Last year, the state won its biggest legal victory when a federal appeals court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency's standard for radiation emissions from the dump violated federal law. Now, instead of ensuring public safety for 10,000 years, peak radiation emissions must be safe over the life of the dump, potentially 1 million years.
Whether such health standards can be met is unknown. EPA officials say they will propose a new standard this year, though outside experts say it could take years to finalize a rule. Until then, the Energy Department has no hope of getting a license for the dump.
As a result, Energy officials say the project to safely bury nuclear waste from power plants and bomb production will be delayed two more years beyond the projected June 2010 startup. Even before the latest setback, the effort was running 12 years behind its original schedule.
The goal is to use the geology of the mountain and highly engineered containers to safely isolate radioactive waste, now stored at 131 sites across the country.
So, far, the project has cost $8 billion and could end up costing an estimated $100 billion, rivaling the International Space Station's price tag.
The program suffered another setback Friday when its director, Margaret Chu, resigned, citing "personal circumstances." The resignation came less than two weeks after Samuel Bodman was confirmed as Energy secretary and assured Congress he was "focused" on moving Yucca Mountain along faster, something Chu was not able to accomplish.
"Without a miracle of some sort, it is all over," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Office for Nuclear Projects, the state's lead agency that deals with Yucca Mountain. Other state officials echo that conclusion.
Even Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M..), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the Energy Department's budget, acknowledges political problems.
"It is very hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel," he said.
In a recent book, Domenici argued for an aggressive new era of nuclear power, calling it critical for the nation's economic future as natural gas prices rise and concerns grow about pollution from coal-fired plants. But without a solution to the nuclear waste problem, he said, utilities are unlikely to build new nuclear plants.
