Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, June 20, 2003
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Las Vegas SUN
June 20, 2003
Pro-Yucca advertising was overwhelming
LAS VEGAS SUN
WASHINGTON -- Pro-Yucca Mountain special interests overwhelmingly out-gunned the project's opponents in issue advertising aimed at congressional lawmakers before a key vote in Congress last year, a research group said this week.
Of all the Yucca Mountain advertisements that ran in the Washington area in 2001 and 2002, a whopping 96 percent urged approval of the project, with just 4 percent urging opposition, according to a report released by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
The center studied more than 5,000 print and television advertisements on a dizzying array of issues, and more than 670 organizations spent about $105 million on the advertising designed to influence policy-makers, according to the report.
The center also studied 12 issues, including Yucca Mountain, in which lobby and special interest groups targeted the White House, Congress or a government agency. In 10 of the cases including Yucca Mountain, the side that produced the lion's share of the advertising eventually got the vote or decision it wanted.
The report revealed that while energy interests spent $1.53 million during 2001 and 2002 to advertise on issues related to national energy policy, environmental groups spent just $10,000.
"Our primary goal in designing this research was to determine whether the voices reflected in advertising about issues that face the nation have equal reach," the report concluded. "Generally speaking, this was not the case."
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Las Vegas Sun
June 20, 2003
House group pushes for full Yucca funding
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is pressuring House appropriators to give the Energy Department the full $591 million it requested for Yucca Mountain next year.
The department has been frustrated in past years as Congress cut its Yucca budget. Now the proposed nuclear waste repository is in a crucial phase of development, and department officials say they need the $591 million to avoid project delays.
Congress and President Bush last year approved the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as the best place to store the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste, which for decades has been piling up at power plants and U.S. defense sites nationwide.
The department needs the money to finish a complex application for a Yucca license by next year and to continue plans to construct and ship waste to Nevada, department officials say. The department is scrambling to stay on a schedule that would allow the repository to open by 2010.
"We believe there is a broad bipartisan group in both the House and the Senate that obviously supports Yucca Mountain," department spokesman Joe Davis said. "We believe it should be fully funded and, if it's not, we'll be disappointed."
In a letter signed by 23 Republicans and nine Democrats, the House lawmakers urged two key members of the House Appropriations Committee to fully fund the project. In addition, the lawmakers requested that the $134 million that was cut from the Yucca budget last year be restored.
Designing and constructing Yucca "represents a strong first step toward addressing the problem of safely storing spent reactor fuel and high-level radioactive wastes" the June 13 letter to Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., and Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, said.
"Further, resolving this nuclear waste issue is a critical component in securing our long-term energy future," the letter said.
The House is more likely than the Senate to approve the full $591 million. The department has not received its full budget request for Yucca in past years largely because of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Reid quietly negotiates to reduce the funding.
Nevada lawmakers said they expect the budget process to follow a similar pattern this year.
Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said they planned to circulate letters of their own to House colleagues urging Yucca budget cuts.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 20, 2003
YUCCA MOUNTAIN ADVERTISING: Study: Big spenders won
Pro-nuclear waste dump groups clearly outspent Nevada and anti-project forces
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Lobbyists seeking to sway lawmakers on the Yucca Mountain Project last summer spent more than $570,000 to advertise in newspapers and newsletters with big audiences on Capitol Hill, according to a study released Thursday.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center estimated that groups favoring Nevada for nuclear waste disposal accounted for most of the spending in publications aimed at decision-makers inside the Beltway, such as The Washington Post, Roll Call and Congress DailyAM.
The center, which is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, estimated that 96 percent, $550,000, of 2001 and 2002 advertising sought to persuade Congress to vote in favor of Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for a waste repository.
Its 83-page study found that in 10 out of a dozen issues it examined, the side that prevailed in Congress was the side that spent more money on issue ads. That included Yucca Mountain.
"More money was spent to open a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, and legislation to make this happen was passed," said the report authored by analyst Erika Falk. The Senate voted 60-39 on July 9, 2002, to complete legislation designating the site for nuclear waste disposal.
"The imbalance in spending on legislative issue advocacy raises such questions as is the public interest well served when the message of one side is shouted and the other side whispered," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Annenberg Public Policy Center director, said in a statement.
Overall, the center estimated more than 670 advocacy groups and coalitions spent $105 million on ads to influence Congress during 2001 and 2002.
Researchers analyzed more than 5,000 ads on public policy issues that ran in The Washington Post and Washington Times, and Roll Call, The Hill and CongressDaily AM, publications that circulate mostly on Capitol Hill, in federal agencies and among lobbyists.
Ads broadcast on Washington television stations and nationally on cable and network TV also were examined, although lobbyists on the Yucca Mountain issue said Thursday their battles were not fought over the national or Washington airwaves.
The Annenberg study concluded the biggest spender on inside-the-Beltway pro-Yucca Mountain ads was the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents nuclear plant owners and operators.
The study estimated the institute spent $260,000 on ads targeted to Congress. NEI spokesman Mitch Singer said he could not confirm the group's spending amounts.
Singer said the institute bought ads in Washington publications to reach decision-makers. At the same time the industry group formed a coalition group, the Alliance for Sound Nuclear Policy, which bought print and television advertising in targeted states.
The Annenberg study authors conceded their spending estimates were not exact because advocacy organizations are not required to report their expenditures and newspapers and television stations are not obligated to make their ad sales public.
For instance, the study estimates that the state of Nevada and other Yucca Mountain opponents spent only $20,000 on issue ads. However, a financial analysis prepared for the state showed that in April 2002 at least $51,207 was spent on Washington newspaper ads opposing the project.
In trying to fight off the Yucca project, Nevada leaders preferred to spend on grass-roots advertising, according to Las Vegas advertising executive Mark Brown, whose firm Brown & Partners coordinated anti-Yucca media campaigns.
"While a small amount of money went to inside-the-Beltway publications, most of it was targeted to states where the ads had a call to action," Brown said.
Brown said he disagreed with the Annenberg Center's thesis that issue ads directed to a Washington audience play a big role in moving lawmakers.
"I stick with the old adage that all politics are local," Brown said. "What moves members of Congress is getting phone calls from back home, and our preference was to hit home."
Brown said the side that wins usually has the bigger media budget overall, an advantage clearly enjoyed by pro-Yucca groups. He estimated NEI ad spending at between $15 million and $20 million overall while Nevada's media budget was a little more than $2 million.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 20, 2003
Letter: Energy bill too focused on nuclear power
The current energy bill being debated by Congress might seem like something very far away, but its impact could be felt by several generations of Southern Nevadans. Not least of the bill's many flaws is its insistence on rejuvenating the nuclear power industry, through billions of dollars of loans for construction of new plants. The connection between this bad policy and our home should be clear. If more nuclear power plants come on line, they will produce more waste.
Since the inception of the nuclear age there has never been a method conceived by which we can safely dispose of nuclear waste. Never. And despite the promises of Yucca's supporters, the Department of Energy's science task force has declared that the mountain leaks and the storage cannisters are predicted to fail. Predictions, promises -- all part of the same game, yes? But why even take the chance?
All of this supposition and argument could be wiped away if the Senate took the lead and put forth a forward-looking energy policy. Learn from the mistakes of the past and work to reduce dependence upon foreign oil, coal and nuclear power by promoting cleaner energy sources, such as wind and solar power, of which we are blessed abundantly in Southern Nevada.
Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign should rework this bill for a sounder policy, not only for Nevada but for the nation -- before another generation of trucks begins trundling toward Yucca. Look toward the future, to a safer, cleaner world, and send this bill back to the 1950s whence it came.
William Huggins
Henderson
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Cherry Hill Courier Post
June 20, 2003
Nuclear waste to be stored
Activists fear above-ground vaults at Salem plant could become targets for terrorists
By LAWRENCE HAJNA
Courier-Post Staff
King of Prussia, Pa.
Running out of room to store spent nuclear fuel, the operator of the Salem nuclear complex expects to begin construction next year on interim storage vaults for its highly radioactive waste.
PSEG Nuclear outlined its plans during a meeting at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's regional headquarters here Thursday. The company operates the three-reactor Salem and Hope Creek complex in Lower Alloways Creek, Salem County.
"We've been able to take advantage of the experiences of a lot of other facilities. There are more than 20 of these around the U.S. that are already operating, so this isn't a new thing," said PSEG project director Brian Gustems. "Things are progressing well."
This was the first time officials from PSEG, the NRC and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection got together to discuss the plan since the company disclosed its intentions two years ago.
The nation's second-largest nuclear-reactor complex is running out of room in deep pools that were designed to cool down extremely radioactive fuel rods after use. These pools, adjacent to the reactors, were never meant to hold the spent fuel permanently.
President Bush has recommended that the nation's nuclear waste be entombed deep under Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. It remains unclear when that facility will be built.
Anti-nuclear activists fear above-ground storage sites like those to be built at Salem will become permanent, and that they may become targets of terrorist attacks.
"The industry says this is totally safe. But a lot of people have their doubts," said Norm Cohen of the UNPLUG Salem Campaign after the meeting.
But he concedes that it may be almost impossible to stop the construction of the waste vaults because of the NRC's record of approving such projects.
However, Cohen hopes the NRC will give consideration to decommissioning the Hope Creek reactor so its spent-fuel pools can be emptied. He argues this reactor's pools are most vulnerable to attacks.
"A terrorist strike on a spent fuel pool would have catastrophic consequences," he said.
PSEG plans to begin using the new facility, to be built at the northern perimeter of its Delaware River complex, in 2007.
That's when waste from Hope Creek will be moved. Waste from the Salem 1 and 2 units will be moved in 2011 and 2015 respectively.
NRC officials said they will closely monitor the project's design and construction.
"We didn't hear anything today that would say there is any fatal flaw in the process, but it's too premature to give an overall assessment of what we think," said Ronald Bellamy, chief of the NRC's decommissioning branch.
PSEG has hired Chicago-based Sargent & Lundy LLC to design the facility as well as a staging area for moving the fuel rods from the pools.
Thousands of uranium pellets contained within fuel rod assemblies will be placed in stainless-steel canisters, known as casks. These, in turn, will be placed in 20-foot-high concrete vaults.
Evesham-based Holtec International will supply the first sets of casks the plant will need. Nuclear Security Services Corp. of Chicago will design security systems, including lighting and cask monitoring.
"All the (companies) here are not only familiar with our site and our design basis, they are also experts in the industry in dry cask storage," Gustems said.
Dennis Zannoni, a nuclear engineer for the state DEP, cautioned the process will need to be cooperative and open. He pointed out that a similar storage plan, put in place last year at Ocean County's Oyster Creek reactor, was held up for years by legal challenges from activists.
"We expect (the Salem project) to go forward as professionally as it possibly can," he said.
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Reach Lawrence Hajna at (856) 486-2466 or lhajna@courierpostonline.com
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Las Vegas Mercury
June 19, 2003
Quick and Dirty: A notebook of news and politics
No-fly zone
Rep. Jim Gibbons just might be on to something. Over the years, Nevada's case against Yucca Mountain has focused primarily on environmental concerns: the radioactive waste to be stored in the mountain will leak out and kill people. Despite this being a logical argument against the nuclear dump, it has generally failed to elicit great sympathy in Washington, D.C., especially among the scorched-earthers in the Bush administration. Gibbons, who doesn't care much about the environment either, is trying a new approach: the nuclear dump may endanger the national defense.
"I have serious concerns about the impact the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site might have on the operations at the Nellis Test and Training Range," says Gibbons, a former Air Force pilot, in a news release. "I fear the Yucca Mountain site will become a vast `red circle' that chips away at the quality of training the Nellis Range offers. It is yet another reason why a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain is not in Nevada's or this nation's best interests."
Gibbons has not been a major player on Yucca Mountain, playing a distant fourth fiddle in Nevada behind Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign and Rep. Shelley Berkley. But that could change if he is able to get the Pentagon's attention on this issue.--GS
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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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