Experts To Study Threat Of Quakes To Nuke Dump Energy Department Fears Buildings Are Vulnerable

Three top earthquake experts will visit Idaho to analyze the quake risk at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

The scientists also are studying the earthquake threat at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, likely to become the nation’s first high-level radioactive waste dump. They are expected to meet in Idaho late this month or early in October.

Yucca Mountain and the INEEL have some similarities, including concerns that a big jolt could trigger catastrophic nuclear spills.

The question in Nevada is whether the mountain is stable enough to entomb the worst kinds of waste for thousands of years. The question in Idaho is whether a once-a-millennium quake could hit in the foreseeable future, and where its energy would be released.

Adding urgency to the work in Idaho are continuing rail shipments of nuclear waste being brought in for temporary storage, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s acknowledgment that some buildings may be vulnerable to major shaking.

Geology crews are wrapping up a summer’s worth of slicing, poking, and probing the terrain around the INEEL.

The three-member panel coming to review their work consists of: John Anderson, a geophysicist and associate director at the University of Nevada Seismological Laboratory, chairman of the Nevada Seismic Safety Council and member of a National Academy of Sciences panel on seismic activities; Norm Abrahamson, a California-based seismologist who is among the most sought-after U.S. experts on ground motion; and Dianne Doser, a geophysicist at the University of Texas-El Paso who specializes in near-surface geophysics as it relates to environmental problems.

Two drill holes were punched into the ground at the INEEL to study geological formations, and trenches were scraped to better understand the geological history of the surrounding terrain.

It is unknown whether a local quake could damage the Energy Department complex.