Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, August 5, 2003
---------------------------
Las Vegas Sun
August 04, 2003
Columnist Erin Neff: On national stage, Nevada still plays a bit role
Erin Neff covers politics for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4062, or by e-mail at erin@lasvegassun.com.
•••
OH TO BE relevant.
Nevada finds itself on the bottom of every social barometer, has thousands of tons of nuclear waste coming its way and continues to suffer the pains only the nation's fastest-growing state can comprehend.
And despite the issues that should help spur debate, assistance and interest nationwide, we find few willing -- or able -- to listen.
Sure, we have the Senate's assistant minority leader, an active congressional delegation, and now the added fifth electoral vote to make a difference.
But once again, as the nation's eyes look to smaller states with bigger political stakes, Nevada proves that on the national stage, it is an electoral wasteland.
Nevada has no presidential primary, and the parties pick without a full election, meaning there's no real reason to campaign here.
As a result, those who have the potential to help fix Nevada's problems don't even have a reason to explore what those might be.
The next time Nevada voters hit the polls it will be in a primary for state and local candidates next September.
By that time, President Bush will already have accepted his party's nomination for re-election and the Democratic nominee will have been known for two whole months.
California, however, has a primary, which includes presidential candidates, in March. That gives its voters a say in not just who is chosen for the November ballot but in what issues drive the debate between presidential candidates.
Sure, candidates do come for Las Vegas' money. But as Vice President Dick Cheney proved last week, you can haul out $300,000 without showing your face in public.
It's time to give serious consideration to changing the sytem and moving up the election dates.
Clark County Registrar Larry Lomax probably will spit out his coffee in disgust at the procedural changes, technology needs and massive education campaign needed to pull it off.
Critics say Nevada's five electoral votes wouldn't even matter much. They say that if we moved up the date of what is now just a state primary to add the presidential portion, we'd be linking our primary with other Western states. We would lose candidate stops to bigger California, they argue.
Indeed, the 1999 Legislature shelved a plan to move up the date of our primary because of election official and grumbling by political parties.
But just look at what other states are able to do with their primaries.
New Hampshire (four electoral votes) will cast ballots Jan. 27 and already has the attention of all nine of the officially recognized Democratic candidates.
Iowa has staked its place in political history by being the first state with a glimpse of voter input. Its Jan. 19 caucus will dominate post-holiday news for weeks, and you can bet, will shine a light on the Hawkeye State's needs.
For weeks Iowans will expound on the economy, health care, Social Security and terrorism. From Des Moines to Keokuk, the state will have clout.
Our neighbor, Arizona, casts ballots on Feb. 3.
Thirty-three states will be finished picking the presidential finalists by March.
The National Association of Secretaries of State recently proposed a national presidential primary calendar aimed at giving every state the chance to go first.
Under the organization's rotating primary plan, states would be grouped by region and given a set date for a presidential primary. For example, the East would vote in March, the South in April, the Midwest in May and the West in June.
The next election would rotate with the South taking the lead, and so on.
That wouldn't guarantee Nevada the spotlight, but it would give the state a better chance to be the focus of someone's campaign, or at least the president's eyes.
Republican political operatives and Larry Ruvo, the Nevada Bush-Cheney campaign's finance director, all say George Bush will visit the state before next fall's election. (If he visits, odds are he will use our constitutional definition of marriage to bolster his efforts to ban gay unions).
Yucca Mountain did its part drawing candidates to Nevada in 2000, as both Bush and Al Gore visited the state and commented on the proposed dump despite Nevada's mere four electoral votes at the time.
Now that the dump is out of the president's hands, it would be nice to talk about the state's unique challenges as the fastest-growing in the nation.
But other than our fat wallets filling campaign coffers, there's no political reason for Bush to visit us.
If we really hope to grow up on the national stage, we've got to give those with the power to help us a reason to campaign here.
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
August 01, 2003
Will Yucca Mountain Work As Planned?
Nye official calls for independent tests
By Steve Tetreault
Pvt Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON, D.C. - 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 in Nye County about 20 miles from the communities of Beatty and Amargosa Valley.
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 confirmation.
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, hang-wire, 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.
---------------------------
Reno Gazette-Journal
August 01, 2003
Senate energy bill could mean more nuke waste for Nevada site
Associated Press
Incentives for renewable energy production approved in a Senate energy bill could bode well for Nevada, but a push for developing more nuclear power mean more waste for a national nuclear dump in the state.
The energy bill was identical to one that died last year in a conference committee. The new bill, passed by the House in April, now heads again to conference committee in September.
Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., voted in favor of the bill passed late Thursday in Washington, D.C.
Many of the bill's elements hang in the balance, since Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of Senate Energy and Natural Resources, has vowed to put controversial provisions into the conference report.
For renewable energy, the bill included Reid's language that provides tax credits for renewable resources such as wind, solar, biomass and geothermal power. Reid said the language would create jobs in the states while providing a"steady, reliable energy supply."
"We have limitless renewable resources in Nevada, and these tax incentives will make Nevada the proving ground of renewable energy,"Reid said.
Approving last year's bill also resurrected a provision that could mandate that electricity suppliers generate 10 percent of power from renewable resources by 2020.
Meanwhile, the bill excluded federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power reactors, but reauthorizes the Price-Anderson Act, a federal insurance programs for nuclear reactors, until 2012 and funds some nuclear research and development programs.
A new nuclear reactor has not been built for decades and the legislation did not spell out what would happen to spent fuel produced by the new facilities, should they be built.
Congress last year approved Energy Department plans to put a federal nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It would hold 77,000 metric tons of spent fuel.
About 46,000 tons of waste sit now sits in storage at commercial nuclear power plants and Energy Department facilities around the country.
The department anticipates submitting a license to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2004. The commission has three years, and up to an additional 12 months with congressional approval, to determine if it can authorize construction.
If all goes according to department plans, Yucca Mountain would begin accepting waste shipments in 2010.
But the country's 103 reactors will still produce about 2,000 tons of waste per year.
---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------