Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
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Fort Worth Weekly
November 19, 2003
Dumping on the Dump
Environmentalists and others think legislative haste led to bad nuclear waste law.
By Betty Brink
On Earth Day, ironically enough, the 78th Texas Legislature finally passed what State Rep. Lon Burnam calls "a monopoly corporate welfare bill" -- intended to enrich one specific corporation. He's talking about the bill allowing development of a multi-state nuclear dump in Texas, and he says it was written for the benefit of Waste Control Specialists, a West Texas hazardous waste dump owned by Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons. "It will allow Texas to become a nuclear waste dumping ground for the nation -- if not the world," he said.
It was a long time coming. Versions of the so-called "low-level" radioactive waste disposal measure have been proposed repeatedly for nearly a decade, defeated each time by intense lobbying from environmental groups and anti-nuclear activists. This year they lost. The bill passed both chambers with little notice, Burnam said, as most of the media coverage centered on the redistricting dance between the two parties.
This is a "risky experiment," Burnam said. The facility will be "host to commercial, federal, and mixed hazardous wastes all at the same site, a deadly combination of products that are not compatible."
Opponents, however, have not given up the battle completely. They will fight a rearguard action in Austin on Dec. 17, trying to convince the state environmental agency to minimize the bill's damage via licensing and operating rules. And they are hoping for help from an unusual quarter -- the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is nearly always on the opposite side of issues from the anti-nuke lobby, but this time may be the groups' best ally. The NRC has tossed in a monkey wrench that could shut the dump down altogether -- or make it unprofitable for a private company to operate.
The law as written, the NRC says, is in direct conflict with federal statutes. Bottom line, according to NRC spokesperson Dave McIntyre, is that unless the law is changed, the NRC will not allow any shipments of federally owned radioactive waste to any Texas site. That alone could doom the dreams of Simmons.
But other concerns raised by the law are myriad. Susybelle Gosslee, president of the Dallas League of Women Voters, is most worried about the dangers of moving radioactive cargoes through the state to reach the dump. She wants the regs to require extra funding for "comprehensive first-response teams for communities throughout the state ... and adequate security" in transport. Burnam, the voters league, and others are also worried that, if the dump is located as expected on Simmons' company's land in West Texas, the radioactive and other hazardous wastes to be buried there in unlined trenches will eventually permeate the underlying red clay and contaminate the aquifer below.
Other dumps located on similar clays have turned into nuclear nightmares, Burnam said, with taxpayers ending up footing the bill. Burnam wants the regulations tightened to "zero leak tolerance."
In fact, the new law raises so many concerns and potential conflicts that one environmental attorney has suggested that the state agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, will be opening the state up to years of litigation if it tries to implement the law in its present form.
"If there was ever a time for an agency charged with such a monumental task to go above and beyond the minimal requirements of the law," Burnam said, "the time is now."
The three-member environmental commission will take testimony on Dec. 17, before approving the policies that will govern the planned dump for about the next 15 years. Staffer Susan Jablonski said the TCEQ encourages public testimony, and that concerns raised at earlier hearings have already convinced staff to make some changes to the proposed regulations. She would not say what they are.
The changes that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking are no small matter. In a letter to the state agency, NRC official Paul Lohaus pointed out that the Texas law conflicts with federal law regarding ownership of the land, buildings, and ultimately the waste.
Federal regulations governing low-level nuclear waste disposal sites are stringent about ownership -- and there are no exceptions, said the NRC's McIntyre. They require that the land and the buildings be owned by either the state or federal government before a license to operate is issued, he said. Otherwise, the NRC will not approve any transfer of federal waste to the site.
Under the Texas law, the private owner would not be required to turn over the federal waste site to the feds until decommissioning, years into the future. "That's not acceptable," McIntyre said. "This ownership issue has to be resolved," he said, before any wastes from a federal facility can be shipped.
Government ownership "from the beginning and into perpetuity," is critical, McIntyre said, to guarantee that the contaminated site will be maintained and monitored for the safety and health of the public long after the license holder is gone. "There must be certainty of the stewardship" of a nuclear waste site beyond the 15 or 30 years of a license holder, he said. "The Texas regs have to be compatible with the NRC's. Right now they are not."
The issue is one of keen interest to billionaire Simmons. His company already owns a hazardous waste disposal facility on about 1,000 acres in Andrews County not far from the New Mexico border. He has reportedly spent about $1 million in the past two years lobbying and contributing to legislator's campaigns, in an effort to get the bill passed. One portion of the resulting law will, for the first time, allow a nuclear dump to be privately owned and operated. The law also will allow the eventual licensee to accept tens of millions of cubic feet of radioactive waste, not only from nuclear power plants and medical facilities, but from nuclear weapons programs dating to 1943. Today those federal wastes are "temporarily" stored by the Department of Energy at aging and leaking facilities around the country.
There's little doubt in Austin that Simmons' company will win the license. "His lobbyists, 16 of them, helped write the bill," Colin Leyden, an aide to Burnam, said.
Burnam represents the Texas Radioactive Waste Defense Fund, a coalition of statewide groups that includes the Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and the League of Women Voters. He said the regulations as currently proposed allow a tolerance for leaks, which is unacceptable.
"This dump will be built with an assumption that leaks will occur," he said, and that the red clay underneath Andrews County will keep radiation, including long-lived isotopes such as plutonium, from migrating into the water tables.
Similar assumptions about the imperviousness of clay doomed a low-level waste dump at Maxey Flats in Kentucky, he pointed out in testimony before the TCEQ. It was closed in the 1980s after radioactive isotopes migrated to the groundwater. The operator walked away, and Maxey Flats is now a Superfund clean-up site. Burnam listed five other low-level waste sites around the country that had been touted as safe that turned into nuclear hot-spots.
The years-long effort to open a waste site in the state was driven by Texas' commitment to Vermont and Maine under a compact approved in 1988, with Congressional approval. In that agreement, Texas committed to building a dump for nuclear waste generated within its borders and allowing the two smaller states to ship their wastes here for a $25 million fee. (The only exception is spent fuel from nuclear reactors. Those hot rods must be shipped to a federal high-level waste site that may or may not open someday at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.) The compact was supposed to shield Texas from having to accept nuclear waste from other states under interstate commerce regulations. However, Maine's legislature voted last year to pull out of the compact because of the years of delay. Its only reactor has been decommissioned and sent to other disposal sites.
That leaves the radioactive detritus from Texas' two nuclear plants and Vermont's one plant, as well as a small amount of medical and research wastes. Not enough, Simmons reportedly has said, to make a dump profitable. He has lusted after the DOE wastes from the git-go, Burnam said. "That's where the money is." The Texas Observer recently estimated that profits from such a dump could top $100 billion.
But that potential for profit could also become a nightmare for the state, according to Austin environmental attorney David Fredrick, an opponent of the dump. Because there are such "large profits to be made in radioactive waste disposal," he warned the commission, "there are a number of corporations, individuals, institutions, and even states that would have incentives to challenge the entire Texas ... program," if the commission is forced to adopt rules that conflict with federal law. That could throw the state into litigation that could last for decades, he said.
"This bill was on the fast track this session," Burnam said. "No one bothered to check with the feds. This is what you get when legislators don't do their homework."
You can reach Betty Brink at betty.brink@fwweekly.com.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 19, 2003
NRC criticized for closing Yucca Mountain meetings
Memo says commission kept evaluation of nuclear waste project secret
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
A memo about closing talks about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project to the public shows federal regulators intend to make up the rules as they go along, a leading critic of the project said Tuesday.
A spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could not specify why the discussions with Energy Department officials were closed, other than to say the NRC needed to proceed with evaluation of scientific information.
The information is vital to the NRC's review of a license application that DOE plans to submit next year for the repository project, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
A Nov. 4 memo from a senior NRC quality assurance engineer, Thomas O. Matula, to the agency's High-Level Waste Branch chief, Janet Schlueter, refers to the closed-door inspection of the Energy Department project.
"At this time, the evaluation of DOE is not open to public observation," states the memo, obtained by the Review-Journal on Tuesday.
"In parallel with conducting this evaluation, the NRC staff is considering whether a revised policy statement and/or a new protocol should be developed to cover state, local and tribal government requests to observe NRC activities at Yucca Mountain," Matula wrote.
Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency chief Bob Loux said the memo expresses what Nevadans have accused federal officials of doing regarding DOE's nuclear waste project: making up the rules as they go along or changing them so the repository will be built.
He summed up the protocol debacle, saying, "That tells us everything we've been saying is true, that these agencies are in bed together."
He echoed a comment Monday by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., about the discussions.
"Anybody who can't do their business in public has something to hide," Loux said.
Earlier Tuesday, NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner couldn't give a specific reason why the public wasn't allowed access to the Yucca Mountain quality assurance evaluation discussions. "We thought we needed to get on with the evaluation," she said.
Asked what was so pressing that the protocol issues couldn't be resolved before the inspection team began work this week in Las Vegas, Gagner answered, "We will have three weeks of evaluation, so we thought we needed to get this done."
The Nov. 4 memo said the NRC team will evaluate adequacy of technical information, quality control processes, and the effectiveness of corrective actions.
The evaluation, according to the memo, is "to assist the staff in making an independent judgment about the quality of certain DOE activities. ... The evaluation is not intended to replace any future license review process."
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Nevada Appeal
November 18, 2003
No water for nuclear-waste storage
By Nevada Appeal editorial board
State Engineer Hugh Ricci had no choice but to deny the federal Department of Energy's application to use Nevada water in its project to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
The most obvious reason is that Ricci would have been ridden out of town on a rail if he'd decided otherwise. The politics of anti-Yucca Mountain fervor are fairly universal in the state.
But Ricci is a professional, a respected and dedicated public employee, and as such had a duty to take an objective look at the application. After all, because something is unpopular is not exactly a sound reason for denying water.
So he held hearings to examine the application for 430 acre-feet of water (some 150 million gallons) a year to operate a nuclear-waste repository as proposed by the federal government. He weighed the request against Nevada's definition of "beneficial use" of the state's scarcest resource.
And he still had only one conclusion. Water for this project isn't justified.
In the history of water in the West, there have been plenty of cockamamie schemes promoted by a long line of shysters. If they could only get the water, they could do wonders. Some of those big dreams came true, and monuments to their vision are as vast as Hoover Dam and the Central Canal.
Yucca Mountain, however, fails on the two most fundamental questions. Will it work? Is it good for Nevadans?
After $7 billion worth of research into the feasibility of the Yucca project, the answer came back that, no, it wouldn't work based on geology and geography. But the DOE is insisting on engineering a repository its leaders think can work. It is far from proven.
There is no benefit to Nevada, primarily because Nevada produces no nuclear waste. It may be a benefit for, say, Pennsylvania. But then, so is the Susquehanna River.
All the DOE has to do is figure out how to get that water here - simply an engineering problem.
In the meantime, Nevada's state engineer has a duty to protect the state's precious resources. Especially against a project residents, legislators, governor and federal representatives swear to oppose.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 19, 2003
Bush to visit Las Vegas next week for fund-raiser
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- President Bush will make his first trip to Las Vegas next week for a fund-raising lunch at The Venetian for his re-election campaign, White House and campaign officials said Tuesday.
It is Bush's first trip to Nevada as president, although he visited Lake Tahoe in June 2000 as a presidential candidate.
White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said Bush will leave his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Tuesday to attend an event on health-care issues and a Bush-Cheney '04 fund-raiser before heading to Phoenix.
Other details will be made available later this week.
Greg Bortolin, spokesman for Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn, said the governor looks forward to hosting the president. Guinn, state Attorney General Brian Sandoval and Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., are on the president's re-election team for the state.
Many state officials have attacked Bush's position on Yucca Mountain.
Guinn supports the president despite the administration's strong support for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Guinn vetoed the president's approval of the site last year, but Congress overrode his objection.
"They agree to disagree on it," Bortolin said.
Rebecca Lambe, executive director of the Nevada Democratic Party, said the party is encouraging its members to attend a planned rally outside the Bush fund-raiser Tuesday. She said they have not had to organize anything, but people who are "outraged by the administration" have been planning their own protest outside The Venetian.
"It's sad that his first time to the state as president is to collect campaign cash when he owes Nevada an explanation on Yucca Mountain," Lambe said.
When Vice President Dick Cheney attended a Las Vegas fund-raiser in July, protesters lined the streets rallying against the project, but Cheney still took home an estimated $300,0000 for the campaign.
Bush narrowly won Nevada's four electoral votes in the 2000 election, helping push him to a 271 to 267 electoral college victory over former vice president Al Gore.
McCarran International Airport should not be greatly impacted by President Bush's planned visit.
After landing Air Force One taxis to a remote area at one of the far ends of the airport, airport spokeswoman Debbie Millet said.
Passengers traveling through the airport when the president arrives shouldn't even notice that Air Force One has landed, Millet said.
When President Clinton visited Las Vegas in April 2000 Air Force One rolled to a stop near the Delta Airlines cargo building on the extreme east end of the airport. Secret Service agents lined the roof of the building on the lookout with high-powered binoculars.
After getting out of the plane Clinton got in a limousine on the tarmac and his motorcade headed out of the airport.
The motorcade was led by about 30 Metro Police motorcycle officers in a double line, and included about 20 vehicles that carried the Secret Service, White House staff and media.
It was immediately unclear if and how traffic would be impacted during Bush's visit.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 19, 2003
Energy bill includes geothermal incentives
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- The House-approved energy bill Tuesday includes geothermal incentives that may benefit Nevada but the bill also includes a push for nuclear power, which Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. opposed.
The report included provisions from Republican Nevada Rep. Jim Gibbons' geothermal energy bill introduced earlier this year to increase resource production on federal lands. The report also includes a 1.8-cents-per-kilowatt hour tax credit for new geothermal facilities during the first five years of operation.
"Geothermal energy is a clean and reliable source of energy that is completely underutilized," Gibbons said in a prepared statement. "Nevada is a hotbed of geothermal energy. This energy package will enable us to tap into that natural resource, help offset the demand for fossil fuels, and encourage investment in geothermal energy production."
Nevada has about 520,000 acres of public land leased for geothermal use, according to the Bureau of Land Management, and is one of the top states for more production potential.
Despite the geothermal incentives, Berkley said she could not vote for the bill since it provides benefits for nuclear energy even though there is "no safe way to ship and no safe way to store nuclear waste."
"Whatever good provisions there are in this bill are buried under billions of dollars in subsidies for the nuclear industry," Berkley said. "I am appalled that we would spend one cent more to promote nuclear energy when the only answer to the problem of nuclear waste is to bury it in Nevada."
Berkley said even if the proposed nuclear waste storage site planned to hold 77,000 tons of spent fuel at Yucca Mountain were built according to the Energy Department's plan, it could not hold any more nuclear waste.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
November 19, 2003
GOP energy bill has benefits, but also concerns for Nevada
The energy bill unveiled by Republican negotiators over the weekend and approved by the House of Representatives Tuesday is a mess, a web of subsidies and tax breaks for energy producers of every ilk (including ethanol producers in the corn belt) and a long list of pork barrel projects to benefit favored legislators.
Most worrisome for Nevadans should be the subsidy for nuclear-power generators, an attempt to restart an industry that was hurt to a large extent by its own mistakes and continues to wait for the federal government to solve the waste disposal problem. That surely will increase the pressure on the Energy Department to approve use of the waste repository at Nevada´s Yucca Mountain, despite growing evidence that it´s a poor choice for the task.
Yet, given the system of rewards that governs Congress, Nevadans should be thankful for what they can get, and the bill´s tax incentives for geothermal energy producers are a significant benefit won by the state´s congressional delegation. They could, in fact, turn Nevada into an important supplier of energy — energy that´s clean, reliable and renewable over time. That could mean jobs for Nevadans and less dependence on coal, oil and natural gas for the nation.
It´s too bad that it takes such an ugly bill to promote a beautiful idea.
Close just isn´t good enough
Close may count in horseshoes, but it shouldn´t count in elections.
Yet the Nevada Supreme Court is being asked to rule that close does indeed count when it comes to the residency requirement for political offices.
That´s the gist of the case out of Ely heard by the court last week. The re-election of Mayor Bob Miller was challenged because he had lived outside the city limits caring for an elderly parent for the past two years, despite the requirement that a candidate for mayor live in the city for at least a year before taking office and 30 days before filing for the office.
A district judge allowed him to run anyway, opening the door for unending mischief in future elections and creating a nightmare for elections officials who could be forced to decide who is a resident and who isn´t. (A Reno councilwoman was forced to resign several years ago when it was revealed that her city “residence’ was an empty apartment with an answering machine.)
But when it comes to public office, home isn´t just where the heart is; everything else has to be there, too. In politics, close simply isn´t good enough.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 18, 2003
Nevadans want to hear about private meetings
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Nevada officials want to know what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is trying to hide behind the closed doors of its technical review of Yucca Mountain information.
Thomas Matula, a NRC senior engineer, announced in a memo earlier this month that closed-door meetings will examine information gathered for the nuclear waste repository planned for Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but the public as well as state and county officials won't be allowed to participate.
"We can not conceive of reasons they would want to meet in private," said Bob Loux, head of the State Nuclear Waste Projects Office.
Loux said earlier comments made by Reid that "there must be something going on they don't want us to hear" are right on mark.
Loux suspects the NRC is telling the Energy Department to "play ball" and get everything in order to the agency can grant them the license application.
Reid believes they are discussing the department's progress on the license application for the project, now slated to be submitted in December 2004, agrees.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission appears to be in bed with the Energy Department, but they aren't married yet so this is not right," Reid said.
Reid said this is the first time the state knows it is not at the table, but not likely the first time it has not been invited.
NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the closed-door review is not exactly a meeting but an independent evaluation by the commission on the department's activities related to the project.
She said under similar inspections for nuclear power plants, state officials usually do not participate but that the commission is now evaluating whether to develop a protocol so a state can participate in a case such as this.
Gagner said the NRC staff will visit the Energy Department's facility and look at its work so far on the project.
She noted that there are things in place during the pre-licensing phases that need to involve and do involve other stakeholders but this is "not quite that type of thing," so there was not a specific reason the state was barred from the evaluation.
In September 2002, former Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa wrote Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and the NRC calling meetings without Nevada and the public involved "unlawful."
But in February 2003, the commission's Inspector General told a Senate panel that meetings without Nevada did not violate any laws since communication occurred during informal meeting, which was consistent with policy surrounding the site.
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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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