Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, July 31, 2003
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Las Vegas SUN
July 31, 2003

Editorial: Yucca ode: 'Someway, somehow...'

Las Vegas SUN

A good time to have produced a plan for endlessly transporting high-level nuclear waste around the country would have been 20 years ago, a year after Congress decided that the waste building up at power plants should be buried. Although no site had been picked, the plan could have addressed security, accident prevention, disaster training, and the vulnerabilities of truck, rail and barge transportation. The plan could have motivated community leaders around the nation to begin thinking about the consequences of deadly waste rolling past schools, churches, farmlands, rivers and their residents' homes.

That opportunity passed. Another opportunity arose in 1987, however, when Congress ganged up on Nevada and declared Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the ideal final resting place for waste that will still be deadly in the year 10,000. Now that a single site had been chosen for a suitability study -- albeit against strong opposition from Nevadans -- the Energy Department's first order of business should have been explaining to the nation how high-level nuclear waste from the Northeast and all other parts of the country was going to be delivered to a site in the Southwest. Well, that opportunity passed too.

Another opportunity arose early this decade, when momentum began building for Congress to approve Yucca Mountain. Certainly, before any approval could possibly be granted, Congress would have to know the full degree of jeopardy that would be faced by communities along transportation routes. But no, that opportunity passed too. Congress approved the site a year ago without having a clue about the transportation issue.

Another opportunity arose immediately after Congress' approval. But again, nothing. Now the Energy Department is casually suggesting 2006 as the year it might get around to revealing a transportation plan. With the federal government giving 2010 as the date for opening Yucca Mountain, localities will be given precious little time to prepare. Waiting until the last possible moment on a transportation plan will give new and tragic meaning to the saying "haste makes waste."

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 31, 2003

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Nye urges outside help for site tests

County official says people will believe independent experts

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A Nye County official on Wednesday urged the government to recruit independent experts for a key series of tests to confirm whether a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository will work as planned.

The public will more probably accept conclusions reached independently from experiments that will judge the safety of the Yucca Mountain Project, said Les Bradshaw, Nye County manager for natural resources and federal facilities.

The Energy Department is developing such a "performance confirmation" plan, a long sequence of testing and mapping that will be conducted if the DOE wins a license for the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Performance confirmation studies would take place before and during construction later this decade and as a Yucca repository is filled with radioactive spent fuel and nuclear waste in succeeding years.

Officials said the tests will give evidence whether Yucca Mountain's natural features coupled with rust-resistant storage casks and other man-made barriers can meet DOE expectations to prevent radioactive particles from escaping into the environment for a required 10,000 years.

Bradshaw said human health, safety and environmental considerations are paramount to residents of Nye County, where the repository would be located.

"People won't believe what government agents say out of hand," Bradshaw said in recommending "significant participation" by outside experts for performance confirma- tion.

He said Nye County hopes to play some role in the ongoing scientific research at the site.County technicians presently monitor groundwater near the repository site under DOE contract.

Bradshaw also pitched the county for a science institute, similar to one near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, where "institutional knowledge" about Yucca Mountain can be preserved.

"The last thing we want is some white elephant, hangwire, bubble gum and bailing wire-type operation in Nye County in 50 or 80 or 100 years or whenever the nation loses interest in this issue," Bradshaw said.

Bradshaw was among Nevada representatives and researchers from the utility industry, the DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who delivered presentations on Yucca performance confirmation this week to the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste. The committee is a five-member panel that monitors Yucca Mountain technical issues for the NRC.

DOE official Deborah Barr said the department is in the midst of a second revision to its performance confirmation plan and expects to have a third revision ready next spring. The plan will be included DOE's Yucca Mountain license application scheduled to be submitted to the NRC in December 2004.

Steve Frishman, a technical adviser for the state of Nevada, warned against the Energy Department putting off necessary studies until the performance confirmation phase.

"I see a danger of unfinished business being tossed into a bucket of performance confirmation," he said.

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Provo Daily Herald
July 31, 2003

Storage casks are the weakest link

One of the weakest links, if not the weakest, in the nuclear storage plan is the strength of the casks in which the spent fuel rods will be shipped and stored.

If a cask isn't strong enough to protect its cargo en route to a depository, it won't matter how secure the final storage place is.

Private Fuel Storage, the Minnesota-based consortium that is seeking to construct a nuclear waste storage depot on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation, is arguing that the casks can withstand an F-16 fighter jet crash or even a conventional missile strike.

The Atomic Safety Licensing Board rejected PFS's application because the storage facility would lie beneath the flight path for Hill Air Force Base. Fighters follow the path to target ranges in the desert. The feds said the risk of a fighter crashing into the facility and rupturing the casks is too great to allow the project to proceed.

At the same time, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials are looking into the durability of the fuel casks, while Gov. Mike Leavitt is pressing the safety issue in his fight to keep the material out of Utah.

The public deserves real answers. Are the casks truly safe? Have the risks increased since Sept. 11?

The last tests conducted on casks occurred 20 years ago and only dealt with traffic accidents, drops and a half-hour exposure to fire. And that was for a cask that is no longer in use today.

The problem of relying on outdated studies, especially in the area of public safety, speaks for itself. Even when current, a study may fail to take all relevant factors into account.

When the World Trade Center's twin towers were constructed, for example, engineers said the buildings could withstand a hit from a jet airliner. They reiterated this claim in 1993, when terrorists tried to topple the buildings with a truck bomb in the underground parking garage. The bomb created a three-story-deep crater, but the buildings still stood.

The problem is that while the engineers' conclusion may have been accurate at the time, it didn't account for future technology or unorthodox terrorist scenarios. In the early 1970s, when the towers were built, the largest airliner in service was the Boeing 707, and engineers figured that if one hit the WTC, it would most likely happen on the final approach to New York airports -- slow and with nearly empty fuel tanks.

No one thought that a much larger aircraft, loaded with enough fuel for a transcontinental flight, would be plowed into the buildings deliberately at high speed.

The same concern might be raised in the case of nuclear fuel casks. The state of Nevada, in its own study, reported that today's casks for shipping and storage have a layer of less than 5 inches of stainless steel and depleted uranium to protect the fuel rods. The next generation of casks will have between 6 and 11 inches of metal around the cargo.

That's not all that reassuring. Today's portable anti-tank weapons, such as a TOW or Milan missile, can punch holes through 40 inches of armor plating; a shaped explosive charge weighing as little as 2 pounds can penetrate 20-40 inches of steel.

All terrorists would need to do to turn a fuel container into a dirty bomb is breach it as a shipment passes through a city. High concentrations of radiation would be released, with all the resulting dangers of radiation sickness, cancer and death. Such an event would wreak havoc economically, especially if it shut down, say, downtown Salt Lake City or the Las Vegas Strip.

Just look at how the collapse of the World Trade Center's skyscrapers knocked the stock market off its feet for awhile. And there was no radioactive material involved in that attack.

The federal government's Yucca Mountain plan calls for 90,000 shipments of nuclear waste across the country -- 90 percent of which will pass through Utah. It's not a question of whether an accident or attack will happen. It's just a matter of when.

If Private Fuel Storage and the NRC want to convince the American public that the casks are safe, they must conduct new, real-world tests. Inflict a force on a cask that would be expected in an F-16 crash. Take a cask out to a target range and see what happens when it is hit with a bomb or a cruise missile. Blast them with anti-tank missiles and artillery shells. In short, do whatever it takes, and then some, to prove the case.

If a cask breaks down, then the government needs to find a better way of dealing with the material, such as reprocessing it or storing it where it was made. Either of those steps would be more acceptable than putting countless Americans at risk of an accident or terrorist attack.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 30, 2003

Nevadans urge analysis of federal Yucca plan

By Suzanne Struglinski

Las Vegas SUN

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- A federal plan designed to make sure the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, if approved, is working according to plan should have independent comprehensive analysis, Nevada representatives told the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste this morning.

Les Bradshaw, manager of the Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities for Nye County, told the panel that the performance confirmation plan will determine if the site will actually protect health and human safety in Nye County, as the Energy Depeartment implies.

The committee, an independent body that advises the five-member commission on nuclear issues, meets at the commission headquarters through Thursday.

When it comes to safety issues surrounding Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nye County "is more interested than anyone in the country" since site is in Nye County, he said.

Bradshaw recommended the DOE include information the county has compiled in the performance confirmation process, as well as assess other data that would be used.

"People won't believe what government agents say out of hand," he said.

Nye County currently collects and analyzes ground water samples and water levels from a network of monitoring wells placed near Yucca Mountain. That information is shared with DOE and the state.

Bradshaw reminded the panel that Nye County welcomes the site and that "it should be a first-class and world-class operation."

Meanhwhile, Steve Frishman, Nevada Nuclear Waste Project office technical policy coordinator, who opposes the site, pointed out that performance confirmation should not be a catch-all for every unanswered question about Yucca Mountain. The process has a clear regulatory and legal intent, he said.

"It shouldn't be a bucket for everything that's undone," he said.

On Tuesday Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials outlined progress on performance confirmation, or the final checklist of tests, experiments and analyses the department will use to see if the storage site lives up to its safety and scientific expectations as it is being filled.

Before a license can be issued to open a nuke waste dump at Yucca Mountain, a plan for testing the dump's safety before it is closed is required. NRC guidelines show the process continuing for at least 50 years after the first shipment of spent fuel arrives, and the department has said it will continue the process, even after the respository is closed.

The DOE described performance confirmation as "the most important monitoring activity" at Yucca Mountain in a report released in February 2002.

The DOE plans to send the final confirmation plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the license application, now scheduled to be submitted in December 2004. If the license is approved, the deparmtent expects to accept the first waste shipments of 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel by 2010.

The plan has already been drafted, and the department may finish a revision next month and issue the third revision next March, Deborah Barr, of the department's repository development office, said Tuesday.

The third version will define the activities, establish their baselines, identify test plans and define the reporting process, among other items.

James Blink, of Yucca contractor Bechtel SAIC, said the plan will address several areas, including igneous activity, seismic activity, waste packages and the surface.

Right now the department has not deemed any of the information it has gathered so far as performance confirmation work, but information compiled now for other areas will "flow" into the process, Barr said.

That raises Frishman's, and the state's, greatest concerns, he said -- that new data will not be collected. Frishman also questioned why some of the performance confirmation tests and data collection were not done before the site was approved.

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National Review
July 29, 2003

Court to Constitution: Drop Dead

How Nevada´s budget mess bodes ill for conservative reforms nationwide.

By Rick Henderson

For the first time since the 1860s, Nevada began its fiscal year without a state budget. But after two special legislative sessions, the Silver State's fiscal crisis ended on July 22, when "Republican" Gov. Kenny Guinn signed into law a $4.9 billion budget with a $833 million tax increase — an amount nearly three times the size of the previous record tax hike.

The impasse was resolved only after the state supreme court issued a potentially devastating decision that could damage grassroots, free-market government reforms nationwide — and boost the reelection prospects of the U.S. Senate's no. 2 Democrat, Nevada's own Harry Reid. That's why if you haven't yet paid close attention to our constitutional crisis, it's time to tune in.

SUPREME CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRACY

On July 10, the Nevada supreme court temporarily set aside the state's constitutional requirement that any tax increase must receive the approval of at least two thirds of the members of both houses, ruling that the "procedural" two-thirds mandate should take a backseat to the "fundamental" requirement that the legislature fund the public schools. While a challenge is now pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, if the decision stands, it could be used as a template for constitutional mischief by teachers unions and other big-spending interest groups nationwide.

Timothy Sandefur's July 13 NRO article offered a concise overview of both the fiscal showdown that led to the call for court intervention, and the Nevada justices' ruling. Facing a $700 million current account deficit, Gov. Guinn initially proposed a $5 billion budget that would increase spending by $1.3 billion and taxes by $860 million (tax revenues are expected to grow by roughly $400 million over a two-year period). Guinn was unable to get two-thirds of the members of each house to approve the tax hike. The controversy went to the state supreme court, which issued its laughable July 10 opinion.

The next day, the state assembly "passed" a tax increase by a 26-16 margin, two votes shy of the two-thirds mandated by the constitution. Two-dozen GOP lawmakers and a group of state taxpayers then filed suit in federal district court, arguing that the Nevada justices had violated lawmakers' and residents' federal due-process rights by diluting the value of their votes.

On July 18, following a rare en banc hearing, Nevada's seven federal district judges (unlike their Nevada colleagues) exercised admirable judicial restraint. The federal jurists said they did not have jurisdiction to decide the case. So as the appeal sat at the 9th Circuit, the legislature went back to work. On July 21, a tax hike of $833 million passed by 17-2 in the senate and 28-14 in the assembly — the minimum number of votes needed in that house to get a two-thirds majority.

THE OTHER RECALL CAMPAIGN

No matter how the federal courts eventually handle the Nevada supremes' decision, this ruling could turn the state's political establishment upside-down, and quickly. A group of conservative activists is preparing petitions to recall the six Nevada supreme court justices who voted to temporarily suspend the Gibbons Tax Restraint Initiative (named after its original sponsor, former assemblyman — and now U.S. congressman — Jim Gibbons). Gov. Guinn may be targeted for a recall as well.

REVENGE OF THE GOP?

If initial outrage over the decision is any guide, some of the recalls could be successful. Feedback to the editorial page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state's largest newspaper, is running roughly 90-to-1 against the decision, with many letter-writers and e-mailers eager to throw the judges out of office — for starters.

Also, GOP Assemblyman Bob Beers, the 43-year-old Las Vegas CPA who spearheaded resistance to the new taxes, is confident that Republicans will take control of the lower house in 2004. (The senate is nominally controlled by Republicans, but its leadership is populated by RINOs.)

This would be a stunning turnaround for the state GOP, which held only 15 of the 42 seats in 2001, and saw its prospects for legislative gains last year dashed by a redistricting plan that should have cemented the Democrats' grip on that body for a decade.

Still, there's justification for Beers's optimism: The GOP gained four seats in 2002, giving it 19 Assembly members, and the 23 Democrats have voted for every tax increase this session. Each contested Democratic district next year will feature an incumbent whose fingerprints are all over the unpopular tax heist.

Which brings us back to Harry Reid. The senator won his last election by 428 votes, and is considered vulnerable — outside Nevada. The Bush administration in particular would love to get rid of the feisty, partisan attorney, as Republicans salivate over the prospect of ousting the Senate's top two Democrats — Reid and Tom Daschle — on the same day.

The White House has openly courted Jim Gibbons to take Reid's seat. A four-term lawmaker from Reno, a veteran pilot of both Vietnam and the first Gulf War, and a pro-choice Republican in a pro-choice state (Nevada voters modified the constitution to affirm Roe v. Wade in the 1990s), Gibbons is wildly popular in his hometown and has run well in southern Nevada, a portion of which he still represents in Congress.

But it's far from certain Gibbons will offer a challenge — even though, as he's said, he's in "the catbird seat" right now. The congressman has been coy about his plans, saying he'll save any announcements until Labor Day or thereabouts. When Gibbons spoke by telephone with Review-Journal editors on July 15, he demurred when asked what role this controversy might play in his plans.

GIBBONS VS. REID?

That said, Gibbons has several attractive options: He could challenge Harry Reid, continue to serve in Congress, or try for another office. This final option would mean Gibbons could seek Nevada's other Senate seat in 2006 if, as has been rumored, GOP freshman John Ensign decides to forgo a second term — or, Gibbons could make a try for the governor's mansion.

If Gibbons does take on Reid, he'll face an incumbent who knows how to take care of the homefolks. From delaying the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump, to stopping potential bans on college sports betting, to ensuring federal benefits to residents and workers who have suffered health problems as the result of nuclear testing, Reid is unparalleled in his ability to use parliamentary procedures, logrolling, and old-fashioned arm-twisting to protect Nevada's interests.

And since no Nevadan has ever risen to such a high-ranking federal office before — when Jim Jeffords left the GOP, Reid was the no. 2 member of the Senate majority — voters might be hesitant to toss such clout aside.

Still, Reid's non-Nevada political activities make Republicans furious. If an issue does not involve a provincial, Silver State interest, Reid goes straight to the Democratic party's playbook, launching attacks with relish. Judicial appointments, tax relief, entitlement, and tort reform — Reid is among the most virulently partisan Democrats.

Unfortunately, Reid's perceived vulnerability could just be wishful thinking by Republicans, particularly those unfamiliar with the inner workings of Nevada politics. Gibbons is the only Republican who has the statewide exposure, access to fund-raising, and high-profile political experience needed to give the incumbent a serious challenge. And the longer Gibbons waits, the better Reid's prospects for reelection.

A July 9 Mason-Dixon poll for the Review-Journal seems to put the congressman within striking distance: If the election were held today, pollsters found, Reid would defeat Gibbons, but only by 48 percent to 37 percent, with 15 percent undecided; Reid's favorable rating was just 49 percent. Still, the senator has more than $3 million in the bank, compared with only a few hundred thousand dollars for Gibbons. And Reid will not hesitate to use his influence and contacts to build on that fund-raising advantage as the campaign gets officially underway.

For a challenger who hasn't announced his candidacy, Gibbons is in a surprisingly strong position. And that's what has the Reid camp spooked. Reid ekes out statewide victories by building up huge majorities in Clark County, where 70 percent of the state's population resides, and also running respectably in Republican Reno and Washoe County — while getting clobbered in the rest of the state. If Gibbons were to crush Reid in Reno, it could be impossible for the senator to accumulate enough of a margin in Clark County to overcome his deficits elsewhere.

So the race boils down to how soon Gibbons wants to come home. The 58-year-old lawmaker has made no secret of his interest in winning the governorship. His best — and perhaps only — shot would come in 2006, when the seat will be open.

The congressman has taken the Nevada supreme court's decision personally. He may believe he can vindicate state taxpayers (and his legacy) only from the governor's mansion. The tax-restraint initiative Gibbons sponsored a decade ago received more than 70 percent of the vote in two statewide elections, and the congressman seems eager to channel the voter outrage the state justices' ruling has generated.

It's certainly possible Nevada's fiscal conservatives could prevail upon Gibbons to run for governor in 2006; it's also plausible that post was Gibbons's preference all along. If that is his decision, the congressman may pass up a winnable Senate race — and Harry Reid should easily land a fourth term in Washington.

What may be most troubling about the Nevada supreme court's ruling is its vagueness. The justices did not strike down the two-thirds majority requirement altogether; they merely set it aside temporarily until the current legislature funded the state budget.

Not surprisingly, supporters of big government are delighted by this decision. Before the ink was even dry on the ruling, California's embattled Gov. Gray Davis had his legal eagles poring over it. Indeed, Davis administration officials said they might ask the Golden State's supreme court to intervene in that budget impasse too, using the Nevada ruling as a precedent.

Legislating from the bench? You ain't seen nothing yet. Rob Natelson, a University of Montana law professor who has consulted those drafting tax- and spending-limitation initiatives, told the Review-Journal that though last week's ruling spoke only to the current legislative session, "it points the way for gutting the initiative permanently."

This could be catastrophic news for other states that require supermajorities in order to raise taxes or increase spending. In addition, state constitutions that prohibit personal income taxes (as does Nevada's) or enable genuine school choice could be at risk from a raid by welfare-state activists, using Nevada's precedent to overturn those "procedural" provisions.

Unless the Nevada decision is overturned by federal courts — or unless the Silver State justices reverse course — such "procedural" requirements could be relegated to second-class status as constitutional law nationwide. If so, populist free-market reforms will be imperiled, the initiative process could be emasculated, and our constitutional rights will no longer be secure.

— Rick Henderson is an editorial writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and publisher of the Deregulator weblog.

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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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