As a scientist working on the Yucca Mountain Project, I object to the article ”Quake jars plans for nuclear dump” by James Coates (July 12), which exaggerates the significance of recent earthquakes for the nuclear waste disposal program. The scientists are not trying to convince critics ”that nothing can go wrong at their proposed reactor waste burial site.” We seek to evaluate the risks and determine whether the site is suitable for waste disposal.
Nothing about the magnitude 5.6 earthquake on June 29 requires a change of planning, nor did the location of the epicenter 12 kilometers away cause any dismay to the scientists. The seismic risk was evaluated in a preliminary study of site suitability. It projected larger earthquakes, closer to the facilities, than this one.
The article omitted the fact that a tunnel within Little Skull Mountain
(the epicenter) showed no damage from the quake. As for underground facilities worldwide, the seismic risk is less for an underground repository at Yucca Mountain than for aboveground facilities.
The fact that 30 percent of the windows (not ”virtually every window”)
were broken and some ceiling tiles fell (the ceilings did not collapse) tells very little about the risk even to aboveground waste-handling buildings. These will be designed to last far longer than the five years the damaged building was intended to last (when it was built in the 1960s), and to be resistant to accelerations five to seven times that caused by this quake. Carl Gertiz`s press release, far from ”putting the best possible light on the quake,”
accurately portrays the scientific import of the event.
