http://www.dri.edu
	Summer 2006

Scientists create mobile air quality shelter to acquire data for Yucca Mountain Air Quality Program

DRI scientists are contributing to the evaluation of Yucca Mountain as a potential geological repository for high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel. Dr. Johann Engelbrecht, the principal investigator on the Yucca Mountain Air Quality Program, explains that while it is not certain whether Yucca Mountain – located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas on the federally protected Nevada Test Site – will be licensed as a high-level waste repository, DRI maintains that it is important to collect baseline air quality and meteorological data now to compare to air quality data if or when high-level waste is disposed at Yucca Mountain.

As part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Yucca Mountain Environmental Initiative, DRI is performing a multi-year scoping study, collecting air quality and meteorological data at sites close to and surrounding Yucca Mountain. The work is being done from a customized and instrumented mobile shelter. The shelter is largely self-sustaining, with most equipment powered by 12 volt solar panels and by 110 volt electrical power where available. The roof of the trailer is mounted with an array of meteorological equipment, solar panels and air sampling inlets. The trailer also is equipped with a data logging and satellite communication system, enabling DRI scientists to remotely access the continuous data from their offices in Reno.

Inside the trailer, PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 filter-based samplers and continuous aerosol monitors are mounted on benchtops and in special instrument racks.

Field visits to the trailer are made once a week to replace filters on the particulate samplers and to download data, as well as to service and calibrate the instruments. The filters are gravimetrically and chemically analyzed by DRI’s analytical laboratories in Reno. The mobile trailer will spend approximately one and one-half months at each of several locations in an area around Yucca Mountain, including: the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Amargosa Valley, Sarcobatus Flats, Beatty, Goldfield, Rachel and Crater Flat, as well as at sites on the Nevada Test Site and at Yucca Mountain. The data collected with this scoping study will help DOE better understand the prevailing air quality and associated meteorological conditions of the Yucca Mountain region, including what levels of particulate pollutants exist in the ambient air and what their sources are.