Plan for aboveground nuclear waste storage unveiled

LAS VEGAS - The Energy Department unveiled plans Friday for an aboveground site to receive highly radioactive waste destined for storage at a national nuclear waste dump in Southern Nevada.

Plans call for a 500-by-500-foot facility the department dubbed an "aging pad" that could hold up to 46.3 million pounds, or about one-third of the highly radioactive waste on its way to underground storage at the Yucca Mountain repository.

The department scaled back plans for building a facility to hold almost twice as much waste, Energy Department repository systems engineer Paul Harrington said at a nuclear waste issues conference in Washington, D.C.

The pad could be surrounded by a 300-foot barrier. Harrington declined Friday to provide details about security at the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"There would be security, certainly," he said.

Nevada lawmakers have fought proposals for temporary aboveground storage at the Nevada Test Site, which encompasses the Yucca site. Critics note that federal law prohibits interim storage in Nevada if the state is to be home to a national permanent waste repository.

The state's top anti-Yucca administrator said the state will challenge the aboveground pad and will call for the Energy Department to seek a separate Nuclear Regulatory Commission license before building it.

"We think that a facility that holds that quantity of waste is an independent fuel storage facility," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency.

Harrington said the pad was not defined as a temporary storage facility because the waste would be awaiting placement in the permanent repository.

The Energy Department has long planned to build an aboveground collection station with about 2,000 casks containing nuclear waste shipped to Yucca from 39 states around the country.

The pad would allow for sorting and cooling of intensely hot radioactive waste destined for entombment in tunnels 1,000 feet below ground. Some casks could remain above ground for up to 15 years, Harrington said.

The pad would be used for about 50 years, or about the time project planners say it will take to fill the underground repository.

The Energy Department wants to open Yucca in 2010 and fill it with up to 144 million pounds of radioactive waste. But the department missed a self-imposed Dec. 30 deadline to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The application is expected to undergo several years of review.

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On the Net:

Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov

Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov