Timeline / What's Next

• January 10, 2002: Secretary Abraham notifies Nevada of its recommendation of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump. DOE has 30 days to forward this recommendation to President Bush.
• February 15, 2002: President Bush recommends to Congress that Yucca Mountain be opened.
• April 2002: Nevada submitted their veto of the President's recommendation.
• May 2002: The House of Representatives voted to override the veto in May.
• June 2002: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted to approve the presidential site recommendation. A full Senate vote is expected any day, so we are now focusing on the Senate to urge them to defeat the Yucca Mountain Project.
• If the Senate overrides Nevada's veto: The Dept. of Energy has 90 days to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for operation of the site. NRC must first accept the license (which triggers a process of technical review of the site and public hearing) and then must approve the license.

Talking Points on Yucca Mountain

OPENING YUCCA MOUNTAIN INCREASES SAFETY, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND TERRORIST RISKS.

• Transporting tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste across US highways and rails, many of which are in poor condition, poses extremely serious safety and terrorist threats. These threats were not adequately analyzed before September 11th and are certainly underestimated since September 11th.

• DOE knows the geology of Yucca Mtn. is inadequate to contain the waste so it is relying on the waste containers to do the job. But the containers are vulnerable to corrosion and are inadequately tested, , the DOE has relied on computer simulated tests on smaller scale casks then on the real transport casks themselves.

THE RECOMMENDATION TO OPEN YUCCA MOUNTAIN IS NOT BASED ON SOUND SCIENCE.

• DOE has relied heavily on modeling and not actual testing. The material that will contain the waste has not even been tested to the temperatures DOE itself says will be present in the repository.

• With inadequate data, DOE is claiming this site will perform adequately for 10,000 years. In just the last 20 years many flaws in the site and waste containers have been discovered and remain unresolved.
• The Yucca Mtn. site sits above the Ghost Dance earthquake fault line and is close to at least 33 other known faults. These faults are active.

OPENING YUCCA MOUNTAIN WILL NOT SOLVE OUR NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM.

• · Yucca Mtn. is only able to hold 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive nuclear waste, the amount of nuclear waste currently in commercial reactors. However, these reactors will continue to produce more waste and Yucca Mtn. won't be able to contain it.

• The immediate risk of keeping the nuclear waste at the current reactors will not disappear with the opening of Yucca Mtn. The waste is to be transported to Yucca Mtn. over a course of 24 years.
• The Bush Energy Plan calls for doubling the number of nuclear reactors in the US by 2040. Yucca Mountain is only designed to contain the waste from existing reactors.

THE CHOICE OF YUCCA MOUNTAIN IS UNFAIR TO NEVADANS AND THE WESTERN SHOSHONE NATION.

• Yucca Mountain is on sacred Western Shoshone land and is being used without their permission.

• Nevada has no nuclear reactors, but is proposed as the dump site for the nuclear waste from all the reactors in the country. Nevadans are strongly opposed to the dump, but it is being forced upon them.

• The government has allowed weaker radiation standards for the Yucca Mountain site than is allowed elsewhere under the Clean Water Act.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) Report on Yucca Mountain - Brief Summary

The GAO is part of the investigative arm of Congress. GAO reports are prepared at the request of Congress and examine issues such as federal programs and policies and the use of public funds. They provide analyses, recommendations, and other assistance to help Congress make informed oversight, policy, and funding decisions. The December 2001 GAO report on Yucca Mountain was prepared at the request of Senator Harry Reid (NV) and Rep. Shelley Berkeley (NV) after an anonymous letter from a Yucca Mountain worker raised serious allegations about the management of the project.

GAO REPORT FINDINGS:

• The report concludes it would be premature for the Secretary of Energy to recommend Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository for 77,000 metric tons of radioactive waste because many technical issues remain unresolved. Energy Secretary Abraham recommended the site anyway.

• The report said the Department of Energy (DOE) is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening a repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010 and currently does not have a reliable estimate of when, and at what cost, such a repository can be opened.

• 293 technical issues have yet to be resolved before the site can be opened. For example, additional study is needed on how water would flow through the repository area to the underlying groundwater and on the durability of waste containers which are needed to last tens of thousands of years.

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