What does 'Yucca Mountain' mean to you? To many of us, it conjures a number of
things, most of them unfavorable. A nondescript ridge along the western boundary of what used to be called the Nevada Test Site. Government incompetence and duplicity. DoE SNAFU. Political payoff. Screw Nevada bill. Boondoggle. FUBAR. Politics. Gravy train. WTF? Good science. Politics. Here's my take.
You get the picture. But whether you do or not, Too Hot To Touch by William M. (Bill) Alley (herein referred to as WA) and spouse Rosemarie Alley (herein referred to as RA) is must reading (don't confuse it with the bodice-ripper (??) of the same name). Trust me - I was involved in nuclear waste, nuclear weapons, and the like
at various stages of my career, yet I still learned a lot from this book.
And if you think the issue of high-level waste (HLW) disposal/storage is settled...well, read the book.
Regarding the title of this post: you'll have to forgive me - the title of the book reminds me of an M.C. Hammer hip hop tune or two. But the full title of the book dispels any notion of pop culture or my feeble attempt at being a smart-ass: Too Hot To Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste.
Disclosures: I worked on various DoE Nevada Test Site (since renamed the Nevada National Security Site) projects while working at the Desert Research Institute from 1976 through mid-1989. None of this DoE work involved the Yucca Mountain HLW
repository, which straddles the western border of the NNSS. However, DRI did have a project, on which I worked, funded through the State of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects (then called the Nevada Nuclear Projects Office, if I recall) which provided oversight for the Yucca Mountain work. In New Mexico I also did some minor consulting work for one of the WIPP subcontractors. I was provided a free copy of the book by the publisher, Cambridge University Press. I have known the senior author, Bill Alley, for about 25 years, and greatly respect his scientific abilities and integrity.
Bill recently retired from the U.S. Geological Survey, where he most recently served as Chief of the Office of Groundwater, which was two words when he started; budget cuts forced the merger of 'ground' and 'water'. He oversaw the USGS activities on the Yucca Mountain Project from 2002 until 2010. He is now Director of Science and Technology for the NGWA. Spouse Rosemarie Alley is a literacy specialist and writer.
Here is a tag-team video of a recent talk the Alleys gave at the USGS in Menlo Park, CA.
Strong Points
1) Well-written, well-organized, even-handed, and extremely well-documented. These aspects do not surprise me, given the talents of the authors. Even a Member of Congress (well, some anyway) could understand the book.
2) The perspective.The policy and political aspects (most interesting to me these days) and the scientific/engineering aspects are both addressed. More importantly, so are their interactions.
3) The history is there - is it ever - from the very beginning. Didn't think there was any deep-well radwaste injection in the USA? How about ocean dumping? Dry storage?
4) The 'tag-team' authorship seems to be a true collaboration in every sense of the word, with WA and RA bringing different skills to the table. But the book reads as though one person wrote it, unlike some recent ones I have read. Great editing by the Alleys and editor Laura Clark.
5) Great discussion questions in the appendix. Some seem worthy of MS or PhD theses. The questions were framed by Dr. Deserai Crow at the University of Colorado.
6) Although the book's title alludes to HLW, other types of radwaste and their storage/disposal sites are discussed: Ward Valley, Hanford (enough liquid waste to fill the tank cars in a 26-mile-long train), Beatty, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. They also discuss why WIPP (bedded salt repository) would not work for the HLW from commercial power reactors.
7) Discussion of what some other countries are doing.
8) The book is very reasonably priced for a 370-page hardcover from Cambridge - $22 ($13 for the Kindle edition) from Amazon.com. Affordable for classes!
9) Great title - true on anumber of levels.
10) Some good things that came out the YMP (pages 305-306). Incredible enhancement of our knowledge of unsaturated fracture flow and mass transport. Interdisciplinary science. Seismic hazard evaluation. Volcanic hazard analysis. Natural analogues. As one of my colleagues said, "DoE was hydrogeology's NSF." Not that it wanted to be.
11) Part III - 'No Solution in Sight'
Weak Points
1) No answers for the discussion questions! Only semi-joking.
2) WA's stint as the Director of the USGS's Yucca Mountain work may cause some to question his objectivity. But the USGS was 'just' a DoE YMP contractor and I know from experience that they and the YMP folks did not always see eye-to-eye. I think I also recall an issue with QA/QC and a USGS infiltration estimation. But I don't have a problem; WA is critical of the DoE YMP when he needs to be.
Other Thoughts
What stood out is the Alleys' treatment of the 'certainty' required by society. Ensuring that no radioactivity from the YM repository reaches the 'accessible environment' in 10,000 years? 1,000,000 years? C'mon, man!
I am also amazed on how the disposal/disposition of wastes and health aspects received such short shrift when the commercial nuclear age began in 1954. The 'experts' seemed to believe that the disposal problem to be 'unimportant'. Yes, that's the word J. Robert Oppenheimer used.
The press was often times unhelpful in elucidating the facts and seprating them from opinion. But newspaper articles are not peer-reviewed. The Alleys brought this home with the story of DoE geologist Jerry Szymanski, who stirred the pot in the mid-1980s, claiming that earthquakes had periodically caused catastrophic water table rises beneath Yucca Mountain. You don't need a PhD to imagine what this would do to the radwaste stored in the repository. Szymanski was treated by the press as some sort of folk hero. I recall being asked by the State of Nevada to review part of the 'Szymanski report'. I found it wanting. No matter...even the New York Times drank the Kool-Aid.
For good measure, to illustrate the foibles of the press when it comes to science, the Alleys recount the tale of the 'expert' who predicted a major earthquake along the New Madrid (Missouri) fault zone that would be caused by alignment of the Sun, Moon, and Earth. It would occur on 3 December 1990. Seismologists discounted it, but the story persisted in the press. Nothing happened.
The Alleys lament the lack of the public's ability to place much value on facts. As they say on page 327:
It is extraordinarily difficult (if not impossible) to address the problem of high-level nuclear waste in a society where a large percentage of the public places little or no value on facts. Today's culture of infotainment, sound bites, fundamentalist religion, ideological extremism and rigidity, and the politics of fear and hate impairs reasoning and thoughful debate. As an astounding case in point, contemporary Americans are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution. Depending upon how the questions are worded, roughly 30 to 40 percent of Americans believe in each.
This passage appears on page 328:
Without their cooperation, State and local interests odften prevail over national needs. This lesson has been demonstrated repeatedly throughout the history of nuclear waste disposal. To move this mountain of instinctive opposition, citizens of the State and local jurisdiction must see a clear benefit, feel empowered to voice their concerns and have them seriously addressed, and have a basic sense of trust and fair play as the process moves along. People also need to know why it matters. This involves more than an information campaign whereby the operating agency tries to educate the public. What is long overdue is a mature dialogue, as equal partners, between an informed public and the operating agency. Short of this, it is doubtful whether the public will ever come to appreciate why it matters for society to take responsibility for its high-level nuclear waste.
This book is more than about nuclear waste disposal; it is parable for yesterday, today and what lies ahead of us. It likely could have been written about the effects of climate change, the debacle that was Hurricane Katrina, or even a discussion about a national water policy/vision. The nuclear waste issue will get ugly by 2050 when all today's commerical power reactors will be offline. So will these other things. Our work is cut out for us.
Read this book. It's an object lesson.
More than I wanted to know about our HLW program. But in this case, ignorance is not bliss.
"The [Nuclear Regulatory] Commission apparently has no long-term plan other than hoping for a geologic repository." - U.S. Court of Appeals, June 2012
"If you produce nuclear power, you just leave it where you produce the energy." - Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter." - Lewis L. Strauss, Chairman, AEC, 1954
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