Earthquake fault line may be underneath Yucca Mountain site
The Las Vegas Review Journal reported today that bore hole drilling operations have turned up preliminary evidence that a fault line passes below the area where project officials want to build concrete pads to store highly radioactive spent fuel.
Rock samples indicate that the fault line is hundreds of feet east of where scientists originally thought it was.
Kenneth Skipper, chief of the U.S. Geological Survey Yucca Mountain Project Branch, wrote in a May 21 letter to Andrew Orrell, senior program manager for DOE's lead laboratory, "Preliminary data from the recent drilling phase indicate the location of the Bow Ridge fault in northern Midway Valley may be farther east than projected from previous work in the area."
The Yucca Mountain Project is a product of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which charged the Department of Energy with finding a place, building and operating an underground disposal facility for nuclear waste.
Read the entire Review Journal article here.
