Obama's Pick for Energy Sec. No Friend of Yucca Mt.

December 16, 2008

RENO, Nev. (The Associated Press) - Dec 16

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid praised President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for U.S. energy secretary on Monday, saying Steven Chu is an ally in the fight against Yucca Mountain who can help lead the country to a more energy-independent future.

Chu, a Nobel-prize winning physicist, is the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a leading advocate of reducing greenhouse gases by developing new energy sources.

He has raised concerns in the past that while the proposed nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain northwest of Las Vegas is planned to be built to standards ensuring safety for 10,000 years, the metal casings holding the waste could fail within 5,000 years.

"Steven Chu is an extremely accomplished scientist and strong choice to lead America into a more energy-independent future," Reid, D- Nev., said in a statement Monday from Washington D.C.

"He has shown that he can work beyond the confines of a national lab to tackle real-world issues and his expertise will greatly benefit our country," he said.

"Dr. Chu also knows, like most Nevadans, that Yucca Mountain is not a viable solution for dumping and dealing with nuclear waste."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., echoed Reid's sentiment.

"After eight years of battling the Bush administration, Nevada
leaders look forward to working with a president who is on our side when it comes to stopping Yucca Mountain," she said.

"No longer will we have a policy that ignores science and safety and that puts the wishes of the nuclear industry over protecting America's families and communities," Berkley said.

"Dr. Chus recognition of Yucca Mountain dangers will make him an ideal partner to work with President-elect Obama to stop nuclear waste from being dumped outside Las Vegas for the next one million years." Chu said in an interview posted on the Web site of the UC-Berkeley's NewsCenter on Sept. 30, 2005 that Yucca Mountain would be filled up with waste from all existing civilian and military nuclear operations as soon as it opened its doors.

"So we need three or four Yucca Mountains. Well, we don't have three or four Yucca Mountains," Chu said at the time.

"The other thing is that storing the fuel at Yucca Mountain is supposed to be safe for 10,000 years. But the current best estimates - and these are really estimates, the Lab's in fact - is that the metal casings (containing the waste) will probably fail on a scale of 5,000 years, plus or minus 2," he said.

"That's still a long time, and then after that the idea was that the very dense rock, very far away from the water table will contain it, so that by the time it finally leaks down to the water table and gets out the radioactivity will have mostly decayed," Chu said in the interview.

In a report to Congress last month, the Bush administration said there are no technology constraints to a major expansion of the proposed nuclear waste site in Nevada, calling for possibly tripling the amount of highly radioactive used reactor fuel that could be stored there in manmade underground caverns.

The Energy Department specifically asked that the current capacity limit of 77,000 tons of waste - imposed by Congress in 1987 - be removed to accommodate all of the waste expected to be generated at commercial power plants, many of which are likely to operate for another four decades or more.

Reid told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this month that he would block Senate confirmation of any nominee for energy secretary who supports building a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

He said on Monday that in addition to nuclear waste, he has been impressed by Chu's command and understanding of serious energy and global warming problems facing the world. He said that is why he invited him to the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas this past summer.

"I am confident that Dr. Chu will transform the Department of Energy into a smart and progressive weapon against our addiction to oil, making our economy vastly more energy efficient and bringing about a safer future," Reid said. "I look forward to confirming Dr. Chu as quickly as possible."