Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository - The Facility

The Facility

The purpose of the Yucca Mountain project is to comply with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and develop a national site for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste storage. The management and operating contractor as of April 1, 2009 for the project is USA Repository Services (USA-RS) (a consortium of government contractors, URS Corporation, Shaw Corporation and Areva Federal Services LLC). Following the layoff of 800 employees on March 31, 2009, the consortium had about 100 employees remaining on the project prior to all being laid off by the end of the 2010 financial year due to zero funding in the 2011 budget for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Sandia National Laboratories had the scientific responsibility for post closure analysis and ensuring compliance with the NWPA for one million years. The main tunnel of the Exploratory Studies Facility is U-shaped, 5 mi (8.0 km) long and 25 ft (7.6 m) wide. There are also several cathedral-like alcoves that branch from the main tunnel. It is in these alcoves that most of the scientific experiments are conducted. The emplacement drifts (smaller diameter tunnels branching off the main tunnel) where waste would have been stored were not constructed since they required a construction authorization by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The repository has a statutory limit of 77,000 metric tons (85,000 short tons). To store this amount of waste requires 40 miles (64 km) of tunnels. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act further limits the capacity of the repository to 63,000 metric tons (62,000 long tons; 69,000 short tons) of initial heavy metal in commercial spent fuel. The 104 U.S. commercial reactors currently operating will produce this quantity of spent fuel by 2014, assuming that the spent fuel rods are not reprocessed. Currently, the US has no civil reprocessing plant. By 2008, Yucca Mountain was one of the most studied pieces of geology in the world with the United States having invested US$9 billion on the project. The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that it has over 100 million U.S. gallons of highly radioactive waste and 2,500 metric tons (2,800 short tons) of spent fuel from the production of nuclear weapons and from research activities in temporary storage. The cost of the facility is being paid for by a combination of a tax on each kilowatt hour of nuclear power and by the taxpayers for disposal of weapons and naval nuclear waste. Based on the 2001 cost estimate, approximately 73 percent is funded from consumers of nuclear powered electricity and 27 percent by the taxpayers. The latest Total System Life Cycle Cost presented to Congress on July 15, 2008 by Director Sproat is $90 billion. This cost, however, cannot be compared to previous estimates since it includes a repository capacity about twice as large as previously estimated over a much longer period of time (100 years vs 30 years). Additionally, the cost of the project continues to escalate due to the lack of sufficient funding to most efficiently move forward and complete the project. In 2007, the DOE announced it was seeking to double the size of the Yucca Mountain repository to a capacity of 135,000 metric tons (149,000 short tons), or 300 million pounds.

The tunnel boring machine (TBM) that excavated the main tunnel cost $13 million and was 400 ft (120 m) in length when in operation. It now sits at its exit point at the South Portal (south entrance) of the facility. The short side tunnel alcoves were excavated using explosives.