Another delay may make Nevada residents happy, but it has potentially lethal ramifications for South Carolinians and Georgians in the vicinity of the Savannah River Site, home to 37 million gallons of nuclear waste.
A decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., Circuit has complicated use of the Yucca Mountain site, which was agreed upon by federal officials two decades ago. The project is now more than a decade behind schedule and could take up to another decade if Congress doesn't act to resolve the issue quickly.
The Environmental Protection Agency standards for the Yucca Mountain repository guarantees that radiation in groundwater won't exceed drinking water standards for 10,000 years. The Court of Appeals says the law calls for a longer period of time, maybe 300,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences has suggested a period of up to a million years.
Regardless of what the court rules, South Carolinians and Georgians are at risk because of the 37 million gallons of radioactive nuclear waste stored in 49 tanks at SRS. Recent reports say that 15 of the tanks have cracks. While methods have been devised using glassification and concrete to stabilize the storage, a permanent solution in a central storage area must be applied sooner rather than later. The environmental danger is enormous and Congress must enact the solution.
The U.S. Department of Energy has pledged to file the license application for the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas by the end of the year, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it may have to delay its evaluation of the Yucca Mountain project license application, according to Commissioner Edward McGaffigan, until a decision is made or the radiation protection standards are revised.
While the court thinks that a period greater than 10,000 years is necessary to comply with the law, common sense should dictate that leaking storage containers at SRS and the vast quantity of on-site storage of nuclear waste for commercial reactors required of the nation's electrical utilities dictates a more environmental-friendly plan.
Federal authorities agreed more than 20 years ago on the central repository. The government already has spent $9 billion to provide that repository in the middle of a mountain that is probably as safe as any place on earth, especially the SRS, which is near the Georgia border in earthquake-prone South Carolina.
This issue demands Congress's immediate attention. It shouldn't take another decade -- or longer -- before a solution is found.