burros, so I asked about burros. She told me that there weren't any. When I told her there used to be and asked what had happened to them, the educated young lady answered, "They were gone before I got here!"
On our way back to the bus for the next leg of the tour we talked over possible reasons for the loss of the asses of Jackass Flats with our neighbors. Our tour guides began to feel that I was a security threat and Carol, sensing their unease, had to remind me that our quest was a quest for gold.
There was a stop at a large warehouse where we were shown a video of how test drilling is done at Yucca Mountain and how the 'core samples' taken are documented and analyzed. We were shown that salt; basalt; granite shale and volcanic tuff were all, in their opinion, good for storing nuclear waste.
After the video we were allowed to wander through a room of rock samples and minerals. This part was fascinating to us and we enjoyed looking at crystals and fossils, and minerals lit with black lights.
Seeing no gold in the samples, I asked, "In these core samples you've taken, have you found any gold?"
The answer was "No."
"Not even microscopic gold?"
"No, not a bit."
So there we were, disappointed and empty handed in our search for gold and feeling amazed that in this whole mountain, that stands in gold bearing ground, not one bit of gold was found. Though over thirty holes were drilled to a depth of 3,000 feet each and still no gold?
There was one finding in those core samples that really interested us: Zeolite. You may not know about Zeolite, so this prospector will try to enlighten you. Zeolite is a mineral that contains water in microscopic channels within a framework of aluminum silicate units. In other words, the water in Zeolite can be driven out of the rock by heat, without altering the structure of the Zeolite crystals. The word 'Zeolite' means 'boiling rock'.
With that little bit of knowledge ricocheting around in my brain I questioned some of the government employees at Yucca Mountain about how the Zeolite would react to the proximity of nuclear waste.
They acted like they didn't know much about the layer of Zeolite that exists between the big holes they planned to store the "hot" nuclear waste in and the huge body of water called the Amargosa aquifer lying just under Yucca Mountain, for they assured me that it wouldn't be a problem!
I didn't believe them; so I jumped the traces and leaving my tour guides behind I went in search of a real scientist. (Is there such a thing nowadays?)
Anyway, I didn't get far on my aberration before the bell rang for lunch and we were all ushered into the dining hall together: like cattle to a feed lot. Though I never can say "no" to a good meal, so I went meekly along with the flow and I soon found out that the detour worked out splendidly for my aborted purpose, because all the folks working there came to lunch with us.
I was soon elbow to elbow with one of their leaders, and over a delicious meal I asked him, "If this repository is approved, and 'hot' nuclear waste is placed in Yucca Mountain and the Zeolite boils, where will the radioactive water go?
He looked glumly down at his busy fork and shrugged.
I pressed him "Will it go down into the aquifer that provides water to the Nevada towns of Beatty, Lathrup Wells, Amargosa, Shoshone and Las Vegas?"
"I'll tell you what bothers me the most," he said, "Yucca Mountain is supposed to be one of many sites tested to see if it is suitable for storage of spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors but, we are not testing any others. We are putting so much money and time into 'exploring' Yucca Mountain that even if it proves to be unsuitable, you will never hear of its dangers. This is the only site being considered and this is where the waste will lie!"
When I was climbing down from the bus after being delivered back to our starting point at Lathrup Wells, I looked back up at our tour guide and asked, "Who paid for my lunch and the tour?"
He smiled at me. "You did," he said, "your tax dollars pay for everything pertaining to the project at Yucca Mountain."
On our way back to the wagon Carol put a hand to her head and told me she was feeling carsick from riding in the bus. I took her hand in mine and told her I felt a bit sick too.
Later, I explained to my disappointed wife, that we'd better stick to our gold prospecting with burros. "It's not as high tech," I told her, "but it sure is more comforting than finding Zeolite in such an unexpected and dangerous place."
She agreed with me and stated rather emphatically, "If those Yucca Mountain workers still had the benefit of jackasses on Jackass Flats, they might have found gold in their exploration of Yucca Mountain!"
Now here is the rest of the story. We had offered this story to a magazine called Rock & Gem in which the article was published in November 1996 after of over a year of government delays. With a disclaimer on my finding, from Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump, US Department of Energy. Little did Department of Energy that I had contact with people in side that complex. Those people years later who when I showed a copy of the article to sat and stared, and with a faraway looked and said: “So that is where all that water came from.”
To make a long story short my little article in an obscure magazine; had put a bee into some ones “Bonnet” so a test was order: that test consisted of drilling holes into the floor and wall then placing resistant electric heaters into those holes to simulate the heat that would be given off by the “HOT NUCLEAR MATERIALS” Over the period of the test, water began to accumulate on the floor of the test tunnel that really got some people upset. The Brass said: Where in the HELL is all this water coming from. At that point a test of the water was made. The results of that test were that the water did not come from any known source. The test said, “That it was ‘NEW WATER’ without the trace isotopes that would indicate its origins. It was if it came out of “thin air.” WRONG it was out of solid ROCK (Zeolite rock to be exact).
I have since checked for articles on the subject and have found a few posted: long after my article was published. Yes always the Bride’s maid never the Bride.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Our drive from Funeral Mountain Ranch to Beatty, Nevada was not uneventful. First, we broke a clevis on the second wagon tongue (the one between the swing team) and I had to replace the solid tongue with a chain. At the time I believed it would work as well and would remove some weight from the necks of the donkeys. I lived to rue the change. (More about that later.)
Secondly, we met up with some new friends dressed in orange that we probably wouldn't have met except for a troublesome cattle guard.
You probably drive over cattle guards out west without really noticing them as you travel in a modern vehicle at sixty miles an hour: you would hear a RRRR and a clank. To you a cattle guard is nothing to be concerned about. But, with a covered wagon and six donkeys every cattle guard is a big deal to us.
Cattle guards are constructed to keep four-footed critters from exiting a fenced area while allowing motorists to cross without having to stop and open a gate. They are either metal rods or channels lying lengthwise with gapes that would trap a hoof if stepped into. The channels are placed over an open pit in the roadway. A hideous sight to see a dead cow or wild horse trapped by a cattle with its leg ripped out of its socket, the critter is then ripped to pieces by coyotes. Painted lines resembling the former are often used now. Every cattle guard used to have a stock gate somewhere near it so that stock could be loaded into trucks at that point or be moved through the gate to other pasture without breaking their legs in the cattle guards. Nowadays, government folk have forgotten the reason for the gates and only about half of them remain in existence.
We don't mind the painted guards, and our burros in the course of our long journey became used to them and would cross them with a minimum of coaxing. But for the steel guards we (at that point) would have to find the stock gate, which was usually choked with brush, clear a route to it and then drive the team off the road and through the opened gate, close the gate behind us and drive back up onto the roadway.
The cattle guard where we met our new