Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, May 16, 2003
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Las Vegas SUN
May 15, 2003
Study on tunnel fire prompts investigation
Nevada officials question institute's findings
By Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning
LAS VEGAS SUN
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of Inspector General is investigating allegations that NRC staff inappropriately influenced an NRC-commissioned study of the Baltimore rail tunnel fire.
The fire in July 2001 raised questions about whether metal rail shipping containers loaded with nuclear waste would have survived such a blaze. So an NRC team contracted with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to analyze the fire, with a focus on how the waste containers would have performed.
NIST officials used sophisticated modeling and salvaged samples of materials from the blaze. They determined that the container would not have failed in the fire.
They said that while the blaze burned for three days, with initial peak temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees, the fire burned below an average temperature of 1,475. That temperature is important because nuclear waste shipping containers are required by the NRC to withstand a 1,475-degree fire for 30 minutes.
Nevada officials have questioned the study's results. The state's experts said a waste container would have failed after 12 hours.
Much is at stake for the NRC, which is responsible for regulating the waste-shipping containers. NRC officials have defended their waste-container safety standards.
But questions about whether NRC staff influenced the study were raised in an article in "Inside NRC," a twice-monthly publication that tracks news inside the agency. The article prompted the IG investigation, George Mulley, spokesman for the agency's IG office, told the Sun. The investigation has been under way for about two weeks, he said.
Mulley said there was little to report from the investigation so far.
Robert Halstead, a senior consultant on nuclear transportation to Nevada, was quoted in the NRC article and NRC investigators plan to speak with him Friday, he said.
Halstead was quoted as saying that the NIST staff "felt they were being leaned on by the NRC to focus on an analysis of the fire that would support NRC's regulatory standard, not being tasked to do a totally unfettered study of the fire."
Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said NIST's final conclusions were somewhat surprising.
"It seems to me the scientists agreed with the state (Nevada) when they talked to these guys originally, then it changed," Loux said.
Nevada officials plan to use tunnel fire data in comments they plan to submit on the NRC's upcoming package performance study, Halstead said. The NRC has announced plans to conduct full-scale cask tests, one involving a full-sized truck shipping container, the other for a full-sized rail shipping container. The NRC is proposing to subject the containers to drop and fire tests.
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UPI
May 15, 2003
UPI's Capital Comment From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk
WASHINGTON, May 15 (UPI) -- Capital Comment -- Daily news notes, political rumors, and important events that shape politics and public policy in Washington and the world from United Press International.
Nuclear site fallout...
Bechtel, the international construction giant serving as the U.S. government's chief contractor on the Yucca Mountain project, has awarded a $30 million contract to a Maryland firm that is a subsidiary of the French-owned AVERA Group. The first contract to be awarded for the nuclear waste disposal facility, Cogema will receive $29.7 million to design robots that will be used in the waste handling process.
The news that this award has been made to a French firm is raising some hackles on Capitol Hill, especially among those who did not want the Yucca Mountain project to move ahead in the first place.
A spokesman for Nevada Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons said the congressman has repeatedly expressed concerns about giving contracts with sensitive national security implications to foreign-owned firms. Giving a contract to a French company "when that government has not shown itself to be an ally of the United States on matters of national security during the past year" is especially troubling, the spokesman said.
Cogema reportedly beat out two other companies that Bechtel did not identify but are thought to be an Anglo-U.S. firm and a joint U.S.-Japanese venture that a source on Capitol Hill said "could have provided similar services at similar cost."
While the process of designing the facility moves ahead, some, like Gibbons, believe the project may "never become a reality." According to his spokesman, "The fight over Yucca Mountain never ended. There are a lot of serious matters at stake and the awarding of this contract to a French-owned firm does not help matters."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
May 16, 2003
NRC investigates fire study
Probe centers on remarks by Nevada nuclear waste consultant
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has opened an investigation into whether agency staff may have pressured scientists studying how nuclear waste shipping casks might withstand intense fire.
The probe centers on remarks by a Nevada nuclear waste consultant who has challenged the study of a 2001 train tunnel fire in Baltimore, an NRC official confirmed Thursday.
According to a March 24 report in the trade newsletter Inside NRC, senior transportation adviser Robert Halstead said researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology "felt they were being leaned on" by the NRC to produce a report favorable to the agency's fire safety standards.
The researchers believed they were "not being tasked to do a totally unfettered study," Halstead was quoted.
Others within the NRC noticed the article, said George Mulley, a senior level assistant in the NRC's Office of Inspector General.
"We had several concerns reported to us, asking essentially what is this about and so we're looking into the allegation to find out if there's any wrongdoing," Mulley said. The probe was first reported in Nuclear Fuel, another trade journal.
Halstead was traveling Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Bob Loux, director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, said Halstead has confirmed he was accurately quoted.
"He's standing by his remarks," Loux said.
Halstead was scheduled to be interviewed today by NRC investigators, Loux said. It was not known who else was being questioned. Mulley said the investigation began two weeks ago.
The NRC study team leader, Christopher Bajwa, referred queries Thursday to the agency's public affairs office.
In an e-mail message last week, Bajwa said, "although the delegation from Nevada may not agree with our conclusions, we believe the science behind them is solid."
The study involved the July 18, 2001, rail car derailment and resulting fire within the Howard Street Tunnel in downtown Baltimore.
Using data gained from tests conducted in a decommissioned tunnel in West Virginia, the National Institute of Standards and Technology developed computer models of the Baltimore fire, which was set off near a tanker car holding 28,600 gallons of tripropylene, a flammable solvent.
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses also contributed to the NRC study, which concluded that a metal shipping cask would not have failed in the Baltimore tunnel.
Halstead and other Nevada-hired experts disputed the NRC study, saying it underestimated the duration of the fire and the amount of heat it generated.
Halstead also has complained that Nevada consultants were denied access to meetings between NRC and contractors conducting the fire study, and had to file Freedom of Information Act requests for data.
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CNN
May 16, 2003
Lou Dobbs Moneyline
Aired May 14, 2003 - 18:00 ET
(excerpt)
Senator Harry Reid joins us from Capitol Hill. Senator, good to have you with us.
SEN. HARRY REID (D), MINORITY WHIP: Thank you very much, Lou.
DOBBS: We're going to a tax cut. Care to tell us what you think the ultimate form will be?
REID: Well, we're going to find out for sure tomorrow. I think we all have a pretty good inkling what's going to happen. We have offered a number of amendments. There will be a lot more amendments offered. This is a very unique procedure quagmire we find ourself in in the Senate. It's not one of those times when there's unending debate. Debate will end.
We're going to finish debate on the measure tonight. And tomorrow morning at 9:15, we'll start voting. And there could be as many as 25 or 30 votes, so it could take all day to vote tomorrow. And I think when the final vote is cast, I think the president's tax cut will go through. There's a number of us feel that that's not the best thing for the country, but one thing that I know how to do is to count votes.
DOBBS: And indeed you do, senator, that's part of your job for the minority there. Any hope of any of those amendments getting through from the Democratic side?
REID: I think we have some opportunity to pass some of the amendments. As I stated on the Senate floor today, when my Social Security amendment was up, it's a relatively simple amendment, straightforward. It said that we should do away with the dividend tax cuts for the elite of this country and apply those monies to Social Security rather than rob the Social Security trust fund and put it into those monies for the dividend tax cut.
But I said there that it was like lemmings going over the cliff. Everyone walked down, even though they know that we should do something to preserve Social Security, and voted against this amendment to save the billions of dollars that will go to the elite of this world with the tax cut.
So I think that I can pretty well understand what's going to happen. I think Republicans will vote in unison against anything we try to do to change the bill.
Now, I don't know what's going to happen in conference. You know, there's a fight between the Republicans in conference as to what should happen. But I think I'd like to be more optimistic and hope that better judgment will prevail, but what I saw today, I don't think so.
DOBBS: Let's turn briefly, if we may, senator, to Yucca Mountain. Contracts being let there. Have you got any news there for us there?
REID: Well, of course we're very concerned. They're going to let a multimillion-dollar contract without putting out to bid to lawyers. We have already had the General Accounting Office and the inspector general indicate that some of the legal work done on that project in the past has been, if not illegal, certainly unethical. We feel that we have had a few people who have stepped forward and said that what is going out there as it relates to science is bad. Those people have been fired or had their jobs changed someplace else in the project.
Senator Edison (ph) and I are going to a hearing in Nevada next week -- I should say the week after next to try to get to the bottom of this.
Yucca Mountain is replete with problems. They're going to continue. But I say, Lou, that I don't think that the American people will ever allow the most poisonous substance known to man be hauled on our railways and highways in this country. I simply think it won't happen, no matter what the legislation indicates should happen.
DOBBS: Senator Reid, we know that you have been fighting Yucca Mountain for -- from its inception, and we look forward to your investigation. And thank you for your time here tonight.
REID: Lou, I enjoy your program very much. Thanks for allowing me to be on it.
DOBBS: Thank you, Senator Reid.
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Las Vegas SUN
May 15, 2003
Correction
Because of errors by the Sun, a May 8 story in the Metro section on analysis of the 2001 Baltimore train tunnel fire failed to mention that the 1,475-degree rating for nuclear waste shipment containers is the average temperature a container is required to withstand for 30 minutes. Also, NRC staff and contractors addressed several other issues in the fire analysis that one Clark County official said were not addressed. The Sun regrets the errors.
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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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