A panel of scientists overseeing government efforts to bury seventy thousand tons of nuclear waste reported in November that alloy canisters designed to prevent radioactive particles from leaking might corrode underground. Their research constructs new hurdles for the Department of Energy, which wants to finalize nuclear waste dump plans for Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and submit them for a license by next year.

According to DOE officials, members of Congress and President Bush, spent fuel from America's nuclear power plants will be safe entombed in tunnels 1,000 feet underground. But research published earlier this month indicates that the canisters the DOE is relying heavily upon for stopping pollution may not be as sturdy as they would like to think. Yucca Mountain engineers proposed to use canisters made out of a rare alloy and $7 million worth of titanium "drip shields" to protect them after scientists found evidence in 1996 that water may flow through rock layers at the burial site faster than expected. None of the canisters have actually been constructed, however, and the scientific panel Congress directed to analyze repository plans indicated they are not sure that Alloy-22 will work.

"Data cast doubt on the extent to which the waste package will be an effective barrier under the repository conditions," wrote the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board to DOE executive Dr. Margaret Chu. "Because of the seriousness of these corrosion concerns, we strongly urge you to reexamine the current repository design and proposed operation. The Board believes that the high temperatures of the current design and operation will result in perforation of the waste packages, with possible release of radionuclides."

Yucca Mountain officials believe that high temperatures created when nuclear waste is placed below the Nevada desert will evaporate any moisture that could otherwise ruin storage canisters. Members of the Board are afraid of another effect of the heat, which is an increased potential for chemical reactions and deterioration of the canisters underground. The panel of scientists began pushing last year for a spacious, low-temperature design to cut back on corrosive conditions. This option is not favorable to the DOE, however, because it would reduce the amount of waste buried at Yucca Mountain. According to Congressional testimony from the Board in March 2002, American nuclear reactors will produce around 87,000 metric tons of spent fuel by the year 2030. Although Yucca Mountain is the only remedy policymakers are looking at for centralizing and containing this barrage of waste, even the high-temperature design disapproved of by the Board will hold only 63,000 metric tons of the material.

Congress passed a law in 1982 mandating construction of a "geologic repository" where natural barriers would contain the toxic spent fuel created by American nuclear power plants. Initially, the DOE was to investigate sites around the United States to methodically uncover a location that could accomplish this task, but funding for the project was slashed in 1987 and Congress reacted by designating Yucca Mountain as the only site for research. Sixteen years and $8 billion later, gaps in DOE data gathered in support of their repository design are vast enough to be disconcerting to groups monitoring the $50 billion federal project.

Spent fuel rods are extracted from nuclear reactors when their uranium is no longer efficient for producing electricity. They are placed in water-filled-pools nearby to cool, but at that point treatment of the radioactive matter varies. Some power plants move spent fuel into cement canisters on-site, called dry storage facilities. Some leave fuel in cooling ponds, as dry storage is an expensive endeavor. Others are shipping their waste to storage facilities they own and maintain elsewhere, like another power plant.

But all nuclear plants are in the same boat together: the production of electricity using nuclear reactors created tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste. Under contracts between the Department of Energy and nuclear industry, this material now being stored at 72 sites in 33 states is the legal property of American taxpayers.

Federal courts ruled in 1995 that the DOE was obligated by the contracts to begin moving spent fuel away from privately-owned reactors to a centralized storage facility by 1998. When that deadline was missed, however, the government began wracking-up a debt that power plant owners argue currently exceeds $40 billion.

Bureaucratic inertia propelling toxic waste disposal in Nevada is monumental and increasingly unwavering, gaining speed since 1982. With a legal deadline with the nuclear industry long surpassed, Yucca Mountain advocates and their contractor, Bechtel SAIC, appear dead-set on finalizing a license application by late next year.

They hope that doing so will allow for an opening date in 2010. Still, numerous questions remain about how to confine spent nuclear fuel so that radioactive particles will not reach the aquifer or desert ecosystem in Nye County, less than 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas

In 2002, General Accounting Office executive Robin Nazzarro testified before congress about recurring "quality assurance problems" within the DOE. The year before that the International Atomic Energy Agency reported shortcomings in "developing and presenting an understanding of repository performance." Much of the difficulty DOE officials encounter when defending Yucca Mountain to skeptical observers stems from the fact that big parts of their design remain hypothetical, as do their methods for testing elements of the plan. Computer models predict what conditions in the repository will look like and how integral features like the alloy canisters will perform. Analyses of the models dictate to policymakers whether or not legal parameters like waste leakage are met. Compliance with the numbers earns a green light, while broader questions get kicked to the curb.

All the while, dangerous radioactive material waits precariously around the country. The Bush Administration is calling for new nuclear plants to be built. Congress authorized Yucca Mountain's construction last year, overruling objections from Nevada, which has six cases lodged against the project waiting to be argued in Washington, DC appellate courts. Western Shoshone leaders maintain the proposed dump sits on land granted to them under the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863. And yet grand epiphanies like the realization that metals corrode may be what is required to redirect a project with its head stuck in tunnels underground.