Post by Logan on May 11, 2016 3:47:42 GMT -6
Nevada panel, tribe call out NRC on Yucca groundwater contamination concerns
Federal plans to saddle Nevada with burying the nation’s most potent radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain were bemoaned Tuesday by the state Commission on Nuclear Projects and American Indians who would be most affected.
Questions about the potential for groundwater contamination were raised by Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects Executive Director Robert Halstead. He took aim at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s recently released final installment to the environmental impact statement for the Yucca Mountain site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The upshot, according to Halstead: NRC’s staff concedes the repository, if built, will likely release radioactive particles into the groundwater centuries after 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel from commercial power reactors and military operations is entombed in a maze of tunnels deep inside the mountain.
Although the NRC’s report says the contamination will be small, Nevada’s scientists believe it will substantially violate the 1 million-year standard at 2,000 years and contaminate traditional American Indian groundwater sources used by the Timbisha Shoshone tribe.
Read more: www.reviewjournal.com/news/yucca-mountain/nevada-panel-tribe-call-out-nrc-yucca-groundwater-contamination-concerns
Federal plans to saddle Nevada with burying the nation’s most potent radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain were bemoaned Tuesday by the state Commission on Nuclear Projects and American Indians who would be most affected.
Questions about the potential for groundwater contamination were raised by Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects Executive Director Robert Halstead. He took aim at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s recently released final installment to the environmental impact statement for the Yucca Mountain site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The upshot, according to Halstead: NRC’s staff concedes the repository, if built, will likely release radioactive particles into the groundwater centuries after 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel from commercial power reactors and military operations is entombed in a maze of tunnels deep inside the mountain.
Although the NRC’s report says the contamination will be small, Nevada’s scientists believe it will substantially violate the 1 million-year standard at 2,000 years and contaminate traditional American Indian groundwater sources used by the Timbisha Shoshone tribe.
Read more: www.reviewjournal.com/news/yucca-mountain/nevada-panel-tribe-call-out-nrc-yucca-groundwater-contamination-concerns