The purpose of the Yucca Mountain Project

For more than two decades, the Yucca Mountain Project conducted an extensive scientific effort to determine whether Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is a suitable site for a deep underground facility called a repository.

The purpose of the repository is to safely isolate highly radioactive nuclear waste in underground tunnels for at least 10,000 years.

The basic idea of a geologic repository is to place carefully packaged radioactive materials in tunnels deep underground.

This method relies on a series of barriers that prevent or slow the movement of radioactive materials from a repository. These barriers include natural ones, such as thick unsaturated rock, and man-made, or engineered, ones. These barriers also would greatly reduce the total amount of any radioactivity that could eventually reach the water table where people might pump it from the ground and use it.

The current design for the potential repository calls for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to travel to Yucca Mountain by truck or rail in specially designed, shielded shipping containers.

Once these materials arrive at the repository, they would be removed from the shipping containers and placed in double-layered, corrosion-resistant packages for burying underground. Special rail cars would carry them underground, and remotely controlled equipment would place them on supports in underground tunnels.

Before the DOE could construct a geologic repository and begin waste emplacement however, the Department must submit a license application, go through a muti-year review and public hearing process, and then receive a construction authorization from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The hearing process would focus on public health and safety. Along with the review process, the hearing process is expected to take a minimum of three years after the DOE submits a license application.

If the DOE receives a construction authorization, it would have to complete initial construction, and apply for and receive a license for the NRC before any waste could be received or emplaced.