Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, July 17, 2003
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
July 17, 2003
Committee OKs Reid's budget cut for Yucca
By Suzanne Struglinski
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- The Senate Appropriations Committee today approved the drastically reduced Yucca Mountain budget requested by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
The action set the stage for a standoff between House and Senate negotiators over the budget in the coming weeks.
Reid's $425 million request is lower than the $591 million the Energy Department requested for the nuclear waste repository project, and a significant decrease from the House Appropriation Committee's $765 million passed earlier this week. Reid is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that creates the Yucca budget each year.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., subcommittee chairman, said the low request will be a "major point of contention" as the bill moves through Congress.
"It will be resolved successfully and adequately in conference," Domenici said, referring to the upcoming House and Senate meeting to work out differences between the two bills.
House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee chairman David Hobson, R-Ohio, named Yucca Mountain his top priority for funding last week, after adding more than $170 million to DOE request.
The full House and Senate are expected to vote on the spending bills before the end of the month.
Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said today he aims to get the bill to the conference committee before the month-long August recess, which begins Aug. 4.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
July 17, 2003
Yucca may face more toxic waste
GAO report says nuclear cleanup in trouble at 3 sites
Sun Staff and Wire Reports
WASHINGTON -- Obstacles imperil a new Energy Department plan designed to speed its massive effort to clean up radioactive waste at three U.S. nuclear weapons sites, a congressional audit said. And the plan's failure could ultimately translate to more waste bound for Yucca Mountain.
That possibility surfaced as part of an examination of the Energy Department's 2-year-old effort to curb the cleanup cost and reduce the time it takes to dispose of the radioactive material.
A report released Wednesday by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the Energy Department effort faces technical and legal challenges that could actually increase costs and blunt attempts by the Bush administration to do the job faster.
If the plan fails, it could also increase the amount of waste headed for Nevada's Yucca Mountain, which would have a limited capacity of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.
It was not immediately known how much more waste was at stake, but an Energy Department official today said it would be "significant."
Yucca clearly was not intended to hold the waste that the Energy Department planned for disposal at the three sites, Robin Nazzaro, author of the General Accounting Office report, told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee today.
"Yucca Mountain can't handle it, and the costs would be prohibitive," Nazzaro said.
Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said, "Clearly, it will have some implications for Yucca Mountain."
Loux said the nuclear material at the three sites was just a portion of the growing stockpile of waste -- both commercial and defense waste -- that won't fit in a 77,000-ton repository.
Dealing with highly radioactive weapons waste that has accumulated at Energy Department weapons sites -- especially at Handford in Washington, Savannah River in South Carolina and at the INEEL facility in Idaho -- has perplexed officials and scientists for decades.
The waste generally is the result of plutonium production and other weapons-related activities dating back more than half a century. The cleanup program "has been estimated to cost nearly $105 billion and take decades to complete," the GAO said.
Much of the waste, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, are in concentrations that will require permanent isolation from the environment.
A particular challenge is disposal of 94 million gallons of untreated high-level waste that has been stored for years in metal -- sometimes corroding -- tanks at the Hanford, Savannah River and Idaho facilities.
"This waste would fill an area the size of a football field to a depth of about 260 feet," according to the GAO report.
The Energy Department's latest plan has been to separate the most highly radioactive material and prepare it for shipment to the planned underground repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, once it is constructed.
The rest, after separation, would be treated and buried where it is already located in the three states. That would reduce the volume of waste bound for Yucca.
The new approach also would save as much as $29 billion and cut the time to achieve final cleanup goals by 20 to 30 years, according to an Energy Department analysis.
But the GAO said there are "technical challenges" to separating the waste and that the department has not adequately tested the separation processes that are expected to be used.
In the past, the GAO said, attempts to speed up disposal by using techniques that have not been sufficiently tested ended up costing tens of millions of dollars with no progress in cleanup.
The GAO also cited potential legal challenges from states or environmentalists on the plan to treat and permanently leave so much radioactive material at the sites. A federal judge in Idaho has already ruled against the department's attempt to reclassify some of the waste to allow it to be buried on site.
That ruling will "significantly hinder" the accelerated cleanup program, Jesse Roberson, assistant Energy secretary for environmental management, told a House panel today in prepared remarks.
By law, any waste classified as "high level" must be buried in a central repository such as Yucca Mountain. The DOE has not decided whether to appeal the ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council. But an appeal is an option, Roberson told reporters after the House hearing today.
Roberson said another option was for Congress to change the federal law so that it would allow the department to continue with its plan to separate some waste and bury it on site.
If the issue is not resolved -- and it is likely a long way from settled -- the Energy Department faces the daunting dilemma of where to put the "extra" waste.
Some of the material at the three sites will remain deadly for thousands of years. In some cases, such as with the wastes in dozens of metal tanks at Hanford, scientists have no clear idea what's in the soup of chemicals because of poor record-keeping over the Cold War years.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
July 17, 2003
DOE vows Yucca answers
By Mary Manning
<manning@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
The Energy Department plans to answer at least 190 key technical questions out of 293 before submitting a license application for a Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository, officials said.
That's about 65 percent of the outstanding scientific and technical questions the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants the Energy Department to answer before it applies to build the repository, Joseph Ziegler, acting director for DOE's license application strategy, said Wednesday at a teleconferenced meeting of the groups in Washington and Las Vegas.
Of those issues, 41 are considered high-risk, Ziegler said. Another 92 issues are considered medium risk.
The unanswered technical questions have been a key point in Nevada's opposition to the nuclear dump. State officials cited statements by an independent review board that called scientific evidence supporting the site "weak to moderate."
Unless the NRC is satisfied that scientific information is complete, the commission could reject a license application from the Energy Department, which expects to submit one in December 2004, she said.
Janet Schuleter, chief of the NRC High-Level Waste Branch, invited the Energy Department to submit an example of its analysis of a technical issue later this year to ensure the department is doing rigorous analysis.
"It's a very challenging time in the program," John Arthur, deputy director of DOE's repository program, said during a second day of a quarterly meeting between the department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff.
An example of a question that will remain a concern after license application is submitted is the probability of a volcano erupting through the repository.
If hot magma broke open and buried waste containers and reached the surface, radioactivity could be spread airborne in ash and in water after a rainfall.
Scientists have discovered a number of features just west of Yucca that could be evidence of volcanic activity buried under fill built up in the valleys over thousands of years. However, no scientific studies of the area have been attempted.
The DOE is planning to go into the field and drill into those volcanic centers, Ziegler said. In addition, the department plans to conduct aerial surveys to map the features. The work could take until 2005 or beyond.
"Either way, the work is going to go beyond the license application," Ziegler said.
Individual technical reports on threats from tornadoes and aircraft crashing into the repository while it is operating are planned, he said.
One issue that concerns the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the threat of a nuclear reaction, Jack Parrott, NRC on-site representative in Las Vegas, said.
If spent fuel became too concentrated either in a shipping container or inside a buried waste container, a nuclear chain reaction could occur and cause metal containers to corrode and release radiation.
Yucca contractor Bechtel SAIC director John Mitchell said that studies on that issue had fallen behind due to budget cuts and other, more pressing issues. However, the DOE has asked Los Alamos National Laboratory experts to review the issue again.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
July 17, 2003
Letter: Seek benefits for inevitable Yucca
The House committee that oversees Yucca Mountain just gave the project a record $765 million for next year's budget. Are our elected officials just so lost in their campaign fighting the project that they can't see that Yucca Mountain is ultimately inevitable?
The state is fighting this in the Washington court system. For goodness sake, that is where the decision was made to recommend Yucca Mountain as a repository in the first place.
It is better to bury high-level nuclear waste at one site in the remote Nevada desert than keeping it at the more than 130 sites where it's at right now.
Both the Senate and House spoke loud and clear last year -- they want to see this important national policy seen through one way or the other. Let's let the process play itself out and allow the independent experts at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission make the decision on the suitability of Yucca as the waste's burial site.
A repository at Yucca Mountain is in our future whether we like it or not. The question is who is looking out for our health and safety and looking at a significant benefits package for all Nevadans.
Guy Corrado
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 17, 2003
Panel to take comment on Yucca transportation
Review-Journal
A National Research Council committee examining nuclear waste transportation risks will meet in Las Vegas next week to field public comment and hear presentations on a national program to haul spent fuel assemblies to the planned Yucca Mountain repository.
The council panel of the National Academies will tour potential transportation routes on July 24, then attend a public comment session at 7 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza Las Vegas Hotel, 4255 S. Paradise Road, between Flamingo Road and Harmon Avenue.
On July 25, from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the same location, the committee will hear perspectives from Nevada and Clark County officials about issues related to transporting highly radioactive waste and spent fuel to the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, from 70 storage sites across the nation.
The panel also will hear a presentation by a Department of Energy official on the agency's effort to develop a national transportation plan.
The committee will identify "options for addressing the key technical and societal concerns" with the risks of transporting highly radioactive waste, according to a statement from the National Academies.
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 17, 2003
Yucca Mountain: Senate panel OKs repository's budget
Bill jeopardizes 2004 goal, official says
By Tony Batt
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Setting up a congressional budget showdown, a Senate panel Wednesday approved lower spending for the Yucca Mountain Project next year.
The energy and water subcommittee approved a $425 million budget for the proposed nuclear waste repository, a figure engineered by the project's chief opponent, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
An Energy Department official said such a spending level would prevent the agency from meeting a December 2004 goal to complete a Yucca license application, necessary for opening the repository.
A $765 million Yucca bill is advancing in the House. A House-Senate conference committee would negotiate a final level later this year.
"This will be a major point of contention in conference, we all know that," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the subcommittee chairman who agreed to Reid's request for cuts in the Yucca program.
The Senate's bill is $166 million less than President Bush had requested and $32 million below this year's budget for Yucca Mountain.
Hampered by persistent budget reductions, DOE replanned the repository program this spring.
The new plan aims to meet the licensing goal after postponing other segments of the program, laying off 50 to 75 workers this summer and restricting access to the Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The budget cut envisioned by the Senate would prevent DOE from meeting its December 2004 license application goal, John Arthur, the project's chief officer in Las Vegas, said Wednesday.
Of the $425 million, the legislation directs $9 million to the University of Nevada, Reno, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas for nuclear waste, transportation and earthquake studies.
Reid said Congress might compromise on a Yucca budget. If lawmakers split the difference between House and Senate bills, DOE would receive about $595 million, roughly what Bush requested.
While lawmakers were forming a Yucca budget Wednesday, project managers and Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff were at a quarterly program meeting in Rockville, Md.
The daylong session discussed schedules for the agencies to settle 207 technical issues for the repository.
DOE officials said that at least three issues the NRC believes important to understand Yucca Mountain will not be put to rest until after the Energy Department applies for a construction license.
The NRC this spring ranked the technical issues based on their potential to affect repository performance.
On three issues involving environmental conditions within the repository and special waste containers, DOE plans to submit information in April and August 2005, months after license submission, according to a department schedule.
DOE license director Joseph Ziegler told NRC staff members they would receive some information on the issues before licensing, and DOE hopes to show that the matters are on path to resolution.
Steve Frishman, a consultant for Nevada, said high-risk issues involving volcanic activity near Yucca Mountain are expected to slip beyond 2004 too.
Also at the session, DOE officials said their Yucca licensing effort is about 25 percent complete. They said their replanning, plus the recent award of a design contract, will allow them to speed up activities.
"We're behind on the license application, and it's going to get better slowly," said John Mitchell, general manager of Bechtel SAIC, the project's managing contractor.
---------------------------
Salt Lake Tribune
July 17, 2003
Nuclear waste lot advanced
By Christopher Smith
The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON -- A House committee has approved a plan to create a temporary nuclear waste parking lot outside the tunnel leading into what is expected to become the nation's burial vault for radioactive debris at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
Developers of a similar proposed interim storage site on Utah's Goshute Indian Reservation said it is unlikely that the House plan, if it survives an expected Senate fight, would eliminate the need for the Skull Valley waste dump.
"Even if this were approved, it would take quite a while to get such a facility up and running, too late to make our facility unnecessary," said Sue Martin, spokeswoman for Private Fuel Storage, the consortium of utilities seeking to transfer high-level nuclear waste currently stored in 39 states to the Utah site in anticipation of Yucca's opening.
"It's conceivable there may be a need for more than one facility," she said. "That this bill has been introduced is very encouraging for us, but we have to pursue the course we are on and plan for our own needs."
The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday passed a record $765 million in spending for nuclear waste disposal programs next year, exceeding President Bush's requested budget by $174 million. The plan calls for the Department of Energy (DOE) to begin Yucca Mountain repository operations in 2010, to spend $70 million to develop a new rail corridor to Yucca, choose a transportation route that skirts metropolitan Las Vegas, offer Nevada counties $30 million in "impact aid" and to start development of a rail-to-truck offloading site at Caliente, Nev., near Utah's western border, where waste casks would be transferred from rail cars to trucks for delivery to Yucca Mountain.
The plan calls for spending $4 million next year on early waste acceptance, and represents a departure from the longstanding prohibition against above-ground storage of imported nuclear waste in Nevada. That blockade, which President Clinton upheld with a veto of accelerated waste delivery to Yucca in 2000, was intended to avoid having waste casks sitting on the surface for years if the underground repository was delayed or cancelled.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, has introduced a measure directing DOE to draft legislation repealing the prohibition for above-ground storage in Nevada, a measure Nevada's House delegation plans to fight when the appropriations bill comes to the floor next week.
"We are opposed to nuclear waste in Utah and we are opposed to nuclear waste in Nevada, it should stay where it is," said David Cherry, a spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "This interim storage plan is being done without science, without a clear timetable, and with the haphazard nature of an expedited delivery process."
Utah opponents of the $3 billion Skull Valley project said they were encouraging Utah's House members to join the Nevada delegation and defeat the interim storage project at Yucca.
"Sure, this may increase the odds Yucca becomes the permanent site, but it's not going to save Utah from PFS," said Steve Erickson of Utah Downwinders. "If Utah's members of Congress are going to hide behind this business of sending it to Yucca for the interim that is just abdicating their responsibility and sticking it to Nevada."
An interim storage addition to the House's Energy spending bill would be fought in the Senate, where Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid has won major cuts in the Yucca Mountain spending bill, pegging the waste disposal budget for 2004 at $425 million compared to the House's $765 million mark.
csmith@sltrib.com
---------------------------
MSNBC
July 16, 2003
The battle over new nukes at home
Proposed U.S. nuclear bomb factory stokes arms debate
By Kari Huus
MSNBC
July 16 — North Korea´s nuclear claims continue to steal the headlines, but in Washington, plodding through the democratic — and certainly less dramatic — system are initiatives by the Bush administration to beef up the American nuclear arsenal. This week marks the final chapter in public comment on a proposed new plutonium bomb factory to be built in the U.S. While proponents say this multi-billion-dollar project would merely help maintain a defensive arsenal, critics say it could spark a new arms race.
AT ISSUE IS a new Modern Pit Facility designed for annual production of 150-450 plutonium pits, or cores. The pits are softball-sized nuclear bombs used to trigger the thermonuclear reaction of the far more powerful hydrogen bombs in nuclear warheads.
The rationale for a new plant — which could be built in one of five possible sites — is to replenish pits for nuclear weapons that otherwise will degrade over time, according to the Department of Energy, which oversees nuclear weapons and related clean-up. These pits haven´t been manufactured on a large scale in the United States since the 1989 closure of the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado and proponents say the new plutonium pit production is needed to maintain a viable defensive nuclear arsenal.
But environmental and nonproliferation activists say the scope of the project suggests it is also aimed at supporting controversial new designs of nuclear weapons pursued by the Bush administration, as well as a capacity far beyond what is needed, given post Cold War nonproliferation agreements, sending the wrong message to the world as the United States seeks to limit weapons of mass destruction.
“It´s like a drunk preaching abstinence from the bar stool as he buys another round,’ says Bob Schaeffer, public education director for the non-profit Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
On Wednesday, with the final in a series of public hearings, leaders of dozens of organizations opposing the facility descended on the final formal public hearing on the plant. All public comment closes Aug. 5.
Previous hearings were held at the five sites around the country that are under consideration for the plant. Some were strongly opposed, pointing to the risks demonstrated in Rocky Flats, which was shut down after a nearly disastrous fire, and disclosures of radioactive contamination in the area. But a few have lobbied tenaciously to win the project, hoping for an economic boost. Construction of the plant is expected to run $2 billion-$4 billion, with operating costs of some $200,000-$300,000 a year.
Ultimately, the decision comes down to funding, which is being debated in the House and Senate, and very much in limbo.
WHAT IS ENOUGH?
The debate centers on how many nuclear weapons the U.S. seeks to maintain, whether nuclear weapons are a relic of the Cold War or an essential part of a strategic modern force, and how U.S. choices affect efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction around the world.
The recently ratified Moscow Treaty limits deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons to 2,200 by 2012, but exactly how many pits are needed is still open to interpretation, in part because of debate on how long they last, and in part because of gray areas in the treaty.
“The Bush administration has decided to maintain some 6,000 or more weapons essentially ready for use, although only perhaps 2,200 of these will be dubbed “operationally deployed’ in the year 2012,’ says physicist Richard Garwin, a senior fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Garwin who has served on a blue-ribbon commission on nuclear pits, argues that the U.S. should be shooting for a total of 1,000-2,000 nuclear weapons in 2012, a level that would require only a small rebuild facility which already exists at Los Alamos, New Mexico. National security objectives lie in effective non-proliferation efforts, he argues. “In order to accomplish this, the United States must at least limit its own holdings and show itself to be on a glide path to lower numbers and possibly to the elimination of nuclear weapons.’
THE BIG QUESTION: MONEY
So far, the project has received mixed reviews in Congress. A House committee allocated less than half $22.8 million requested for research and environmental assessment on the project — an outcome all the more surprising since the chairman of the committee is a Republican. David Hobson (R-OH) said his top priority was the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, which would handle high-level nuclear waste now stored in Idaho.
“Unfortunately, the Department of Energy continues to ask Congress to fund a Cold War nuclear arsenal, and the nuclear weapons complex necessary to maintain that arsenal, even though we no longer face a Cold War adversary,’ said Hobson.
On related nuclear initiatives, the subcommittee was equally unconvinced: It eliminated $6 million sought by the administration to research “advanced concept’ nuclear weapons that the Pentagon is interested in developing for purposes that so far remain classified. It allocated $5 million for research of nuclear “bunker busters,’ designed to penetrate the ground and blow up suspected chemical or biological weapons sites, just one-third the amount that was requested.
The push for new types of nuclear weapons, which surfaced in the Bush administration´s Nuclear Posture Review in January, 2002, is clearly tied to the current war on terrorism. In a recent meeting with reporters, Energy Undersecretary Linton Brooks said the proposed earth-penetrating nuclear warheads and research into low-yield nuclear weapons would “preserve the capability to adapt to changing times’ and was not intended to restart an arms race.
But this line of reasoning provoked alarm among arms control experts who saw it as a dangerous drift towards the “acceptable use’ nuclear weapons, and a blurring of the lines between nuclear and conventional weapons.
“We´re disappointed. ... We didn´t expect it,’ said Anson Franklin, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the branch of the Energy Department that oversees all nuclear weapons programs.
He said the administration will try to get the money restored when the spending bill gets before the full House, or, failing that, in the Senate when the spending bill comes before it.
For activists who oppose the project, the goal is to put a stop to it while it is still in the research phase.
“The history of stopping mega projects is you have to kill them when they´re small and and its still early,’ says Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. “Once they have concrete or steel in the ground, it´s very hard to stop.’
But in the Senate, where Pete Domenici (R-NM) chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the outcome may be very different than in the House. Domenici is a strong advocate for the modern pit facility, and for Carlsbad, New Mexico, his home state, as the site for that project.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bush's new nuclear weapons initiatives
White House funding and legislative requests
• $22 million for environmental studies and design of a Modern Pit Facility for producing plutonium triggers. Total construction cost would be $2-$4 billion.
• $15 million for research on a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or bunker-buster
• $6 million for research on "advanced concept" nuclear weapons for other new uses
• Both houses of congress lifted a ban on R & D of low-yield (below five kiloton) nuclear weapons, as requested by the Bush administration
• $25 million requested to shorten nuclear testing readiness to 18 months from 24-36 months
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
July 16, 2003
Reid panel cuts Yucca budget
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., today unveiled a dramatically slashed budget proposal for Yucca Mountain next year -- $425 million.
The figure is well below President Bush's budget request of $591 million for the nuclear waste project and far less than the $765 million budget approved by the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.
Reid is chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that crafts the annual Yucca budget. The budget process follows a familiar pattern each year in which Reid negotiates to cut the budgets proposed by House leaders and the president. The final Yucca budget is typically a compromise between what Reid proposed and what the president proposed.
Reid negotiated the $425 million budget as part of a national energy and water projects bill discussed today in the subcommittee. The panel approved the bill; the full Appropriations Committee could vote on it as early as Thursday.
Reid noted that $425 million was $100 million more than what the subcommittee approved last year.
"We're talking, even by Washington figures, a lot of money," Reid said.
In a previous statement Reid called the $765 million figure "outrageous, and it's insulting to Nevadans and all Americans."
Both Reid and panel chairman Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said there would be a heated battle between Senate and House negotiators over a final Yucca compromise.
"It'll come up, of course," Domenici said after the hearing, referring to the $425 million figure.
The House Appropriations Committee had approved what would be the biggest annual Yucca budget ever.
The House budget included:
$70 million for waste transportation projects, including planning for a rail route in Nevada that would carry waste to the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
$30 million as an enticement for Nevada, dubbed "local impact assistance," to mitigate the effects of a national nuclear waste repository on Nevada's economy, public health and environment.
$4 million for the Energy Department to develop a plan to launch the first shipments of waste to a temporary, above-ground waste site at Yucca by 2007, three years before the permanent underground repository is set for completion.
But the Senate version of the bill included none of those provisions. Domenici said he generally supported the concept of temporary storage, but said he had not carefully considered the House language.
In a preview of the negotiating to come, a leading pro-Yucca senator, Larry Craig, R-Idaho, noted that Yucca is a decade behind in its development.
"I'm hopeful we can keep it on schedule, if not accelerate it some," Craig said.
The Yucca legislation and budget will be "a major point of contention" between the House and Senate as negotiators try to strike a compromise on the broader bill, Domenici said.
In other action, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she could not support the bill because it contains $24.8 million to speed readiness of the Nevada Test Site to do nuclear testing from 36 months to between 18 and 24 months; $15 million for research on a nuclear bunker buster bomb; $4 million in other advanced nuclear weapons research.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
July 16, 2003
Meeting set on nuke routes
Las Vegas SUN
If Yucca Mountain is licensed and opens as a high-level nuclear waste repository, it could receive spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste from more than 70 interim storage sites across the country.
A committee of the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council is planning to examine the risks involved in shipping radioactive waste and identifying options for addressing key technical and social concerns.
A two-day meeting has been scheduled in Las Vegas for committee members to tour potential routes for shipping waste to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The committee will go on a field trip most of July 24 along potential transportation routes and then hear public comments from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza Las Vegas Hotel, 4255 S. Paradise Road.
The committee will hear presentations from the Department of Energy, state, city and county officials as well as the public starting at 8 a.m. on July 25.
---------------------------
The Guardian
July 16, 2003
Investigators: Nuke Cleanup Needs Overhaul
Thursday July 17
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal government has spent $18 billion over two decades to try to clean up highly radioactive waste left from making nuclear bombs but is still far behind schedule, and the program needs an overhaul, a congressional study concludes.
The General Accounting Office report acknowledged that the Energy Department attempted, beginning nearly two years ago, to curb the cleanup cost and reduce the time it takes to dispose of the pollution.
But the GAO, Congress' investigating arm, said these attempts face technical and legal challenges that could, instead, increase costs and blunt attempts by the Bush administration to deal with the waste more quickly.
Energy Department officials had no comment Wednesday on the specific GAO findings, which were to be the focus of a hearing Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee.
But department spokesman Joe Davis said, ``This administration has made environmental cleanup of DOE sites an important priority. We'd like to do that to the benefit of the taxpayer.''
Dealing with the highly radioactive waste that has accumulated at Energy Department weapons sites - especially Hanford in Washington, Savannah River in South Carolina, and at the INEEL facility in Idaho - has perplexed officials and scientists for decades.
Some of the material will remain deadly for thousands of years, while other wastes are mixed with less radioactive material in unknown mixtures whose handling is particularly precarious. In some cases, such as with the wastes in dozens of metal tanks at Hanford, scientists have no clear idea what's in the soup of chemicals because of poor record keeping over the Cold War years.
The wastes generally are the result of plutonium production and other weapons-related activities dating back more than half a century.
The cleanup program ``has been estimated to cost nearly $105 billion and take decades to complete,'' the GAO report said. Much of the waste, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, are in concentrations that will require permanent isolation from the environment.
A particular challenge is disposal of 94 million gallons of untreated high-level waste that has been stored for years at the Hanford, Savannah River and Idaho facilities.
``This waste would fill an area the size of a football field to a depth of about 260 feet,'' according to the GAO report.
The Energy Department plan has been to separate the more long-term radioisotopes from the less radioactive ones, and prepare them for shipment to the an underground disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, once that repository is built. The rest, after separation, would be buried at the facilities in the three states.
The new approach would save as much as $29 billion and cut the time to achieve final cleanup by 20 to 30 years, according to an Energy Department analysis.
However the GAO said it has concerns about the success of these programs, noting the DOE already has scaled back its cost savings from an original estimate of $34 billion.
``Our assessment of the revised estimate indicates that (the cost savings) may not be reliable'' said the congressional auditors' report.
It cited two major concerns.
Potential legal challenges from states or environmentalists to the plan to treat and permanently leave so much radioactive material at the sites. A federal judge in Idaho already has ruled against the department's attempt to reclassify some of the waste to allow it to be buried on site. No decision has been made by the DOE on whether to appeal the case brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Also, the GAO said there are technical challenges to separating the waste and the department has not adequately tested the separation processes. Past attempts to speed up disposal by using insufficiently tested techniques ended up costing tens of millions of dollars with no progress in cleanup, the GAO added.
---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------