Yucca Mountain News Clips - Friday, July 18, 2003

Yucca Mountain News Clips - Friday, July 18, 2003
---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN
July 18, 2003

Temporary Yucca waste plan defeated

By Suzanne Struglinski and Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN

WASHINGTON -- House budget leaders today agreed to scrap legislation aimed at speeding the nation's nuclear waste to a temporary Nevada waste site by 2007, three years before the proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain could be completed.

At issue is a provision in a $27.1 billion House energy and water spending bill that would launch a $4 million Department of Energy study of establishing an interim, above-ground waste site. The site would allow nuclear power plants to begin shipping their waste to Nevada even with the permanent repository under construction.

The Senate version of the bill does not contain the provision.

The legislation surfaced this month as pro-Yucca lawmakers attempt to advance the nuclear waste project, which for years has been plagued by delays and budget cuts.

Reps. Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons, both Nevada Republicans, negotiated behind the scenes with House GOP leaders to have the provision removed from the broader bill when the final version of the bill is hammered out by House and Senate lawmakers meeting in a conference committee.

Under the planned revision, the $4 million would be used instead to bolster security of nuclear waste storage containers at nuclear plants.

Gibbons and Porter pleaded their case to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that crafted the spending bill.

Hobson has said Yucca Mountain is his top priority among national energy projects.

"It's a great victory for Nevada," Gibbons said.

Porter called it a "huge win." Porter said that just four days ago Hobson was not willing to scrap the interim storage provision.

Gibbons, a possible Senate contender in the 2004 election, denied that GOP leaders were merely doing him a political favor.

"It had no bearing on my political future," Gibbons said.

Meanwhile the House today approved the broader spending bill, which included a $765 million budget for Yucca next year. That would be the biggest annual budget ever for the 20-year-old project.

Gibbons and Porter both voted against the bill.

But the Yucca budget is far from final. The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved a $425 million Yucca budget, and the full Senate could vote to approve the much smaller allocation as early as next week.

That would set up a contentious debate between House and Senate negotiators in a conference committee.

So far the annual haggling over the nuclear waste project budget has followed a familiar pattern, with the House proposing increased funding for Yucca from the previous year, and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., quietly negotiating to slash the budget. Reid, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, is a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Observers say the final Yucca budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 is likely to be a compromise somewhere near the amount requested by President Bush -- $591 million.

Pro-Yucca lawmakers today said approving Yucca was a matter of national security because it would centralize the nation's most radioactive waste, now piling up at 103 reactors nationwide, in one underground repository.

Nevada officials have argued that Yucca creates security risks, largely because of waste shipments. Nevada officials also note that some amount of waste will always be stored at nuclear power plants and that Yucca Mountain would create one more terrorist target.

In other debate, Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and and Porter introduced an amendment that would have reduced the Yucca budget by $30 million and funneled the money to renewable energy projects.

Hobson, among others, objected.

"This (Yucca) project has been starved for funding every year by the actions of the other body," Hobson said. "Let me tell you, 2010 is a pipe dream at the ($591 million) requested funding level."

Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said nuclear power is "green power" because it produces no greenhouse gases, and urged the House to support speedy completion of Yucca to alleviate a long-standing waste problem that plagues the nuclear industry.

"We cannot cut the Yucca Mountain budget," Wamp said. "I'm sorry to my friends from Nevada -- it's not in the national interest to do that."

The Udall-Porter amendment was not approved.

The proposed House version of the Yucca budget contains several provisions not included in the Senate bill. The provisions include: $70 million for waste transportation planning, including initial work on a Nevada rail spur; and $30 million for Nevada to blunt the social, economic and environmental effects of constructing a national nuclear waste dump in the state.

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

Las Vegas SUN
July 18, 2003

House Firm on Nev. Nuclear Dump Site Fund

By Alan Fram
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House refused on Friday to chip away at funds for building a nuclear waste repository in Nevada as lawmakers approved a $27.1 billion energy and water bill for next year.

By 251-153, the Republican-run chamber refused to cut $30 million from the government's plan to build a nuclear waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain, a remote ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The long-delayed dump, which received final congressional approval a year ago, could open as early as 2010 and is eventually to hold 77,000 tons of highly radioactive materials, mostly from power plants.

Under the defeated amendment, sponsored by Reps. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Jon Porter, R-Nev., the money was to have been shifted to alternative energy programs including research into solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy. The bill has $330 million for work on renewable energy, $114 million less than President Bush wanted.

More spending for alternative forms of power is justified because the country needs "over-the-horizon thinking" to wean itself from its "addiction" to Middle East oil, said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., a supporter of the amendment.

The $30 million was but a small portion of the $765 million the bill has for the nuclear waste disposal, $174 million more than Bush requested. Even so, approval could have opened the door for a new strategy for Yucca Mountain opponents, who have been battling the proposal in Congress and the courts for well over a decade.

"This is a national security issue. We need to have the waste in one place, underground," said Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., who helped defeat the proposal.

The underlying bill, approved 377-26, has $4.5 billion for hundreds of water projects popular with lawmakers, nearly $300 million more than Bush requested.

In exchange, the measure provides less than Bush wanted for nuclear weapons activities. Included is just $5 million of the $15 million the president requested for research into small nuclear bombs that could penetrate the earth to destroy bunkers.

Another provision would rename Lock and Dam No. 3 on the Allegheny River in western Pennsylvania after Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which produced the spending bill. Young, 72, grew up in poverty within eyesight of the dam.

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

Las Vegas SUN
July 18, 2003

Editorial: No signs of wavering on Yucca

Las Vegas SUN

A plan in the Republican-controlled House would boost funding for the Yucca Mountain budget from roughly $325 million this year to $765 million in the next fiscal year. Not even the request by President Bush, whose plan to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain was approved by Congress last year, is that high: The White House is seeking a $591 million budget. While the Republican-led Senate wants to increase the Yucca Mountain budget, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is using his influence in an effort to get a budget passed in the upper chamber with $425 million in funding.

It's obvious that the Republicans, who control both the White House and Congress, are determined to bury the nation's high-level nuclear waste just 90 miles north of Las Vegas. The House also is considering plans to make Yucca Mountain an interim dump, even though no final decision has been made yet by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as to whether Yucca Mountain is suitable as a nuclear waste dump. An interim storage dump, of course, is a none-too-subtle plan to make Yucca Mountain a fait accompli.

Then there's the matter of a General Accounting Office report released this week, a report that says a new Energy Department plan to accelerate its cleanup of nuclear waste now stored at U.S. weapons sites could be placed in jeopardy by technical and legal challenges. As reported Thursday, the failure of the cleanup plan could mean that more of that waste could be bound for Yucca Mountain -- which would overload the dump and possibly require it to be dangerously expanded.

The environmental dangers of storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, the hazards associated with shipping cross-country man's deadliest waste and the huge cost overruns at the project all have been well documented. So when a government tries to fast-track a controversial project or promotes its "inevitability," as is the case with Yucca Mountain, it almost always means that deep down federal officials are worried about the project's fate. While the odds seemingly wouldn't favor Nevada, this state needs to stand opposed resolutely to the Yucca Mountain project, fighting it in the courts and during the licensing process. This is a battle in which Nevada can never waver.

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

Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 18, 2003

U.S. Senate panel OKs bill with Yucca money

Differences with House measure must be resolved

By Tony Batt
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Nevada counties, universities and research groups would receive $20.5 million next year to monitor the government's effort to develop a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, according to a spending bill approved Thursday by a Senate committee.

Overall, the bill allocating energy and water projects for fiscal 2004 contains almost $200 million for Nevada, although it will not be finalized until differences with a House version are resolved later this year.

The bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee steers $8 million in Yucca oversight money to Nevada counties. An additional $5 million would go to the University of Nevada, Reno for Yucca Mountain-related research.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the Desert Research Institute, and the state of Nevada each would receive $2.5 million.

For the Yucca Mountain Project, the bill contains $425 million compared to $765 million in the House bill. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the ranking Democrat on the energy and water subcommittee, engineered the reduction and also inserted other Nevada funding.

The bill also includes $78 million for transmutation, a developing technology that aims to reduce the volume and toxicity of high level nuclear waste.

The fledgling National Center for Combating Terrorism at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, would receive $25 million under the bill. That sum includes $2.5 million each for anti-terrorism research at UNLV and UNR.

Other Nevada items include:

• $26.3 million for continued construction of the flood control project Tropicana and Flamingo washes. That sum includes $23.3 million for construction and $3 million to reimburse the Clark County Regional Flood Control District.

• $15.6 million for the development of geothermal and other renewable energy sources in Nevada.

• $23.8 million in budget increases for Nevada Test Site operations and improvements, including designs to replace two firehouses.

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

Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 18, 2003

Yucca Mountain Repository: DOE seeks input on moving nuclear waste

Event included officials from states, public safety groups, utilities and shipping firms

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department sought to jump-start a segment of its nuclear waste program Thursday by seeking advice from state and industry experts on strategies to transport spent nuclear fuel to a Yucca Mountain repository.

Stalled for years by budget cuts, the department is refocusing on commercial nuclear waste shipping and will step up activity on a national program as the next phase of the Yucca Mountain Project, Margaret Chu, DOE director of radioactive waste, said at a conference.

"It's timely for us to reactivate our transportation program," Chu said. She said the DOE will issue its strategic plan for Yucca transportation later this year, to be followed by specific operating plans.

She added the DOE is resuming funding of regional advisory groups and has asked Congress for money in the 2004 budget to begin consulting with states and affected parties.

Chu spoke to 125 experts at a DOE-coordinated transportation conference. The meeting included representatives from states, federal transportation and nuclear agencies, public safety groups, utilities, and shipping firms planning to compete for Yucca contracts worth millions of dollars.

"This is the initiation of our discussions with stakeholders," said Jeff Williams, DOE's transportation liaison.

Industry officials who have been frustrated by DOE delays said they are eager to proceed.

Alan Hanson, president of Transnuclear, a nuclear services company, said transport firms are waiting only for DOE to finalize a repository design.

"The critical missing element is a design of the infrastructure at Yucca Mountain. We need to know what the facility is going to look like," Hanson said. "Once we know what that is, the industry can easily design what we need to get waste there."

Jack Edlow, president of Edlow International, said, "As DOE develops its plans more, the industry is fully capable of meeting the demand and coming up with new ideas."

But Robert Halstead, a transportation consultant to the state of Nevada, challenged DOE's planning, saying the department has yet to formally declare rail as a preferred transportation mode.

"You should have made those decisions last February," Halstead told Chu. "We can't go forward with this until you make decisions."

In its environmental impact study for the Yucca Mountain Project, the Energy Department said that it leaned to a mostly-railroad transportation strategy, estimating about 95 percent of nuclear waste would be sent to a Nevada repository by rail car.

But detailed plans for transporting radioactive spent fuel and nuclear waste from 131 locations in 39 states, including shipping routes, won't be formed for another two years at least, officials said. DOE envisions accepting waste at a Yucca repository by the end of 2010.

At the daylong session, DOE officials sought input on shipping casks and other hardware, safety issues and strategies to cooperate with states and local governments in route planning and emergency responder training.

Halstead proposed DOE develop a standard-design fleet of dual purpose casks that could be used for storage and for rail shipping.

Eileen Supko, a consultant whose firm Energy Resources Inc., has overseas clients, suggested DOE take lessons from European nations with experience in moving spent fuel.

Chet Poslusny, an official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, suggested that a safety center be established at Yucca Mountain, where local transportation and emergency workers can attend safety classes.

Michigan state official Thor Strong asked DOE to rule out the possibility of waste shipments by barge since that idea has proved unpopular in Great Lakes states.

But Edlow said that option should be kept on the table. He said acceptance might grow when people learn that oil and other industrial materials are barge-shipped routinely.

"Let's not just discard this as an alternative," Edlow said.

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

Salt Lake Tribune
July 18, 2003

Report says plan to dispose of radioactive material is flawed

By Faith Bremner
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy's plan to clean up radioactive waste in Washington, Idaho and South Carolina faster and cheaper is based on shaky assumptions and unproven technologies, a government report released Thursday says.

In a hearing on the report before a House Energy Committee panel, an Energy Department official said her agency is preparing to ask Congress to shore up the plan's biggest assumption, which a federal district judge in Idaho shot down this month.

The department is counting on being able to treat and then reclassify as low-level waste 90 percent of the 94 million gallons of highly radioactive waste generated by the military during the Cold War. The waste is being stored in leaky underground tanks at the Hanford Reservation in Washington, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Idaho National Laboratory.

By reclassifying the waste, then immobilizing it in concrete or glass and leaving it in place, the department hopes to save $29 billion and 20 to 30 years. The cleanup had been expected to cost $105 billion and take 70 years.

But in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups and joined by Washington and South Carolina, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled July 2 that the Energy Department doesn't have the authority to reclassify the waste.

"We're working with Congress to clarify the law," Jesse Roberson, assistant secretary for environmental management, told the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee.

Without this authority, DOE would have to ship all the waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste dump in Nevada -- a move that would fill the facility several times over. Yucca Mountain is being designed primarily to hold spent fuel rods from commercial nuclear power plants.

"Yucca Mountain can't handle it and the cost would be prohibitive," said the report's author, Robin Nazzaro, director of the General Accounting Office's Natural Resources and Environment Section.

Subcommittee chairman Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., said he supports authorizing the Energy Department to reclassify the material, considering Yucca Mountain's cost -- $60 billion -- and all the controversy it has generated.

Michael Wilson, of the Washington State Department of Ecology, and David Wilson, of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, said their states support letting DOE reclassify some of the material, providing they are involved in the decision.

"Our purpose for joining the lawsuit was to protect our interests on both sides and to prevent DOE from making a wholesale declaration that untreated waste should stay in the tanks," Washington's Wilson said.

Other problems with the department's expedited cleanup plan include out-of-date cost estimates and untested technology that would be used to break down the waste into two parts.

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

MSNBC
July 18, 2003

Nuclear weapons cleanup flawed?

General Accounting Office delivers report to Congress

WASHINGTON, July 17 — Bush administration attempts to quicken the cleanup of 94 million gallons of nuclear weapons waste face significant legal, technical and even “management’ obstacles, investigators reported to Congress on Thursday. Noting that $18 billion has been spent over the last two decades, the General Accounting Office raised concerns about how billions more will be spent.

AT A HOUSE energy oversight subcommittee hearing, lawmakers on Thursday highlighted the significance of the issue, especially at the nation´s three largest nuclear weapons sites: Hanford in Washington, Savannah River in South Carolina and at the INEEL facility in Idaho.

“There´s so much on the line here’ in terms of taxpayer dollars and human health, said Rep. Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican whose district is is downstream on the Columbia River from the Hanford waste tanks.

Rep. Greenwood, R-Penn. and the subcommittee chairman, noted that the Energy Department expects to spend $105 billion over 70 years to deal with nuclear waste from Cold War weapons labs. Greenwood cited a “questionable track record’ by Energy Department management, but said he hoped the Bush administration team would do better.

‘MANAGEMENT WEAKNESSES´

In its report, the GAO said that while the Bush administration´s attempts to reduce costs and speed up cleanup were laudable, the program relies on untested technologies and procedures, and faces potentially crippling legal challenges.

GAO investigator Robin Nazzaro testified that concerns include “management weaknesses’ such as using a fast-track approach to construction before full design work is done, and simulating new technology instead of physically testing it.

“Maybe they haven´t gone far enough,’ Nazzaro said of the Energy Department´s efforts to push the program forward.

Jesse Roberson, the Energy Department official in charge of environmental management, defended the program, saying “we are making progress’ while also expecting further criticism until “results’ start showing up.

Roberson also asked Congress for legislation that would clarify its intent on waste cleanup, and promised to send draft language within a month.

Greenwood said it was “probable’ that Congress would eventually do just that.

Officials and scientists have been perplexed for years over how to deal with the highly radioactive waste that has accumulated at Energy Department nuclear weapons sites.

Some of the material, left over from a half century of plutonium production for nuclear bombs and other weapons activities, will remain deadly for thousands of years. In some cases, such as with the wastes in dozens of metal tanks at Hanford, some of which are corroding, scientists have no clear idea what´s in the soup of chemicals because of poor record keeping over the Cold War years.

“This waste would fill an area the size of a football field to a depth of about 260 feet,’ according to the GAO report.

APPROACH QUESTIONED

The Energy Department plan has been to separate the most highly radioactive material and prepare it for shipment to an underground disposal site, possibly at Yucca Mountain in Nevada once that repository gets built. The rest, after separation, would be treated and buried where it is already located in the three states.

The new approach 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.

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. “DOE´s current savings estimate for these approaches is $29 billion, but the estimate may not be reliable or complete,’ the auditors´ wrote.

The GAO cites potential legal challenges from states or environmentalists on the plan to treat and permanently leave so much radioactive material at the sites. And a federal judge earlier this month ruled against the department´s attempt to reclassify some of the waste to allow it to be buried on site.

By law, any waste classified as “high level’ must be buried in a central repository such as Yucca Mountain. No decision has been made by the DOE on whether to appeal the ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The GAO also 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 full report is online at energycommerce.house.gov/108/News/07162003_1041.htm.

MSNBC.com´s Miguel Llanos and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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

Casper Star Tribune
July 18, 2003

Nuke train rolls, two years late

By BRODIE FARQUHAR Star-Tribune staff writer Friday, July 18, 2003

A shipment of nuclear waste, on hold at its point of origin since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, passed through Wyoming this week.

The shipment of 125 spent nuclear fuel rod assemblies left West Valley, NY, on Sunday night. It pulled into the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory on Wednesday morning. During its journey, the train passed through southern Wyoming along the Union Pacific line.

Rick Dale, a spokesman for Bechtel BWXT Idaho LCC., which operates INEEL for the Department of Energy, confirmed that the special shipment arrived safely Wednesday morning with no incidents en route. He would not comment further about the shipment's schedule or route.

Lara Azar, press secretary to Gov. Dave Freudenthal, said the governor's office was contacted about the shipment.

The governor in each state involved in the shipment appoints a representative to decide who should be allowed to know the details of a shipment. In Wyoming, that representative is Captain Vernon Poage, commercial carrier officer for the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Poage was unavailable for comment Thursday.

The federal government halted all nuclear waste shipments shortly after the terrorist attacks. It was not immediately clear if other shipments have moved before now, or if the West Valley load was the first to cross the nation.

Just days before the attacks, Department of Energy officials announced their plan to ship 125 spent nuclear fuel assemblies by rail from the now closed nuclear fuel reprocessing plant to INEEL. Since then, the fuel rods have been stored loaded on a special train, guarded 24-hours a day by Cattaraugus County sheriff's deputies.

The Times Herald of Olean, NY, reported that the train was composed of two engines, two flatbed cars with specially-designed casks to hold the fuel rod bundles, three buffer cars filled with crushed stone and a passenger car with Department of Energy and emergency response teams.

The spent fuel assemblies are left over from West Valley facility's uranium-processing operations conducted between 1966 and 1972. The Energy Department is now cleaning up the nation's first and only commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in West Valley.

The fuel assemblies will be placed in dry storage in a specifically-constructed facility at INEEL until a national repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is available.

Department of Energy officials have said communities along the train's route should not be concerned about radiation doses from the fuel assemblies. They noted vastly higher amounts of radiation comes from the atmosphere, common appliances and even some natural sources of food and water.

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

Hartford Courant
July 18, 2003

Push For Moving Nuclear Waste

By GARY LIBOW, Courant Staff Writer

U.S. Sens. Joe Lieberman and Chris Dodd are among six New England senators lobbying to expedite removal of spent radioactive fuel from the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant in Haddam Neck.

A similar campaign to remove spent fuel from the Connecticut Yankee, Yankee Rowe (Mass.) and Maine Yankee plants is progressing in the House of Representatives, bolstered by a letter signed by 10 New England congressmen, including Conecticut's Nancy Johnson, R-5th District, and Rob Simmons, R-2nd District.

This week, the House's Appropriations Committee authored legislation directing the federal Energy Department to ensure that spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from reactor sites undergoing decommissioning be transported as soon as is practical.

The Senate bill has not yet been filed, but in a July 3 letter to Sen. Pete Domenici, chairman of the energy and water development subcommittee, the senators urged funding for such a pilot program. They want the pilot program incorporated into the Energy Department's proposed fiscal year 2004 budget.

Under the plan, the fuel would be sent to sites across the U.S.

The government is more than five years past the statutorily established date by which the Energy Department was to begin accepting and transporting spent nuclear fuel from New England to Yucca Mountain in the Nevada dessert. The government now says it cannot begin the process until 2010.

The letter, also signed by senators from New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, urges the Energy Department to develop a pilot program using decommissioned nuclear plants to test its waste acceptance and transport programs.

The senators want the pilot project activated "as soon as possible."

They argue the project would assure that Energy Department issues are adequately addressed prior to full-scale shipping of spent nuclear fuel from all commercial, university and defense nuclear facilities in New England.

New England residents have paid over $1.6 billion into a Nuclear Waste Fund, but high-level radioactive waste continues to be "stranded" in the region with no removal dates in sight.

Thursday, Connecticut Yankee spokeswoman Kelley Smith applauded efforts to have spent nuclear fuel removed from New England. In the fall, Connecticut Yankee plans to begin moving more than 1,000 radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods from an indoor pool to an on-site outdoor dry-cask storage facility.

"We have been urging priority removal of spent fuel from decommissioned plants, in order to facilitate the reuse of these sites and to eliminate the need to continue to protect these sites ...," Smith said.

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

Greenville News
July 17, 2003

Report critical of waste cleanup plan

By Faith Brenmer
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy's plan to clean up radioactive waste in Washington, Idaho and South Carolina faster and cheaper is based on shaky assumptions and unproven technologies, a government report released Thursday says.

By reclassifying the waste — and then immobilizing it in concrete or glass and leaving it in place — the department hopes to save $29 billion and 20 to 30 years. Originally the cleanup was estimated to cost $105 billion and take 70 years.

But in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups and joined by the states of Washington and South Carolina, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled July 2 that the Energy Department doesn't have the authority to reclassify the material.

"We're working with Congress to clarify the law," Jesse Roberson, assistant secretary for environmental management, told the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee.

Without this authority, DOE would have to ship all the waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste dump in Nevada — a move that would fill the facility several times over. Yucca Mountain is being designed primarily to hold spent fuel rods from commercial nuclear power plants.

"Yucca Mountain can't handle it and the cost would be prohibitive," said the report's author, Robin Nazzaro, director of the General Accounting Office's Natural Resources and Environment Section.

Subcommittee chairman Jim Greenwood, R-Penn., said he supports authorizing the Energy Department to reclassify the material, considering Yucca Mountain's cost — $60 billion — and all the controversy it has generated.

Michael Wilson, of the Washington State Department of Ecology, and David Wilson, of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, said their states support letting DOE reclassify at least some of the material, so long as they are involved in the decision.

Other problems with the department's expedited cleanup plan include out-of-date cost estimates and untested technology that would be used to break down the waste into two parts, the GAO report says. One part of the treated waste would have high concentrations of radioactive material that would be deadly for thousands of years. The other part would be radioactive for only about 100 years.

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

Las Vegas Mercury
July 17, 2003

Quick and Dirty: A notebook of news and politics

Busy fall season for nuke dump foes

The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects--the arm of the state charged with fending off the Department of Energy's proposed nuke dump at Yucca Mountain--has a busy fall season ahead. And with any luck, the action this season will prove fatal to the federal government's proposed high-level nuclear waste repository. Next month, the state engineer's office will consider the DOE's application to draw water necessary to build and run the dump. The office denied the NANP's request to make a case at the hearing, but the NANP may ask it to reconsider. Even if the agency doesn't get the okay, the hearing won't be a complete cake-walk for the DOE.

"If there's any area where state water law is supreme, this is it," says NANP executive director Bob Loux. "Will it kill the project? No. Usually what happens in these situations is the federal government does a land withdrawal bill." And if it gets the land, it gets the water.

But that's just an opener for the main event in October, when the NANP presents its four lawsuits against the federal government in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. "All four are going to be heard in one day," Loux says. "Three of the four are virtually fatal. If we're successful, it's essentially over."

Of course, the DOE wants you to forget about that; this week the department earmarked a $30 million "impact fund" for Nevada to ease the pain of burying and storing nuke waste. As if it's a done deal.--AK

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