Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
---------------------------

Reno Gazette-Journal
June 11, 2003

Senate votes to keep loans in energy bill

By Doug Abrahms

WASHINGTON — The Senate narrowly voted Tuesday to keep federal loan guarantees in the energy bill to build a new generation of nuclear power plants — a source of power strongly supported by the Bush administration.

The provision would allow the Energy Department to guarantee loans for half the construction cost of commercial reactors. Both Nevada senators voted for an amendment to strip that provision, but it lost 50-48.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev, said he believes the Senate already is subsidizing nuclear power by voting to build the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

“To add another subsidy, I believe, would be wrong at this time,’ he said.

Even though electricity users have paid billions of dollars for construction of a nuclear waste dump over the past 20 years, the high price of Yucca Mountain will force Congress to add billions in taxpayer money, Ensign said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said his opposition to the loan guarantees was separate from his views on Yucca Mountain.

“The simple truth is: If investors on Wall Street won´t invest in new nuclear power plants, we shouldn´t force the families on Main Street to invest their hard-earned money,’ he said.

Opponents, most of whom were Democrats, said the provision could make the government liable for at least $14 billion if nuclear plants default on their bonds.

A Congressional Budget Office report last month estimated that the risk of default by nuclear power plants built with federal loan guarantees would be greater than 50 percent. The agency said the cost of building a nuclear generating plant is more than four times higher than a natural gas-fired facility, and the full construction price of an atomic reactor might never be recovered.

“Never before have the taxpayers been on the hook from the get-go,’ said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who led the charge against the subsidies. “The loan guarantees are unprecedented, even in the early days of nuclear power.’

Some fiscally conservative Republicans also opposed federal loan guarantees.

“I oppose those subsidies even for those sources of energy which I think are critical to develop,’ said Sen. Jon Kyle, R-Ariz., who supports nuclear power.

But proponents turned the vote into a referendum on nuclear power, which provides 20 percent of America´s electricity. No commercial generator has been ordered by a utility since the early 1980s — in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island reactor malfunction that caused a release of radioactive gas in 1979.

Supporters argued that coal, wind, oil and gas would get subsidies in the energy bill to increase production, and it was only fair to include nuclear.

---------------------------

Jefferson City News Tribune
June 11, 2003

Official: Nuclear shipment to head through Missouri later this year

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- A train carrying high-level nuclear waste will travel through Missouri in a one-time shipment later this year, a State Emergency Management Agency official said.

SEMA Radiological Emergency Planner Ed Gray said the shipment will be taken from West Valley, N.Y., to the northwestern United States. He said he did not know when the shipment would come through Missouri, except it would be this year.

Gray has been performing training sessions at locations where the shipment would pass, including one last week in Moberly in north-central Missouri. He said the sessions are to prepare local first-responders to secure the scene in case of an accident.

"We just want to be more cautious than not," Gray said.

Tim Jackson, a spokesman with the Department of Energy in Idaho, would not confirm that the waste would cross Missouri because the timing and routes of nuclear shipments are not disclosed for national security reasons.

However, Jackson said spent nuclear fuel rods from a site in West Valley, N.Y., needed to be transported to a laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The nuclear waste would then be taken to the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Nevada for permanent disposal.

The spent nuclear fuel rods are transported inside large casks made of steel, lead and other materials. The containers have survived a series of rigorous tests, Gray said.

The tests included a 30-foot drop onto a concrete pad, a 30-minute-burn in a 1,245-degree fire and an 80 mph rail-car crash into a concrete wall. There are also tests for underwater submergence and puncture by a steel rod. The Nuclear Energy Institute said no leakage was recorded in any of the tests.

The Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico fired a weapon the NEI called 30 times more powerful than a typical anti-tank weapon at the cask. A quarter-inch diameter hole was created that the NRC said would leak one-third of an ounce of used nuclear fuel, according to the NEI.

Gray said a person could stand near a stopped train 24 hours a day for two weeks and receive less radiation than in a single chest X-ray.

Jackson said the New York to Idaho shipment was the same shipment that was canceled in October 2001.

At the time, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service organized a replica shipment and protested at locations along the proposed route, including Moberly. Kevin Kamps, a nuclear waste specialist at NIRS in Washington, D.C., said the 2001 route had the shipment entering Missouri near Hannibal and leaving from Kansas City.

Kamps claims the government's information about the safety of nuclear waste transport is incomplete.

He said the tests are misleading and discount realistic situations that could exceed the test situations. For instance, Kamps said, fires with diesel fuel can burn up to 1,800 degrees and railroad fires have lasted several days instead of only 30 minutes.

Since 1964, the NEI said more than 3,000 nuclear fuel shipments have been made with only four road accidents and four rail accidents.

Those accidents caused no injuries, no deaths and no environmental damage, the NEI said.

Kamps said there had been 50 incidents, including ones where radioactive materials were found on the exterior of shipment containers. No injuries or deaths had been reported but "minimal effort" had gone into researching the incidents, Kamps said.

Kamps advocates halting the production of nuclear power because there is no easy way to dispose of the waste it creates. And he claims shipments of nuclear waste would be vulnerable to terrorist attacks and accidents.

"If we are going to move the waste one day, then it had better be for very good reasons," Kamps said.

A series of about 40 trains crossed the state in the late 1980s, carrying nuclear waste from the Three-Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Gray said those trains passed through St. Louis, Jefferson City, Sedalia, Independence and Kansas City and no one was exposed to radiation.

In 2001, Gov. Bob Holden halted trucks carrying a nuclear fuel shipment at the Illinois border, claiming the Energy Department's route failed to avoid rush-hour traffic in St. Louis and a baseball game in Kansas City. Holden also claimed the agency had notified officials that the waste would go through Iowa, not Missouri.

---------------------------

USA Today
June 10, 2003

Nuclear plants near airports may be at risk

By Gary Stoller, USA TODAY

The nuclear industry beefed up security on the ground at power plants throughout the country after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But the plants today remain as vulnerable to a hit from a plane using a nearby small airport as they were then.

A USA TODAY analysis shows that thousands of airports are within 60 miles of plants; 52 are within five miles. Yet, aircraft based at many of these airports are largely unguarded and could reach a nuclear site within minutes.

Nuclear power companies say their plants, designed to withstand earthquakes and natural disasters, are well protected and wouldn't release radiation if struck by an aircraft. Even a jet crash wouldn't cause major damage, although it could affect the ability to generate electricity, they say.

But some scientists, safety experts and lawmakers say the real threat is the ever-increasing stockpile of used fuel stored in less-protected pools at the plants.

The worry about a plane crashing at a nuclear power site was heightened after hijacked jets were used in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Since then, various government agencies have sounded warnings that planes controlled by terrorists might pose a threat to the plants: The FBI alerted local law enforcement agencies last month to the possibility of terrorists using an aircraft to strike a plant; the government earlier this year urged small plane owners to look for and report suspicious activities; and in late February, the Federal Aviation Administration instructed pilots to "avoid the airspace above or in proximity to all nuclear power plants."

But Congress and the accountable federal agencies, facing high-cost solutions and political pressure, have done little to address the threat. The nuclear industry considers it an airport security issue. Aviation interests are opposed to restrictions that might limit access to the skies.

After Sept. 11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began a study of what could happen if an aircraft strikes a power plant. The study hasn't been completed. It has "the highest priority," but science "does take time," says Alan Madison, a security chief at the NRC.

The NRC says it relies on airport security to protect against anyone commandeering a plane and using it for a deliberate attack on a nuclear plant. Although security at major airports was beefed up after Sept. 11, there is little or no security at many of the 18,000 "general aviation" airports that handle smaller planes.

"What would prevent some terrorist or criminal from taking a Learjet from a small airport?" asks security consultant Jalal Haidar, senior vice president of Virginia-based Aerospace Services International. "They have no security measures. They're a loophole in the overall aviation security system."

Using government data, USA TODAY and Pennsylvania-based CAP Index, a risk-forecasting and mapping company, looked at the proximity of airports to the nation's operating nuclear power plants at 65 sites in 31 states. The analysis shows:

• More than 6,200 airports and heliports are within 60 miles of the nuclear plants. Among them are 83 airports that have regular jet flights, including Chicago's O'Hare, the nation's busiest, and Boston's Logan and New Jersey's Newark, two airports from which terrorists hijacked planes on Sept. 11. But most of the 6,200 aren't bound by federal regulations designed to make larger airports more secure. About 1,200 are public; most of the rest are operated privately for companies, hospitals and local governments.

• Every nuclear plant is within 19 miles of at least one public airport. Two hundred public airports are within 20 miles of a plant.

According to USA TODAY's analysis, the nuclear plant closest to a public airport is Wolf Creek, operating since June 1985 in Lebo, Kan. It is 1.4 miles from Burlington, Kan.'s Coffey County Airport, which handles about 55 flights daily and is home base for 28 single-engine and two multi-engine planes.

Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, site of a 1979 nuclear accident, is the plant closest to an airport with scheduled commercial flights. Harrisburg International Airport is slightly more than three miles from the plant, handles about 200 flights daily, mostly airlines' multi-engine jets and commuter planes. Lancaster Airport, a busy private-plane facility with more than 300 flights each day, is 22 miles away.

Nuclear power companies say the numbers are meaningless. Most planes at airports near power plants are small, without the weight or speed to cause a crash that would release radiation into the atmosphere, they say. The concrete surrounding each nuclear reactor gives sufficient protection, and a crash elsewhere on a power plant site wouldn't lead to an environmental disaster, they say.

But given the proximity of the airports, including many of the USA's largest, to nuclear plants, some safety experts raise questions about the chance not only of terrorism but of an accidental crash, because most accidents happen at or near an airport.

An October 2000 NRC study calculated that the chances of an airplane damaging a spent-fuel pool, considered more vulnerable than the reactor itself, are between one in 17 million and one in 100 billion. As a comparison, a person's chance of being killed in a plane crash is one in 4.6 million.

The chances of a plane accidentally crashing into a pool are "at the far end of possibilities and low probability," says the NRC's Madison.

But the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, an arm of the NRC, has signaled its concern about the proximity of planes and nuclear facilities. In March, the board said it couldn't approve a license for a proposed nuclear waste facility in Utah, which would be built by utility companies, because it would be under an airway used by F-16 pilots during training flights from Hill Air Force Base, north of Salt Lake City. The NRC's technical staff disagrees with the board's decision, and utility companies have petitioned NRC commissioners to reverse it.

Jan Beyea, a nuclear physicist who agrees with the NRC's mathematical calculations for a conventional plane crash, says the odds "completely go out the window" in the case of terrorism. "After Sept. 11, the odds are much greater," he says. "There's also probably a whole number of events that could occur that we haven't thought about."

In a recent report for the 380,000-member Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, former Energy Department employee Robert Jefferson says common sense indicates that power plants' proximity to airports "does not increase their exposure to terrorist threats." He also says a small plane crash into any part of a power plant wouldn't produce enough damage to cause a radiation release.

Biggest worry

Still, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has been sounding alarms about the situation since Sept. 11, says that without a new NRC report or scientific proof, he's concerned about any aircraft, small or large, striking a power plant. "Is it a fixed-wing aircraft, a helicopter or a shoulder-fired weapon that can cause a nuclear accident? I don't know," he says. "Until we get information from somebody, I can only throw up red flags."

Of particular concern are the spent-fuel pools, used to cool nuclear fuel that once powered the reactors. The pools' roofs are either corrugated metal or concrete less thick than the shells surrounding the reactors. That makes them vulnerable, critics say.

Three Mile Island is the only plant required to have features protecting vital areas from a 200,000-pound jet crash, the NRC says. But safety watchdogs say the plant's auxiliary buildings lack extra protection. Exelon, which owns the plant, says its reactor is designed to immediately shut down in such an emergency.

Marc Feigenblatt, an airline pilot who flew fighter jets, says hitting a spent-fuel pool is possible. "It's more difficult than a World Trade Center target but not beyond the capabilities of any commercial airline pilot. It's also not beyond the capabilities of a Sept. 11 terrorist with some degree of training in a commercial aircraft."

Power companies say a December study they commissioned — which they say can't be released because of security considerations — showed that a crash into a spent-fuel pool wall could crush and crack it but not enough to cause a radioactive release into the environment.

Costs a concern

Providing better protection for the plants will be neither cheap nor quick. The U.S. government has invested billions of dollars and created an agency to make the country's large commercial airports secure. But at small airports, operators and private pilots say they can't afford the costs of providing more security.

Some security critics have suggested stationing guards with anti-aircraft guns at nuclear plants. But in Senate testimony last year, NRC Chairman Richard Meserve, who left the agency in March, said he's against the idea because, among other things, "the use of such weaponry could lead to significant collateral damage to plant workers and members of the public."

Nuclear safety experts agree that the most pressing need is to protect the used fuel. Many advocate removing it from the pools and putting it into concrete casks. If an aircraft crashed into the casks and radiation was released, the amount would be far less than would be released from a pool, they say.

Operators at 33 of the 103 operating plants have transferred a small amount of used fuel to casks. But it would cost up to $7 billion to transfer about 35,000 tons from all the pools and take about a decade, according to a January study by eight scientists and nuclear experts.

The fuel transfer also presents risks. A cask that is dropped, an NRC staff study concluded, could "catastrophically damage the pool."

Not all the fuel could be put into casks. Reactors keep producing more, and used fuel must cool for years before it can be transferred. Some experts say it would be safer in dry storage racks than in pools.

For decades, environmental concerns and scientific studies have derailed the federal government's promise to build a waste-disposal site for used fuel. But last July, President Bush signed a bill to develop Nevada's Yucca Mountain site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as an underground repository. The Energy Department is expected to submit a licensing application by the end of next year. Then the NRC, an agency within the DOE, must decide whether to approve it.

The proposed site is projected to open in the next decade. The cost, originally estimated at $6.3 billion, is now about $8.4 billion.

In late 2001, the NRC said its new study will include a detailed analysis of the consequences of a plane crash into a spent-fuel pool, as well as a "top-to-bottom" evaluation of "all aspects of the agency's safeguards and physical security programs."

Memos about classified information sent by the NRC to the CIA and the Office of Homeland Security show that the agency has at least looked at the potential of large commercial planes hitting nuclear facilities and the ability of plants to withstand plane crashes.

"We've increased security in general since Sept. 11, but we haven't been able to get into specifics," says NRC spokeswoman Beth Hayden. "We don't want to give our hand away."

Nuclear power companies say the public has nothing to worry about because their plants are well protected. "The nuclear power industry is confident that nuclear plant structures that house reactor fuel can withstand aircraft impacts, even though they were not specifically designed for such impacts," the companies said in their December report.

Such confidence infuriates Reid, who has introduced legislation with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., to create a federal force to assess the design, operation and protection of nuclear facilities and develop a plan for each plant. "For their own protection, they should be joining in on this," he says.

"There's a lot of blame to go around. Our pants aren't all the way down on this issue, but they're pretty close."

Contributing: Barbara Hansen

---------------------------

Inyo Register
06/03/2003

NRC to clarify Inyo issues

By Darcy Ellis

With deadlines fast approaching that may determine when and if nuclear waste is buried not more than 17 miles from Death Valley, county officials are continuing to examine ways to weigh in with their concerns.

In preparing to further express itself on the Yucca Mountain Project, Inyo County is first looking to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for guidance, officials reported this week.

Top officials and experts with the NRC - charged with approving or denying the application that would allow the U.S. Department of Energy to begin accepting and storing waste at Yucca Mountain - will be in Inyo County this week to hopefully provide some of that guidance.

At today's 9 a.m. Inyo Board of Supervisors meeting in Independence, the NRC is scheduled to give supervisors a presentation on its role - and the county's potential role - in the Yucca licensing phase.

Then, on Wednesday, the NRC is holding a public workshop-style meeting where it will give four presentations on the same subjects, related more specifically to waste transportation and hydrology issues, and its job in ensuring safety of potential waste shipments through southeast Inyo County.

Wednesday's meeting will run from 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Tecopa Community Center. Today's presentation is being held in the County Administrative Center next to the courthouse in Independence.

According to Inyo County Yucca Mountain Project Assessment Office Coordinator Andrew Remus, both meetings (more than a year in the making) will give local officials a chance to find out how Inyo County can continue to interact with the NRC once the DOE has submitted its license application.

Remus will be on hand for the meetings, should officials or residents ask questions of the county.

Today's meeting in particular, he said Monday, "is important because the NRC hasn't spoken directly to the board to my knowledge ... it's an opportunity to explore what Inyo County's role in the Yucca Mountain Project might be."

Specifically, Remus explained, the county wants to know how its ongoing groundwater studies in Death Valley (to determine whether water under Yucca Mountain deposits in Inyo County as other studies have indicated), will factor into the NRC's decision.

"The key question for us," he said, "is how will our groundwater research be utilized in the licensing process and how will we present our research."

Remus added that, at this juncture, it is unknown what Inyo County will have to respond to in the DOE's license application for the Nye County proposed repository.

If DOE intentions hold true, it could be submitting its application for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage next year.

And according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission High-Level Waste Public Outreach Team leader Dr. Janet Kotra, it could be as early as 2007 that the NRC will issue its decision on that application.

As an independent regulatory body - using the scientific and technical evaluations of exclusive, independent contractors - the NRC will have 3-4 years to decide whether the DOE can accept and store spent, high-level nuclear fuel underneath Yucca Mountain.

It is expected that Kotra and her colleagues will explain to county officials and residents just how the NRC will make its decision. Kotra said last week that the NRC will focus on the DOE application itself, relying heavily on the analyses of its independent contractors to determine whether the DOE's application meets, among other stringent guidelines, the mandates of the U.S. Environmental Protection Act.

---------------------------

Inyo Register
06/09/2003

NRC officials present overview

By Darcy Ellis

For some Inyo officials, Tuesday's meeting with Nuclear Regulatory Commission representatives was their first chance to speak face to face with the high-ranking, independent authority.

Held as an abridged version of the NRC presentation scheduled last night in Tecopa, the Tuesday gathering (held during the board's regularly scheduled meeting) offered supervisors insight into the commission's role in the Yucca Mountain licensing phase, and how local officials may impact part of its decision-making process.

In particular, NRC officials spoke of its investigative, enforcement and licensing responsibilities in relation to the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository in nearby Nye County, Nev.

NRC Branch Chief Janet Schluter began the presentation with an overview, reporting - among other items of information - that the NRC's job is to set and enforce the standards and rules for nuclear waste projects like Yucca Mountain. With the Nevada project in particular, the NRC will be charged with evaluating the DOE's information on the project in an objective fashion.

DOE is still expected to submit its license application in December 2004. She said the NRC will have three years to approve or deny the application; first, though, the NRC will have 30 days to decide whether to accept it as a complete document.

"Then the three-year clock starts," she said.

NRC officials also have to decide whether to adopt the DOE's Environmental Impact Statement for the project - to determine whether the EIS is sufficient as is or if the DOE has included information in its application that has not been addressed in the separate environmental document. Staff then can begin a detailed safety and technical review, during which it could be "very possible" the NRC will request more information from the DOE, Schluter explained. An evidentiary hearing would follow later on the technical aspects of the DOE's application.

Much of the evaluation will be done by the independent consulting firm, the Center for Waste Regulatory Analysis, of San Antonia, Texas.

Consultant Paul Bertetti told Inyo supervisors that they will be looking at aspects of the project like groundwater pathways and possible contamination - something of serious concern to local residents. He explained that Nye County's Early Warning Drilling Program, similar to drilling being done in Death Valley by Inyo County, has already given the firm's experts a better understanding of the area's soil elements and descriptions of geology. As part of their independent studies, he explained, they took their own samples from Nye County's drilling sites.

Bertetti said the firm is "very interested" in participating in local studies that will help their understanding of the situation, so that they may "make the best decision possible."

If its license is approved (and it could be approved with certain conditions tacked on, Schluter said), the DOE can begin construction at Yucca Mountain and later the acceptance and storage of waste.

The NRC will continue to monitor the project to ensure Yucca Mountain is safe and in compliance with guidelines through inspection and enforcement programs.

According to Schluter, the NRC strives to do all this as transparently as possible, hence its long schedule of public outreach opportunities.

County supervisors repeatedly expressed gratitude Tuesday to the NRC representatives in attendance, while also indicating their disappointment with other agencies that have not been so open, particularly those relating to transportation of waste through Inyo County.

Chester Poslusny, of the NRC's Spent Fuel Project Office, explained that if the Yucca Mountain repository is built, the NRC will be regulating the safety and security of shipments to the site.

First and foremost, the NRC will have to approve the casks in which the DOE wants to transport the high-level waste. More than once, Poslusny held up thick books filled with all the guidelines NRC officials follow when making that decision. He also cited the excellent safety record of current waste shipments stateside and abroad.

If the DOE's casks are approved, transportation regulation essentially falls to the Department of Transportation. He noted that the NRC will nevertheless be working closely with the DOT and agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Administration, Office of National Security and state, local and tribal governments.

Poslusny told supervisors that Affected Units of Local Government (Inyo County being one of them) have the opportunity to come up with alternate routes for the shipments - news, apparently, to county officials.

Supervisor Linda Arcularius asked how rural governments might improve their chances of having a route changed, if say, a highly-populated city's request was at odds with theirs. Poslusny suggested enlisting the aid of state officials, which he said might become more readily available when shipment numbers begin to change.

Supervisor Butch Hambleton, meanwhile, reiterated concerns that the DOE plans to ship nuclear waste on State Route 127, despite the fact that local authorities have little haz-mat response capabilities. "We couldn't respond to a (past) haz-mat situation right here in Independence in less than six hours," he said, questioning whether Inyo County had ever been told it could propose alternate routes.

Inyo County Yucca Mountain Project Assessment Office Coordinator Andrew Remus noted that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act provides money to Affected Units of Local Government for response efforts, but said the amounts available are "totally inadequate" for all those affected. He concluded that Inyo County would have to speak and work closely with the DOE, DOT and state to improve its lot.

---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN
June 08, 2003

Editorial: Open probe into alleged Yucca flaws

Las Vegas Sun

A letter regarding the quality of construction at Yucca Mountain, bearing the signatures of U.S. Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., was sent last week to Attorney General John Ashcroft. The senators based their letter on evidence that's been building over the past several months casting serious doubt on the quality of work taking place at Yucca Mountain.

Reid and Ensign are asking Ashcroft to investigate allegations that quality assurance workers are being intimidated. The Sun has detailed the cases of workers who say they experienced disciplinary retaliation when they raised concerns regarding procedures and workmanship. It was alarming when two of those workers failed to appear at a field hearing conducted by Reid and Ensign on May 25. Were they pressured to stay away? It was alarming when a top Department of Energy official wrote to Reid, explaining she would not encourage workers to testify. It was alarming when, at the hearing, representatives from the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also raised serious quality-assurance issues.

We have always sided with the scientists who say that it is impossible -- even with the highest construction standards -- for Yucca Mountain to safely seal 77,000 tons of nuclear waste that will be deadly for at least the next 10,000 years. Given the strength of the arguments against Yucca under even the most rigid standards, it's certainly of urgent national concern when there is reason to believe standards may be lax.

Nothing like Yucca has ever been built and therefore its work should have layer upon layer of oversight. A Department of Energy timetable lists 2010 as the earliest date the mountain could open -- a date just seven years away. For the sake of the nation now and in the future, Ashcroft should order an investigation -- one that would ensure the protection of all workers who cooperate with it.

---------------------------

Pahrump Valley Times
June 6, 2003

Reid, Ensign strongly request DOE investigation

Senators Claim Witnesses Were Intimidated; Refused to Testify on Yucca Mountain

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Nevada's senators urged Attorney General John Ashcroft on Wednesday to investigate whether the Energy Department intimidated two witnesses who declined to testify at a Senate hearing last week on the Yucca Mountain Project.

The senators said Donald Harris and Robert Clark were prepared to appear at a May 28 hearing in Las Vegas until they became aware of a letter from the nuclear waste repository program's top manager that caused them to withdraw.

"We are extremely concerned by this incident, because the Department of Energy appears to have discouraged these witnesses from testifying," Ashcroft was told in the letter from Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and John Ensign (R-Nev).

The Nevada senators asked Ashcroft to review whisteblower protection laws and ensure Harris and Clark would be protected from job loss or harassment if they came forward.

Reid said he has spoken with the workers. "Of course they want to testify but they are afraid of losing their jobs," he said during an appearance he and Ensign made on CNN.

An Energy Department spokesman strongly denied the accusation that DOE had discouraged the workers from testifying, calling it "absolutely false."

"Nobody in the Department of Energy nor anyone in the Yucca Mountain Project told people they could not testify, period," spokesman Joe Davis said. "DOE has not intimidated witnesses."

"It is incredible the level of politics this issue has descended into," Davis added. Nevada's senators have long opposed the program, which seeks to establish a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Reached at home, Harris's wife said he declined to comment. A call to Clark's cell phone was not returned.

Harris, employed by a repository contractor, was on a four-person audit team that discovered flaws in a segment of the project's quality assurance program this spring. He has said he believes the audit was connected to his removal from audit duties for several weeks.

His company, Navarro Research and Engineering, said it was a temporary reassignment while Harris was being investigated, and subsequently cleared, for unprofessional conduct.

Clark was the Yucca Mountain Project's quality assurance director until he was transferred to another division in 2001. The reassignment came after he reportedly urged corrective actions for the program.

Reid arranged a Las Vegas field hearing by the Senate's energy and water subcommittee to question Clark and Harris on quality assurance in the Yucca project and their treatment by managers.

Days before the hearing, the witnesses informed Reid they would not appear. Harris told a reporter he decided not to testify after he became aware of a letter written by Margaret Chu, director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

Chu's letter was addressed to Reid. It said DOE had "given no direction to Mr. Clark or Navarro, Mr. Harris's employer, regarding this hearing."

Chu went on to say that Clark no longer worked on quality assurance. "The subject matter for which is testimony is sought is not within the scope of his current duties." As for Harris, Chu said since he was a contractor employee, "we are not in a position to instruct or otherwise pressure him to testify."

Ensign said Chu's letter chilled the witnesses.

"You could tell the Department of Energy was somewhat embarrassed by what was going on and they did not want them to testify," he said. "This needs to be looked into very, very seriously."

Ensign said the matter is pertinent in light of testimony by another witness at the Las Vegas hearing.

Allison MacFarlane, co-director of a Yucca Mountain study program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said scientists fear retaliation if they challenge DOE's work on Yucca Mountain. She did not identify any scientists.

"Scientists all over the country are afraid of saying anything negative for fear of losing grants from the federal government," Ensign said. "There is almost an atmosphere around the Yucca Mountain Project that they want it to go forward no matter what."

---------------------------

FOX News
June 10, 2003

Energy Bill Revives Nuclear Power Debate

The senior senator from the state where the nuclear bomb was first developed more than a half century ago says more needs to be done to help the nuclear power industry get off the ground.

Sen. Pete Domenici, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, is proposing in this year's attempt at an energy bill billions of dollars in government help, including loan guarantees, to the nuclear power industry. The goal, Domenici said, is to get new nuclear power reactors, a cleaner alternative to coal and natural gas manufacturing, up and running.

"America has made a giant mistake in putting nuclear energy on the back burner for so long," said Domenici, whose comprehensive energy measure was unsuccessfully challenged Tuesday by lawmakers who tried to strip a provision to help build six new generators.

The bill, he contends, "will move the world more substantially toward ... a new kind of nuclear power" with smaller, safer reactors and new ways to deal with nuclear wastes.

Reactors now account for 20 percent of the power generated in the United States, but ground has not been broken on a new plant since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island (search) nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

Opposition to nuclear industry incentives comes from a wide range of people. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Domenici's plan is too much of a gamble.

"It's not a question about whether someone is pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear" but whether "to put at risk the taxpayers of this country" if the reactor projects flop, he said.

Others, like officials in Nevada, where the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository has been on and off again countless times, say the danger of nuclear waste makes further reactors too hot to handle.

Though the nuclear power plan is just a fraction of the subsidies being doled out to develop natural gas, coal, oil and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, Domenici's approach is the most aggressive attempt to spur nuclear energy development in decades.

The legislation would:

— Have the government underwrite with loan guarantees construction of six next-generation power reactors. Taxpayers wouldn't pay a dime if the plants succeed but pick up billions of dollars in costs should they fail.

— Have the government build a $1.1 billion reactor in Idaho to produce hydrogen.

— Recommend spending $865 million to speed research into ways to alter reactor waste chemically to reduce its volume and long-term radioactivity.

— Increase other nuclear research spending by tens of millions of dollars over current levels.

Taxpayers for Common Sense (search) estimates the bill will offer nuclear industrialists $3.7 billion in direct funding over five years, other than loan guarantees.

"It's corporate welfare for an industry that doesn't need a dime of federal backing," agreed Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Wyden says taxpayers "could be on the hook" for anywhere from $16 billion to $30 billion if the reactor projects should fail or be abandoned, not an unlikely prospect says the Congressional Budget Office (search), which estimates high costs and high risk for nuclear power development.

New plants will cost $2.1 billion to $3 billion apiece, CBO estimates, and the "risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high — well above 50 percent."

But supporters of the nuclear power industry, which is banking on the removal of regulations that created licensing problems, say CBO's estimates are based on projects that were in place two decades ago, and don't account for the fact that companies will still be liable for half the cost.

"We're trying to jump-start the industry again," said Richard Myers of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group. "We're not looking for a handout. We're not looking for any freebies."

Still, even some senators who support nuclear power say the subsidies should be scaled back.

"Nuclear power is a mature technology today," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who has been supportive of the industry. He said he has "great difficulty seeing how we can justify ... subsidies of this scale."

Bingaman has criticized in particular the proposed hydrogen-producing reactor that Domenici would have the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory build. While favoring a less ambitious research project, Bingaman suggested that the government should not be in the business of producing hydrogen.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

---------------------------

Insight
June 09, 2003

Commentary: Let's Hear It All

By Tom Devine and Martin Edwin Andersen

To those concerned with whistle-blower rights, the outrage expressed by Nevada's senators following an alleged attempt by the Department of Energy (DOE) to silence and intimidate two witnesses scheduled to appear at a congressional hearing concerning the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste dump is all too familiar.

Republican Sen. John Ensign declared at a hearing held May 28 in Las Vegas: "It is disturbing that responsible workers who uncover problems with Yucca Mountain procedures are being retaliated against by the Department of Energy and its contractors. Their attempts to silence critics of the project have amplified our concerns about their commitment to quality assurances at Yucca Mountain." Democratic Sen. Harry Reid fumed: "It is a disappointment to me and a disservice to the American public that workers within the Yucca Mountain Project have been silenced" by DOE. "Make no mistake, we will ultimately hear their stories and what they know will be made public."

Maybe.

It is clear that the whistle-blowers ought to be heard. Their voices might have added even greater credibility to the parade of expert witnesses at the hearing who testified about rampant mismanagement, politicized "scientific" reports and serious defects in the quality-assurance program that is supposed to govern DOE's plans for entombing 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in the unexpectedly leaky mountain.

The whistle-blowers' voices were needed to allay concern that DOE fails to act responsibly. The lead auditor for a Yucca Mountain program contractor testified that for the last two years, despite allegations of corruption and other abuses of authority, the department's inspector general has yet to open an investigation. The mixture of questionable science by DOE's Yucca Mountain "amen corner" and alleged fabricated witness interviews on key quality-assurance programs has left experts scratching their heads about where the truth lies about water that could accumulate inside the facility, the rate at which it could accumulate and the risk of corrosion for hundreds of waste cannisters storing lethal waste.

Yet, instead of dealing with these problems, insiders say, DOE has been paying what Reid himself called "millions of dollars in hush money" so that the public - particularly Yucca Mountain's Nevada neighbors - doesn't know what's threatening them. Naturally, DOE doesn't see it that way.

The Yucca Mountain experience serves as a microcosm of how DOE deals with whistle-blowers, say critics, in that those who can't be bought by the department end up being bullied by it. Absent congressional champions and the bright glare of unfavorable publicity, most whistle-blowers find that they are treated like criminals. The intimidation tends to be successful because the consequences - including security-clearance revocation, job loss and blacklisting - can be severe. Even bipartisan senatorial huffing and puffing doesn't necessarily forestall reprisal. Witness DOE's willingness to turn a deaf ear to Reid - the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate - and Ensign, who belongs to the same party as President George W. Bush.

There is a possible solution, however, and it is something Reid and Ensign very plausibly could do. The Energy Reorganization Act (ERA) remains the only Department of Labor environmental statute that excludes government whistle-blowers from being harassed for challenging violations of laws and regulations. Those affected by this free-speech orphanhood are primarily Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and DOE whistle-blowers.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the need to protect government employees blowing the whistle on national-security violations appears to critics to be increasing dramatically, as does the number of modern-day "Paul Revere" whistle-blowers challenging bureaucratic negligence over vulnerabilities to terrorist attack. Not surprisingly, claims of reprisals against whistle-blowers also are on the rise.

A recent report by the NRC inspector general's office reveals that fear of reprisal is undercutting the commission staff's public-service goals, with only 53 percent saying they are satisfied that their agency adequately is serving public-interest goals.

If Congress really is serious about protecting Yucca Mountain and other DOE whistle-blowers, say Capitol Hill staff, there is an easy way to fix the problem. An energy bill now is before the Senate, with action on it expected in the next few weeks. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) included precisely the kind of legislative "fix" critics say the current law needs so that the free-speech rights of DOE whistle-blowers may effectively be protected.

Yet, in the Senate, there have been no takers to date for the Tauzin amendment. History is replete with examples of great ideas being adopted by one house of Congress, only to die without an appropriate echo in the other.

DOE has served Nevada's senators with what advocates call a tailor-made example of a whistle-blower reprisal that begs the question about whether such protections ought to be extended to NRC and DOE employees. Nothing can be quite as compelling an argument on Capitol Hill as a recent horror story about how the Washington bureaucracy tramples on a constituent's rights. That same bureaucracy has given Reid and Ensign a chance for leadership.

For those concerned with problems at Yucca Mountain, an appropriate redress for their worries might come by empowering those with the expertise and experience to address environmental worries with genuine and enforceable rights

Tom Devine is legal counsel for the Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington-based whistle-blower protection organization. Martin Edwin Andersen, an Insight contributing writer, in 2001 won the federal service's highest award as a national security whistle-blower.

---------------------------

Tri City Herald
June 8th, 2003

Fluor aims for contract by Aug. 25

By John Stang Herald staff writer

Fluor Hanford hopes to have a contract in place by Aug. 25 to tackle Hanford's densest concentration of radioactivity.

That concentration is 1,938 capsules of strontium and cesium stored in several water-filled pools inside a building at B Plant in central Hanford. Overall, those 20-inch-long, 21Ú2-inch-diameter capsules contain 126 million curies of radioactivity.

By comparison, central Hanford's 53 million gallons of tank wastes, scattered across 177 underground tanks, hold 190 million curies.

Late last week, Dale McKenney, Fluor's acting director for waste management projects, briefed the Hanford Advisory Board on how the capsules will be moved to a dry storage area inside Hanford's T Plant.

Fluor has issued a request for proposals on the project. June 25 is the deadline for proposals. Flour has set an Aug. 25 deadline to select the subcontractor.

The first capsules are supposed to be moved by Oct. 3, 2005, and all capsules are supposed to be in T Plant by Sept. 28, 2006, which is two years ahead of the original schedule.

The details and costs of moving the capsules are open-ended subjects to be covered in the bids submitted.

About a dozen companies expressed interest in the project a few months ago, McKenney said.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hanford removed some highly radioactive strontium and cesium from the tank wastes and shipped 700 capsules of that material across the nation for medical purposes. But one capsule leaked, and all 700 were recalled to Hanford by 1995.

The recalled capsules, plus those that never left Hanford, totaled 1,938.

These are stored in pools because the water acts as a radiation shield, while also cooling the hot cesium and strontium.

The Department of Energy originally planned to glassify the strontium and cesium sometime after 2012 in the tank waste glassification complex currently under construction.

But the radioactivity of the cesium and strontium will decay to benign levels in just a few hundred years, much less than the required 10,000-year lifespan of Hanford's future waste-holding glass.

So DOE wants to insert the capsules in slightly bigger shielded canisters that are designed to dissipate the heat. Then the canisters are to be moved to a dry area in T Plant to remove the risk of the indoor pools' springing leaks with contaminated water seeping into the ground.

Eventually, DOE plans to send those canisters to a proposed permanent storage site inside Yucca Mountain, Nev.

---------------------------

KMIZ
June 09, 2003

Nuclear Waste Headed for Moberly

Bill Zurheide

A train carrying nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain will pass through Moberly, Missouri sometime this year and local emergency workers completed training this last week to prepare.

The shipment was scheduled to pass through Missouri in late 2001, but fears after September 11 delayed it till now.

The anticipated shipment caused protests in Missouri in 2001, but officials still say the shipments will be safe.

Waste is being moved from highly populated areas in the east, to lower populated areas of the west.

---------------------------

Reno Gazette-Journal
June 06, 2003

Thursday update: Nevada senators want probe of Yucca whistleblower treatment

LAS VEGAS — Nevada´s senators want U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate whether the Energy Department coerced workers into skipping a hearing about quality problems at the site selected to bury the nation´s nuclear waste.

Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., said two Yucca Mountain project employees were scheduled to appear at a May 28 hearing in Las Vegas, but canceled.

“We are extremely concerned by this incident, because the Department of Energy appears to have discouraged these witnesses from testifying,’ Reid and Ensign said in a letter sent to Ashcroft on Wednesday.

The senators asked Ashcroft to review whistleblower protection laws and ensure the employees, Donald Harris and Robert Clark, are protected from job loss and harassment.

An Energy Department spokesman denied that the DOE discouraged workers from testifying.

“Nobody in the Department of Energy nor anyone in the Yucca Mountain project told people they could not testify, period,’ spokesman Joe Davis said. “DOE has not intimidated witnesses.’

Harris and Clark have declined comment on why they did not attend the hearing.

Nevada´s senators have opposed Energy Department plans to bury 77,000 tons of radioactive commercial, industrial and military waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Nevada also has filed suit against the Energy Department and federal government to stop the project.

Harris, employed by a repository contractor, was on an audit team that discovered flaws in a segment of the project´s quality assurance program this spring. He has said he thinks that led to his removal from audit duties for several weeks.

His company, Navarro Research and Engineering, said it was a temporary reassignment while Harris was being investigated, and subsequently cleared, of allegations of unprofessional conduct.

Clark was the Yucca Mountain Project´s quality assurance director until he was transferred in 2001. The reassignment came after he reportedly urged corrective actions for the program.

Reid arranged a Senate energy and water subcommittee field hearing in Las Vegas to question Clark and Harris on quality assurance in the Yucca Mountain project.

Days before the hearing, the witnesses informed Reid they would not appear.

In their letter, the senators cited a correspondence from project chief Margaret Chu to Reid in which she wrote that she could not pressure Harris to testify since he is a contractor and that Clark no longer works on quality assurance issues.

“In light of the reported problems with worker retaliation at the project, the witnesses apparently felt this letter was an indication that they would be fired or removed from their current positions if they testified,’ the senators wrote.

---------------------------

AlterNet
June 06, 2003

A Nuclear Whistleblower at Home

By J.A. Savage, AlterNet

Oscar Shirani just didn't understand when his former employer, Exelon, wouldn't stop its high-level nuclear waste container manufacturer. The containers, like the ones Shirani say headed for the Dresden plant in Illinois, are being filled with radioactive spent fuel and installed at nuclear plants around the country. Shirani fears the shoddy work will result in affecting the health of millions of people.

Despite their delicate and deadly cargo, the casks "are nothing but garbage cans" if their fabrication violates government specs, said Shirani.

Instead of giving him a medal for thorough work and dedication, Shirani says Exelon convinced him to transfer to another job and then, conveniently, laid him off. The self-described "company man," turned freshly minted whistleblower, might be able to do what anti-nuclear activists have been unable to accomplish – pounding nails into the nuclear casket, forcing old plants to shut down. Then again, the federal government could acknowledge the alleged sub-standard work and hope the casks don't leak anytime in the next few thousand years.

The nuclear industry has turned to on-site radioactive waste storage in what's called "dry casks" in order to keep nuclear plants humming. Commercial nukes all have spent fuel pools. When those are filled up – and most are at, or near, capacity already – environmentalists expected the industry would be forced to turn off the plants.

Like a clogged septic tank, you have to quit flushing when it's full. But environmentalists were out-flanked by industry when it figured out a new "sewage" storage plan.

Industry hoped that it would have a permanent waste site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, long before now. Nuclear plant owners, however, could see that a Yucca repository is a far off, if ever, possibility. They moved to simply build a new and different kind of above-ground septic tank.

What Shirani alleges is that those tanks (a company called Holtec designed them and uses U.S. Tool & Die to make them) are not being fabricated to Nuclear Regulatory Commission specs. While some believe NRC specs themselves don't provide much safety assurance, Shirani did.

"I thought the NRC was a big dog and a force," he said, but without the kind of oversight he maintains was thwarted, the safety of nuclear plants "is suspect."

Failure Points

Shirani's nuke casket story is akin to, say, ordering a new Hummer from the dealership. In the glossy brochure, the thick boxy steel can repel almost anything short of armor-piercing projectiles. But when you get the SUV home, you find it's made of glued fiberglass and spills passengers all over the sidewalk at every approaching pothole.

If the casks are shoddy, would they leak radioactivity and endanger public health? Shirani could only guess that it could affect "millions." Activists say they just don't know.

"Federal regulations should not make [Shirani], or us, or the NRC, or the cask owner guess about consequences," said David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear safety engineer. "The regulations require a certain level of performance and his findings were below that minimum level. It may not be that the cask will fail when challenged, but they are unnecessarily and illegally closer to the failure point."

Welds on the casks were performed by "unqualified welders" and materials control was inadequate for the casks, Shirani reported to Exelon in mid-2000. Fabrication engendered brittleness in materials, weakening them, Shirani notes. He maintains Holtec failed to report holes in the neutron shielding material. He allleges that Exelon "falsified" quality assurance documents and "misled" the NRC in last year's investigation of the problem. He found "hundreds of non-conformance items." Overall, he claims that what is being manufactured to hold nuclear waste is not what was approved in conceptual design by the federal government.

"I called my people in Washington and tried to get them to do something, but they didn't do anything," said Ross Landsman, NRC Region III inspector in a January deposition provided by Shirani.

"Every time I find some stuff wrong with any of the Holtec stuff, my brilliant cohorts in Washington say, 'Give them an exemption'," Landsman said sarcastically. "Holtec, as far as I'm concerned, has a non-effective QA (quality assurance) program and US Tool & Die has no QA program whatsoever."

Landsman added that the issues raised by Shirani on the casks headed for the Dresden plant had not been resolved, despite an August 2000 audit stating the problems had been fixed.

Cover Up?

Shirani had audited Holtec and its suppliers for the Nuclear Users Procurement Issues Committee, identifying what he calls "major design and fabrication issues" against Holtec in 1999 and 2000. He filed those with the NRC in November 2000. The NRC closed the allegations procedure a year later.

Shirani said he tried to put a "stop work" order on the casks' fabrication to no avail. Anti-nuclear activists have followed up on Shirani's claims, filing Freedom of Information Act requests to find out what the government did about these claims.

The activists are backing Shirani in his quest to get the NRC to look into the original allegations and their cover up through the NRC inspector general.

"The NRC has not contacted us," responded Brian Gutherman, Holtec manager of licensing. "The NRC did approve the design as a snapshot in time. We're allowed to make certain changes below the safety threshold." Gutherman said Holtec "is absolutely not concerned" about cask safety and potential leakage, and that between the NRC and Holtec's clients, "nowhere has anyone suggested such a thing." As for Shirani, Gutherman said, "He's just making things up."

If the casks are found to be fabricated below specifications, the NRC could simply let them be. "They could be accepted as is or get approval of the [changed] design. There could also be an exemption," said NRC spokesperson John Monninger. He added, though, there is a possibility the government won't let the casks be used at all.

Insider Information

Being a whistleblower isn't easy. You can be celebrated, like Jeff Wigand who revealed the dirt on tobacco purveyors Brown & Williamson and had a movie, "The Insider," made about him. Most likely, though, whistleblowers lose their livelihood, are mocked by their former peers and considered "eccentric" at best – all this for deciding to follow the muse of conscience instead of the dominant paradigm.

"It's ethical cleansing," of the nuclear industry, chided Union of Concerned Scientists' Lochbaum – a former industry man himself.

Shirani's former employer, Exelon, rejected the dust-up. "His case has been heard by numerous boards and agencies and it was dismissed. There is no substantiation for those claims," said Exelon spokesperson Ann Mary Carley She could, however, say that only the labor administrative review board has heard Shirani's complaints. The board's decisions are on appeal.

As a pro-nuclear power conservative company man, Shirani can't help still believing in the efficacy of the system – but now he believes that the system can be flawed.

"Without the enforcement [of NRC regulations] I believe that we allow these people to spit on the face of quality and safety. This would be my top priority in my life more than my financial damage – to see justice served."

Sidebar

Holtec casks approved, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson:

Pennsylvania: Exelon, Dresden
Oregon: Portland General Electric (Enron), Trojan
New York: Entergy, Fitzpatrick
Georgia: Southern Nuclear Operating Company, Hatch
Washington: Energy Northwest, Columbia Generating Station

Holtec casks in consideration by nuclear plant owners according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson:

Alabama: Farley, Southern Nuclear Operating Company
Tennessee: Tennessee Valley Authority, Sequoyah
Arkansas: Tennessee Valley Authority, Browns Ferry; Entergy, ANO
Vermont: Entergy, Vermont Yankee
Louisiana: Entergy, Riverbend
Utah: Consortium of owners and utilities known as Private Fuel Storage for a potential waste site.
California: Pacific Gas & Electric, Diablo Canyon; Humboldt Bay.

J.A. Savage is an environmental economics reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area.

---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------