Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, July 8, 2003
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 08, 2003
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Bill aids whistle-blowers
Nevada's senators say DOE workers feel jobs threatened
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- New legislation by Nevada's senators aims to broaden job protections for federal energy workers who suffer retaliation after reporting wrongdoing.
Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., said Monday they were motivated by their unsuccessful efforts to persuade two Yucca Mountain Project workers to testify at a May hearing in Las Vegas about flaws in the nuclear waste repository program.
The Nevada lawmakers announced legislation allowing federal employees of the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to file whistle-blower complaints with the Department of Labor. DOE contractor workers already have that ability.
The bill would allow all whistle-blowers to take their claims to federal court if the Labor Department does not settle their cases within 180 days.
"One of our most fundamental freedoms is the right to be heard," Ensign said in a statement. "Nowhere should this be more obvious than in our own federal government."
Under current law, federal DOE employees must take claims of job retaliation through either an administrative court system operated by the Merit Systems Protection Board or the government's Office of Special Counsel, said Doug Hartnett, a staff attorney for the Government Accountability Project, which monitors whistle-blower cases.
The avenues are flawed by an appeals process that is "historically hostile to whistle-blowers," Hartnett said.
The Reid-Ensign bill incorporates elements of a whistle-blower amendment the House passed earlier this year. The amendment by Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Billy Tauzin, R-La., was tacked onto an energy bill.
Reid will try to add the whistle-blower protections onto the Senate version of the energy bill later this summer, an aide said.
Reid and Ensign have accused the Energy Department of quashing testimony by former DOE quality assurance director Robert Clark and Donald Harris, a quality assurance auditor employed by a DOE subcontractor, Navarro Research and Engineering.
On separate occasions over the past two years, Clark and Harris had called DOE attention to flaws in the Yucca program. They declined Reid's invitation to testify at a May 28 hearing.
"I believe these workers have a right to be heard, and this is one step we will take to ensure they are protected," Reid said in a statement.
Energy Department officials have denied any pressure on the workers. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is preparing a statement to Congress on the matter.
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Las Vegas SUN
July 03, 2003
NTS plutonium plan opposed
By Mary Manning
<manning@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
Gov. Kenny Guinn and more than 40 people conveyed their opposition Wednesday night to the Nevada Test Site becoming a National Nuclear Security Administration plutonium pit factory for nuclear weapons in 2018.
The National Nuclear Security Administration is considering five sites across the nation as potential manufacturing plants for plutonium pits, the heart of a nuclear weapon, once made at Rocky Flats near Denver, Colo., until it was closed in 1989 because of environmental contamination.
Wednesday's Las Vegas hearing on a draft environmental impact statement for the project was the third one this week and most of the audience expressed anger that the National Nuclear Security Administration, in charge of nuclear weapons under the Department of Energy, put Nevada on the list of potential sites.
Guinn, in comments read by Steve Frishman of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said that the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, appears to be "a very problematic site" for the government to annually make up to 450 plutonium pits.
"The Nevada Test Site lacks the necessary infrastructure to support the proposed pit facility, including insufficient electrical supply and lack of either a rail line or a natural gas pipeline," Guinn's statement said.
Nevada officials are suing the Energy Department for its plans to build a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, on the western edge of the Test Site. Guinn argued that cumulative radiation exposure from the Yucca dump, the pit plant and operations at the Nellis Test Range were not considered in the impact statement.
"The analyses contained in the draft (Environmental Impact Study) do not support adding another risk to this mix," Guinn said.
Plutonium pit document manager Jay Rose said a new facility costing $2 billion to $4 billion is needed because scientists estimate the current plutonium cores in stored nuclear weapons will deteriorate in 45 to 60 years.
The states of South Carolina, Texas and New Mexico are actually asking for the plutonium pit project, Rose said. The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is also under consideration.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to make a decision on a preferred site in March 2004.
A few people are arguing that the Nevada site is the best choice for the project.
Troy Wade, chairman of the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business, representing contractors for the DOE and Nellis Air Force Base, said the pit plant would be isolated and secure at the Test Site.
"It is unconscionable to locate such a facility near populations," Wade said.
Ken Riem, a geologist, said that more plutonium pits are necessary as long as the United States relies on a nuclear weapons arsenal.
But Peter Ediger, a local peace activist, thundered into the microphone, "Why in the world are we even thinking of building this stuff?"
"This is a very, very bad idea along with Yucca Mountain," Las Vegas resident Charles Broe said. "It's time the human race woke up."
Tilges asked the government to allow people more time to obtain and read the environmental impact statement almost two inches thick.
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Las Vegas SUN
July 04, 2003
Court Forces DOE to Clean Up Nuke Waste
By Bob Fick
Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A federal judge has overturned an Energy Department regulation the government said allowed it to store highly radioactive waste in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina.
The 15-page decision filed Thursday will require the U.S. Energy Department to remove all 85 million gallons of high-level liquid waste now stored in hundreds of tanks at federal installations in the three states.
"Today's decision is a victory for the people of the Tri-Cities, Washington state and other communities near DOE facilities who deserve cleanups that will protect the public health and environment," said Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill said the Energy Department regulation directly conflicts with the provisions of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
The government said the material, a byproduct of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for bomb construction, was exempt from the 1982 law - a claim Winmill rejected.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said an appeal was being considered.
"If the decision stands, it could lead to a tremendous burden on the taxpayers and jeopardize our ability to clean up our sites sooner," Davis said.
It must be processed for permanent disposal at the federal dump for highly radioactive waste, now planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Officials in the three states had argued throughout that the government was using the rule to avoid the expense of dealing with the waste.
As much as 100 million gallons of material were stored over the years in 239 tanks in the three states. Some of it has been removed and processed for permanent disposal. About 85 million gallons remain.
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New York Times
July 04, 2003
Judge Voids Cleanup Plan for Wastes at Bomb Plants
By Matthew L. Wald
WASHINGTON, July 3 — The Energy Department's plan for cutting billions of dollars and several years off the bomb-waste cleanup at three government nuclear reservations is illegal, a federal judge has ruled, because it would leave some of the wastes in shallow burial despite Congress's prescription that they can be safely disposed of only in a deep "geologic" repository.
The radioactive wastes are in tanks, many already rusting, at a reservation in Hanford, Wash., another near Aiken, S.C., and a third in Idaho.
The original plan was to clean out the tanks and, in preparation for transfer to a deep repository, solidify the wastes. But in 1999, facing major technical problems and cost overruns, the department issued internal rules allowing itself to redefine some unspecified percentage of the material as "incidental." This incidental waste was to be covered with a material much like cement and left behind in the tanks, under only a few feet of dirt.
Exactly how much of this radioactive waste was to be left behind is not clear. But Geoffrey H. Fettus, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, quoted from a government memorandum implying that it could have been in the tens of millions of gallons.
In any event, the judge's decision has overturned the department's approach. In the ruling, dated Wednesday and made public today, the judge, B. Lynn Winmill of Federal District Court in Boise, Idaho, said that the department's rules for reclassifying some of the wastes as incidental were based on little more than "whim" and that they violated a 1982 law requiring that high-level wastes be buried deep within the earth. Judge Winmill issued a summary judgment in favor of environmentalists, who were led by the Natural Resources Defense Council and supported by the three states where the reservations lie as well as by Oregon, whose border is close to Hanford.
Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said, "If this decision stands, it could lead to a tremendous burden on the taxpayers with respect to cost of cleanup, and jeopardize our ability to clean up our sites sooner."
But Mr. Davis said he did not have an estimate of how much more money and time would be required, and would not say whether the department would appeal the ruling.
Jeremy Maxand, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, an environmental group in Boise that was among the plaintiffs, said, "There has been an attempt to cut corners and shave off dollars," and added: "We're not as interested in doing the job as quickly as possible with the least amount of money. We'd like to see it done right the first time, as safely as possible."
Joseph E. Shorin, an assistant attorney general of Washington State, said, "Our fear was that they were going to cut the cost and the duration of cleanup by sweeping the stuff under the rug, or leaving it under the rug." Mr. Shorin said the Energy Department had been planning by "semantic fiat" to leave in place material that Congress had determined was so dangerous that it had to be buried deep underground.
The Energy Department itself has announced many cleanup timetables over the years but had never made clear how much of the waste it would proceed with solidifying under its plan to exempt some of it. In general, though, the less solidified, the less time needed to complete the job. So the judge's decision does add years and billions of dollars to cleanup costs.
The case also pointed to a weakness in the government's broader plan for disposing of nuclear waste: burying it inside Yucca Mountain at a repository that the government is trying, in fits and starts, to open near Las Vegas. According to briefs filed by the government in the case, Yucca is too small for all the bomb wastes plus the civilian nuclear power wastes; the implication was that a requirement to put the military wastes in a deep hole would create the need for another repository.
There are 117 underground tanks at Hanford, storing about 53 million gallons of wastes that come from the production of nuclear bombs, but some of the liquids have already leaked into the soil and joined underground water that flows toward the Columbia River. There are an additional 34 million gallons at the South Carolina reservation, and 900,000 gallons more at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
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Idaho Statesman
July 04, 2003
Court: DOE can´t reclassify nuclear waste
Judge says feds must move it all to permanent site
A federal judge overturned an Energy Department regulation the government claimed allowed it to reclassify highly radioactive waste in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina so that it would not have to be permanently removed.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill said the Energy Department regulation directly conflicts with the provisions of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
“DOE does not have discretion to dispose of defense (high-level waste) somewhere other than a repository established under (the Nuclear Waste Policy Act),’ Winmill said in his decision.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said an appeal was being considered.
“If the decision stands, it could lead to a tremendous burden on the taxpayers and jeopardize our ability to clean up our sites sooner,’ Davis said.
Winmill refused to issue an order requiring the department to follow the law, saying there was no indication the government would ignore his ruling.
Unless overturned, Winmill´s 15-page decision, filed on Thursday, will require the Energy Department to remove all 85 million gallons of high-level liquid waste now stored in hundreds of tanks at federal installations in the three states.
It must be processed for permanent disposal at the federal dump for highly radioactive waste, now planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The government wanted to mix grout with about 1,000 gallons of residual material left in each tank after the rest of the highly radioactive liquid is removed. That residual matter would be left in place.
It claimed the material, a byproduct of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for bomb construction, was exempt from the 1982 law — a claim Winmill rejected.
Officials in the three states had argued throughout that the government was using the rule to avoid the expense of dealing with the waste stored at Washington´s Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and the Savannah River site in South Carolina.
“You can´t just call a monkey a turkey and say it doesn´t need to be in a cage,’ said Sheryl Hutchison of the Washington Department of Ecology. “They can´t do cleanup on the cheap — they´ve got to deal with the high-level waste.’
Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire said the state was concerned the Energy Department would attempt to reclassify high-level waste in order to avoid cleanup and permanently leave it in Hanford´s leaking underground tanks.
“Today´s decision is a victory for the people of the Tri-Cities, Washington state and other communities near DOE facilities who deserve cleanups that will protect the public health and environment,’ Gregoire said.
The Energy Department´s attempt to reclassify the material as low-level waste was originally challenged by National Resources Defense Council and the Snake River Alliance. The states of Idaho, Washington, South Carolina and Oregon and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes supported them.
As much as 100 million gallons of material were stored over the years in 239 tanks in the three states. Some of it has been removed and processed for permanent disposal. But about 85 million gallons remains to be processed.
Critics contended that leaving any waste in those tanks will threaten the Snake River aquifer under the INEEL, the Columbia River near the Hanford site, and the groundwater at the Savannah River site.
Thomas Cochran, a physicist and director of NRDC´s Nuclear Program, noted that “this case is the most egregious of several ongoing efforts by the Department of Energy and the nuclear industry to ´solve´ their nuclear waste problems by relaxing regulatory standards instead of cleaning up their mess.’
Idaho Statesman reporter Rocky Barker contributed to this report.
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Las Vegas SUN
July 03, 2003
Deal with county on monitoring of Yucca OK'd
Ed Koch
Las Vegas SUN
The Las Vegas City Council by unanimous vote Wednesday approved a contract for the city to receive from Clark County $40,000 to participate in the monitoring of the planned nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain.
The council approved the interlocal agreement without comment, voting on it as part of the consent agenda, items considered to be routine.
Since 1998, the city has been funded by the county to participate in the monitoring of the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the federal government wants to store l77,000 tons of high level nuclear waste.
The contract says the city can use the money for a number of Yucca Mountain-related issues, such as to "train a cadre of firefighters on emergency response (for) a wide range of vulnerabilities that the local municipalities would be subject to should there be a radiological spill."
The city's contract with the county says that the county is the designated "affected unit of local government" as determined by the Energy Department. But the city also can participate because of "the potential to impact social and economic characteristics of Southern Nevada," the contract says.
"The city desires to increase and enhance its capabilities to determine, evaluate and respond to the potential and perceived impacts" from the project, the contract says. "The city desires to participate in making findings and recommendations regarding potential impacts."
Under the terms of the contract with the county, the city can spend up to $40,000 to, among other things, participate in meetings of the Clark County Nuclear Waste Steering Committee, send a representative to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission meetings and meetings of other federal boards, visit nuclear waste-related facilities and participate in the county's impact assessment program.
The funds also can be used to offset travel expenses related to the Yucca Mountain project, the contract says.
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Las Vegas SUN
July 03, 2003
Nevada registers concerns, not opposition, to plutonium plant
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Nevada Test Site is not the best place for a proposed nuclear trigger production plant, a Nevada state official said Thursday.
"The same type of argument we have about Yucca Mountain we could have about the pit plant," said Steve Frishman, of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.
On Wednesday, Frishman presented Gov. Kenny Guinn's concerns at a National Nuclear Security Administration hearing in Las Vegas.
The governor argued the federal government did not adequately study the combined risks from the proposed pit plant, the planned Yucca Mountain repository and the active Nellis Air Force Base test range. All three facilities would be in southern Nevada.
"It isn't just radiation," Frishman said Thursday. "You have risk in the transportation of hazardous cargoes, and the potential for any type of accident having to do with radioactive materials ... could put a chill on the economy that we have here."
He referred to the state's ongoing fight to block a federal Energy Department plan to build a place to entomb the nation's nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The state has not formally opposed the pit plant proposal, and not everyone at the hearing said they were against the idea.
Troy Wade, chairman of the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business, representing contractors for the Energy Department and Nellis Air Force Base, said he favored the plant because it would be isolated and secure at the Test Site.
"It is unconscionable to locate such a facility near populations," he said.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, a division of the Energy Department, is considering five sites nationwide to cast plutonium into round "pits," the trigger for a nuclear reaction. A decision from Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected by April 2004.
The other sites are the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M., a former nuclear weapons complex at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., and the Pantex nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo, Texas.
Plans call for a plant costing up to $4 billion and employing about 1,000 people to produce 450 plutonium pits a year beginning in 2020. The nuclear triggers were manufactured until 1989 at Rocky Flats, Colo., near Denver. Currently, the United States has no facility to make the pits.
Plutonium pit document manager Jay Rose said a new plant is needed because scientists estimate current plutonium cores in stored nuclear weapons will deteriorate in 45 to 60 years.
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Reno Gazette Journal
July 01, 2003
Report predicts worker cancers at Nevada nuclear"pit"plant
A nuclear bomb"pit"factory that could be established at the Nevada Test Site could cause several cancer deaths among workers, a new federal report said.
According to an Institute for Energy and Environmental Research analysis of the Energy Department's draft environmental impact statement for the proposed plant, workers could be exposed to radiation at a rate that could cause one fatal cancer every 4 1/2 years.
The Test Site north of Las Vegas is among five sites in the nation being considered for the plant, which would manufacture plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons.
The exposure rates could vary according to proposed plant sizes, the analysis said, using the document's findings that the plant would produce a"collective dose estimate"of 560 millirem of radiation each year
The largest of the proposed plants could cause up to nine deaths over the 40-year plant lifetime, IEER President Arjun Makhijani told the Las Vegas Sun in Washington, D.C.
"It seems unconscionable to propose to build such a risky and unneeded facility when the DOE is only just beginning to compensate workers that it put at risk during the Cold War after 50 years of denial of harm,"Makhijani said.
Makhijani was referring to the Energy Department's admission in 2000 that Cold War nuclear weapons fabrication and testing at sites around the country _ including at the Nevada Test Site _ had made workers ill and caused deaths.
A public meeting about the possible site for the plutonium pit factory is Wednesday at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department arm that manages the Test Site, this summer is hosting field hearings near each of the five proposed sites.
Defense Department officials have said a new plant may be needed to manufacture new triggers for the aging weapons in the nation's nuclear stockpile. The facility also could make pits for new generations of nuclear weapons.
The Energy Department's plutonium pit plant at Rocky Flats, Colo., was closed in 1989 for massive environmental cleanup.
The proposal for a new plant is controversial. Critics say a plant is not necessary, that there is no evidence that the aging pits make the weapons unsafe or unreliable.
The largest of the proposed plants could produce up to 450 pits per year.
"Building large numbers of new bombs that could be used in nuclear war-fighting seems to be the real purpose of this plant,"Makhijani said.
An NNSA spokesman today scoffed at Makhijani's analysis.
"It's a complete misuse and distortion of statistics,"NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said.
Wilkes said the analysis badly manipulates the risk data over the lifetime of the plant.
Wilkes noted that the individual radiation dose rate for a pit plant worker _ as opposed to the collective rates used by IEER _ would be scarcely higher than the amount of radiation that any given person receives in a year from natural radiation sources like the sun and X-rays.
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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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