Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC, is built on the collective strengths of two internationally recognized organizations - Bechtel National, Inc., and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). The organizations have joined forces to create BSC, which is now the prime contractor implementing solutions for the Yucca Mountain Project. This unique scientific and engineering challenge is part of an ongoing effort by the Department of Energy (DOE) to find solutions for the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste. Click on What is the Yucca Mountain Project? for more information. BSC now draws upon the expertise of more than 750 employees offering world-class research, engineering, and nuclear science capabilities. We are dedicated to the mission of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Operating within DOE, this federal agency has been tasked to develop and manage a safe system to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. What is the Yucca Mountain Project? The purpose of the Yucca Mountain Project For more than two decades, the Yucca Mountain Project conducted an extensive scientific effort to determine whether Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is a suitable site for a deep underground facility called a repository. The purpose of the repository is to safely isolate highly radioactive nuclear waste in underground tunnels for at least 10,000 years. The basic idea of a geologic repository is to place carefully packaged radioactive materials in tunnels deep underground. This method relies on a series of barriers that prevent or slow the movement of radioactive materials from a repository. These barriers include natural ones, such as thick unsaturated rock, and man-made, or engineered, ones. These barriers also would greatly reduce the total amount of any radioactivity that could eventually reach the water table where people might pump it from the ground and use it. The current design for the potential repository calls for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to travel to Yucca Mountain by truck or rail in specially designed, shielded shipping containers. Once these materials arrive at the repository, they would be removed from the shipping containers and placed in double-layered, corrosion-resistant packages for burying underground. Special rail cars would carry them underground, and remotely controlled equipment would place them on supports in underground tunnels. The U.S. Department of Energy has submitted an application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build the repository. Before the DOE could construct the repository and begin placing waste inside the mountain, however, the Department must go through a multi-year review and public hearing process, and then receive a construction authorization from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The hearing process would focus on public health and safety. Along with the review process, the hearing process is expected to take a minimum of three years after the DOE submits a license application. If the DOE receives a construction authorization, it would have to complete initial construction, and apply for and receive a license for the NRC before any waste could be received or emplaced.