yucca Mountain does not solve the terrorist problem," said Alvarez, now a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. "I look at it as the unicorn of nuclear power -- this mythical creature that people are really hoping will appear and create magic for them."
Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said he didn't know of any decision to leave defense waste at SRS. No completion date has been set on Yucca Mountain, although the Energy Department remains committed to building it, he said.
"When it's ready, it's ready," Stevens said. "We're not going to create an artificial timeline."
Fifth District U.S. Rep. John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat, said another repository could be built in New Mexico, although he has heard no serious consideration of doing that. Yucca Mountain, he said, could be built and then expanded to hold more waste than the proposed 77,000 tons.
"I'm sure Nevadans wouldn't be happy about that, but it is an expandable site," he said.
Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign introduced legislation recently that would leave nuclear waste at power plants across the nation. U.S. Reps. Shelley Berkley of Nevada and Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah offered up a House version of the proposal.
Other setbacks for Yucca Mountain, once scheduled to open by 2011, include a steady march of legal challenges. On top of all that, Congress agreed last month to cut 2006 funding for the site to $450 million, or $127 million less than each of the two previous years.
Questions over waste have arisen as Duke Power considers whether it will build a new nuclear power plant in its service territory, which includes the Upstate. Scana Corp. and Santee Cooper have also told regulators they plan to seek a permit to build a new plant in the state.
At the same time, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission continues to grant license extensions to plants across the nation, which means more waste. The three reactors at Oconee Nuclear Station can operate until 2033 and 2034.
A study last year concluded that even if the Yucca Mountain dump were built, limited capacity would maroon 2,423 metric tons of waste in the state, the most in the nation, according to the Environmental Working Group. Oconee Nuclear Station alone could be stuck with 1,095 metric tons, the group said.
South Carolina generates more than half of its energy by nuclear power, while the national average is about 20 percent.
Rita Sipe, a Duke Power spokeswoman, declined to release how much waste the company keeps at the plant but said it can add "module" canisters as needed.
She said the Charlotte-based company remains confident the government will build Yucca Mountain.
"The technology is there," she said.
