March 27, 1998

Quakes Might Hit Planned Waste Site

Filed at 1:37 a.m. EST

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New questions have arisen about plans to bury thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste in the Nevada desert after a finding that the region may be more susceptible to earthquakes and volcanic activity than previously thought.

The site at Yucca Mountain could have an earthquake or lava flow every 1,000 years, or 10 times more frequently than earlier estimates by government geologists, a study concluded. The wastes would remain deadly for tens of thousands of years.

Researcher Brian Wernicke of the California Institute of Technology said his findings should not necessarily disqualify Yucca Mountain for permanent burial of nuclear spent fuel and other highly radioactive atomic wastes.

But he added, ``This is something that can't be ignored in evaluating the hazards'' of building the repository about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Energy Department officials said they were not discounting the findings, detailed in today's edition of Science magazine. But they said they did not believe it would rule out the Nevada location.

``We will be evaluating this information to provide a more definitive finding,'' said Tim Sullivan, a lead geologist on the Yucca Mountain project.

But critics, including Nevada state officials and environmentalists, said the research provided additional evidence that the Yucca Mountain geology was suspect when considering a burial site for material that will remain deadly for such a long time.

``It continues to demonstrate that the site is a geologically active area,'' said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Project Office, a state agency charged with monitoring the Yucca Mountain selection process.

The Energy Department views Yucca Mountain as ``an island of stability in the region. We've always questioned that,'' Loux said in a telephone interview.

``This is just one more straw on the camel's back,'' said Arjun Makhijani, a physicist and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Silver Spring, Md. He has been critical of the government's nuclear waste program and long has considered the Yucca Mountain site as ill-conceived.

The site is not far from where the government conducted nuclear tests through the 1950s and 1960s.

It is the only location being considered for burial of the high-level radioactive wastes now kept at civilian power plants and at federal atomic weapons sites. Once complete, possibly around 2010, it is expected to hold more than 70,000 tons of waste nearly 1,000 feet below the surface.

The Energy Department later this year will release a preliminary ``viability'' analysis of the site, but a more detailed environmental assessment will not be finished until 2001. The department says Yucca Mountain in all likelihood will be found acceptable.

The region had volcanic and earthquake activity thousands of years ago, but such activity has been rare, Wernicke said.

In his research, Wernicke used satellites to measure small ground motions in the Yucca Mountain region and found that the movement, or stretching, of the Earth's crust was as much as .06 inch a year, must greater than previously estimated.

``The rate (of movement or strain) that we measured was unexpectedly high,'' he said. ``We interpreted that as indicating that Yucca Mountain may be in a period of higher potential for earthquake or volcanoes than what might normally be the case if you just look at the geological record.''

Three years ago, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory raised the possibility that the buried wastes might explode as a result of an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction, reaching so-called criticality. That concern has since been ``pretty well discounted'' said Erik Olds, a spokesman for the Yucca Mountain project.

Last year, scientists found evidence that water -- as little as there is in the desert region -- may be moving through the soil and rock much faster than previously thought, raising concern about future groundwater contamination.