Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, May 1, 2003
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Las Vegas SUN
May 01, 2003
NRC puts Yucca project on notice to shape up
Nuclear regulatory official: 'Schedule pressures are overrunning the quality'
By Mary Manning
<manning@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
During a tense teleconference meeting Wednesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff ordered the Energy Department to prove within 30 days that its quality assurance program for a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is working.
"Quality is not being built into the project," NRC management leader John Greeves said. "The bottom line is that behavior in safety needs change. Right now the schedule pressures are overrunning the quality."
Supporters say the Energy Department will meet a deadline to open the repository by 2010. Critics have said for years that the schedule, not quality scientific work, is driving the department.
Because the NRC will be responsible for licensing Yucca, commission officials are keeping close watch on the project.
An audit team recently discovered flaws in the way the Energy Department's chief contractor, Bechtel SAIC, had revised procedures that dictate how work is done at Yucca so reviewers can understand it.
"It's going to be difficult to implement an effective quality assurance program for licensing," Greeves said during a contractor meeting by teleconference with Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials in Las Vegas, Rockville, Md., and San Antonio.
Asked during a break whether the NRC might reject the DOE's request to build a repository, Greeves said, "I don't know what's going to happen, but the commission could reject a license application if the quality assurance is not in place."
If the Energy Department submits a license application in December 2004, the NRC could take six months to review it. If there is not enough information, the commission would reject it.
The department is making changes to its procedures and its leadership, Energy Secretary Margaret Chu said. "It's not a quick fix," she said.
John Arthur, the Energy Department's Yucca Project manager in Nevada, said administrators have been trained to listen to employee complaints and act to improve safety. By March 29, a total of 29 complaints had been received, four of them were serious enough to take action.
He said he could not say whether three members of an audit team were reassigned because they found flaws in the program, but an investigation of those allegations is under way.
Arthur said an electrical problem at the mountain was fixed in January, improving safety conditions at the tunnel.
John Mitchell, new general manager at Bechtel SAIC, said reduced funding for Yucca has eroded efforts to plan the project's future. The project is operating on $457 million, $134 million less than the $591 million Bush administration request.
As many as 40 employees could be cut from the project in June, Mitchell said.
But, he said, he doesn't "think it will be that many, and there are no final decisions yet."
Bechtel is trying to find a balance between staying within the budget and delivering a safety-based license application to the NRC in December 2004, he said. To do that, managers discussed closing down the mountain site, which costs $50 million a year to operate.
"All of us agreed that idea was unacceptable," Mitchell said, because of ongoing experiments at the site.
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Las Vegas Review Journal
May 01, 2003
Key official says DOE failing to make Yucca case
Management, quality control problems cited
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is failing to build a strong case to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain because management and quality control problems continue to persist after years of failed fixes, a key regulatory official said Wednesday.
The latest series of reforms do not appear to be taking root, leaving the DOE stumbling to meet a December 2004 goal to submit a complex nuclear waste repository application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to John Greeves, director of the agency's waste management division.
"I'm going to keep it real simple," Greeves told DOE officials, including office director Margaret Chu, at a program meeting. "It's all about outcomes, and we're going to have to verify the outcomes, and so far it's not there."
Greeves called on DOE officials to write the NRC a letter within 30 days, "telling us what you're going to do differently."
While agreeing to write the letter, Chu said DOE is seeing improvements, and more will come over time.
"I hate to say trust me, but that is what I am saying," said Chu, who initiated a management improvement plan after taking over last year. "It's not a quick fix," she added.
Greeves heads the NRC division that will evaluate the Energy Department's license application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Although it may be too early to say the NRC is poised to reject the Yucca repository, Greeves "certainly put DOE on notice that he doesn't think the NRC will see something of quality," said Judy Treichel, director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.
The Energy Department and Bechtel have installed new onsite Yucca Mountain managers in recent months. During two days of management meetings this week they discussed new efforts to instill "quality focus" in the Yucca workforce.
The issue is an important one for the Yucca program. In order to qualify for a license, DOE must meticulously verify all of its activities according to painstaking conventions.
But Greeves said when it comes to Yucca management reforms, he's heard it before.
"Over the years the department has attempted initiatives to correct these problems but there hasn't been follow through," he said. "Anyone who has watched this project has a large collection of these initiatives on their shelf."
Among other problems, Greeves noted that repairs on computer modeling and software development that were identified two years ago have yet to completed.
"Quality is just not being built into the product," he said. "The project's track record shows that schedules overcome quality."
Yucca managers said the new quality work campaign was prompted in part by discovery that a group of employees had cut corners in updating procedures, a violation of strict data management requirements.
Additionally, officials said this week that teams will soon need to begin reviewing computer models built over the past four years to double-check supporting documentation.
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San Francisco Chronicle
May 01, 2003
Energy bill passes Senate committee; toughest fights ahead
H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press Writer
The central parts of an energy bill won approval Wednesday from a Senate committee, although some of most contentious issues -- from car mileage to climate change -- went unresolved.
The legislation includes federal support to build a half-dozen nuclear power plants, loan guarantees for constructing an Alaska natural gas pipeline, and royalty relief to spur natural gas development in the Gulf of Mexico.
The bill would delay a plan by federal energy regulators to standardize access and management of electricity transmission lines across the country. Lawmakers from the South and West contend the proposal would push states into electricity deregulation and lead to higher electricity prices.
The legislation was approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee by a near party-line vote, 13-10. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana was the only Democrat voting for it.
Lawmakers failed to finish an energy bill in the final weeks of the last Congress. They now appear determined to work aggressively on legislation that would provide a broad blueprint for federal energy policy.
The House passed energy legislation this month and full Senate debate could come next week. Supporters hope the Senate measure could be wrapped up before Memorial Day.
The House legislation focuses more heavily on promoting fossil fuel development and -- unlike the Senate bill -- calls for oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Congressional negotiators would have to resolve the differences.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Energy and National Resources Committee, said the bill supports "a diversity of energy supply." While it does not include everything the Bush administration might want -- the refuge drilling, for example -- he anticipates White House support.
The bill will be combined with other provisions, including $15.5 billion in tax breaks approved by the Senate Finance Committee for both energy development and conservation. Also expected to be added is a measure passed by another committee to require greater use of ethanol as a gasoline additive.
Democrats complained the bill fails to do anything that would rein in motor vehicle fuel use, and does not adequately address ways to protect consumers against a repeat of the widespread manipulation of power markets that caused electricity prices to soar across the West two years ago.
The bill has "serious deficiencies" and lacks "overall balance and scope," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the committee's ranking Democrat. He said it "does little or nothing" to address climate change, fails to protect consumers against electricity market abuses, and opens "loopholes" for environmentally damaging energy projects on Indian lands.
While a compromise was reached on some difficult electricity measures, Domenici acknowledged many of the most divisive issues were left to be worked out when the bill comes before the full Senate.
For example, Bingaman said he would press again for a requirement that electric utilities increase use of renewable fuels, a proposal that was rejected in a party-line 12-11 vote in committee Wednesday.
Democrats pledged to push plans to require automakers to increase fuel mileage, an effort that failed last year in the Senate and again in the House last month. A proposal to require sport utility vehicles to reduce fuel use was rejected in the committee this week 15-7.
Domenici said measures he shepherded to promote nuclear power may cause "a huge uproar" and be challenged by some senators. The legislation calls for building a $1 billion reactor in Idaho to produce electricity and hydrogen, and would provide loan guarantees to help the industry build as many as six next-generation nuclear power plants.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
May 01, 2003
Yucca review raises questions
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — A review has raised questions about documents supporting the federal government´s plan to build a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, an official with a project contractor said.
The Energy Department found the problem serious enough to start corrective action earlier this month, said John Mitchell, general manager of Bechtel SAIC, a contractor on the Yucca Mountain Project.
Mitchell said Tuesday that Bechtel managers reviewing years of material to prepare a repository license application discovered in January that data management problems recurred during the past four years, despite efforts to fix them.
“We´re talking about the ability to objectively defend the history and pedigree of the data,’ Mitchell said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must be able to trace the agency´s conclusions that Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, safely can store highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.
Mitchell disclosed the problem at a Las Vegas meeting of Yucca Mountain Project quality control managers. He said Bechtel must “go back and re-establish the authenticity of the data.’
Project spokeswoman Gayle Fisher said, “I´m told this is not significant, but anything dealing with quality is a serious issue.’
Mitchell´s comments represented the latest of recent problems with quality control at the Yucca Mountain project.
In March, the Energy Department issued a “stop work’ order on one program segment after auditors found flaws in procedure-writing.
Mitchell said he stepped in to investigate the audit findings. They concluded Bechtel was failing to update procedures that direct scientists and technicians on what is necessary to document their tasks.
Auditors found that sign-offs on procedure changes were not documented properly. In one reported case, a Bechtel manager signed approval sheets for 97 procedures before their preparation was complete.
Mitchell said workers felt pressure to complete the task and sought shortcuts to simplify what appeared to be routine work.
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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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