Abstract
Mounting debate
“The decision-making process
must be fair, open, and transparent. Yet, the drive for a Yucca Mountain repository has exhibited none of these attributes.”
In “Stuck on a Solution” (May/June 2006 Bulletin), Allison Mac-farlane provides an insightful and notably clear discussion of the factors contributing to the continued troubled status of the proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. It's always gratifying to those of us in Nevada when someone with a scientific background faithfully researches and reports the policy and technology quagmire that is Yucca Mountain. Unlike our European and Canadian counterparts, the United States has yet to engage in critical reassessments about potential nuclear waste disposal options.
In 1999, as governor-elect, I joined my predecessor, Governor Bob Miller, in reiterating the site's unsafe nature to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. With the benefit of seven more years of scientific investigation, it remains clear that Yucca Mountain should have been disqualified as a repository under the Energy Department's Site Recommendation Guidelines. Instead, Energy revised the guidelines, eliminating Yucca Mountain's pre-established disqualifying conditions from the site suitability evaluation. In 2002, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended Yucca Mountain to President George W. Bush as a suitable repository. Hence, Congress, overriding my statutory Notice of Disapproval, designated the site for a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. To succeed in the essential task of protecting people and the environment from the unprecedented dangers of nuclear waste now and in the future, the unqualified safety of a repository is paramount. The decision-making process must be fair, open, and transparent. Yet, for the past 20 years, the drive for a Yucca Mountain repository has exhibited none of these attributes.
Kenny C. Guinn
Governor, State of Nevada
“Stuck on a Solution” gives a thorough analysis of the effort to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. It identifies many of the problems with the science underpinning the proposed repository–including the impossibility of forecasting geochemi-cal interaction and threats posed by the area's water flow and volcanic activity.
Unfortunately, from the moment my home state of Nevada was designated as the recipient of our nation's nuclear waste, the process has ignored such science. The Energy Department overlooks the science because it wants to open Yucca Mountain at any cost, eschewing all safety and efficiency concerns. In Nevada, we do not take the health and security of our families lightly, and we will not stand silent in this battle.
Nor are we alone in questioning Yucca Mountain's feasibility. Most scientists agree that a viable, safe, and secure alternative to a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain could be a reality within a decade. Already, on-site dry cask storage–one possible alternative–is in use at 34 sites throughout the country. The Nuclear Energy Institute projects that 83 of the 103 active reactors will possess dry cask storage by 2050. With this in mind, I've introduced the Spent Fuel On-Site Storage and Security Act–along with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The act mandates that nuclear waste remain stored at its production facility and requires the federal government to take responsibility for possession, stewardship, maintenance, and monitoring of the waste while searching for a solution predicated on solid science.
The Clonk
UPDATES
So much for banning Iran from the World Cup as a means of deterring its nuclear ambitions (“Bad Sports,” May/June 2006 Bulletin). Trapped in a tough group that included soccer powers Portugal and Mexico, Iran left the 2006 World Cup with the same number of wins as the United States–zero. In terms of national agony, the poor performance seemed to trump the pre-Cup talk of banishment. “The Iranian team arrived in Tehran last night,” ESPN.com reported upon the team's return home. “There were around 100 police officers at the airport ‘protecting’ the team amid fears that angry fans would turn violent…. The generally well-behaved Iranian fans did not even bother showing up as the country is going through a footballing depression right now.”
Another frustrating moment for Iran during the World Cup.
In “Bomb-Grade Bazaar” (March/April 2006 Bulletin), Alan Kuperman rebuked the Canadian company MDS Nordion for refusing to wean itself from highly enriched uranium (HEU) when manufacturing medical isotopes. But Nordion now seems to be having second thoughts. In June, Grant Malkoske, Nordion's vice president for technology, told the Ottawa Citizen that he recognizes his company's supply of HEU could be disrupted by future export-control policies arising from growing concerns over global security and nuclear proliferation. “The question that I always struggle with is, what will the geopolitical situation be like three, five, or ten years from now, and do we want to keep struggling with this issue?” he said. “To stand aside from that and think that the world will be okay is not a good thing to do.”
What does this mean to Kuperman's trained ear? “Nordion seems to be almost wilting under the pressure,” he says. “But I'll believe it when I see it.”
The choice is clear. We can either spend an additional $60 billion on a mountain filled with unpredictable seismic activity, or we can allocate a fraction of that money to safely store nuclear waste on-site while investing in recycling technology to turn one of the world's most toxic substances into a clean energy alternative.
Sen. John Ensign
Republican, Nevada
Allison Macfarlane misplaces the emphasis in her skepticism about performance assessment modeling at Yucca Mountain. Macfarlane rightly criticizes this repository project; but rather than sweepingly dismiss performance modeling, she should have pointed out the Energy Department's failure to craft a repository design that exploits the site's natural characteristics and employs well-understood diffusion phenomena.
In “Proof of Safety at Yucca Mountain” (October 21, 2005 Science), we addressed Energy's missed opportunity. Since the site resides 200-300 meters above the water table, movement of water in the rock is slight and occurs only through fractures. But the presence of high humidity and oxygen in repository tunnels means waste containers need protection from corrosion.
Modeling the complex corrosion process over many tens of thousands of years as it affects key elements in Energy's most recent designs–a nickel-alloy outer layer for the waste container and a titanium “drip shield” over the container–is not a credible undertaking. We advocate a capillary barrier concept. First, a layer of coarse gravel is placed around waste containers; then a layer of fine sand is draped over the gravel. Strong capillary forces in the sand would seize any water dripping from the tunnel ceiling and move it slowly away. Proof of safety turns on the gravel layer, however, where capillary forces are absent.
Ultimately, the containers fail by corrosion from the omnipresent water vapor and oxygen. But the radioactive elements that emerge to form a thin coating on gravel particles would diffuse so slowly within the gravel that they're effectively trapped. Compared to corrosion chemistry, such diffusion serves as a far simpler physical process that lends itself to laboratory mock-ups and extrapolations over vast periods of time. Although absolute proof of safety remains beyond reach, the capillary barrier concept deserves urgent attention and testing.
Luther J. Carter
Independent journalist, author Washington, D.C.
Thomas H. Pigford
Professor emeritus of nuclear engineering University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, California
Allison Macfarlane correctly concludes that a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain serves as “the best solution to the nuclear waste problem.” However, Macfarlane errs in arguing that science does not prove Yucca Mountain's viability as a repository. Twenty years of study by more than 2,500 scientists at the most prestigious U.S. national laboratories and at the world's leading universities has overwhelmingly proved its viability.
Macfarlane similarly misses the mark in contending that performance assessment isn't a valid tool for appraising repository safety. For years, scientists have understood that they must account for a wide range of complex factors when considering the long-term isolation of nuclear waste. To do so, they've developed an analytical methodology known as safety assessment, also called performance assessment. These assessment tools include comprehensive models of all repository systems that simulate how these systems interact during a broad range of future scenarios.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, whose work Macfarlane cites to support her assertion that performance assessments don't work, actually reached the opposite conclusion. The agency devoted an entire chapter to the subject in its 2003 report, “Scientific and Technical Basis for the Geological Disposal of Radioactive Wastes,” deducing, “Safety can be evaluated … using Safety Assessment/Performance Assessment as the main tools.”
Based on this comprehensive scientific research, the nuclear energy industry believes quite confidently that Yucca Mountain meets the requirements for safely disposing of used nuclear fuel.
Rod McCullum
Director for Yucca Mountain Project, Nuclear Energy Institute, Washington, D.C.
Rod McCullum is incorrect when he writes that I believe Yucca Mountain provides “the best solution to the nuclear waste problem.” I stated that a geologic repository is the best solution, not Yucca Mountain. Moreover, his defense of Yucca based on the amount of time and money the Energy Department has spent on the project is specious. Time and money don't necessarily equal meaningful results. McCullum also misunderstands my objections to the use of performance assessment to determine Yucca's compliance with EPA standards. On thermodynamic grounds it's impossible to validate performance assessment models; therefore Energy's case supporting performance assessment results falls apart.
Finally, though interesting, Luther Carter and Thomas Pigford's idea of a capillary barrier reflects another engineered solution for a proposed nuclear waste repository with inadequate geology. Wouldn't it make more sense to select a more suitable site instead?
Avner Cohen and William Burr reveal some interesting new material concerning Israel's desire to possess a nuclear deterrent (“Israel Crosses the Threshold,” May/June 2006 Bulletin). But they add a sentence at the article's conclusion that cannot remain unad-dressed. They state, “Without open acknowledgement of Israel's nuclear status by Israel itself … the inclusion of Israel in an updated Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime cannot even be properly discussed.”
To say that Israel refuses to tell the truth about its nuclear capability is irrelevant. Post-World War II, Israelis understood that “nuclear deterrence,” not a “treaty,” ensured their survival against an attack by an assortment of Muslim nations. And Israel made clear decades ago that if attacked by Saddam Hussein, it would harshly retaliate.
Deterrence works. In their decades-long border dispute, India and Pakistan ignored the NPT when developing deliverable nuclear weapons. Only now, they will not invade each other. As for the legality of their arsenals, they pointed to the last paragraph of the NPT, which states that any country threatened with attack can withdraw from the treaty.
For a broader solution, the United Nations should replace the NPT with its own arsenal of nuclear weapons, which would be used for deterrence purposes only. Roger Speed made such a proposal 10 years ago, but the arms control community ignored it because they held little confidence in the United Nations as a worldwide nuclear deterrent force. Recently I made a similar proposal. With an ever-evolving and globalized United Nations now made possible by the information revolution, I believe that a U.N. deterrent force against nuclear weapon use will indeed someday replace the NPT.
Sherman Frankel
Professor emeritus of physics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The recent twentieth anniversary of Chernobyl's traumatic nuclear accident was marked with journalistic flourishes, including Michael Flynn's “Chernobyl: Hardly the Last Word” (March/April 2006 Bulletin). But Flynn and others paid little attention to the good news–the remarkably few medical casualties resulting from the accident. A number of international commissions that thoroughly investigated the accident found no more than 60 emergency workers died of injuries and acute radiation; no physical public health impact explicitly attributed to radiation exposure; no unambiguous evidence for an increased cancer incidence; no excess radiation-induced leukemia; no detectable genetic damage; and no birth defects due to radiation exposure. They did find a few thyroid cancer fatalities, but they are not necessarily associated with the Chernobyl radiation release.
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While the number of Chernobyl-caused premature deaths among the 600,000 most exposed individuals remains difficult to ascertain, the best estimates now place the upper limit at 4,000. Actual premature fatalities could number as low as zero, far less than well-publicized speculation that radiation exposure would lead to tens or hundreds of thousands of future cancer deaths.
The international scientific consensus formulated from Chernobyl is supported by more rigorous epidemiological studies. Chronic low doses of radiation didn't harm workers at U.S. nuclear shipyards. The oft-cited Hiroshima-Nagasaki studies show that more than half the 86,500 survivors remained alive 60 years after the 1945 bombings. And radon in basements is significantly less harmful than widely feared.
Far from Chernobyl, hundreds of thousands of residents were unnecessarily and permanently displaced from their homes, thus intensifying mass psychological trauma, great economic losses, and disturbing social consequences. Huge numbers of individuals experienced paralyzing fatalism due to hyped myths and misperceptions about low-level radiation. Based on predictions that have not materialized, individuals and organizations who forecast an enormous increase in cancer from small doses of radiation have further amplified an unreasonable public burden.
Despite serving as the worst possible nuclear-reactor catastrophe, the Chernobyl self-destruction resulted in two positives–a comparatively small death toll considering the magnitude of the incident and major improvements in reactor design and operation.
Alexander DeVolpi
Coauthor, Nuclear Shadowboxing: Contemporary Threats from Cold War Weaponry Plainfield, Illinois
Thank you for drawing attention to the successful reintegration of child soldiers into Mozambique society (“Lost Boys Found,” May/June 2006 Bulletin). With more than 300,000 children involved in conflicts worldwide and 10 percent of the world's combatants reportedly as young as six years old, we must continue to enhance reintegration programs.
Family and community treatment of former child soldiers often disintegrates over time, making long-term follow-up a crucial portion of successful reintegration programs. To wit, foster families often force unrelated former-child soldiers to work in the fields while allowing biological children to attend school. Follow-up support would identify such unhealthy situations and find alternative living arrangements.
Likewise, some former female child soldiers turn to prostitution because their relatives don't give them enough money for food and other necessities. Here, education is essential. By providing former female combatants with basic literacy and math skills, they will develop the necessary prerequisites for employment and self-sufficiency. Re-integration programs could also better address girls' needs by implementing sensitization campaigns about the value of education for all children and by providing free or low-cost child care so young mothers can attend school or vocational training programs.
Ultimately, however, we must eliminate the need for reintegration programs by ending poverty-driven conflicts worldwide.
Kari Hill
Kalispell, Montana
My review of The Jasons by Ann Fink-beiner (“Brain Trust,” May/June 2006 Bulletin) contained some minor errors that need correcting [see below]. On other points, some could quibble with issues of interpretation. For example, I castigated the author for calling Pupin Hall at Columbia a lab. While it housed a lab, the entire building was the target for antiwar activists protesting Columbia physicists' work with the Jasons on the Vietnam War.
Similarly, when I stated that the Bush administration defunded the Jasons, my confusion arose from three details: Finkbeiner's account that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Jason's longtime Pentagon sponsor, ended its relationship with the group; her statement that “as of January 2002 Jason had no money”; and her description of negotiations with the research and engineering office as “slow.” Fink-beiner never returned to the subject, thus not specifying what final arrangement emerged.
John Prados
Washington, D.C.