Yucca Failure Due to Geology not Politics

Recently, a local news program covered the opening of the hearings on Yucca Mountain.  A number of states are suing the DOE for not allowing Yucca to open.  Unfortunately, the report was woefully negligent on the real reasons Yucca is not going to operate as planned.

Yucca Mountain's non-opening is being blamed on President Obama's seeming desire to placate Harry Reid.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Yucca Mountain is not opening for the simple reason that the geology there failed to meet the DOE’s criteria for a site that would safely isolate deadly, hot, radioactive spent fuel for the next 10,000 years.

Numerous geologic problems became apparent as the site was being built, resulting in it not being qualified to isolate the waste from the biosphere.  Fractures in the rocks of Yucca will allow large amounts of Carbon 14, a radioactive gas produced as the waste decays, to be released.  The same fractures will allow water to move through the site, compromising and eventually breaking down the metal canisters that contain the waste.  Why is the rock fractured? Ironically, this is a high earthquake zone, where more than 600 quakes have rattled the area in the last 20 years.  These earthquakes fracture the relatively soft rock (tuff) that forms this ridge.  There are 35 active fault lines in the area, including two that traverse the repository site itself.  The entire mass of Yucca is a sieve with tiny fractures that allow water and gas to flow.  As if that weren't enough, recent technology has allowed science to see the vast reservoir of magma chambers that lurk beneath the western plains, the same kinds of magma chambers that created the Snake River Plain and fuel the geothermal activities at Yellowstone.  New studies at Yucca indicate it is likely sitting above or near a large magma chamber.  Any and all of these geologic features will create disastrous problems with the goal of keeping deadly radioactive waste from entering the water table, air, or violently reacting from the impact or contact with geologic processes.

I have attended several forums on Yucca, including one led by USGS Geologist Allison MacFarlane, an expert on Yucca and nuclear waste.  She has recently been appointed to serve on Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon panel to address the issue of what to do with the increasing inventory of commercial and military high level nuclear waste.  At the most recent forum, she advised us that the only truly stable geologic formations in the United States are in the East.  The DOE knows this, and, as we speak, Eastern locations are being looked at, including salt domes along the Gulf and around the Great Lakes, and granite formations in Georgia, North Carolina, western Virginia and other Eastern granite areas.

The bottom line is that we are creating and accumulating a deadly, long lived toxic material in massive amounts that we (or any other nuclear country) don’t have ANY idea how to manage for 10,000 years.  No one wants this in their backyard, and we certainly don't want it somewhere unstable.  This is the real story the media should be covering.