Yucca Mountain

Yucca Mountain, some 160 kilometers northwest of Las Vegas, blends unobtrusively into the desert landscape. Yet it's no ordinary place. Yucca Mountain is the proposed site for the United States' first national nuclear waste repository —where spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste can be be stored permanently.

In the early 1980s, the U.S. government green-lighted an initiative to find a safe, secure way to dispose of the nation’s growing nuclear waste. Almost immediately, hundreds of world-class engineers, geologists, seismologists, volcanologists, chemists, and other specialists converged on Yucca Mountain. Starting in 2001, Bechtel and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) teamed up to conduct even more extensive studies, computer modeling, and sophisticated analytic surveys exploring the site’s potential as a repository.

The need for a national repository is clear. Today, radioactive waste sits in aboveground pools of water at 74 U.S. nuclear power plants—not the safest or most secure storage method.

Moreover, the whole world is paying attention to progress at Yucca Mountain. “The conclusion of every country looking at the issue is that the only ethical solution is to place these wastes underground, as safely as possible,” said one Bechtel SAIC technical advisor. “No one wants to leave their waste where it is now."

In addition to research, Bechtel SAIC helped its customer, the U.S. Department of Energy, prepare a licensing application for the site, which was submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2008.

"We are confident that the NRC’s rigorous review process will validate that the Yucca Mountain repository will provide for the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in a way that protects human health and our environment," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in announcing the license application.