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Yucca Mountain Head Offers Optimism Over Project By Joe Fiorill WASHIGTON — The leader of the Yucca Mountain project yesterday presented senators with an optimistic evaluation of the state of the U.S. nuclear waste repository project (see GSN, Jan. 27). The long-running Nevada project is intended to provide permanent, consolidated storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste, including spent fuel from the nation’s nuclear power reactors. Testifying before the Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee, Theodore Garrish played down criticisms of the project over recent setbacks. The program was forced last year to delay a self-imposed deadline for submitting a license application, and an appellate court ruled in a suit brought by Nevada that the department would have to increase radiation protection at the site (see GSN, July 15, 2004). “There has been a lot of comment about this program being unable to move forward,” said Garrish, who is deputy director of the Energy Department’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. “On the contrary, the program is as well situated as it has ever been. Indeed, we are in excellent shape for the future, and we are moving ahead deliberately, step-by-step, toward development of a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain.” The department now says it plans to submit the Nuclear Regulatory Commission application by the end of this year for the project, which is scheduled to begin operating in 2010. Among reasons for his optimism, Garrish cited lawsuits upholding the legality of the site’s use, the existence of a draft license application that is “in the process of refinement,” the beginning “in earnest” of activity related to transporting waste to the site and the inclusion by President George W. Bush’s administration in its fiscal 2006 budget proposal of “full funding” for planned Yucca Mountain activities. The budget request, which was the reason for yesterday’s hearing, includes $651 million for the waste repository. Garrish called fiscal 2006 a “crucial period” for the effort to obtain authorization to build the facility, since much of the work planned for that year “is required to advance the repository design and facilitate construction and operation and to support the NRC’s review and the department’s defense of the license application.” He said fiscal 2006 funding would also support work toward a 300-mile rail line and development of transportation casks and cars. In other testimony before the subcommittee, the Energy Department’s principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management, Paul Golan, outlined the administration’s $6.5 billion budget request for radioactive cleanup activities, which includes more than $5 billion for speeding cleanup at nuclear defense sites. The cleanup chief said the request reflects a 7.8 percent cut from fiscal 2005, which he said reflects recent cost-cutting through risk management, rather than a reduction in work activities. “We committed that if we could eliminate urgent risks and associated fixed costs, then, starting in FY 2006, we would request a declining level of funding to complete our work,” Golan said. “The investments of 2003 through 2005 have allowed us to lower the infrastructure costs, complete work, reduce high-cost security areas and pull work forward. Thus, we have reduced fixed costs, allowing a greater proportion of our funds to go to actual cleanup, a trend we will continue to improve upon.” Listing accomplishments in fiscal 2004, Golan said the department finished “packaging all excess plutonium into a safe long-term storage configuration,” in part by shortening timelines for the process at the Savannah River and Hanford sites, and managed to “retrieve spent fuel from all aging water-filled pools and plac[e] it into dry storage or modern, more robust storage pools.” Since the Environmental Management program’s “nuclear materials stabilization mission is by and large completed,” he said, “the EM program is evolving into more a radiological and industrial facilities deconstruction program.” Golan’s prepared statement included a highly detailed, site-by-site description of his office’s plans under the fiscal 2006 budget for cleanup activities at 14 separate facilities.
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