Keith Rogers attempts to address the issues: Are volcanism and seismic activity major problems for putting nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain? But first a video is presented by an adversary of the project. Its generalizes conclusions on potential risk, revealing bias. In Rogers article reviewed below, he opens the article with warnings: "A renewed push to bury the nation’s most dangerous nuclear waste northwest of Las Vegas could hinge on competing geoscientific theories about the hazards of nearby volcanoes. If federal regulators endorse Nevada’s scientific challenge to Washington’s plans to build a repository at Yucca Mountain, the tomb for at least 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste would not be built."
Rogers goes on that if Congress sides with U.S. Department of Energy geoscientists during expected licensing hearings and don’t find other reasons to derail the massive project 100 miles from Las Vegas, construction could begin [aka could continue]. In either case, the arguments for and against a Yucca Mountain repository would be based on arcane computer models of what might or might not happen over a million years, using data gleaned from an inexact science — geology — that’s fraught with ambiguity. [These last statement reveal Rogers' shocking ignorance of the value of geology in characterizing complex geological processes over thousands and millions of years.]
“It’s an uncertainty trade-off,” acknowledges Bruce Crowe, a volcanologist from Henderson who worked for the DOE team until he retired from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2007. “So it’s defined as decision-making under uncertainty. That’s what the issue is.” Volcanoes with names like Red Cone and Black Cone have dozed harmlessly for hundreds of thousands of years just a few miles west of Yucca Mountain, in a remote part of Nye County known as Crater Flat. [Even if in the remote chance of volcanism occurs, the character of such activity in the area includes splatters cones and riffs and cinder cones, all minor events, a distinction impacting nothing a "few" away]. Before that, they oozed lava from deep below the Earth’s crust and rained rocks and ash over the Amargosa Desert. If they were to awake and do so again, with a [maybe 12 miles away?] repository full of spent fuel from private nuclear power and government defense reactors nearby, the results could be calamitous. [These statements are pure BS and constitute fear mongering without basis, also revealing the bias of Roger's agenda].
If the New administration and Congress follow through on plans to revive the Yucca Mountain Project by restarting [it would not be "re-starting" but resuming] lengthy [not necessarily "lengthy"] the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing hearings, one of the state’s new technical challenges [why addthis comment?] — in addition to 218 “contentions” accepted so far by the NRC — will argue that federal geoscientists failed to look at a big-picture model when evaluating volcano and earthquake hazards in the area [this too is "big picture" BS, with no basis in fact].
“We feel that volcanism and seismic activity are major problems for putting a repository at Yucca Mountain and should be considered as major risks,” said Eugene Smith, a professor emeritus of geology at UNLV and a volcanism expert for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. He said the two subjects need to be considered together because fault lines can become lava conduits in the event of an eruption.[These are obviously gross exaggeration of potential risk, likely taken out of context, and reveals a subtle bias against the project, likely political in nature].
The state’s geoscientists are prepared to argue in the courtlike licensing proceedings that the federal government’s theory that the volcanoes were fed by lava that flowed from the upper mantle’s top layer — the lithosphere — is incorrect. Instead, they would contend, the eruptions originated in a deeper zone, known as the asthenosphere.[The source of magma does not impact the level of risk]. Smith uses a dessert analogy involving raisin pudding to explain why the distinction is important when it comes to Yucca Mountain, itself a ridge formed by a series of volcanic eruptions of Timber Mountain, about 12 miles to the north, beginning 12 million to 13 million years ago.
Studies by the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory conducted during the 1980s and early 1990s examined the possibility that a volcanic event — possibly an explosive one — could disrupt a repository if one is built. [Another gross exaggeration on future risk]. Among other scenarios, they modeled the possibility that magma could rise through the repository area and carry off radioactive materials [Another gross exaggeration on future risk]. They concluded that the odds were so remote the possibility could be discounted.[Agreed].
Crowe, the Los Alamos volcanologist who did much of the field work [projects like this do not allow one person to do "most of the field work"] in Crater Flat decades ago, said the DOE geoscientists calculated the likelihood of a volcanic event occurring and intersecting with the repository as “three or four” in 100 million per year. [To be expected minimal risk] That would be much less than a person’s chance of being struck by lightning in a year — 1 in 960,000 — but greater than the chance of hitting last year’s $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot: 1 in 292 million.
Greg Valentine, another former Los Alamos volcanologist who worked on the Yucca Mountain Project, said government geoscientists determined that the seismic faults that run through the area probably would determine the path of magma in an eruption.[This sounds like another gross exaggeration that applies significant meaning when there is only minimal]. “Magma makes its own pathway, as a dike, until it reaches the upper 1000-2000 feet, and then if it intersects a fault it can, under the right conditions, start to follow that fault,” he said by email. “Because there are many faults in the Yucca Mountain region, most rising magma dikes intersect some type of fault.” [Roger's is cherry-picking geological reporting here]. Rogers at least acknowledges that Valentine concluded that there’s “a very small chance that lava could intrude the proposed repository. It could intrude as an underground lava flow, or it might be more explosive.”Rogers just had to add the last statement, out of context, of course].
Valentine, currently director of the Center for GeoHazards Studies at the University of Buffalo, New York, stressed that he doesn’t represent DOE and hasn’t been affiliated with the project “for many, many years.”[So what?}.
[Then from no foundation comes the statement:] Smith, 73, said the Nevada team also believes the government geoscientists erred by focusing only on volcanoes in the immediate region of Yucca Mountain and not looking at the potential that other volcanoes near Death Valley could be part of the same subterranean plumbing system.
In an attempt to ensure that nuclear waste could be safety stored inside Yucca Mountain, the Environmental Protection Agency set a two-tiered radiation safety standard that government scientists must meet: one for 10,000 years and another for 1 million years. The respective dose limits are 15 millirems and 100 millirems per year for a theoretical farmer living 11 miles south of the site, near the unincorporated town of Amargosa Valley. For comparison, EPA officials say a chest X-ray exposes a patient to 10 millirems while a mammogram results in a 30 millirem exposure. Americans are exposed to about 360 millirems a year from naturally occurring radiation in the environment.[So....Rogers indicates radiation is not at issue?]
[Worth reading the entire article with maps, etc. because Rogers bounces all over the issues hiding his agenda. See if you agree. Notice he cites no references or provides internal links to references. He does include great maps from references he should have cited in his article and in the map inserts provided].
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