Last week, a 6.5 magnitude earthquake shook Nevada. Nevada’s Congressional delegation and state officials are reiterating their fears about the safety of the proposed deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel to be located under Yucca Mountain about a hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas. The earthquake last week was the third earthquake within one hundred and fifty miles of the Yucca mountain repository site in the last two years. There was a 6.4 and a 7.1 earthquake in Ridgecrest, California which is about one hundred miles southwest of Yucca Mountain. These seismicity problems could pose a threat not only to the repository itself, but also the necessary associated nuclear waste transportation.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said in a recent interview that "Last week's 6.5 magnitude earthquake less than 150 miles from Yucca Mountain only solidifies what my colleagues and I in the Nevada delegation have argued in our opposition against designating Yucca as the nation's sole nuclear waste repository site. We know that this site sits atop an aquifer and is seismically active and that the proposed transportation routes to Yucca Mountain — some of which would be less than a dozen miles from this earthquake's epicenter — are close enough to communities to place them at severe risk.”
Although the Trump administration is working on abandoning the site because of state opposition, the Nevada lawmakers are still concerned. Some Republican Congressmen in Washington, D.C. are still supporting locating the repository under Yucca Mountain. At this point, the Yucca Mountain site is the only nuclear waste option that has been approved by Congress.
Last week’s earthquake was on the path of Walker Lane which is a geological trough that runs along the Nevada and California boarder. It expresses between fifteen and thirty percent of the seismic motion between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates.
Belinda Evenden is Nevada Technical Division Administrator, who is managing a new Yucca Mountain seismic hazard scoping study for the state said in an interview that, “The Tonopah earthquake, in combination with the California earthquakes and their thousands of continuing aftershocks, unequivocally validate the State's seismic hazard concerns at Yucca Mountain.” She went on to say that the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) “must perform a thorough reassessment of seismic hazards before any further consideration of Yucca Mountain for a high-level nuclear waste repository.”
Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak (D) and the Nevada Congressional delegation expressed their concern shortly after the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake in a letter they sent to the DoE. Rick Perry, the Energy Secretary at the time, reassured the Nevada lawmakers that the DoE would conduct such an analysis if Congress provided money to work on questions related to the Yucca Mountain site. No such funds have been provided by Congress in the last decade.
The DoE did conduct a seismic review of the Yucca Mountain site and the area around it. That study concluded that there was no threat level that was high enough to disrupt the facility. It stated that the geological characteristics of the Yucca Mountain site should help dissipate any earthquake vibrations. The NRC agreed with the conclusions of the study in a safety evaluation report that was issued in 2015. Secretary Perry wrote that the Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment “used the best information that was available at the time. Your letter raised an excellent point that if new data are available, a seismic reevaluation would be appropriate and useful. I share this view." He added that the previous earthquake activity in the area did not cause any damage at the Yucca Mountain site.
The Nevada officials have insisted that the existing seismic analyses that have been carried out do not fully portray the actual damage that an earthquake could have on the Yucca Mountain facility and the region. Nevada is planning on questioning two hundred contentions in the NRC licensing proceedings including the 2015 review.
Representative Dina Titus (D-Nev.) said in an interview that “The ugly truth is that if an earthquake were to hit a nuclear waste repository, not only would the people in the surrounding area be in danger but the economic impact on all Nevada would be devastating. I'll continue to lead the fight to prevent Nevada from becoming a dumping ground for the nation's nuclear waste.”