Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, June 16, 2003
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 13, 2003
Inspector General finds flaws in oversight spending
OVER $1 MILLION WITHHELD FROM NYE; AUDIT QUESTIONS $3.3 MILLION SPENT OVER TWO YEARS
By MARK WAITE
PVT
Half of the $2.2 million due Nye County this year for oversight of the Yucca Mountain project has been withheld, due to findings in an audit report by the Office of the Inspector General, said Les Bradshaw, director of the Nye County Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities.
The 14-page audit questioned $3.3 million spent between July 1, 2000 and June 30, 2002 by Clark, Nye and Lincoln counties. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires oversight funds be used to review Yucca Mountain activities with the potential to affect local economies, the environment, and public health and safety.
Nye County was chastised for hiring consultants to develop a Community Protection Plan, which advocates locating Yucca Mountain support activities in Nye County to create jobs, shipping the waste by rail away from local communities and other recommendations.
The audit notes: "Although the plan was developed as part of its impact assistance request, the plan was also used to lobby for funding a research and development center, changing a section of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and transferring federal land for economic development projects.
According to Nye County officials, the travel costs associated with distributing the plan for lobbying purposes were charged to a non-federal fund. However, Nye County used oversight funds to pay the associated consulting costs and employee salaries without allocating any of these costs to the non-federal fund."
Nye, along with Clark and Lincoln counties, spent oversight funds on additional activities that benefited multiple county departments and were unrelated to oversight, the audit notes.
"Specifically these counties paid employees or consultants that worked for other county departments. However, time for these individuals was not correctly allocated between the oversight funds and other county activities," the audit states.
The Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Office managed oversight funds and two scientific grants as well as an economic development grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Commerce, auditors noted. Employees charged their time and overhead to the oversight fund, though employees worked on the scientific and economic development grants, auditors said.
"Nye County also used oversight funds for consultants to prepare, manage and implement the economic development grant," the audit states. Nye County received a $3 million EDA grant to build an industrial park in Amargosa Valley, fund the Community College of Southern Nevada Pahrump Center and economic development organizations.
Auditors found Nye County accumulated $1.5 million in unspent oversight funds, which included $141,700 of interest that was supposed to be reinvested in the Nuclear Waste Fund.
The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management approved annual program plans by the counties, but didn't assure the counties completed the activities and accounted for the funding, auditors said. The OCRWM was also criticized for providing funds in a lump sum, rather than funding counties for actual expenditures.
Auditors said the General Accounting Office complained of lax oversight of the funding by the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management in 1990 and 1996 when the State of Nevada was asked to return money for using funds to lobby against Yucca Mountain.
The audit report recommends the OCRWM recover funds spent on unallowable activities, distribute future funds based on actual expenditures, monitor county expenditures, require annual certifications to include actual amount of funds expended and resolve findings on oversight funding in independent annual audits.
"We believe that there are various funding mechanisms available to advance funds to the counties in a manner that would more closely provide funding based on expenditures," the auditors report states. "The chief financial officer could assist OCRWM in establishing a funding mechanism which assures that federal funds are not distributed until needed by the counties."
Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, wrote back the OCRWM understood Congressional intent was that funds for the counties be provided as direct payments, not grants. OCRWM understood supervision of the county's use of the funds was to be limited, to distance itself from overseeing the state and oversight funds, Chu wrote in a May 2003 letter.
"With audit recommendations we increased our oversight of the process to include the review of program plans, annual certifications and audits," Chu wrote. Chu said unauthorized expenditures will be recovered or withheld from future payments, she requested a legal opinion on the interest.
Auditors list $887,500 in questionable costs by Nye County in fiscal year 2001 and $1.19 million in fiscal year 2002. In 2001, auditors said Nye County spent $547,175 on technical assistance including lobbying and activities unrelated to oversight; $278,878 on employees salaries working on science and U.S. Economic Development Administration grants; $46,072 on overhead costs related to science and EDA grants; $8,307 in unrelated travel charges; $5,179 in Energy Communities Alliance membership, registration and attendance costs; along with other spending amounting to less than $1,000 each.
Bradshaw said he has had to notify some consultants, "Sorry, we're out of money." He indicated the findings could be more a question of semantics than actual wrongdoing.
"The important thing is there was no waste, fraud or abuse. So it's a difference of opinion on the definition of oversight," Bradshaw said.
"We have enough money for the staff and office to keep going this year. But we won't be able to do the full range of activities," he said.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
June 15, 2003
Editorial: Lacking solution for waste, don´t subsidize nuke power
The experts may be right that nuclear power is poised for a comeback. If so, however, it´s difficult to see why the industry needs loan guarantees from the federal government to kick-start construction of the next generation of commercial reactors.
The U.S. Senate´s narrow approval of the guarantees in an energy bill last week is particularly troubling because the federal government has yet to solve the problem of what to do with the waste from nuclear plants.
As Nevada Sen. John Ensign said last week, the government already is subsidizing the industry by trying to force the state to accept a nuclear waste dump in its backyard. It´s in this fight with Nevada because there was little thought given to what would be done with the waste when the government first agreed to take it off the power-plant operator´s hands. The desire to find a place — any place — for the waste led to Congress´ decision to bury it at Yucca Mountain regardless of whether it made scientific sense. It had to go somewhere, and Nevada appeared to be an easy mark.
Until that very basic problem is solved, why would we want to go down the same road again? And why should money from Nevada taxpayers, already being asked to bear alone the brunt of the search for a dump, be used to guarantee the loans that are needed to build new power plants that probably won´t even benefit them?
If nuclear energy really is the next best thing, then the industry can well handle the cost. The need for loan guarantees suggests, however, that lenders aren´t so sure that nuclear power is going to make a comeback. Congress should take the hint.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 13, 2003
Government studying aircraft threat at Nevada nuke dump
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Federal officials on Friday downplayed the chance that aircraft including military bombers from Nellis Air Force Base could pose a threat to the Nevada site picked to bury the nation's radioactive waste.
"Potential plane crashes are not realistic obstacles to Yucca Mountain getting an (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) license, we believe," said Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis in Washington, D.C.
Davis said the Energy Department compiled a report last year for the NRC makes no conclusions about the danger posed by flights over the site.
"Above-surface work at the Nevada Test Site has coexisted with military training for years," Davis said. "Yucca Mountain is a below-ground facility with very limited aboveground facilities. We don't see that Yucca Mountain would make any change to that coexisting relationship."
The Nellis testing and bombing range encompasses the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear testing was conducted from 1952 to 1992. The Test Site is operated by the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration.
The aircraft threat report, compiled by the department's top Yucca contractor, Bechtel SAIC Co., called for more analysis of planes flying within 30 miles of Yucca Mountain - the site Congress picked last year for a national nuclear repository.
The Energy Department plans to apply in late 2004 for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to open and operate the repository beginning in 2010.
Plans call for entombing 77,000 tons of commercial, industrial and military radioactive waste 1,000 feet underground.
The federal government in March cited the danger of military flights when it rejected an Indian tribe's plan to store nuclear waste on the Goshute Skull Valley reservation near Salt Lake City. The site is between Hill Air Force Base and the Utah Test and Training Range.
Gayle Fisher, an Energy Department spokeswoman in Las Vegas, issued a statement Friday noting that the Goshute plan was for aboveground storage, while Yucca Mountain storage would be underground.
The statement said the number of flights over Yucca Mountain were difficult to determine. It said civilian flights pass to the southwest, military training takes place to the north and a limited number of military and Energy Department aircraft fly over Yucca Mountain.
Nevada officials who oppose the Yucca Mountain project characterized the issue as a serious obstacle to opening the repository.
U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., on Thursday asked Maj. Gen. Stephen Wood, Nellis Air Warfare Center commander, to say how a Yucca repository might affect training and military exercises.
"I have grave concerns that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is going to have a dramatic impact on the training that our nation's pilots receive," Gibbons said.
The Air Force has not stated a formal objection to the Yucca project. But Pentagon officials have filed objections to any plans for nuclear waste transportation beneath Nellis airspace.
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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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