Q: Has the department of energy implemented any of these recommendations for engineered barriers.?

A: The DOE has accepted our suggestion to use back fill as an engineered barrier, and that's very good except that the back fill that they are going to use is magnesium oxide backfill which is required for DOE to assume the very low solubility of the radio nucleaides because the backfill creates a chemical environment in the repository which the projection is that one can make an assumption of very low solubilit. So it is used as part of the containment requirement, it not being used as something over and above what is reuqired for the pobablistic risk calculation. So in that sense it is not an additional safegaurd, but is something which is used, is needed to show compliance with the EPA standards.

Q: What about fixing the waste?

A: The fact of the matter is at many generator cites the waste is going to be fixed and treated for reasons other than its disposal at Wipp. For the Chemical hazardous wasre regulation RECRA or other requirements by the state in Idaho and in Colorado and Oak Ridge and many other places, there are plans, hanford, certainly, there are plans to treat the waste, and but the Wipp project has not taken credit for it and there is no requirement as far as Wipp is concerned . So we would have a sort of a patchy treatment of some waste but not as part of a well- thought out plan to make the waste safer in the repository.

Q: And the DOE has plans to make the barrels more safe?

A: The containers, the fifty five gallon drums, will remain, that is the plan. The drums will crush as soon as the repository starts colsing and will most like get breached in a matter of a few tens of years.. And after that it is mainly reliance on the geology, the slat beds, to contain the waste.

Q: Is there water at the site?

A: There is not a large quantity of water in the ecofirm overlying the repository, but there is water. It is not very good quality water, it is not potable water mostly, but it is water, there is water in the ecofirth which has been seen as a potential pathway for release of radio nucleides from the cite.

Q: Talk about the brine resevoir.

A; There are a number of bore holes around the WIPP site, industry bore holes -- bore holes which were drilled for oil and gas drillling, which found pressurized brine at a depth of about 3000 feet below the surface. Right within the four mile by four mile WIPP site there is a well -- there is a well called WIPP 12 which was drilled in 1978 and which was deepened essentially because the recommendation made by EEG throught the State which encountered pressurized brine. The volume of the brine was estimated to be 17,000,0000 barrels -- each barrel contains forty two gallons so it's several million gallons of brine. At a depth of about 3000 feeet which would make it 8000 feet below the level of the repository.

Now of course no well has been drilled to that depth directly under the repository because it would breach the safety of the repository but geophysical work has been done to see from surface experiments if there is any indication of brine in there directly below the repository. And the indications are that atleast part of the area directly below the repository at about seven to eight hundred feet below the repository contains pressurized brine.

And so one fo the scenarios which has been considered in evaluation the repository is what happens if someone drills a well into the repository and continues to drill down to 3000 feet depth and potentially that will may bring radio nucleides from the repository to the surface.

The scenario concerning brine resevoir which has been calculated and analyzed by DOE is that somebody may drill form the surfgace down to the repository and may continue drilling down further another seven or eight hundred feet which would make a total of 3000 feet, and oil wells are drilled to that depth in a routine manner and may bring pressurized brine to the repository and with it may bring radio nuclides either to the surface or to the may inject into the overlying aquifires. Another scenario that has been analyzed by DOE is that there may be two wells, one just going to the repository and the other going all the way down to the brine resevoir depth and then what happens to that.

Q: Would you talk a little bit about the pattern of oid gas drilling around the cite and how that impacts the cite.

A: The WIPP site is situated in a natural resource rich area. There are oil deposits, natural gas deposits and pot ash deposits. The oil and gas around the WIPP site is found at a depth of 5000 to 7000 feet below the surface. The WIPP repository is at 2000 to 150 feet below the surface. So about 5000 or so or perhaps a bit less below the repository there is a lot of oil.

There are more than a hundred wells that surround the area, the so called land withdrawn area, the four mile by four mile WIPP site, which are producer wells, and in fact if you drive around the site you can see them. When the WIPP site was selected the DOE estimate was that it is mostly natural gas, and there some natural gas in fact right at the WIPP site, which were driven for natural gas, but that not much oil is to be found around the WIPP site, but that has been shown to be untrue, and because since 1991 a number of wells have been drilled and productive wells which are pumping oil around the WIPP site.

Q: Would you describe the Hartman scenario?

A:The so called Hartman scenario relates to an experience by an independent oil operator named Oral Hartman (?) who drilled some well about forty miles east of the WIPP site and encountered a large amount of water which came up to the surface. The geology is different from the WIPP site but yet it is not so different.

The situation at the base (???) one and two wells, those are the names of the two wells Oral Hartman drilled, is that the oil is at a much shallower depth and the horizon -- the geologic horizon in which WIPP is situated is at a much closer to the oil that is found in the base number one and two wells.

Nevertheless, what a number of people have proposed is that a similar situation might happen at WIPP. So that if a well is drilled about 2 miles from the WIPP repository and there are lots of wells being drilled more than two miles from the WIPP repository and if for secondary recovery if a large amount of fluid is injected to get the rest of the oil out this fluid may find its way to some of the fractured or fracturable rock and perhaps could find their way close to the WIPP repository. Underlying the WIPP repository is a fracture (???) and hydrite layer called marthabed 139 and the postulation is that large amount of pressurized water if it is injected between one and two miles from the WIPP repository may find its way into the repository. And a similar situation did occur in the Hartman wells. Hartman won a lawsuit charging another compna for having injected a large amount of water which stayed there and moved perhaps as much as two miles, which is the distance from the areas where the water was injected in the Hartman case. And so the general scenario is that a similar situation may occur at the Wipp cite.

Q: How do the rooms work, the salt creep, panel one, the problems with that?

A: DoE's orginal plan was to put a large quantity of waste underground for what they call demonstration purposes. In fact the original plan was to put the entire inventory of existing waste at Idaho National Engineering Lab. The reason given for that was that we could demonstrate that we could do this. EEG and others argued that one needs to demonstrate through projecting in the future what will happen to the repository and to that extent one has to do geological and hydrological studies. But there was no need for waste to be placed before the decision was made to use the place as a repository. Nevertheless DOE starting excavation in 1986 for the repository itself for the panels in which the waste was to be put, and completed seven rooms which are 300 foot long, 33 feet wide, and 13 feet high. A panel of seven rooms which can contain more than 50,000 drums.

Then of course the DoE was criticized and a number of people questioned the need for putting waste for demonstration and the explanation the justification changed from demonstration to experimenting with waste and that put DoE literally in a corner and they -- for next five years or so -- they painted themselves in a corner because in order to justify conducting experiments with waste they had to justify taking some samples of brine from the drums and then of course the question was "why can't you measure gas which was the purported experiment?" Why couldn't they measure gas from the drums where they are sitting right now which is at Idaho and other places why did those drums have to be put underground at Wipp to measure gas generation from them. And the argument was given that we are going to see the interaction between waste and brine and the drums.

Anyway, to make a long story short, that resulted in what DOE called the bin experiments. A bin simply is a large container in which waste from five to six drums could be emptied and some brine would be implaced and some back fill and then the idea was that DoE will see how much gas that measures. Well of course we said that that can be done at eye level as well, what's so special about taking it all the way underground.

Anyway, so because DOE because these question gradually DOE backed off from its plans to conduct experiments undeground or do any demonstration. And the polciy was changed in 1993 to not do these experiments and to first show Wipp's compliance with the EPA's standards and then put the waste for disposal, which was the original intent of the WIPP repository. What it resulted -- what happened because of that is that we now have a panel in 1998 which was excavated ten years ago with an expected life of five years and the idea was and still is excavate the panel and salt, put the waste and close, and that can all be accomplished in five years.

So because of the age of these rooms, the rooms are becoming unstable, a large number of rock bolts, have to be installed, and rock bolts have only limited function in stopping the potential rock fall from the roof, particularly after you start implacing waste in those rooms and therefore one may not be able to maintain them, then it becomes a dangerous sitaution , because as long as one can maintian the rock bolts, in others words, rock bolts pop out and so they have to be replaced new ones have to be installed. And so because of these reasons EEG recommended as early as 1994 that the panel one should be abandoned and a new panel should be excavated when Doe is ready and has all the approvals and so on and when it is ready to start putting waste underground. We are still hoping that DOE will do that, will put the waste in panel two when the time comes, and simply abandon panel one.

Q: Speak about salt creep.

A: The reason bedded salt was selected for a nuclear waste repository is because it creeps, in other words it moves in a plastic manner, it doesn't fracture, or if it fractures it heals quickly and it would make a cocoon around the waste. Now the WIPP site itself is not just pure salt. There are layers of fractured and hydrite or rocks which can be fractured, and that's what makes it difficult for rooms to remain open for a very long time. And for rooms to remain open... In salt like in the Asa mine in Germany and in salt duhram kind of salt, where there is pure salt, one can create, one can maintain the excavations without the danger of roof falls for much longer. That's not the situation at WIPP, so one may not have the advantage of the salt creeping and entombing the waste, while at the same time try to keep the rooms open for a very long time and then put the waste underground. It's just the two thing work in reverse ways. So the idea is to put the waste soon after excavation and not keep the room open for a very long time.

Q: The danger for using panel 1 is an operational one, is that right?

A: The concern is an operational one. The concern is that before the room is fully filled, the room may become unstable and the waste may have to be moved elsewhere. Or the room may have to be closed and if it not a completely fill room then part of the room that comes down will be at the edge of the waste may topple drums and create problems that way. And while I'm sure that DoE will not do anything unsafe, I mean they have good mining engineers and so on who will take care of - and the policy makers- will ascertain whether it's a safe place to put them -- to put the drums before they actually put them.

Our fear is that a decision might be made without considering all the uncertainties in the rate of input and so on, how much waste can be brought and you know since this is the first repository it is best to take measures which will make as safe as possible an not take any chances. So it is an operational concern you know, the operational concern is that the roof may come down if things are not done properly.

Q: Could you say that more succinctly?

A: The concern about using the existing rooms, the seven rooms of panel one, is that they are old. They were excavated in 1986 to 88 period ten years ago. And the whole philosophy of using salt is to put the waste and close the rooms as soon as possible. If the rooms are kept open for a very long time there is a danger of rock falls and to avoid that danger one has to put rock bolts and continuously maintain them. While the waste is being implaced it would not be possible to maintain the rooms and therefore they will become a potentially unsafe place for implacement of waste.

Q: Can New Mexico's environmental department have a say in whether panel one is used?

A: I don't know much about RECRA and whether New Mexico environment department can tell DoE whether to use a certain area for waste or not, but apparently that is a concern that which is what indeed resulted in this argument about whether or not DoE is going to use panel one or has started excavation for panel two when it was found out in early October that DoE had started some mining underground. Not mining for panel two, but for a particular drift that leads in that direction and DoE claimed that they were not going to mine panel two but just going to get ready to mine panel two.....

Q: What are your personal concerns about this site?

A: The EEG's concerns are both long term and operational. With respect to long term, as you know EPA has approved the site and EPA has the authority to approve compliance with the EPA regulations. EEG's concerns relate to a number of assumptions which have been made in projecting what may happen in the future. These concerns relate to chemistry of the waste, evolution of the underground rooms and its chemistry with results in much lower solubility, assumptions of several geological and hydrological questions.

The difficulty is that the process of approving a site, certifying a site that EPA has used is so prescriptive and is so has to be a probablistic risk assessment process because no one knows for sure what will happen in the next 10,000 years or longer, that it calls, its sort of custom made for continuing arguments. And DoE and some others, EPA, its time to close the debate and make a decision. And EEG is only looking at how its concerns were addressed by EPA, and this is what were're doing now, in terms of operation aspects there are a number of safeguards for avoiding release of radio nucleides that we have recommended to DoE. We do not agree that the operational readiness review addressed all those questions. And of course this question of where to put the waste, we have recommended to DoE to wait until they are ready with all the approvals and then mine a new panel, new rooms and put the waste in those and close them as soon as possible, to avoid any potential for roof falls and such.

Q: Are salt beds the best burial place for this nuclear waste?

A: The DoE and others have often cited a 1957 National Academy of Sciences report which recommended salt beds as a possible location for nuclear waste disposal. That report has been given much more importance than it was meant to be. In fact that report addressed liquid waste and did not assess other types of geology, and its not that they rejected other kinds of rocks and recommended salt. In fact many other kinds of rock are being considered around the world. The French are looking at clay as a medium, so are the Belgians. The Swiss are looking at hard rock, ignenious rock, as a repository. Even in the USA at Nevada at the Yuka Mountain site it's the hard rock, volcanic stuff which is being looked at as a repository medium.

And so there are advantages and disadvantages of salt. The advantage is that it will creep and close and cocoon the waste. The disadvantage is that it becomes much more difficult to retrieve the waste if you change your mind later. Its much easier to retrieve the waste from an excavated repository in hard rock. And one can go on, but that is essentially the relative advantage.

Q: What are the retrieval plans?

A: The DoE originally had a retrieval plan for five years, to keep the waste retrievable for five years, but has abandoned that plan. The EPA standards require retrievable for several tens of years. In fact, the way the regulations are written any place in any mined repository is retrievable, because it does not take into account the cost or the difficulty of retrieval, or the dangers or risks of retrieval, but just by virtue of the fact that we know the waste is, if you absolutely have to retrieve it then it is retrievable.

But that is sort of like avoiding the question. The fact of the matter is that in a practical sense the waste put at the WIPP underground will not be retrievable. In a practical sense, it's not impossible to retrieve. But in a practical sense the threshold of retrieving it has to be so much high, so high because of some concerns you know that it absolutely must be retrieved, the threshold has to be very high because it's going to create exposure to people, workers who are going to retrieve it. It will be extremely expensive to retrieve waste from the WIPP site.

Q: And where will it go?

A: And once you retrieve it where will it go?, that certainly is a very good question.

Q: What are other countries doing?