YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROJECT RECOMMENDATION BY THE SECRETARY OF ENERGY REGARDING THE SUITABILITY OF THE YUCCA MOUNTAIN SITE FOR A REPOSITORY UNDER THE NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY ACT OF 1982

Technical Report · Tue Mar 26 00:00:00 EST 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/883370· OSTI ID:883370

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For more than half a century, since nuclear science helped us win World War II and ring in the Atomic Age, scientists have known that !he Nation would need a secure, permanent facility in which to dispose of radioactive wastes. Twenty years ago, when Congress adopted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA or ''the Act''), it recognized the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that the best option for such a facility would be a deep underground repository. Fifteen years ago, Congress directed the Secretary of Energy to investigate and recommend to the President whether such a repository could be located safely at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Since then, our country has spent billions of dollars and millions of hours of research endeavoring to answer this question. I have carefully reviewed the product of this study. In my judgment, it constitutes sound science and shows that a safe repository can be sited there. I also believe that compelling national interests counsel in favor of proceeding with this project. Accordingly, consistent with my responsibilities under the NWPA, today I am recommending that Yucca Mountain be developed as the site for an underground repository for spent fuel and other radioactive wastes. The first consideration in my decision was whether the Yucca Mountain site will safeguard the health and safety of the people, in Nevada and across the country, and will be effective in containing at minimum risk the material it is designed to hold. Substantial evidence shows that it will. Yucca Mountain is far and away the most thoroughly researched site of its kind in the world. It is a geologically stable site, in a closed groundwater basin, isolated on thousands of acres of Federal land, and farther from any metropolitan area than the great majority of less secure, temporary nuclear waste storage sites that exist in the country today. This point bears emphasis. We are not confronting a hypothetical problem. We have a staggering amount of radioactive waste in this country--nearly 100,000,000 gallons of high-level nuclear waste and more than 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel with more created every day. Our choice is not between, on the one hand, a disposal site with costs and risks held to a minimum, and, on the other, a magic disposal system with no costs or risks at all. Instead, the real choice is between a single secure site, deep under the ground at Yucca Mountain, or making do with what we have now or some variant of it--131 aging surface sites, scattered across 39 states. Every one of those sites was built on the assumption that it would be temporary. As time goes by. every one is closer to the limit of its safe life span. And every one is at least a potential security risk--safe for today, but a question mark in decades to come.

• Research Organization: Yucca Mountain Project, Las Vegas, NV (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: NA
• OSTI ID: 883370
• Report Number(s): NA; HQO.20020325.0002 DC#47364; TRN: US0603405
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE WASTES, AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
AGING
LIFE SPAN
METRICS
NUCLEAR FUELS
NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY ACTS
RADIOACTIVE WASTES
RECOMMENDATIONS
SAFEGUARDS
SAFETY
SECURITY
SPENT FUELS
STORAGE
URBAN AREAS
YUCCA MOUNTAIN