Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
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Tech Live
April 22, 2003
Hard-Core Hammering
How scientists solved the pounding problem of creating stronger steel.
By David Stevenson, Tech Live
Anyone who has ever taken a shop class is probably familiar with "peening": using a ball-peen hammer to dent and compress a piece of metal until it becomes a bit stronger, a bit more resilient.
The most common form of industrial peening bombards metal parts with tiny ceramic or metal balls, dimpling the metal's surface and eventually creating a uniform layer that resists cracks and corrosion. This "shot peening" is commonly used on automobile springs and transmission parts, as well as on critical aircraft components.
Now, a laser peening method designed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is gaining attention. Tonight on "Tech Live," see how an automated robot arm and intense red laser beam deliver up to 1 million pounds of force in one bright flash -- precisely pounding away at crucial metal parts.
Making airplanes, nuclear storage safer
In laser peening, "the atoms are pushed together and cracks grow much more slowly," says LLNL physicist Lloyd Hackel, who helped invent laser peening 23 years ago. The process is used to protect jet engine blades from cracks caused by stray bits of airplane tires on runways, birds sucked into engines, and other debris.
"You make the aircraft safer to fly," Hackel says, "and you make maintenance scheduling and costs much less because the parts are more reliable. [They] will not fail."
The technology isn't protecting just those in the air. Soon it'll protect folks on the ground. Laser peening will be used to build stronger, corrosive-resistant nuclear-waste containers for storage deep in the bowels of Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
And laser peening is already in use in outer space. In 2001 NASA took three laser-peened parts up to the international space station to see how well they hold up in outer space.
Protects against counterfeiting
Hackel says laser peening also offers manufacturers a way to "watermark" their parts and guard against counterfeit components. He expects that once laser peening gains wider usage, the process could revolutionize the making of everything from hip joint implants to car parts.
"The laser peening process can make parts' fatigue strength as much as 10 to 20 times longer," Hackel says. "You can start to look at your components and significantly reduce the weight."
That could eventually mean improved fuel efficiency and longer-lasting vehicles, all achieved by a beam of light.
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Las Vegas SUN
April 23, 2003
Nuke waste transportation problems cited
State's consultants lay out questions before NRC panel
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Fourteen months after the Energy Department deemed Yucca Mountain a safe place to bury the nation's nuclear waste, the department still has no plan to safely haul the highly radioactive material there, paid consultants for the state of Nevada said Tuesday.
Among their unanswered questions: Will the department adopt a mostly rail or mostly truck strategy? How many shipments will there be each year? Which agency is in charge of an accident? And what kind of testing will shipping containers undergo?
Energy Department assurances about waste transportation safety should be taken with a grain of salt, consultant Bob Halstead told a Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel.
"Most, if not all, of the important decisions are yet to be made," Halstead said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be responsible for licensing and regulating the first-of-its-kind high-level waste repository at Yucca. The Energy Department intends to submit a license application to the commission in December 2004, and the commission could take up to four years to approve it.
The repository is slated for completion in 2010, although critics doubt the Energy Department can meet that schedule.
On Tuesday the NRC's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste spent the afternoon listening to presentations from four Nevada consultants, who outlined flaws in the 38-year plan to ship 77,000 tons of waste to Yucca from Defense sites and nuclear power plants nationwide.
In previous meetings nuclear industry and federal government officials have told the panel that the massive shipping campaign can be completed safely.
At the heart of the safety question are the number of shipments and the methods used to haul waste to Nevada, Halstead said. If mostly trucks and some rail shipments are used, it could take as many as 108,000 shipments. Energy Department officials have said they prefer a mostly rail plan, which would greatly reduce the number of shipments.
But there are problems with implementing a mostly rail scenario. Among them: constructing a Nevada rail spur to Yucca Mountain that would be the biggest and most expensive -- between $1 billion and $2 billion -- rail project in decades, Halstead said.
Nevada is suing the Energy Department for not including a detailed transportation plan in its final environmental impact statement.
"Instead the transportation analysis contained in the FEIS is legally and substantially deficient and entirely inadequate," Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said.
Nevada wants a comprehensive risk assessment of shipping the nation's waste to Yucca, Loux said. Nevada also wants an accident prevention and emergency response program, and new tests of full-scale models of the giant metal waste containers that would be loaded onto trains and trucks for shipping.
Those tests are now being developed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and are tentatively set for next year. The Nevada consultants laid out a list of their concerns about the tests, too. Nevada officials are worried the tests will focus too much on crash "impact" tests and not enough on fire tests.
At the very least the NRC should test at least one full-scale -- not a model -- of one rail cask and one truck cask that would actually be used to haul waste to Nevada, Halstead said.
Nevada consultant Marvin Resnikoff completed an analysis of the Baltimore tunnel fire in July 2001, which burned for five days. Current NRC regulations require nuclear waste containers to withstand a 1,475-degree fire for 30 minutes, but the Baltimore fire burned hotter and longer than that, Resnikoff said. The fire should prod the NRC to more thoroughly test casks and reconsider cask requirements, he said.
Questions about the shipping containers are a top concern on a long list of concerns about the Energy Department's lack of a transportation plan, said Jim Hall, a consultant who is a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
"These casks are not designed to withstand all credible accidents that could happen," Hall said.
In other action Tuesday, Kevin Crowley, director of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Radioactive Waste Management, said there is still time to study and develop a safe waste transportation plan. To that end, the academy board plans to launch a two-year, $842,000 study of waste shipping to Yucca, Crowley said.
The study will consider accident and terrorism risks, along with technical and societal concerns. The report will be complete in early 2005, Crowley said. A narrower, six-month National Academy study requested by Congress that will examine the procedures used to select waste-shipping routes, will be conducted in conjunction with the broader study, Crowley said.
The National Academy panel that will conduct the broader study will meet first in Washington next month, then hold its second meeting in Las Vegas. The date and venue for the Las Vegas meeting are not set.
Hauling waste to Nevada could cost roughly $8.4 billion, according to Energy Department estimates, or $9.2 billion according to Nevada estimates. A nuclear waste accident could cost an estimated $10 billion, Nevada consultants said.
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Las Vegas Review Journal
April 23, 2003
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Transport safety questioned
Nevadans say feds are underestimating difficulties of shipping nuclear waste
By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- A group of Nevada experts laid out the state's case on nuclear waste transportation before a government advisory panel Tuesday.
The experts said the Energy Department is underestimating the difficulties of devising a strategy to ship radioactive materials to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository.
The state's nuclear waste chief and five paid consultants outlined challenges facing the Yucca Mountain Project, including developing a railroad line to the repository site, devising a combination of rail and truck shipments, and safety testing the design of casks to be utilized in moving spent nuclear fuel from sites in 39 states.
"We ask that when you hear glib assurances from the department or any other party that they know exactly how the transportation system to Yucca Mountain will work, that you take that with a grain of salt," said Robert Halstead, Nevada's principal transportation adviser.
The Nevada consultants delivered a four-hour presentation to the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, which monitors the Yucca program for members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Echoing past criticism, the Nevadans said it probably will take more than the 175 nuclear waste shipments per year that DOE estimates to fill the repository planned for 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The DOE figures "grossly underestimate the nature, magnitude and scope required to support the repository program," said Bob Loux, head of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects.
"This is all what we've heard before. There's nothing new here," said Allen Benson, Yucca Mountain Project spokesman. Benson said Nevada's estimates are inflated based on assumptions that the repository will hold more waste than currently planned.
Halstead contended that the Energy Department will be handicapped in developing a rail line to Yucca Mountain because routes through Southern Nevada will run afoul of private development. The Air Force will declare the Nellis range unsuitable for a proposed route, while rough terrain and environmental issues will hamper suggested routes from Carlin and Caliente, he added.
As the Nevadans discussed the risks associated with nuclear waste transportation, advisory board member B. John Garrick noted that hazardous materials already travel through Las Vegas and other cities largely unnoticed.
Garrick said nuclear waste should be put in that context. He warned against "putting too much emphasis" on analyzing consequences of potential accidents without also weighing their risk in the first place. "We can lead the public down the wrong path very easily," he said.
Among other topics, a divide emerged between Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff and Nevada experts over analysis of the July 21, 2001, train derailment and subsequent fire in the Howard Street tunnel in Baltimore.
A Nevada analysis concluded that radioactive particles would have been released into the surrounding neighborhoods if the trapped cars had been carrying canisters of nuclear waste.
The state's findings contrast with two studies released by the NRC in March. Those concluded that a nuclear waste cask would have withstood fire conditions in the tunnel that were calculated to have reached 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.
A thermal analysis by NRC staff, coordinated with the National Transportation Safety Board, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analysis and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, "concluded there would be no release of radioactive materials."
Marvin Resnikoff, a nuclear physicist and Nevada consultant, challenged the NRC studies, saying the Baltimore fire burned hotter than nuclear waste casks are designed to withstand.
Halstead said Nevada analysts have been in a "running dispute with the NRC" over availability of data that the agency used in its study. A meeting has been set for May 8 to compare the reports. he said.
Halstead also said Nevada is forming a proposal for testing cask designs against severe fire. The plan will be presented to NRC scientists forming full-scale tests for several nuclear waste shipping casks.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
April 23, 2003
Nevada pushes for full testing of Yucca nuclear waste casks
Doug Abrahms
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
WASHINGTON — Nevada officials Tuesday urged an advisory board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to fully test casks that will hold nuclear waste shipped to Yucca Mountain, saying the cost is insignificant compared with the cost of the entire project and the risk of a rupture.
The Department of Energy has no requirement that casks undergo full-scale testing. Computer models have been used to test similar casks, which resemble large steel cylinders, and full-scale testing has been done on smaller, mock casks.
George Hornberger, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, questioned the purpose of testing and probably wrecking the casks rather than using computer simulations.
Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant to Nevada, argued that the proposed casks will use new designs, be composed of new materials and carry heavier payloads.
“Frankly, the only disadvantage (to testing) I have ever heard from anybody is cost,’ he said.
The Department of Energy estimates that it will cost at least $8 billion to haul 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from commercial U.S. nuclear reactors to Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The cost to put casks through a series of puncture, fire and impact tests would run less than $75 million, said Jim Hall, a former National Transportation Safety Board chairman acting as a consultant for Nevada.
“Indeed, full-scale testing will be expensive,’ he told the advisory panel, an arm of the NRC. “But put these costs in perspective.’
A handful of Nevada experts came to Washington to highlight the transportation problems posed by the plans to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. Congress has approved the project, but the NRC must approve its operating license. The Energy Department is expected to apply for the license within two years. It hopes to open the nuclear waste repository in 2010.
The advisory committee can make only recommendations to the NRC and will have little influence over whether Yucca Mountain obtains an operating license. But Nevada officials used the meeting as another forum to air concerns about the plan to ship the nation´s nuclear waste to their state.
“For example, Nevada believes that DOE´s recently devised estimate of 175 shipments per year to a Yucca Mountain repository is not only inaccurate, but grossly underestimates the nature, magnitude and scope of the shipping campaign required to support the repository,’ said Bob Loux, who heads the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Nevada officials estimate that there will be hundreds and possibly thousands of shipments to Yucca Mountain every year depending on whether the Energy Department decides to use trucks or trains.
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Salt Lake Tribune
April 23, 2003
Private Fuel Storage Pays Senator Turned Lobbyist Handsomely
By Christopher Smith
© 2003, The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON -- A consulting firm run by the former U.S. senator who helped write the federal law on storing radioactive waste has been paid more than $1 million to lobby Congress to support dumping spent nuclear reactor fuel in Utah.
Reports filed with Congress show that Private Fuel Storage, the group of utilities seeking to license a temporary nuclear waste storage facility on the Goshute Indian Reservation west of Salt Lake City, paid $1.12 million to the Washington, D.C., firm of McClure, Gerard and Neuenschwander Inc. from 1997 through June 2002, a span representing the first year the reports were required by law to the most recent disclosure available.
The firm is headed by Jim McClure, the former Idaho Republican state senator, congressman and three-term U.S. senator who authored the National Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. That law established a federal program to regulate interim and long-term storage facilities for high-level nuclear waste generated by civilian nuclear reactors. It paved the way for both the Yucca Mountain permanent waste repository in Nevada and the Skull Valley interim storage facility in Utah, both hotly opposed by each state's governor.
In the revolving-door world of Washington politics, it is not unusual to find former members of Congress lobbying on issues for which they wrote the federal law. But watchdog groups say it raises questions about a lawmaker's true motivations while he or she was in office.
"Were his decisions while he was in office guided by the prospect that when he left he would make some serious money on this issue?" said Steve Weiss of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington. "It's the way the game is played, but members of Congress who become high-priced lobbyists get access opportunities that other citizens don't have."
Although its five elected members of Congress oppose the Skull Valley project, the state of Utah has no professional lobbyist registered in the nation's capital to counter PFS's presence on Capitol Hill with McClure promoting the project. Neither McClure nor his office returned calls seeking an interview.
According to the reports filed under the Lobby Disclosure Act, PFS has paid McClure's firm an average of $200,000 annually the past six years to urge members of Congress to oppose various legislative proposals that would have blocked locating the waste dump in Utah, prohibited shipment of high-level waste to Utah or penalized the Goshute Tribe for agreeing in 1996 to host the $3 billion storage facility.
Besides McClure, others in the firm lobbying on behalf of the eight utilities seeking to transfer their nuclear waste to Utah include Tod Neuenschwander, McClure's former Senate chief of staff; Jack Gerard, the former legislative director for McClure who is the executive director of the National Mining Association; Nils Johnson, the former legislative director for current Republican U.S. Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho; and Joseph Findaro, the former deputy assistant secretary of Interior for water and science.
Former Republican Idaho Lt. Gov. David Leroy of Boise, who also served as the nation's first nuclear waste negotiator, said McClure's political clout and expertise would be vital to any company seeking to develop a waste storage site away from the reactor that produces it.
"Hiring somebody of incredible political sophistication and connections is not only appropriate but absolutely necessary if you want a project of this magnitude to get through," said Leroy. "He's a virtuous gentleman and one of the very few members of Congress who was willing to spend his personal political capital to work on these very unattractive issues."
But Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group in Washington, said McClure's motivations for working the issue are far from noble.
"Obviously, the guy has totally cashed in," said Cook. "This is absolutely the way Washington works. You get the very best influence peddler money can by and they trump the facts and democracy every time, and in this case he is trumping the demonstrative opposition of an entire state."
McClure retired from the Senate in 1991 after serving as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for most of the 1980s. In Washington, he frequently admonished Congress to re-energize public support for nuclear power after dangerous reactor accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986, as well as the multibillion-dollar bond default handed to ratepayers for five never-finished nuclear power plants in the Northwest.
"The opportunity to revive the nuclear option is not whether, but when, where and how," he declared in a 1990 Senate speech. "We must all exert leadership in restoring public confidence in the need for nuclear energy to meet this nation's requirements for safe, clean and economic electricity."
After the House and Senate passed opposing bills to store highly radioactive waste generated by civilian reactors in late 1982, McClure drew up a "compromise" measure and was the floor manager in the Senate.
He orchestrated several amendments before getting the bill passed through the body and sending it to the House, which approved it during a last-minute scramble just before Christmas.
One of the amendments McClure secured on unanimous consent -- a voice vote -- was considered the deal maker: giving states veto power over having a nuclear waste storage facility located within their borders. Opposition evaporated and the entire legislation passed in 15 minutes, although weeks later, lawmakers complained that McClure had misrepresented the language of the amendment during the rush.
Instead of giving states more authority to block potential waste repositories, the amendment actually neutralized several state laws restricting nuclear plant development.
The amendment created such enmity that McClure's heavily favored bid to be Senate majority leader in 1983 nose dived into defeat as he became the first candidate eliminated after winning just five votes from fellow Republicans. At the time, Congressional Quarterly noted McClure's nuclear waste-state veto amendment controversy "cast a longer shadow over the leadership contest than anyone had predicted."
csmith@sltrib.com
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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