The Department of Energy on Monday said the national nuclear waste repository planned at Yucca Mountain in Nevada remains unworkable, despite the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s finding last week that the facility would have a “small” impact on local groundwater.
Department spokesman Bill Wicker said by email that the NRC’s final supplement to DOE’s Yucca Mountain environmental impact statement (EIS), issued Thursday, is consistent with the department’s technical report for the site. Despite the confirmation of findings, Wicker said that “in DOE’s view, Yucca Mountain remains an unworkable solution to our nation’s nuclear waste problem.” DOE has maintained that argument on the basis that it does not hold the proper land or water rights to proceed, and has instead embarked on a “consent-based” process to find new waste storage sites.
The NRC’s 301-page supplement analyzed potential contaminant releases from the repository that could be transported through groundwater in the Death Valley region. Among the findings is that the peak estimated annual individual radiological dose over a 1 million-year period at any of the evaluated locations would be 1.3 millirems, which compares to normal background radiation exposure of 300 millirems per year.
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who along with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), has been prodding DOE to resume work on Yucca Mountain, in a statement Monday encouraged advancement of the NRC’s suspended licensing process for the Nevada facility.
“Independent scientific staff at NRC have reaffirmed the Yucca Mountain repository can safely store nuclear waste for one million years,” Shimkus’ office stated via email. “With the final EIS supplement completed, there is no excuse to further delay work on the Yucca Mountain repository. I thank the NRC staff for their hard work and I look forward to the next steps in the licensing process.”
On Tuesday, Timbisha Shoshone tribal Chairman George Gholson spoke out against the environmental report, saying the NRC did not give proper consideration to the Native American people living in the region.
“We are real. We are here,” Gholson said during a Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects meeting in Las Vegas, according to ABC News. “We can’t pick up our reservation and move it. We would end up with a contaminated reservation.”
Operating under the direction of the Nevada Governor’s Office, the agency is responsible for the health, safety, and welfare of the state in regards to federal high-level nuclear waste disposal activities.
The NRC said the final supplement analyzed impacts on minority and low-income populations in the Amargosa Valley and Death Valley National Park areas. Staff offered the opinion that these groups would not be affected any differently from the general population.
Members of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, which has opposed the Yucca Mountain repository in the past, also criticized NRC’s report. Agency chief Robert Halstead said the report validates what the group has said all along, according to ABC, that Yucca Mountain will contaminate the region’s water.
