Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, August 22, 2003
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Nevada Appeal
August 22, 2003
Nuclear Waste agency seeks to cut off feds' water at Yucca Mountain
by Geoff Dornan, Appeal Capitol Bureau
Nevada's Nuclear Waste Project Office wants to cut off the federal government's water at Yucca Mountain.
But a lawyer for the federal Department of Energy argued Thursday the state engineer is obligated to issue water permits because the application meets state requirements.
It's the second time around for the water permits battle, part of Nevada's ongoing struggle to block construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump 75 miles north of Las Vegas. The permanent water permits were denied by former state Engineer Mike Turnipseed on grounds the Legislature had determined Yucca Mountain wasn't in the public interest and storing nuclear waste there would violate state law. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling, saying Nevada can't deny the water permits on those grounds.
Federal energy and state officials presented their arguments before State Engineer Hugh Ricci again this week. The federal government needs water or it will be unable to operate the Yucca Mountain high level nuclear waste dump.
The government wants permits to draw 430 acre feet of water a year from Fortymile Canyon-Jackass Flat groundwater basin in Nye County.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said those applications "go directly to the public interest in Nevada."
"We have ample evidence in the record to show the socioeconomic interests of the state will be jeopardized if this project is allowed to go ahead," she told engineer Ricci and hearing officer Susan Joseph-Taylor. "It's the Legislature's view that this project, rather than being normal industrial use, is unique and detrimental to the public interest."
She said using the water at the underground nuclear waste storage facility will actually contaminate it with radioactive material.
"But the application does not consider the presence of radionuclides at all," she said.
Adams told the hearing panel contamination of the water supply north of Las Vegas would cause the state irreparable damage.
Kolvet said the Nuclear Projects Office was making the same argument that was tossed out by the federal appeals court.
"They do not address the use of the water," he said. "They address the potential use of the facility to store nuclear waste."
He said if there's water available, taking it doesn't damage other water rights holders in the system and it's for a "beneficial use," the permits should be granted under Nevada law. He said the Department of Energy applications meet those criteria.
Kolvet said he doesn't even think the state should be talking about discharge.
"You don't need to even seek a groundwater discharge permit because you don't intend to discharge," he said. "If there is a discharge, then there can be enforcement."
Adams said that would be too late.
Ricci declined to estimate how long it will be before he can announce a decision in the case.
In the meantime, hearings are expected later this year in the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., on the separate effort by Nevada to block federal efforts to turn Yucca Mountain into a repository for more than 78,000 tons of radioactive waste.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 22, 2003
Feds seek change in nuclear waste definition
Nevada officials: DOE sidestepping court's decision
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department has asked Congress to change the federal definition of nuclear waste, which would sidestep a recent court decision that overruled the agency.
Nevada officials and nuclear critics are decrying the move, saying the agency is showing its arrogance by going around the court to Congress to change the law governing nuclear waste disposal and the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"They have no respect for the law of the land or the rules of the court," Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency Director Bob Loux said. "They simply don't like doing what they are supposed to do."
The proposal isn't expected to affect Yucca Mountain directly, but officials say if Congress opens up the law, there could be discussion to add more waste to Yucca Mountain or allow temporary storage of waste on the site.
"Anytime this law gets open there is a concern on our part," Loux said, arguing that a proposal from the Energy secretary could sway some lawmakers.
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval decried the decision and said the Energy Department was "substituting its judgment for the courts or the Congress by changing the rules of the game. They are changing the rules to suit them(selves)."
Nevada officials fear this could be a precedent for the Energy Department to go to Congress to change various parts of the law, despite years of public hearings, debates and study on the issue.
Sandoval said if Nevada is successful in its court challenges, there "is always a chance" the department will try to get the law changed through Congress.
"They have a record of doing this," said Sandoval.
In an Aug. 1 letter, sent to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham asks to alter the definition of high-level nuclear waste in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the federal law that guides the Yucca project.
An aide to the speaker said the department would have to find a sponsor for the bill before the legislative processing of the proposal could start.
The proposed change would allow the department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to determine whether certain materials generated from nuclear fuel reprocessing at former nuclear weapons and plutonium factories would be sent to Yucca Mountain.
The department's Savannah River Site in South Carolina has more than 34 million gallons of this waste, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has more than 900,000 gallons and the Hanford Site in Washington State has more than 53 million gallons of radioactive material underground and on-site.
The current law specifically includes liquid waste produced by fuel reprocessing as high-level waste that needs permanent geological storage.
But Abraham explained the law as it stands only implies that the department can determine what is radioactive enough to need to go to Yucca. The change would spell this out and "resolve the confusion and uncertainty" created by last month's federal court decision against the department's plans to reclassify certain waste.
On July 2, the U.S. District Court in Idaho decided the department did not have the authority to deem some high-level nuclear waste at the three sites as"incidental" and leave it on site as it had planned.
Abraham said the court's ruling could not only result in "decades of delay" in removing the waste from the department facilities but also creates "the need to dispose of far more material than any prior estimate have assumed in a deep geologic repository, far exceeding the statutory or physical capacity of the Yucca Mountain site."
Loux said that argument is "almost irrelevant" since there is already more waste in existence than Yucca Mountain could hold. Yucca Mountain is allowed to accept 77,000 tons of waste under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, although some reports suggest it could hold much more than that.
The Energy Department letter stems from the department's 1999 decision to separate some radioactive components of the liquid waste and prepare it for a future shipment to Yucca, after the repository was approved and built. The rest, after separation, would be reclassified as low-level waste and be buried on site. Energy Department officials said the plan was to reduce the volume of waste set to go to Yucca and save as much as $29 billion, while reducing cleanup timelines for 30 years.
But last month, the federal court said the department could not do that under the law since any waste classified as "high level" must be buried in a central repository. The court also said the steps outlined in the 1999 decision that DOE planned to use to reclassify the waste, such as removing radioactive material to the "extent technically and economically practical," conflicts with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
The General Accounting Office last month recommended the department seek clarification of its authority to designate waste to help relieve the legal challenges, which Abraham's proposal seems to satisfy. The GAO said the court decision would mean more waste would be deemed high-level than Yucca Mountain could hold.
Loux said the issue is not about more or less waste coming to the proposed federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain but that the department is "trying to get a law changed simply because they don't like it."
DOE did not return calls seeking comment. If approved, the law would circumvent the court ruling by allowing the department move forward with its waste separation plan, which includes sealing tanks with concrete and leaving them on department sites.
"It's appalling the extent DOE will go to to mislead the American public," said Tessa Hafen, spokeswoman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Once again it is trying to change the rules to win the game."
Hafen pointed to the department's decision to add drip shields to the Yucca site even though the law called for a geologic barrier and even resorting to politics and not sound science in singling out Yucca Mountain from the other proposed sites in 1987 as other examples.
"Clearly, it is doing this with complete disregard for the health and safety of the American public," Hafen said.
Other members of the Nevada delegation could not be reached for comment.
Michele Boyd, Public Citizen legislative representative said the group, which opposes nuclear power and the Yucca site, is concerned about the proposed change since the department is going around the court ruling.
"They are taking what's actually high-level waste and saying they don't have to deal with it," she said.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, who with three other groups brought the reclassification lawsuit in February 2002, objects to the proposal saying, among other things, the proposal would give the authority to reclassify literally any amount of the extraordinarily radioactive waste in the storage tanks and just leave it in the states. They also say Abraham's notion the court decision threatens the Yucca Mountain project is wrong.
"The (court) decision is irrelevant to the legal and technical adequacy proposed Yucca project," Cochran and Fettus wrote to Hastert. "The decision simply means that (high-level waste) cannot be abandoned in aging, leaking tanks and must be disposed of in a repository regardless of whether that repository is the proposed Yucca Mountain site or another repository if Yucca is found legally and technically inadequate."
Sun reporter Cy Ryan contributed to this story.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 22, 2003
AG: Yucca use of underground water could damage Nevada
By Cy Ryan
<cy@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Capital Bureau
CARSON CITY -- The state Attorney General's Office said Thursday that allowing a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain to use underground water would result in environmental damage to Nevada.
But Brent Kolvet, an attorney representing the U.S. Department of Energy, said its application to pump 430 acre-feet of water a year for development and operations of the dump meets all of the requirements in state law.
Kolvet said his department believes state Engineer Hugh Ricci was obligated to grant the permit.
Ricci took the arguments and will rule later. He said he had no estimate when he will make a decision.
Former State Engineer Mike Turnipseed originally denied the applications of the Energy Department but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling and sent it back for further hearings.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams, representing the Nevada Office of Nuclear Projects, said in her final argument Thursday: "We have ample evidence in the record to show the socioeconomic interests of the state will be jeopardized if this project is allowed to go ahead."
Adams said the water that would be used at Yucca Mountain would lead to contamination of the underground water supply.
Kolvet argued the same arguments presented by Adams were rejected by the federal appeals court.
In addition to stopping the approval of the water permits, the state has filed several lawsuits in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. to block the construction of the project. Hearings were set for October but they were cancelled and no new dates have been set.
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Tech Central Station
August 22, 2003
Julian's Genius
By Herbert Inhaber
A recent article on auctions in the science journal Nature sparked memories of my interactions with the late Julian Simon, the famed economist at the University of Maryland.
David Porter of George Mason University in Virginia found ways to make auctions more efficient. Auctions are generally efficient since they help match supply and demand. But bidders can employ confusing strategies like spreading the price they want to pay among more than one item. Porter's scheme, involving a clock ticking upwards, might solve these problems.
Julian Simon was a proponent of auctions, but not the Saturday morning farmyard kind. I had the honor of knowing Julian and at one time we were planning to co-edit a book dealing with auctions and other money-based ways of solving societal problems.
Julian was the developer of one of the best known auctions there is, even if most people don't realize it. The auction Julian designed is used to get excess passengers off overbooked airlines. As an economist, he developed an interest in this when he found out that stewardesses were putting elderly people off overbooked planes, on the assumption that they would complain less than younger ones. He had some memos from airline executives stating this policy.
He realized that some type of financial compensation to booted passengers was necessary, but how to arrange it? He came up with what I later called the reverse Dutch auction, although he never used the term. The standard auction is known to economists as the English auction. Bids rise until there is only one bidder left, but such an auction would take far too long with an airliner at the gate.
The Dutch auction works in reverse. The auctioneer starts the auction at a high price. The price gradually drops until a bidder raises his hand. There is only one bid.
But the Dutch and English auctions are for desirable objects. Since being put off an airplane is clearly not desirable, the process must be reversed.
Anyone who has ever flown has seen it in action. The announcement of overbooking is made, and the attendants offer a free ticket to those who depart. Usually, enough people rush forward that the overbooking is relieved within a minute. The attendants have the ability to offer free tickets, hundreds of dollars and other incentives if they can't get enough people to deplane. So the process is truly an auction, and works highly efficiently.
Julian went to airline executives, suggesting this as a method for solving their difficulty. But they rejected his idea, partly because they didn't think of it themselves. He had almost given up when he encountered Dr. Crandall, an economist at the Brookings Institution. Crandall was the son of Robert Crandall, then the head of American Airlines. The elder Crandall was very skeptical of Simon's idea, but agreed to give it a short trial. It worked perfectly, and is of course now universally adopted -- a prime example that sometimes it's not what you know, but who you know.
The reverse Dutch auction can also be applied to siting LULUs - Locally Unwanted Land Uses. This is the common situation where everyone wants a place to house things like dangerous criminals, hazardous and nuclear waste, as long as it's not in their backyard.
The siting authority would set some fair environmental rules -- no putting wastes in swamps or Times Square. Then the price would rise, every week or month. The rising price, as in the airline case, would create a constituency urging their elected leaders to bid now, before the county down the road or the adjacent state got all the money.
Right now, there is absolutely no constituency to accept LULUs anywhere, with the result that risks of storing wastes are increased unnecessarily. Living in Las Vegas, not far from the proposed Yucca Mountain repository, I know that there are few in Nevada that welcome it with open arms. If there had been a reverse Dutch auction, there might be people in Nevada (or any other state with deserts, like New Mexico or Washington) who would want it to come there.
Julian Simon, as many readers of TCS know, was a great believer in the power of ideas to change society for the better. His ideas still live on -- and may they continue to do so.
The writer is author of "Slaying The NIMBY Dragon."
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Nevada Appeal
August 21, 2003
Keep an eye on transuranic shipments
By Nevada Appeal editorial board
Here's a word you can add to your vocabulary: transuranic.
You'll be able to use it in everyday conversations, such as "Did you know they're planning transuranic shipments through Tonopah?"
Sounds a lot better than "nuclear waste," doesn't it?
No matter what you call it, a plan to truck nuclear waste an extra 700 miles through rural Nevada on its way from the Nevada Test Site to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M., carries a whiff of the absurd.
Start with the fact much of the waste stored at the Test Site originated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory outside Oakland. Then with California's insistence the waste not move along Route 127 through Death Valley. And finally with Clark County's reluctance to allow the shipments to go through Las Vegas.
Thus the "compromise" in which the waste travels 1,800 miles -- through Tonopah, Ely and Wendover -- en route to New Mexico.
The folks in White Pine County didn't think it was humorous. "We find it absurd that the (Department of Energy) would consider this," said one.
The real issue, however, was best summed up by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"If they're having all this trouble with transportation of low-level waste, what in the world is going to happen to high-level nuclear waste?" he wondered.
Reid was referring, of course, to the thousands of shipments of nuclear waste from all over the nation to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department is pushing ahead with designation of Yucca Mountain, with no discernible transportation plan in place.
Nevada doesn't want nuclear waste. We suspect no one is going to want shipments going through their hometown, either. Who's working on an alternative? Nobody.
We've come up with our own word: transmoronic.
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Pahrump Valley Times
August 20, 2003
Nye tapped for waste detour
Deal May Send Test Site Shipments North
By Steve Tetreault
PVT Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Rebuffed by California, federal and state officials are weighing a proposal instead for the Energy Department to transport plutonium-tainted material across rural Nevada on its way to burial in New Mexico beginning in 2005.
A 405-mile route along two-lane highways through Tonopah, Ely and Wendover has emerged as part of a compromise for disposal of transuranic waste currently stored at the Nevada Test Site.
Western governors have been scrambling since California refused in July to let DOE transport specially packed waste-bearing drums on 90 miles of State Route 127 through the communities of Shoshone and Baker and onto interstates that would allow the shipments to avoid Las Vegas.
A consultant to rural White Pine County criticized the proposal on Monday, saying the state was bending to the will of California, where most of the radioactive waste came from in the first place, and also to the desires of Clark County leaders who adamantly oppose nuclear waste shipments through southern Nevada.
"This is clout, no question," Mike Baughman said. "We find it absurd that the DOE would consider this."
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the struggle to find acceptable shipping routes for transuranic waste signals bigger troubles ahead in designing waste shipments to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository, where deadlier nuclear spent fuel would be stored.
"If they're having all this trouble with transportation of low-level waste, what in the world is going to happen to high level nuclear waste?" Reid said.
Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, said she planned to urge public hearings on whatever route emerges.
"We need to be informed that these kinds of discussions are going around," Johnson said.
About 1,650 55-gallon drums of waste are stored at Area 5 of the Test Site, according to Angela Colarusso, project manager for the facility's environmental management division. Much of the material originated at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory outside Oakland, Calif., before being sent to the Test Site in the 1970s and 1980s, she said in a presentation last week in Pahrump.
The Western Governors Association has been seeking a compromise that would allow the shipments to take place. Transuranic waste includes laboratory clothing, tools, plastics and other solids contaminated with plutonium, neptunium and other radioactive material produced in nuclear weapons research and production.
Association officials said California now has agreed to allow about half the tainted material to be shipped along the Death Valley route to Baker, Calif., where it will pick up Interstate 15 to Barstow and then Interstate 40 east to New Mexico.
California shipments would cease on Dec. 31, 2004, allowing for 55 shipments over the next 16 months.
Starting in 2005, the remainder - about 55 shipments - would be transported through rural Nevada to Interstate 80, east through Salt Lake City and Utah, through most of Wyoming and then south on Interstate 25 through Colorado including Denver on its way to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
Much of I-80 and I-25 tracks the route of nuclear waste that was shipped to New Mexico from the Energy Department's lab in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
"While this may be a longer route, the majority of the route already accepts TRU (transuranic) waste shipments," Western Governors Association executive director James Souby said in an Aug. 12 letter outlining the proposal to Energy Department assistant secretary Jessie Roberson "All participants now believe it is time for the Department of Energy to become involved if negotiations are to be completed and a compromise actually reached," Souby wrote.
William Mackie, program manager for the governors' group, said several other routes remain in discussion but the rural Nevada proposal seems to be emerging as a favored solution.
Mackie said he expects the governors to negotiate further with DOE on details of the shipping program.
DOE spokesman Joe Davis said in a statement, "Our environmental management office has a variety of issues to assess and a variety of issues to discuss with the WGA, but it's promising to see that the WGA would like us to move forward with the shipments."
A spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who had objected to DOE plans to use the California state road, said, " ... there is no deal yet." A spokeswoman for the California Energy Commission did not return a call on Monday.
Nevada has been represented in the discussions by an official in its Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Agency director Bob Loux said Monday the state has yet to take a position on the proposal but he said it might be acceptable.
"I suspect it would not be objectionable primarily because we're doing low level (nuclear waste) shipments on those routes generally," Loux said.
Loux said Nevada could require DOE to provide accident preparedness and emergency response training along the in-state route and also allow for a state escort to travel with the canister-packed trucks.
White Pine County consultant Baughman said the plan "is absurd. This is a very circuitous route."
"It doesn't make a lot of sense but it is not unexpected," Baughman said, noting Nevada customarily steers low level nuclear waste shipments through rural counties to avoid heavily populated Southern Nevada.
"We find it a bit ironic that our state doesn't want to be dumped on, but when we do a routing decision like this, or encourage routing like this, we are dumping on rural counties in Nevada," he said. "It's really the same issue."
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Las Vegas Mercury
August 21, 2003
Quick and Dirty: A notebook of news and politics
Granite dreams
Aye, did you hear about the new, improved method for disposing of the deadliest nuclear waste? No, not in the considerable, manly maw of screen he-man and would-be California savior Arnold Schwarzenegger. Har har. Rather, the journal Nature reports in an Aug. 13 science update that a British waste-management expert, Fergus Gibb, has proved that if you bore holes into granite and fill them with high-level nuclear waste, the waste's heat melts the surrounding rock, which then globs around the waste. When it cools the rock solidifies, and--presto!--a perfectly isolated capsule of rockhardness that even Arnold would envy.
In the article, writer Tom Clarke quotes Gibb as saying, "Granite is the ideal material to form a coffin for nuclear waste--a coffin that will survive for millions of years."
Apparently, the waste would be irretrievable, and thus pretty safe--a helluva lot safer than the shallow storage planned out at Yucca Mountain.
Well, this changes everything. Instead of shipping deadly waste cross-country to Nevada, nuclear power plant operators could scout out their neighborhood granite batholiths. The Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire--"The Granite State"--surely could find a local burial spot, for instance. But things could get ugly, especially if some privateer in charge of national park business decided to tidy a profit by taking California's four nuclear power plants' waste and stuffing it somewhere in Yosemite, which is 95 percent granite. El Caliente, Hot Dome--you can imagine the spree of presidential renamings.
At any rate, Charles Curtis, chairman of the U.K. Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee, throws a soggy blanket on the discovery: "You can't beat Gibb's concept as an example of something that we can have strong scientific confidence in," he allows in the article. "But it would be virtually impossible to deliver for political reasons."
Huh, maybe in the U.K. Over here, our politicians have already placed deep faith in much-less-solid ground.--HW
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Planet Ark
August 21, 2003
US Proposes Truckers Have Hazmat Safety Permits
WASHINGTON - The government proposed this week to require federal safety permits for North American truckers hauling radioactive and toxic material and certain explosives on U.S. roads.
"Hazmat cargo represents a large segment of the freight transported daily across America and the (Transportation Department) is committed to ensuring its integrity and security," Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said in a statement.
The Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks prompted new concern about the movement of hazardous materials in the United States, prompting federal government action to close safety and security loopholes.
The proposal would require trucking companies from the United States, Mexico and Canada carrying hazardous materials in the United States to register with the government and meet new safety and security standards.
The requirements would be phased in and companies would be subject to closer oversight.
Some hazard material cargo would have to be inspected by the government before being hauled.
New government safety permits would cover radioactive materials and more than 55 pounds of explosives, including dynamite and nitroglycerin, special fireworks, flash powders and some propellants. Also covered would be liquefied natural gas and toxic substances that are considered dangerous if inhaled.
The Transportation Department comment period on the proposal expires Oct. 20.
Reuters News Service
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Las Vegas SUN
August 20, 2003
Hearings open on nuke waste water
By Cy Ryan
<cy@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Capital Bureau
CARSON CITY -- The state attorney general's office said today allowing underground water to be used in the development and operation of a high-level nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain will "drastically undermine future beneficial uses of water" in Nevada.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams told state Engineer Huge Ricci this morning, as hearings on permanent water rights for the project began, that he should consider evidence that wastewater from Yucca would contaminate the underground supply in the Amargosa Valley. That is detrimental to the public interest, he said.
But Brent Kolvet, a lawyer for the U.S. Energy Department, said the issue is limited to whether there is enough water available for Yucca Mountain and if the pumping of that water will affect other water users.
Kolvet said the state has already conceded there is enough water for the project. He said other evidence of possible contamination should not be considered by Ricci. That is the jurisdiction of other agencies, he said.
The hearing started with Adams presenting her case, asking Ricci to reject the application for 430 acre feet of water a year sought by the Energy Department.
Hearing officer Susan Joseph Taylor, who is conducting the proceeding, criticized both sides for their pre-hearing briefs. She said they both failed to address the question of what's in the public interest.
She called the arguments "shallow" and said the briefs failed to say whether the state engineer must "consider everything under the planet" when ruling on an application.
She asked, "Is the state engineer supposed to be an expert on all things?"
The hearing is expected to last two days and a decision probably won't be made for several months.
The state Engineer's Office already denied the application once. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision.
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Las Vegas Review Journal
August 20, 2003
Nevada Views: Yucca Mountain: absolutely unacceptable
By Brian Sandoval
Special To The Review-Journal
The U.S. Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear power industry would each like you to believe there is a monetary benefit for Nevadans in the proposal to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
They would like Americans to believe that there is a security benefit for Americans in the proposal to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
They would like you to believe that the Yucca proposal is based on bona fide scientific principles and that it is safe.
They would like you to believe that the process leading up to today has been, and continues to be, fair, objective and without bias.
You could believe any one of these things -- or all of them -- and you would be wrong.
As recently as July 8, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected the idea of appointing outside experts to weigh plans for the proposed repository. As an action on the part of an oversight agency, that's not terribly objective.
And that's exactly why we have taken the issue to the courts: you've been deceived, your laws are being broken, and if we -- meaning this office -- were to deem any of the above acceptable, we would be failing you.
The details of the cases aren't as important as the reasons for filing, but there are five pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for things ranging from site selection and radiation standards to water rights; a separarate lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court cites constitutional violations.
Here are the "Cliff's Notes" on why:
Yucca is neither safe nor based upon sound science. It's a seismic, volcanic, porous, fault-ridden hill with an aquifer that drains to the Amargosa Valley, one of Nevada's most productive agricultural areas. It's 90 miles from our biggest metropolitan area. As a site to store the most dangerous, longest lasting substances known to man, one could scarcely do worse.
On top of that, in order to select Yucca and the proposed site, the DOE had to side-step and change site selection rules and break the law: According to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, a proposed site must be capable of geologic containment.
In other words, the natural characteristics of the site itself must prevent leakage. But according to the proposal, the Yucca site is less than 1 percent responsible for containment. The rest is up to engineered barriers, and untested ones at that. And there are still 180 technical, safety-related issues regarding the site that remain unaddressed.
There is no security benefit for Americans. One, we have to endure the transportation of the waste, which is inherently risky and unprecedented in volume and scope: tens of thousands of tons over 38 years.
Two, once this waste is transported, there will be even more waste at the reactor storage sites than is stored at Yucca, because at current rates of waste production, the breakeven point when they begin to ship more waste than they produce is 100 years away.
So, the claim that a central repository is necessary for "national security" is a fraud: We'll still need security at the reactor sites for 100 years, and in only 38 years, the proposed Yucca repository will be full, requiring yet another "central" repository. If anything, the proposal is a clear threat to national security: The transportation plan amplifies opportunities for acts of terror.
There is no monetary benefit for Nevadans, even if you were to consider that in order to accept one, this office -- the attorney general -- would have to overlook the fact that laws are being broken and both constitutional and state's rights are being violated. No money has been set aside, no agreement proposed.
The DOE has made 15 such arrangements in its history and has failed to live up to the terms of every one. It doesn't have to, and it doesn't have to take the blame for its failures.
No one does: The DOE can make promises, but Congress must keep them by appropriating money; when the time comes to appropriate, Congress finds other priorities, and no one is to blame. As Nevadans, we would be foolish to accept into our house a substance that is dangerous to our children ... for any amount of money. And as your attorney general, I would be derelict in my duty if I were to "negotiate" a "deal" with lawbreakers.
Think of it this way: Asking Nevadans to warehouse the nation's nuclear waste without an objective, compelling and rational basis for doing so is like reinstituting the draft -- but with only Nevadans being drafted.
Our court cases will show that the objective, compelling and rational argument is that the waste should remain where it is, at distributed sites where security already exists, in dry-casks that are tested and proven good for at least 100 years; and that we take a fraction of the $58 billion dollars bound for Yucca and direct it to the long term solution -- in other words, let science catch up to the problem.
The nuclear power production process today is only 3 percent efficient: 97 percent of what we use to produce power remains on fuel rods and is declared "waste." Surely there is room for improvement, so why remove it from sites of potential re-use? Transmutation -- the neutralization of the waste -- is also an option.
Dry-cask storage gives us time. Transportation gives us increased levels of risk. Negotiating a deal for Yucca? That would give us nothing ... plus the unacceptable.
Brian Sandoval is Nevada's attorney general. He writes from Carson City.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 19, 2003
Editorial: Nuke report serves only as a pacifier
Las Vegas SUN
On the surface, a report released last week by the General Accounting Office prompts a feel-good response to the issue of transporting high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. The conclusion -- "little risk of public harm" -- is wonderful, unless the reader delves a little deeper into the report. Then it is discovered the report is not based on new information or new tests. It is, in fact, simply a report based on a review of existing federal reports. Not surprisingly, then, the conclusion amounts to a pacifier for the American public. Nevada has been warning for years about all of the overly optimistic reports emanating from the federal government, which is under extreme pressure from the nuclear power industry to license Yucca Mountain as a burial site.
The true value of the report is the GAO's admission that worst-case scenarios have not been evaluated. Will casks containing the waste stand up to rocket attacks or planes crashed into them? Would they stand up to a tornado or remain sealed if the train or truck carrying them plunged off a bridge? These elemental questions still have no answers. The truth is, there can never be an honest feel-good report on this subject -- as no one will ever know until the day a shipment is caught up in such a scenario.
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Elko Daily Free Press
August 20, 2003
Yucca Mountain nuke route planning stalled
By Roger Phelps, Free Press Staff Writer
ELKO - Planning for a rail route to carry nuclear waste through Nevada to the proposed Yucca Mountain waste dump is stalled.
No progress has come for nearly two years in picking the route, while the approximately 130 radioactive-waste storage sites in the United States continue to fill up.
A federal Environmental Impact Statement in October 2001 outlined proposed routes for nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.
In July 2002, President Bush made the controversial decision of designating the site 90 miles from Las Vegas for development as the nation's permanent nuclear-waste dump.
A string of lawsuits opposes the project, which calls for the majority of radioactive waste to arrive at the site by rail.
But the lack of progress in picking a rail route stems not from the lawsuits but from lack of money allocated for route planning, said Gayle Fisher, project spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy.
"This year, some funding was cut toward transportation planning," Fisher said this week during a visit to Elko.
A Department of Energy map shows that from neighboring states, radioactive waste could enter northern Nevada by rail from as many as five sites in northern California, three sites in Oregon, four in Idaho, and one in Utah.
All of that waste, current proposals indicate, would converge by rail on the remote ranching community of Beowawe about 40 miles west of Elko. Much of it would travel on tracks passing through Wells, Elko and Carlin.
From Beowawe, built at taxpayer expense, a brand-new rail line possibly carrying nothing but nuclear-waste cars would depart due south, energy-department maps show, passing near Crescent Valley in a 322-mile journey that would also bring a nuke track near Austin and Tonopah.
Tonopah lies only a few miles from the northern extremity of Nellis Air Force Range, which contains Yucca Mountain. The federal Atomic Energy Commission tested nuclear devices for decades at Nellis and the adjacent Nevada Test Site.
Eureka County, officially an "affected" local jurisdiction eligible for federal funding in the Yucca Mountain project, has written its own Impact Assessment Report on the project, and is still studying the transportation-route issue.
"Our rural population received damaging doses of radiation in the 1950s and 1960s from nuclear weapons tests," the Eureka report summary states. "The current proposal would continue the pattern of placing disproportionate risks on our residents."
Abby Johnson, nuclear waste advisor to Eureka County, said, "We've found potential impacts to grazing, mining and other land uses. There's a tremendous amount of private land in Crescent Valley, because of the 'checkerboarding' (alternating small tracts of public and private land). One thing we're doing is going parcel-by-parcel in the 18 miles of the proposed route that's in Eureka County, to see what the uses are."
No matter what the land uses, however, the land in Crescent Valley probably is unsuitable for a railroad because much of it is subject to flooding, Johnson said.
"One thing brought up at meetings in Crescent Valley is the sort of bog east of the town site," Johnson said. "The groundwater table is very high. Quite a bit of the proposed route is in the flood plain. We learned that typically for rail construction, you'd have culverts and underpasses for water issues and animals to pass. With the water table so high, underpasses and culverts aren't feasible."
Johnson said Eureka County heard from DOE that "they'd just stop the trains, until the water went down."
Johnson said a firm 'Plan B,' which could be chosen at any time by DOE over the proposed reliance on rail to carry nuclear waste, calls for trucking the radioactive material over established highways.
"If they decided to do trucking, the consensus is that Las Vegas would prevail in keeping trucks out," Johnson said. "The 'B' (highway) route from the east is Wendover south to Ely and west to Tonopah. This was defined by the state five or six years ago as a possible alternative."
Also at issue is what danger to the public exists in the form of a possible plane crash by a Nellis-based aircraft on Yucca Mountain.
In June, Bechtel announced results of a study it made on the question. It found military flights posed "no realistic obstacle" to the facility getting a license.
Yucca Mountain would be an underground dump, with an expected 77,000 tons of radioactive waste buried about 1,000 feet deep.
Technicians are currently at work to prove that neither groundwater nor precipitation has any chance of coming in contact with nuclear waste stored under Yucca Mountain, Fisher said. Water is the easiest medium by which contamination could escape from the site, she said.
"Studies must show the waste package is pretty much imperturbable by water," Fisher said.
Deadline for the energy department to submit its license application, which must prove Yucca Mountain would be a safe radioactive-waste disposal site for 10,000 years, is December 2004.
After that, it's expected that around three years of public hearings with officially interested parties, such as plaintiffs to lawsuits, would be needed to move the project forward toward its projected completion about 2010.
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Columbia State
August 20, 2003
States urge feds to keep nuclear waste law
Associated Press
TWIN FALLS, Idaho - Idaho and other states are asking the U.S. Department of Energy to follow a federal law and to remove radioactive sludge in underground tanks.
The agency in July lost a lawsuit brought by activists and tribes and backed by Idaho, Oregon, Washington and South Carolina.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise ordered the department to follow the law and remove the sludge from storage tanks in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina, and prepare it for shipment to an underground repository.
The Department of Energy claims the ruling is unworkable. Now, the agency is asking Congress to "clarify" the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Idaho, Washington, Oregon and South Carolina have sent a joint letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, urging him to reconsider the department's alleged effort to circumvent the ruling by appealing to Congress.
"Reasonable solutions exist within the current law without undermining public trust in DOE's efforts to properly manage nuclear waste," the letter said. "What the court rejected was giving DOE free rein to override national policy."
Winmill's decision requires the Energy Department to remove all 85 million gallons of high-level liquid waste now stored in hundreds of tanks at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
It must be processed for permanent disposal at the federal dump for highly radioactive waste, now planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The government wanted to mix grout with about 1,000 gallons of residual material left in each tank after the rest of the highly radioactive liquid is removed. That residual matter would be left in place.
The department claimed the material, a byproduct of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for bomb construction, was exempt from the 1982 law - a claim Winmill rejected.
Proposed legislation in Congress would change the definition of high-level waste so that the Energy secretary and Nuclear Regulatory Commission may decide which waste does not require permanent isolation in a repository.
Activists applauded the states' joint response Tuesday.
"It shows how radical the Department of Energy is being in their attempt to abandon this stuff and cut costs," said Jeremy Maxand, executive director of the Snake River Alliance in Idaho.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 20, 2003
California offers waste compromise
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- California may allow some waste shipments from the Nevada Test Site to the Energy Department's waste storage facility in New Mexico, but only if an alternate route -- including one through Nevada -- can be set by 2004. The department is evaluating the idea.
California would allow the use of Route 127, as the department proposed, for 55 shipments through December 2004 as long as the department and other affected states agree to an alternate route and timetable for the remaining shipments, according to a letter sent Aug. 12 by Western Governors Association Executive Director James Souby to Assistant Energy Secretary Jessie Hill Roberson.
California had originally objected to the plan. It is unclear how many shipments will take place, but estimates show fewer than 110, according to the letter.
Last month DOE agreed to cancel the shipments until California and the Western Governors Association came up with their own plan. The department announced its plan to ship the material earlier this year.
"We are assessing it right now," DOE spokesman Joe Davis said. "We are seeing what they are proposing."
The waste would have been shipped south on Nevada State Route 373/California State Route 127, to Interstate 40, where it would head east to New Mexico.
Davis said the department has already used that route. There is not a set schedule on when it has to move the waste.
The Western Governor's Association recommends a route from the Test Site north through Nevada on U.S. 95 to U.S. 6 to U.S. 93 to Interstate 80, then east through Utah and southern Wyoming before going south to New Mexico for final storage at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
"While this may be a longer route, the majority of the route already accepts transuranic -- waste shipments," Souby wrote. "Affected states believe this means that additional resources to support this route would be needed only to train responders in rural Nevada and provide refresher training in Salt Lake City."
The shipments would contain clothing, tools, rags and other materials laced with plutonium from nuclear weapon experiments conducted at the site from 1951 until 1992.
The parties have not agreed on a final route, but Souby wrote that they all believe it is time for the department to get involved into order to reach a compromise.
Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency Director Bob Loux said the state would not have allowed shipments on U.S. 95 through Las Vegas or through Pahrump on State Route 160, but that it will look at the proposed alternate route. He also noted that this is a department push to move the waste, not the state's.
"I don't care if the stuff ever moves," Loux said. "That stuff can stay here for 10 or 20 more years."
Should the route be approved though, Loux said "extensive" safety training would take place over a possible 18-month period before the shipments would go through.
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Detroit News
August 20, 2003
Mounting energy crises keep Abraham out front
Blackout, Calif. problems, nuclear waste have kept him busier than predecessors
By Lisa Zagaroli / Detroit News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham likes to joke with other members of President Bush's Cabinet that they may have their share of crises to deal with, but his are the only ones that tend to have the word "nuclear" associated with them.
The electricity blackout over large parts of the Great Lakes region and the Northeast last week is just the latest challenge the former U.S. senator from Michigan has had to tackle since taking the helm of the department.
Abraham, having just lost his Senate seat, was appointed by Bush to the position during the California energy crisis in early 2001. Soon after, he immersed himself in the science of nuclear waste and made a controversial decision that had eluded many of his predecessors, to pick Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the site for future waste storage.
He also has dealt with gasoline price hikes and a natural gas shortage that is driving up prices.
Now, he and Canadian Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal are meeting today in Detroit to discuss last week's power outage. They hope their investigation pinpoints the specific trigger point for the blackout so they can move on to prevent similar incidents.
"Our goal is to move as fast as we possibly can to find the answers," he said.
Despite the pressures of his position, he seems to delight in the challenges.
"I just truly enjoy this job," Abraham said in an interview Tuesday. "It's exciting and it's a job where every day, things are happening."
Among the highlights for him has been sitting in the Ministry of Atomic Energy in Moscow to collaborate with Russians on how to protect their nuclear program from terrorism and sabotage.
But he thinks his department's legacy will be nuclear cleanup and new technology initiatives: the so-called FreedomCAR, a hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle that one day would reduce the nation's reliance on oil; and Future Gen, which would develop a "clean coal" plant that injects the carbon byproducts of coal deep into the ground rather than into the atmosphere.
His focus on technology isn't pleasing to all of his critics, who'd like to see more immediate emphasis on efficiency and conservation. Still, they admit, he's come a long way.
"Since he came to office, Spence Abraham has had to deal with more energy crises than any other energy secretary and, frankly, we've been encouraged that he increasingly has come to appreciate the role energy efficiency can play in dealing with these situations and, more important, in preventing future crises," said Mark Hopkins, co-president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit bipartisan organization that promotes energy efficiency.
"I don't think it's any secret this administration has focused on the need for new supply," Hopkins said, referring to the administration's push for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.
"But when this crisis came about with natural gas and the industry said we have no short-term solutions, the efficiency community came to Abraham and said we do. Abraham opted for the efficiency option and has been out about the country preaching our message of increased efficiency."
Though industry observers like FreedomCAR, they want a more immediate plan for the 30 years it'll take to develop that hydrogen-fueled vehicle.
"It only makes sense if one is also paying attention to how one gets from 'here' to 'there' because 'there' is a long way off," said Ernest J. Moniz, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Abraham counters that he has proposed more spending on hybrid vehicles than any of his predecessors and notes that Congress on a bipartisan basis has consistently shot down efforts for greater automotive fuel economy.
One oil man dismisses any claim that the automobile-friendly Michigan native working for an oil-friendly White House executive doesn't have a fair, global view.
"There is nothing that has been accomplished in the entire Bush administration as far as I'm personally concerned that would lend itself to having done a great deal for the development of oil or gas," said C. John Miller, chairman of Kalamazoo-based Miller Energy Inc. "They haven't been able to pass the energy bill. There hasn't been any major change in our energy policy."
Still, he's glad Abraham is in the job.
"There's no question about him being a diligent, hard-working, persevering, very capable person," said Miller, who serves on the National Petroleum Council, an advisory group to the Energy Department.
Rep. John Dingell of Dearborn, ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he thinks Abraham has done "a credible job" under difficult circumstances.
"He's got an agency which has huge problems and he's having a very difficult time getting them resolved, but so did every one of his predecessors," the congressman said.
Dingell said he blames the White House more than Abraham for some of the energy-related controversies, such as the White House's decision to keep private the workings of an energy task force.
"None of the secretaries are doing much more than just carrying water for the White House," Dingell said.
Abraham admits that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, both former oil men, "know a lot about energy and have a lot of interest in it."
"They both have been very positive about giving me the responsibility to lead this agency," he said. "Yet I've got an interested White House in the things we are doing here."
One of his frustrations has been trying to get energy to stay on Congress' agenda.
"When we were trying to to send an energy bill through Congress in that crisis, everyone said it's not fair to use the crisis to push through your policies," he said. "But what I've learned is as soon as the crisis abated, then everybody said there's no crisis so we don't need an energy bill."
Abraham said he's tired of critics using the Alaska drilling policy to thwart other policy that might have helped prevent situations like the power blackout, noting that the White House has never threatened to veto an energy bill that didn't include the drilling provision.
You can reach Washington correspondent Lisa Zagaroli at (202) 662-7382 or lzagaroli@detnews.com.
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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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