Yucca Mountain News Clips - Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
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Las Vegas SUN
August 26, 2003

Attorneys refining anti-Yucca case

By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN

WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials and legal experts will meet during a three-day retreat, starting today in the Washington suburbs, to fine-tune arguments for the upcoming Yucca Mountain federal court case. Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval, Nuclear Waste Project Office Executive Director Bob Loux and state technical experts will meet with attorney Joe Egan to do a "top-to-bottom" review of the state's case against various aspects of the Energy Department's plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Egan said.

Oral arguments had been scheduled for Oct. 3, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit postponed the case earlier this month and reclassified the case as "complex."

The meeting was planned before the court moved the date, Egan said, and the court has not yet rescheduled the trial.

Egan is an attorney with Egan, Fitzpatrick and Malsch, a Washington-area law firm with a $4 million state contract to handle the legal challenges to the Yucca Mountain project. The recently reapproved contract was first agreed to in September 2001. The money comes from state appropriations and some federal funds.

"We'll try to develop all the nuances of the case," Egan said. "We are still confident that we are going to do some serious damage to Yucca Mountain."

Egan did not wish to discuss specifics of what they will work on at the meeting. About 20 people will participate, he said.

Under the "complex" classification, cases may be allowed several hours of argument time as opposed to the usual 10 or 15 minutes allotted for regular cases. The parties will usually receive an order allocating the time two to three weeks before the date, according to the court.

The court consolidated several court cases filed by the state into one case. Nevada has sued the Energy Department over the environmental impact statement, the federal recommendation and the guidelines used to determine the site's suitability to hold the waste. These cases have been lumped together with challenges against the Environmental Protection Agency's radiation standards for the site and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rules for licensing it. A constitutional challenge against the site filed in January is also part of this case.

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Pahrump Valley Times
August 26, 2003

Consultants Under Fire

Commission splintered on Yucca Mountain oversight

By Mark Waite
PVT

The method of hiring consultants who perform oversight of the Yucca Mountain project came under fire from Nye County Commissioner Patricia Cox Tuesday.

County Commissioners Henry Neth and Joni Eastley, county liaisons with the U.S. Department of Energy, responded with concerns of their own about other commissioners muddying the waters by speaking independently with high-ranking Department of Energy officials.

The heated exchange concerned an application for $100,000 in DOE money to prepare a report on Nye County's perspectives, as host of the Yucca Mountain project, on transportation of the high level nuclear waste to the site situated 20 miles from Beatty and Amargosa Valley.

Rather than go out to bid for consulting services, commissioners voted 3-2 to hire the consultants for the study that were requested by Les Bradshaw, director of the Nye County Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities. Commissioners Candice Trummell and Cox voted in opposition to the action.

The study, due by Dec. 31, will review existing county transportation infrastructure on possible routes to Yucca Mountain and define how the project could maximize economic development benefits for Nye County.

A second phase of the study, expected to cost $400,000 and be completed by September 2004, would develop preferences for shipping routes, along with business scenarios for the construction of a proposed rail line for shipping waste.

"This is our chance to study the infrastructure that is going to be built according with Yucca Mountain transportation," Bradshaw said.

The funds are part of a five-year, $2.9 million program, Bradshaw said, adding that his office would consult with towns throughout Nye County before developing conclusions for a draft strategic plan.

"This is a wonderful way for Nye County to step in (and) do the planning. DOE has finally opened this door to us after many years of being reticent," Bradshaw said.

About $73,000 of the $100,000 cost of the first phase would be for contracted services, Bradshaw explained. He added that the DOE will accept sole-source procurement, meaning the hiring of a firm without going out to competitive bids - a move Bradshaw insists is necessary due to the Dec. 31 deadline for the first part of the study.

"This time constraint," Trummell countered, "has been created by your department by not bringing it to this board a long time ago."

"We just got the go-ahead on this after months of negotiations," Bradshaw replied. He added that the county got to this point only after years of confidence building with the energy department.

"If we have to go out for an RFP (request for proposals) on janitorial services, why don't we have to go out for RFPs on a $2.9 million grant?" Cox asked. "I would like to see this go through a competitive process so we can get the most qualified person."

But Neth asked who on the commission had the experience necessary to make that determination. "This board has never required Mr. Bradshaw to go through a competitive bid," Neth said.

The difference now, Cox said, is that the DOE is watching Nye County carefully, thanks to an audit by the Office of Inspector General that recommended Nye County pay back $1.8 million in oversight funds from 2001-2002 it claims were spent inappropriately.

She said, "It may look a little fishy" to hire a consultant that might later bid on improvements along the transportation route.

That's when Eastley commented about the two commissioners conversing with high-ranking DOE officials. Trummell declined to divulge her source of information.

"You don't have to go to staff to ask for permission to speak to members of federal agencies," Trummell said.

In an effort to reach a compromise Bradshaw said they could use an abbreviated bidding process, consulting with bidders already on their list.

But that did little to soothe persistent Yucca Mountain critic Sally Devlin, who complained that the hiring of out-of-town consultants was a done deal, just as it has been in the past.

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New London Day
August 26, 2003

Dominion Cites Study In Argument For Bunkers

Radioactive Fuel Storage Containers Could Survive Terror Attack, Report Says

By Patricia Daddona
Day Staff Writer

Waterford —“Robust’ is the word, almost a mantra that the nuclear power industry leans on heavily when talking about concrete storage bunkers designed to house decaying radioactive fuel near power plants.

Dominion Nuclear Connecticut formally applied Monday to the Connecticut Siting Council for such a facility at Millstone Point.

How resistant these temporary, oversized bunkers are to terrorist attacks is a profoundly important question, given the unanticipated force of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A study by the Nuclear Energy Institute purports to demonstrate these bunkers' near-impregnability.

Perhaps surprisingly, some of the industry's most vocal critics are receptive to the NEI report.

The NEI's computer-modeled study and its summary are titled “Deterring Terrorism: Aircraft Crash Impact Analyses Demonstrate Nuclear Power Plant's Structural Strength.’ The analysis includes the hypothetical situation of a Boeing 767-400 striking the front-door plug of a concrete horizontal bunker, which resembles a one-car garage or front-loading washing machine.

In the hypothetical study, the center of the door of the bunker is only 10 feet off the ground and smaller in diameter than the plane's engine, so the chance that the plane would even hit the bunker is deemed “extremely unlikely.’ If it did hit, Dominion experts have said at public meetings this summer, the bunkers might be moved or slightly breached, but radioactive particles would not be released.

Dominion has proposed building 135 such bunkers to temporarily house assemblies of spent radioactive fuel rods in dry metal casks. The rods' radioactive particles must have decayed for at least five years in a spent fuel pool before they can be put into the bunkers, which are vented so that air circulates inside to cool the rods further.

Dominion's bunkers would be 18 feet high, 8.5 feet wide and 20 feet deep, with walls and a roof up to five feet thick. They would weigh 300,000 pounds apiece. If Dominion's application is approved by the Connecticut Siting Council, Transnuclear, Inc., a company that specializes in dry cask storage construction, would build them. If the Yucca Mountain underground storage facility is built in Nevada — some 10 years from now — casks would be shipped there.

The NEI study does not address the specific dimensions of Dominion's proposal, but the dimensions in the Dominion plan meet or exceed the parameters used in the study.

NEI, which commissioned the study, is a national association of nuclear power owners and operators. Electric Power Research Institute, or EPRI, is the international nonprofit energy research consortium that conducted the computer modeling used in the study.

David Lochbaum, a scientist and industry critic who belongs to the Union of Concerned Scientists, has seen the NEI study and considers it is sound.

“I think the math is correct,’ Lochbaum said. “It seemed like it was an accurate report because the casks are somewhat like bowling pins: if they are hit, they will move. So some of that energy (from the hypothetical jet) is just dissipated by moving the cask, (while) some of it challenges the concrete iron structure.’

The UCC also supports Dominion's plans to build so-called dry cask bunkers at Millstone Point, though the company's request for 135 should be reduced to 50, Lochbaum said. The town of Waterford wants to see no more than 19 through the year 2013.

“We actually advocate moving spent fuel to the dry casks because there are less things that can go wrong from an accidental standpoint,’ Lochbaum said. “And from a sabotage perspective, if you successfully sabotage the spent fuel pool, because there are so many more fuel assemblies there, the consequences are much higher.’

Since the late 1980s, 25 dry cask storage facilities have been built around the country, said Dominion engineer Brian H. Wakeman. Nine use the horizontal design that Dominion would use. Dominion built the first dry cask storage site in the country at its Surrey Nuclear Power Plant in Virginia.

A key advantage to the horizontal bunker, says Wakeman, is that the dry metal cask loaded with an assembly of used radioactive fuel rods would be loaded into the bunker once, and then removed once to Yucca Mountain. For that reason, horizontal bunkers are state-of-the-art in the industry, he said.

“When you load the canister and weld the lids on it's ready to be shipped. There's no additional handling. That's always something we want to do,’ he said.

Other benefits to Dominion's proposal, Wakeman said, include an extra three feet of thickness at the top to suppress radioactive particle emissions and webs of steel that create a rugged framework inside the concrete bunker.

The UCC's own research supports the idea that in the event of a fire, which would release radiation, bunkers would be safer because there is little oxygen in them to fan the flames.

“You still have combustible material but it's lacking one of the key elements — oxygen,’ Lochbaum said.

Dominion Spokesman Pete Hyde would not comment on UCC's analysis or opinions, but noted, “We still feel that the spent fuel pools are as safe as dry fuel storage.’ The pools will continue to be needed in the initial cooling process, he said.

Nancy Burton of the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone questioned not only the details of Dominion's proposal and the NEI study, but even the need for Millstone's continued operation. The company should encourage NEI to release the entire aircraft impact analysis to the public, she said.

“I'm just wondering why, if (the study) is so powerfully persuasive, they haven't shown it to the towns. Why wasn't it part of their application? What are they hiding from the town?

“This sounds like the classic rush job. Southeastern Connecticut should not countenance a rush job to become a high-level radioactive waste dump, for all practical purposes, permanently. What's in it for the community except more potential long-term peril?’

But “robust’ is what NEI's study confirms dry-cask storage to be, said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for NEI. The agency's focus these days is on getting Yucca Mountain licensed so spent fuel can be removed from power plants around the country, he said.

According to Hyde, the NEI study and the bunker technology licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission give Dominion all the confidence it needs to pursue its plans.

“Dominion has always thought that the best deterrent is to keep the bad guys out of the cockpit,’ Hyde said. “We have great confidence in the government and law enforcement and agencies protecting public health and safety to do that.’

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New London Day
August 26, 2003

Six-Month Decision Process For Nuclear Storage Begins

By Patricia Daddona
Day Staff Writer

Dominion Nuclear Connecticut filed its formal application with the Connecticut Siting Council Monday for more storage of radioactive waste at Millstone Station.

The council received three binders of information, said S. Derek Phelps, the siting council's executive director — one more than has already been presented to the host town of Waterford. By law, the siting council has six months to review the application and render a decision, unless the company seeks an extension, Phelps said.

Despite the added heft, “nothing significant’ in content has changed, said Dominion spokesman Karl Neddenien. A copy of the application is available to the public for viewing at Dominion's Discovery Science Center in Niantic, he said.

The company is proposing to house spent fuel temporarily in 135 steel-reinforced concrete bunkers the size of one-car garages. The bunkers would each contain a steel cask loaded with fuel rods that had cooled for at least five years in spent fuel pools at Millstone Point. The casks would be moved to Yucca Mountain in Nevada when the permanent national storage facility is built, company officials say.

The project would be phased in over many years. Millstone has three nuclear power plants. Only two are operating.

Dominion also has 15 days from Monday in which to file its response to the town's demand that it build only 19 concrete bunkers for casks through 2013, when at least one of plants must renew its license.

“This is a position,’ reiterated First Selectman Paul B. Eccard, “of seeking to make sure that everything is done carefully and on a step-by-step basis and that there's no unfettered permission that would ... change the use of the property as anything other than a generating facility.’

The siting council will first review Dominion's application for completeness and set a public hearing date. Any individual or organization wanting to be a party to the application must notify the siting council before the public hearing in order to preserve their right to testify, Phelps said. The siting council Web site is www.ct.gov/csc/site/default.asp.

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Gloucester County Times
August 26, 2003

Political aid flows; votes don't follow

By Bill Cahir
Bill.Cahir@newhouse.com

Second of two parts

Money talks. Right?

Well, maybe.

U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo has received $28,000 over the past five years from Public Service Enterprise Group, the parent company for PSE&G and PSEG Nuclear. U.S. Rep. Robert Andrews collected $11,000 from the Newark-based company over the same period.

That may sound like a lot of dough.

But it's hard to say that LoBiondo, R-2nd Dist., or Andrews, D-1st Dist., fit squarely into the pocket of the New Jersey power industry.

Both lawmakers voted against H.R. 6, the House Republican energy legislation.

Rob Geist, spokesman for LoBiondo, said the Vineland Republican would not support any legislation that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration. As long as the House GOP keeps that provision in the bill, Geist said, LoBiondo will continue to object.

Andrews himself said that the $11,000 he received from Public Service Enterprise Group amounted to less than 1 percent of the money he raised over the 1997-2002 period.

He dismissed the idea that PSEG or any other company could buy influence with him or with any other House lawmaker with such contributions. "If you're asking about influence, it really has none," Andrews said.

PSEG gives up to $60,000 to members of Congress each year, but that sum pales in comparison to the amounts given my other energy companies.

The Southern Company, the top donor among utilities, gave $1.91 million in the 2001-02 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The firm is lobbying Congress to repeal the Public Utility Holding Company Act so that it can expand into new fields of business and sell power outside of the South.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative ranks second, having given $1.34 million to federal causes. Exelon Corp., a nuclear power company, ranks third, having given $1.28 million. The Nuclear Energy Institute placed 14th by giving another $468,000.

FirstEnergy, a company that serves New Jersey customers through Central Jersey Power & Light, came in sixth, giving $1.04 million. Public Service Enterprise Group and its subsidiaries did not crack the top 20.

Only one New Jersey lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson, R-7th Dist., stands in a strong position to collect lots of money from utilities.

Ferguson, a sophomore in Congress, earlier this year won a spot on the Energy and Commerce Committee, a panel that drafts utility legislation. The power companies noticed. FirstEnergy gave $5,000 to Ferguson's campaign committee on June 18.

Public Service Enterprise Group had its top legislative issues before Congress last year: PSEG Nuclear, a subsidiary of the Newark holding company, owns and operates the Salem and Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lower Alloways Creek. PSEG Nuclear company additionally owns a share of the Peach Bottom nuclear generating station in Delta, Pa.

Emma Byrne, top lobbyist for PSEG, takes a strong interest nuclear policy, and urges lawmakers to open the Yucca Mountain repository to spent nuclear fuel rods from New Jersey.

"Last year, we were very active on Yucca," Byrne said. "We wanted to find everyone we could to tell them about how important it was for the federal government to keeps its promise ... and create a repository for spent fuel."

Congress passed legislation to designate Yucca Mountain as the sole storage facility for nuclear waste; LoBiondo and Andrews supported the bill.

Opening the site will take several additional years of study, planning and construction.

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Greenville News
August 26, 2003

Medicare, Upstate lakes on peoples minds at Gresham Barrett town meeting

By Anna Simon
Clemson Bureau
asimon@greenvillenews.com

CLEMSON — High prescription drug prices, Medicare reform and the future of the shoreline of three Upstate U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lakes were hot issues Monday at U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett's town meeting in Clemson.

An overflow crowd of about 125 people packed the Clemson Area Chamber of Commerce meeting room as tightly as baggage once filled the building that was a former train depot. Seneca High students taking notes to earn extra credit sat hip to hip on the floor between aisles. Clemson Mayor Larry Abernathy and Clemson University trustee Tom Lynch were barely inside a doorway left open for people outside.

The Westminster Republican stayed close to the message that handily won him a seat as a freshman Congressman last November.

He called for common sense spending and government accountability. He supported a Family Care Act that would give tax breaks to people caring for elderly parents at home and an Energy bill that would open new missions such as MOX fuel at the Savannah River Site and make Yucca Mountain the storage site for nuclear waste.

Barrett railed against a $2 trillion federal budget that's growing faster than family income, decried illegal immigration and promised action over jobs lost to an eroding manufacturing base.

But Upstate resident Dot Sams came to talk about Medicare reform and protecting oncologists' ability to provide safe, accurate chemotherapy to cancer patients.

Janie Ruth Johnson wanted relief from high prescription drug prices.

Lake Hartwell homeowner Ted Caimody worried over legislation to shift ownership of current Corps of Engineers shoreline around lakes Hartwell, Russell and Thurmond to the counties.

And Seneca Middle teacher Kathy Crain wanted to save after school programs from Bush administration budget cuts.

Medicare and prescription drugs will be main issues when Congress reconvenes, said Barrett, who voted for round one of reform but is uncomfortable with the $400 billion cost. If efforts were targeted to those who "really need it," the cost could be halved, he said, adding that he doesn't know how he'll vote in the next round.

He addressed legislation he and U.S. Rep. Charlie Norwood, whose district mirrors Barrett's on the Georgia side of the lakes, calling it a "starting point."

The proposal to move ownership and control of the collar of land around the three lakes was a tool to get the Corps to address issues holding back development that could create jobs on Lake Russell in Abbeville County where there's double-digit unemployment, he said.

It also is meant to open discussion on lake levels, interbasin water transfers and other concerns. Discussions have started since the legislation was introduced and the bill could be changed, totally rewritten or withdrawn, he said.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 25, 2003

Official wants sludge defined

Judge's ruling affects nuclear waste dump

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has asked Congress to clarify the definition of high-level nuclear defense waste stored in three states in order to skirt a court ruling that requires his agency to dispose of it in the planned Yucca Mountain repository.

The ruling last month by U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill in Boise, Idaho, orders the Department of Energy to remove sludge from steel tanks that are holding millions of gallons of liquid waste and prepare it for disposal in Yucca Mountain along with thousands of glass logs that will result from solidifying the highly radioactive liquids.

The mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site approved for entombing spent fuel assemblies from nuclear reactors and high-level radioactive wastes left from nuclear weapons production. Those wastes are stored in steel tanks at aging production and processing sites in Washington, Idaho and South Carolina.

But the Yucca Mountain site, designed to hold 77,000 tons of material, will not be large enough to bury all of the glass logs in addition to the fuel-rod assemblies, let alone additional sludges and the dismantled tanks.

The judge's decision "has cast serious doubt on this entire strategy," Abraham wrote in an Aug. 1 letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

Abraham said legislation he seeks would resolve what he sees as confusion created by the ruling. He said the ruling conflicts with current law that the secretary of energy, in consultation with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, can determine which nuclear weapons processing wastes require disposal as high-level radioactive waste.

"The department has long planned to dispose of this material by separating the high activity fraction of this material from the low activity fraction," Abraham said in his letter to Hastert.

The letter explains that the remainder of what is not solidified into glass logs would be disposed of as low-level radioactive waste or medium-level transuranic waste.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency and critic of the Department of Energy's handling of Yucca Mountain matters, said Abraham's letter "is just another case like everything that goes on at Yucca Mountain."

Rather than comply with the law or the courts, DOE's tactic is to try and change the law, Loux said by telephone Friday. "Clearly, as the district court judge says, this is all high-level waste and needs disposal and the secretary should go about his business and go along with the law as it exists rather than change it for his convenience."

According to Abraham's letter, the court's decision "also imposes significant constraints on DOE's ability to close and grout the tanks ... and may even require disposing of the tanks themselves in the repository for spent fuel."

He said the ruling's result "certainly may be decades of delay in removing the waste from the tanks, the need to dispose of far more material than any prior estimates have assumed in a deep, geologic repository, far exceeding the statutory or physical capacity of the Yucca Mountain site."

Winmill's ruling stems from a lawsuit by several groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, who claimed the Department of Energy illegally reclassified sludge that will be left in the tanks as low-level radioactive waste.

His order affects less than 2 percent of more than 90 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes in tanks at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

The Energy Department is siphoning out roughly 99 percent of the highly radioactive liquid waste and plans to turn most of it into glass.

Estimates last year showed the repository won't be able to handle all of the thousands of glass logs that will result.

That means the need for a second repository, or expansion of the one on the drawing board, is imminent, even though construction of the facility is not expected to begin until at least 2007.

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Reuters
August 25, 2003

Cheney Stifled Energy Probe, GAO Investigators Say

By Peter Kaplan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional investigators said on Monday that Vice President Dick Cheney had stymied their investigation into his energy task force by refusing to turn over key documents.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said it was impossible to tell how much energy companies or industry groups may have influenced the task force's 2001 report because the administration withheld important records.

"The extent to which submissions from any of these stakeholders were solicited, influenced policy deliberations or were incorporated into the final report is not something that we can determine based on the limited information at our disposal," the GAO said.

Administration officials did not account for much of the money spent on the task force and could not remember whether anyone took official notes during the 10 Cabinet-level meetings the group held in 2001, the investigators said.

The report came more than eight months after a federal judge rejected the GAO's demand that the administration turn over task force records.

Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise advised critics toput the dispute behind them. "Now that the courts have dismissed the GAO lawsuit and GAO has issued its final report, we hope that everyone will focus as strongly as the administration has on meeting America's energy needs," shesaid.

Instead, the GAO report provoked a new round of complaints from Democrats in Congress.

"This report is a sad chronicle of the efforts of the office of the vice president to hide its activities from the American people," said Michigan Rep. John Dingell, the senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The task force issued a report to President Bush in May, 2001. The administration announced an energy policy shortly afterward, calling for more oil and gas drilling and a revival of nuclear power. The policy bogged down in Congress.

Critics of the administration, including environmentalists and some Democrats in Congress, said they suspected the energy industry had undue influence on the task force.

White House officials argued that the GAO had overstepped its bounds and forcing them to turn over the records would hamper their ability to get "unvarnished" expert advice.

The GAO's final report confirmed that administration officials met with a procession of lobbyists and executives from the energy industry, including coal, nuclear, natural gas and electricity companies. But it did not shed much new light on the task force's deliberations, beyond information already shaken loose by private lawsuits against the administration.

Those suits forced the release of records from agencies such as the Energy Department, but not from the White House.

According to the GAO report, administration officials said no outside groups attended the 10 meetings in Cheney's ceremonial office in the White House complex.

"However, no party provided us with any documentary evidence to support or negate this assertion," the GAO said. "Agency officials could not recollect whether official rosters or minutes were kept at the meetings."

Cheney's office turned over 77 pages of documents relating to money spent on the task force, but all were either irrelevant or useless, the GAO said.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 23, 2003

Nuclear test set for 2004

Experiment sustains test-readiness ability

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Scientists are preparing to conduct a nuclear materials experiment in a fashion similar to full-scale nuclear weapons tests that were put on hold indefinitely in 1992, National Nuclear Security Administration officials said Friday.

The so-called subcritical experiment, dubbed Unicorn, will be detonated in 2004 in a hole in the east-central part of the Nevada Test Site, about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, according to a statement from the administration's Nevada Site Office in North Las Vegas.

Previous subcritical experiments were conducted in a cavern complex, 960 feet below ground at the test site.

"Initial site preparation for this experiment is under way," the statement said. "This activity, and the means for emplacement of the experimental hardware into the vertical hole, will appear visually similar to those employed in underground nuclear tests conducted prior to the 1992 moratorium."

In a telephone interview Friday, Nevada Site Office spokesman Darwin Morgan said the experiment helps maintain mandated test readiness capabilities.

Bush administration officials said last year that they would like the test site to be ready to resume full-scale tests, if needed, in 18 months, or about half the time expected during the Clinton administration.

Subcritical experiments involve small amounts of nuclear materials and are designed to stop short of triggering nuclear chain reactions. They allow scientists to study how materials, such as plutonium, blow apart when detonated with high explosives.

The subcritical program was launched in 1997 as a way to maintain the skills of U.S. nuclear weapons scientists and allow them to check how the stockpile ages in the absence of full-scale nuclear weapons tests.

Unicorn will be the nation's 20th such experiment since the program began. The most recent subcritical experiment, Rocco, was conducted Sept. 26, 2002.

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Waste News
August 22, 2003

Attack on spent nuclear fuel wouldn´t cause many deaths, study predicts

WASHINGTON (Aug. 22) -- Widespread deaths or serious illnesses would be unlikely from a terrorist attack on shipments of spent nuclear fuel from power plants, but the federal government could take additional precautions to reduce the risk further, according to a recent congressional report.

Nuclear power companies store 50,000 tons of spent fuel at 72 sites in 33 states, and the amount will increase to 69,000 tons by 2010, according to federal estimates. The federal government plans to build a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert and ship the waste by truck and rail from around the nation.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, examined the issue and made its report public Aug. 14. The GAO reviewed Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission studies in response to concerns from some members of Congress and environmentalists about the risk that terrorist attacks could pose to the shipments.

"Largely because spent fuel is hard to disperse and is stored in protective containers, these studies found that most terrorist or accident scenarios would cause little or no release of spent fuel, with little harm to human health," the GAO report states.

While the GAO report concluded that spent fuel shipments would be relatively safe, the Department of Energy could enhance security by minimizing the number of shipments and transporting older spent fuel first. The radioactivity of the waste decreases over time, meaning the older waste is less dangerous, according to the GAO.

Environmentalists, including the Environmental Working Group, argue that the government, especially in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks in New York and Washington, is not adequately considering terrorist threats to nuclear waste shipments.

However, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of a House energy subcommittee studying the Yucca Mountain plan, said the report bolsters his position that spent nuclear fuel should be shipped to Nevada for safer storage despite the concerns expressed by some.

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Reno Gazette Journal
August 22, 2003

Officials say Yucca use of underground water could damage Nevada

Associated Press

Allowing a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain to use underground water would result in environmental damage to the state, according to an official with the Nevada Attorney General's Office.

"We have ample evidence in the record to show the socio-economic interests of the state will be jeopardized if this project is allowed to go ahead,"said Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams.

Adams represented the Nevada Office of Nuclear Projects in a hearing Thursday to determine whether the Energy Department, which would operate the repository about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, should receive a permit to draw the water.

The hearing was before State Engineer Hugh Ricci, who said he will rule on the matter at a later unspecified date.

Energy Department lawyer Brent Kolvet said the application to pump 430 acre-feet of water a year for development and operations of the dump meets all of the requirements of state law.

Former State Engineer Mike Turnipseed originally denied the Energy Department's application, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling and sent it back for further hearings.

Adams said the water that would be used at Yucca Mountain would lead to contamination of the underground water supply.

Kolvet said those arguments had been rejected by the federal appeals court.

Along with trying to block the approval of the water permits, the state has filed several lawsuits in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. to prevent construction of the project. Hearings in those cases had been set for October, but were delayed and no new dates have been set.

Information from: Las Vegas Sun

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Las Vegas SUN
August 22, 2003

Officials say Yucca use of underground water could damage Nevada

ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Allowing a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain to use underground water would result in environmental damage to the state, according to an official with the Nevada Attorney General's Office.

"We have ample evidence in the record to show the socio-economic interests of the state will be jeopardized if this project is allowed to go ahead," said Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams.

The hearing was before State Engineer Hugh Ricci, who said he will rule on the matter at a later unspecified date.

Energy Department lawyer Brent Kolvet said the application to pump 430 acre-feet of water a year for development and operations of the dump meets all of the requirements of state law.

Former State Engineer Mike Turnipseed originally denied the Energy Department's application, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling and sent it back for further hearings.

Adams said the water that would be used at Yucca Mountain would lead to contamination of the underground water supply.

Kolvet said those arguments had been rejected by the federal appeals court.

Information from: Las Vegas Sun

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TomPaine
August 22, 2003

Dirty Secrets

Osha Gray Davidson is the author of numerous books, among them The Enchanted Braid: Coming to Terms with Nature on the Coral Reef, a Discovery Channel On-line Editor´s Choice and a finalist for the Natural World Book Prize. A former resident of Key West, Fla., Davidson currently resides in Iowa City, Iowa.

This article originally appeared in Mother Jones, and is reprinted with permission.

In the early 1980s you didn't need to be a member of EarthFirst! to know that Ronald Reagan was bad for the environment. You didn't even have to be especially politically aware. Here was a man who had, after all, publicly stated that most air pollution was caused by plants. And then there was Reagan's secretary of the Interior, James Watt, who saw no need to protect the environment because Jesus was returning any day, and who, in a pique of reactionary feng shui, suggested that the buffalo on Interior's seal be flipped to face right instead of left.

By contrast, while George W. Bush gets low marks on the environment from a majority of Americans, few fully appreciate the scope and fury of this administration's anti-environmental agenda. "What they're doing makes the Reagan administration look innocent," says Buck Parker, executive director of Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm. The Bush administration has been gutting key sections of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, laws that have traditionally had bipartisan support and have done more to protect the health of Americans than any other environmental legislation. It has crippled the Superfund program, which is charged with cleaning up millions of pounds of toxic industrial wastes such as arsenic, lead, mercury and vinyl chloride in more than 1,000 neighborhoods in 48 states. It has sought to cut the EPA's enforcement division by nearly one-fifth, to its lowest level on record; fines assessed for environmental violations dropped by nearly two-thirds in the administration's first two years; and criminal prosecutions -- the government's weapon of last resort against the worst polluters -- are down by nearly one-third.

The administration has abdicated the decades-old federal responsibility to protect native animals and plants from extinction, becoming the first not to voluntarily add a single species to the endangered species list. It has opened millions of acres of wilderness -- including some of the nation's most environmentally sensitive public lands -- to logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling. Under one plan, loggers could take 10 percent of the trees in California's Giant Sequoia National Monument; many of the Monument's old-growth sequoias, 200 years old and more, could be felled to make roof shingles. Other national treasures that have been opened for development include the million-acre Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in Arizona, the 2,000-foot red-rock spires at Fisher Towers, Utah, and dozens of others.

And then, of course, the White House has all but denied the existence of what may be the most serious environmental problem of our time, global warming. After campaigning on a promise to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, Bush made an abrupt about-face once elected, calling his earlier pledge "a mistake" and announcing that he would not regulate CO2 emissions from power plants-even though the United States accounts for a fourth of the world's total industrial CO2 emissions. Since then, the White House has censored scientific reports that mentioned the subject, walked away from the Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and even, at the behest of ExxonMobil, engineered the ouster of the scientist who chaired the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

So why aren't more people aware that George W. Bush is compiling what is arguably the worst environmental record of any president in recent history? The easy explanations -- that environmental issues are complex, that war and terrorism push most other concerns off the front pages -- are only part of the story. The real reason may be far simpler: Few people know the magnitude of the administration's attacks on the environment because the administration has been working very hard to keep it that way.

Like any successful commander in chief, Bush knows that putting the right person in the right place is the key to winning any war. This isn't just a matter of choosing business-friendly appointees for top positions. That's pretty much standard operating procedure for Republican administrations. What makes this administration different is the fact that it is filled with anti-regulatory zealots deep into its rank and file -- and these bureaucrats, unlike James Watt, are politically savvy and come from the very industries they're charged with regulating. The result is an administration uniquely effective at implementing its ambitious pro-industry agenda -- with a minimum of public notice.

Take the case of mountaintop-removal coal mining. As the name implies, this method -- the predominant form of strip mining in much of Appalachia -- involves blasting away entire mountaintops to get at coal seams below and dumping the resulting rubble, called "spoil," into adjacent valleys. In some cases, valleys two miles long have been completely filled with spoil. Opponents had hoped that a court-ordered Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) would crack down on the practice, which has buried at least 1,000 miles of Appalachian streams and destroyed tens of thousands of acres of woodland that the EPA describes as "unique in the world" for their biological diversity. But when the Bush administration released the EIS this spring, it not only gave mountaintop removal a clean bill of health; it also relaxed what few meaningful environmental protections existed and focused on how to help mining companies obtain permits more easily.

So how did a process mandated by a federal judge "to minimize, to the maximum extent practicable, the adverse environmental effects" from mountaintop removal become a vehicle for industry? Two words: Steven Griles. Never heard of him? You're not supposed to. Steven Griles is one of industry's moles within the Bush administration. Before coming to work as deputy secretary of the Interior, Griles was one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, with a long list of energy-industry clients, including the National Mining Association and several of the country's largest coal companies. On August 1, 2001, Griles signed a "statement of disqualification," promising to stay clear of issues involving his former clients. Despite that promise, according to his own appointment calendar (obtained by environmental groups through the Freedom of Information Act), Griles met repeatedly with coal companies while the administration worked on the mountaintop-removal issue. Griles has denied discussing the "fill rule" in any of those meetings. But on August 4, 2001 -- three days after signing his recusal letter -- he gave a speech before the West Virginia Coal Association, reassuring members that "we will fix the federal rules very soon on water and spoil placement." Two months later, Griles sent a letter to the EPA and other agencies drafting the EIS, complaining that they were not doing enough to safeguard the future of mountaintop removal and instructing them to "focus on centralizing and streamlining coal mine permitting." Griles is now the subject of an Interior Department investigation for possible ethics violations.

With key positions in the hands of industry veterans, the administration has been able to pursue one of its most effective stealth tactics -- steering clear of legislative battles and working instead within the difficult-to-understand, yawn-producing realm of agency regulations. It's a strategy that has served Bush well, especially in his push to give the energy industry -- which donated $2.8 million to the 2000 Bush campaign -- access to some of the nation's last wildlands. In Congress, where the administration's agenda must endure full public scrutiny, Bush's effort to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has failed repeatedly. But there was little public debate over a plan to drill 66,000 coalbed methane gas wells in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana -- a massive project that will result in 26,000 miles of new roads, 48,000 miles of new pipelines, and discharges of 2 trillion gallons of contaminated water, disfiguring for years the rolling hills of that landscape. That plan was hatched behind closed doors, by the secretive energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Cheney task force is behind another of the administration's pet projects-protecting utilities from having to comply with a law enacted 26 years ago. Some 30,000 Americans die each year because the federal government is unwilling to take meaningful steps to enforce the Clean Air Act's standards for coal-fired power plants. Nearly 6,000 of those deaths are attributable to plants owned by a mere eight companies, according to a study by ABT Associates, which frequently conducts assessments for the EPA. (The companies are American Electric Power, Cinergy, Duke, Dynegy, FirstEnergy, SIGECO, Southern Company and the Tennessee Valley Authority.)

When Congress passed the current air-pollution standards in 1977, it grandfathered in these aging plants and some 16,000 other industrial facilities around the country. Under a provision known as New Source Review, the plants could perform routine maintenance without having to install cleaner technologies, but any substantive changes or expansions leading to increased emissions would force the operators to meet the new standards. The grace period was expected to last just a few years -- a reasonable compromise, it must have seemed to Congress at the time. Yet, for nearly three decades these facilities have gotten around the New Source Review rules by continually expanding and calling it "routine maintenance."

In 1999, the EPA's then-director of enforcement, Eric Schaeffer, tried something radically new: He actually enforced the law. The agency filed suit against eight power companies that together emitted one-fifth of the nation's total output of sulfur dioxide -- a deadly compound that is also the leading cause of acid rain. Soon, violators started lining up to negotiate settlements. By the end of 2000, two of the largest power companies had agreed to cut emissions by two-thirds. And then George W. Bush took office. The new administration immediately leaked its intentions to expand, rather than close, the New Source Review loophole (see "No Clear Skies"). By March 2002, EPA administrator Christine Whitman was telling Congress that if she were an attorney for one of the companies sued by the agency, "I would not settle anything." Not surprisingly, the two tentative agreements the EPA had worked out evaporated.

Meanwhile, in a classic bit of greenwashing, the White House has released a plan called "Clear Skies" that will, in President Bush's words, "dramatically reduce pollution from power plants." In fact, Clear Skies would gut the standards of the Clean Air Act, allowing companies to wait 15 more years to install state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment -- and even then, power plants would be emitting far more pollution than allowed under current law, for a total of 450,000 tons of additional nitrogen oxide, 1 million tons of sulfur dioxide and 9.5 tons of mercury annually.

The administration also wants to sink millions into reviving the dying nuclear industry, increasing by 50 percent the number of nuclear plants currently operating in the United States. That's no small feat, given that not a single new plant has been ordered for two and a half decades -- not since the nation held its breath in 1979, waiting to find out if a nuclear doomsday scenario was unfolding at Three Mile Island. Industry officials insist that with today's improved technology such a calamity is unthinkable. But that hasn't stopped the administration from endorsing a $9 billion cap on industry liability, just in case the unthinkable should occur. Other gifts to nuclear-plant operators include more than $1 billion in new subsidies and tax breaks, support for relicensing dangerously outdated reactors, and at least $18 billion in taxpayer money for construction of a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Just before she stepped down last summer, EPA head Whitman issued a "state of the environment" report that fairly rhapsodized about the significance of environmental protection: "Pristine waterways [and] safe drinking waters are treasured resources," one passage declared. "The nation has made significant progress in protecting these resources in the last 30 years."

What Whitman did not mention was that the administration has spent two years attempting to eviscerate the law that brought about most of that progress -- the Clean Water Act of 1972. In January 2003, the administration proposed new rules for managing the nation's wetlands, removing 20 percent of the country's remaining swamps, ponds and marshes from federal protection. And wetlands are only the beginning: A close reading of the proposed rules shows that the administration is attempting to change the definition of "waters of the United States" to exclude up to 60 percent of the country's rivers, lakes and streams from protection, giving industries permission to pollute, alter, fill and build on all of these waterways (see "Down Upon the Suwannee"). "No president since the Clean Water Act was passed has proposed getting rid of it on the majority of waters of the U.S.," notes Joan Mulhern of Earthjustice -- and Bush might not have tried either, had he been forced to justify the move in congressional debate rather than burying it in bureaucratic rule-making.

Even when it seems to bow to environmental concerns, the administration often manages to leave a back door open for industry. This summer, after more than two years of foot-dragging and resistance in court, the Department of Agriculture finally accepted a Clinton-era rule placing more than 58 million acres of national forests off limits to road building (and thus logging). But it added two caveats: Governors could obtain exemptions for federal forests inside their borders (as several have already done); and the rule wouldn't apply in much of Alaska, where the largest stretches of roadless wild forest are located. In June, Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey -- a veteran timber lobbyist who is now the chief architect of the nation's forest policy -- announced that nearly 3 million acres of land could be opened to timber sales in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the planet's largest pristine temperate rainforest and home to several species of animals found nowhere else on earth.

The White House has also been darkly brilliant at using the courts to do its dirty work -- through methods such as "sweetheart suits," the practice of encouraging states and private groups to file lawsuits against the federal government, and then agreeing to negotiated settlements that bypass environmental laws without any interference from Congress or the public. In perhaps the most egregious such case, in April the state of Utah and the Interior Department announced that they had reached a settlement involving 10 million acres of federal lands set aside in the 1990s for possible wilderness designation. The deal will allow Utah to sell oil and gas rights on what had largely been pristine areas, including the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument with its multihued cliffs and Cedar Mesa, a fragile desert area near Monument Valley that holds world-renowned archaeological sites -- and that is now slated to host a jeep safari.

Two days after the first settlement with Utah -- in another closed-door deal -- Interior Secretary Gale Norton signed a second, more sweeping compact promising that the federal government would never again so much as study lands for wilderness designation. And not just in Utah: The decision, which effectively freezes a wilderness-protection program that goes back nearly 40 years, applies to more than 200 million acres of Western lands, an area twice as large as California.

But it's not just the West's spectacular scenery that's threatened, or even the purity of our air and water -- as important as those are. By using stealth tactics to pursue a corporate agenda, the Bush administration is undermining the very landscape of democracy, which depends on an informed citizenry, transparency in government, and lively public debate. A culture of deception and deceit erodes all of these -- and that is probably the most serious "environmental" damage of all.

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Pahrump Valley Times
August 22, 2003

Commissioners Allocate $50,000

County to assist 'pay' plan

Needy Athletes To Benefit - At Least During 2003-2004

By Mark Waite
PVT

Nye County Commissioners voted Tuesday to provide $50,000 for the Pay to Participate program in the Nye County School District.

The money will be earmarked for students who want to participate in athletics, but can't afford the new $150 annual fee.

"The criteria we've established is those students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch program would qualify for these scholarships," Nye County School Superintendent Rob Roberts told commissioners.

School district figures show 40 percent of the students enrolled at Pahrump Valley High School last fall qualified for free or reduced lunch. That figure dropped to 35 percent by the end of the school year.

Roberts estimated about 500 students would participate in athletics this year. A $50,000 donation would pay annual participation fees for 333 students. He said any funds not used by the school district this year would be carried over to the next year.

The $150 fee helps cover the cost to the school district for transporting students to athletic events, fees of officials to referee games, equipment and coaching stipends, Roberts said.

Commissioners are drawing the money out of an educational endowment fund, established with money the county receives from the U.S. Department of Energy for the land value of Yucca Mountain. The county currently has $9.25 million in the educational endowment fund.

"We're funded primarily to educate students. Athletics is an after school activity, although it contributes greatly to the overall development, citizenship, teamwork and life experiences," Roberts said.

The school district looked at various ways to reduce a $1.9 million budget shortfall this year, Roberts said. One was to eliminate athletics altogether, another was to maintain athletics only at the varsity level and the third was to charge a pay to participate fee. He said athletics costs the district a little over $400,000 per year.

The fee won't be charged for an athlete until their names are submitted on a roster to the Nevada Interscholastic Athletic Association, Roberts said.

"Coaches will have a firm handle on who their players are by then," he said.

Commissioner Candice Trummell inquired about other ways to fund athletics. She asked Roberts if the coaching salaries are included in negotiations with the teacher's union. Roberts said they were and the contract is up for approval this coming year.

"Then take a one-fifth reduction in what they (coaches) are paid and that will subsidize all these students for the following year," Trummell said.

Trummell said she would vote for the funding but told Roberts, "I really encourage you to find other sources of financing for the next year, through negotiations or whatever it takes."

Commissioner Joni Eastley said she's already assured the school district of her total support for sports programs in the schools. She lamented the fact professional athletes are being paid tens of millions of dollars for playing sports while Nye County school children have to pay out of their own pocket to play.

Roberts assured Commissioner Patricia Cox the district was installing playground equipment at Manse Elementary School, using $107,351 of the $630,776 the commission allocated to the school district out of the educational endowment fund April 15.