Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
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State of Nevada
December 1, 2003
Yucca Mountain Update
Volume 1 Issue 18
Nevada Presses for Investigation of Potential Chain Reactions of Nuclear Waste Stored at Yucca Mountain
Secret DOE documents indicate corrosion of waste storage packages could result in up to 60 nuclear reactions over
10,000-year life of repository
Nevada´s Agency for Nuclear Projects today asked the federal Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) to investigate the potential for nuclear waste stored underground at the proposed Yucca Mountain repository to undergo an uncontrolled chain reaction, a possibility the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) secretly documented but shielded when preparing environmental studies for the facility.
In a Nov. 25 letter to NWTRB Chairman Dr. Michael Corradini, agency Executive Director Bob Loux stated that DOE documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act “anticipate that, if the repository operates as is now planned, up to 60 nuclear criticalities may plausibly occur inside the mountain, and that the conditional probability of occurrence may be greater than one in one thousand per year.’
“The discovery of these once-hidden documents indicates that DOE was well aware of the risk of waste package damage and radioactive releases into the environment, but attempted to hide it, knowing that internal criticality may be one of the most, if not the most, significant safety issues in repository licensing,’ Loux said.
DOE, which responded to Nevada´s Freedom of Information Act requests in October and November, did not list the documents in mandatory documentation filed as part of Nevada´s pending court cases as being relevant to either the repository´s safety or its environmental impacts, Loux said.
Nevada has filed a series of lawsuits against the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) aimed at blocking licensing and development of Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a repository for 77,000 metric tons of the nation´s high-level nuclear waste. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is slated to hear arguments in the consolidated cases Jan. 14. Nevada officials have said these lawsuits may present the best opportunity yet to stop the proposed nuclear waste dump from being built at Yucca Mountain.
Because of the DOE´s omissions, Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval today simultaneously filed a request for the court to permit the so-called Administrative Record for Nevada´s court cases to be supplemented with the secret DOE documents obtained by the state.
Loux said the DOE documents raise dramatic new safety and security issues concerning the Yucca Mountain project that DOE previously claimed were of negligible importance.
“First, they show that if the waste packages stored in the repository corrode and permit water to enter, a spontaneous nuclear chain reaction is a great enough possibility that up to 60 such events could be expected in the repository, with a likelihood of occurrence of more than one in one thousand per year,’ Loux said.
Conversely, DOE in its Final Environmental Impact Statement for Yucca Mountain, claimed that the probability of such an event occurring was less than two in 10 million over the entire 10,000 years the repository must be in compliance with regulations, Loux added.
DOE´s studies acknowledged that if such a criticality event did occur, it could dramatically affect nuclear waste releases to the environment by damaging waste packages and thereby accelerating and concentrating releases. Though DOE´s analysts repeatedly recommended that the consequences of such an event be studied, no such studies have been performed to date, Loux said.
DOE acknowledged in the documents that, with the presence of water, the risk of criticality is “greatly increased,’ since water makes nuclear waste more susceptible to a chain reaction.
The documents also reveal that DOE markedly understated the risks and consequences of a terrorist attack on a spent fuel cask in transport to Yucca Mountain, since DOE failed to consider that, if a cask were perforated by a commercially available portable armor-piercing missile, a nuclear criticality event could occur, especially if water was able to enter the cask.
Such an event would almost certainly cause what DOE called a “violent event,’ exploding the cask and dispersing its radioactive contents into the environment.
In one of its lawsuits, Nevada had called this scenario the ultimate “dirty bomb’ for a terrorist who might choose to target a cask with a missile or aircraft as it made its way through downtown Chicago or St. Louis. Though water or jet fuel would have to enter the perforated cask for criticality to occur, Nevada had argued that rainwater, firefighters´ spray, jet fuel, or submersion of the cask in a river or waterway were easy to envision. DOE called the allegations “mere conjecture.’
However, DOE´s secret documents reveal that its own analysts thought the risk of criticality occurring in a cask in the presence of water was so high that analysis of the consequences should be mandatory. Loux said DOE ignored that advice.
What´s wrong with putting nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain? The NRC Licensing Procedure (third in a series)
Federal law requires that the Department of Energy obtain a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct and operate a nuclear waste repository. However, Nevada´s studies show that a repository at the proposed Yucca Mountain site won´t come close to meeting even the NRC's new, lax safety rules during the 10,000 year compliance period.
To obtain a license, for example, DOE must show that water moving through Yucca Mountain will not corrode waste emplacement containers for 10,000 years or, if corrosion does occur, that radioactive waste quantities reaching the accessible environment will not be enough to exceed EPA dose limits. Nevada studies show, however, that the canisters will corrode rapidly in the subsurface environment at Yucca Mountain, causing radioactive material to move quickly into the groundwater, with resulting radiation exposures in excess of permissible safety regulations.
Some other licensing issues where studies show Yucca Mountain cannot pass muster include the potential for volcanic activity at and near the site, the likelihood of nuclear criticality occurring within the repository, and the risk of aircraft crashes into repository surface facilities from operation at the Nellis Air Force Range.
DOE says it will file a license application with the NRC in December 2004, thus beginning a three- to four-year legal contest in which DOE bears the burden for demonstrating repository safety.
Nevada has engaged a world-class team of scientists to work with Nevada´s attorneys throughout the licensing process. The State intends to demonstrate that the repository fails safety tests at every single stage.
(Editor's note: Future editions of Yucca Mountain Update will feature more "What's wrong with Yucca Mountain" articles covering a wide range of issues.)
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Outrage of the Week
NRC Abandons Its Principles
The week of November 17th, 2003 may well be remembered as the date the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) surrendered whatever remaining vestiges of credibility the nuclear licensing agency had with Nevada and Nevadans. Despite repeated assurances from NRC over the years that the process for licensing a Yucca Mountain repository would be open and entirely transparent, NRC chose to ban State of Nevada, affected local governments and the public from the a series of pivotal meetings that week with DOE´s Yucca Mountain staff and consultants held specifically to review DOE´s studies and findings with respect to critical site suitability and licensing issues.
That NRC is colluding with DOE and smoothing the way for DOE´s license application comes as no surprise. What is surprising – and a departure from the more subtle DOE/NRC collaboration that has been occurring for years – is the brazen way NRC brushed aside even the appearance of openness in closing the DOE meetings from any sort of external scrutiny.
While there have been troubling instances of inappropriate NRC and DOE staff contacts, including numerous meetings over the years that Nevada officials were ‘inadvertently´ not informed about, the decision to officially close a crucial series of topical meetings dealing directly with licensing and pre-licensing matters marks a major departure for the NRC, which has historically attempted to maintain at least the fiction of openness and impartiality.
Coming on the heels of major and potentially devastating revelations about a whole host of technical problems at Yucca Mountain, including the susceptibility of DOE´s proposed waste disposal containers to rapid corrosion in the subsurface environment and the likelihood that radioactive waste buried at the site could go critical, the decision to hold these meetings in secret takes on a sinister interpretation. The question that must be asked is, why close the sessions if DOE and NRC have nothing to hide?
The answer appears obvious. The two sister agencies find themselves in a growing dilemma – how to effectively shepherd Yucca Mountain through a rigorous licensing process when all of these serious deficiencies keep cropping up. NRC´s solution: Sit the DOE side down and feed them the licensing script out of earshot of the State, local governments and the public.
This is not the first time NRC has revealed its true Yucca Mountain colors. Back in May, 2002, then-Chairman Richard Meserve testified before a nervous Congress (which was then debating whether to override Governor Guinn´s veto of the Yucca Mountain site recommendation) that the NRC is satisfied DOE would be able to submit an acceptable license application, even though NRC´s own staff had, at the time, identified 293 unresolved issues – glaring gaps in the information supporting DOE´s decision to move ahead with Yucca Mountain, any one of which could prove to represent a fatal defect for the proposed repository project.
Instead of testifying as the objective, impartial arbiter of fact with regard to the proposed first of a kind facility and the transportation of spent nuclear fuel to a repository, Chairman Meserve descended into the role of project advocate as he sought to assure Senators that Yucca Mountain was a suitable site and that waste transportation is safe.
Perhaps the greatest irony in NRC´s decision to close key aspects of its Yucca Mountain activities to the public lies in the timing of the secret meetings. Just a week before the sessions, NRC released a draft of its 2004 – 2009 Strategic Plan in which NRC set forth as series of “principles of good regulation.’
Principle number two on the first page of the draft Plan states, “Nuclear regulation is the public´s business, and it must be transacted publicly and candidly. The public must be informed about and have the opportunity to participate in the regulatory processes required by law.’
For NRC in the case of Yucca Mountain, the political imperative of helping DOE cover up fundamental problems of a dangerously defective site obviously takes precedent over the need for openness as a principle of good regulation.
We welcome comments and story ideas for this newsletter.
For media information, please contact Tom Bradley
Brown & Partners,
at (702) 876-5611 or via
e-mail at
tbradley@brown-partners.com.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 02, 2003
Bush signs smaller Yucca budget
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON --President Bush signed into law the $580 million budget for the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project and close to $200 million for other projects in Nevada on Monday.
Nevada's congressional delegation opposed the final version of the Energy and Water Development spending bill, which contains the funds.
Nevada Reps. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, and Republicans Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons all voted against the final bill last month because of the Yucca Mountain budget. The Senate approved the bill but did not have a roll call vote.
The $580 million is a decrease from the department's $591 million request for the planned nuclear waste storage site at Yucca, but a $120 million increase from the current fiscal year.
The House had originally approved $765 million for the nuclear waste storage project planned 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, while the Senate approved $425 million. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who is the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations subcommittee that writes the bill each year, negotiated the funds down to $580 million.
The department maintains it will still meet its December 2004 deadline to submit its Nuclear Regulatory Commission license application for the site. Within the new budget, $525 will go for licensing activities with the remaining money split among transporation and other elements of the program.
Also in the newly signed law, the president approved $24.9 million for Enhanced Test Readines, matching the president's request, but restricted the National Nuclear Security Administration to improve test readiness capability to a 24-month gear-up rather the the proposed 18 months at the Nevada Test Site. Right now preparation could take up to three years.
The Modern Pit Facility program received $10.8 million, down from the $12 million approved earlier. The president wanted $23 million for the program.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 02, 2003
Editorial: Double standard on nuke waste
Southern California Edison wants to get rid of a 770-ton nuclear reactor that it no longer uses. The utility, however, has run into a number of problems in trying to ship the reactor -- contaminated by low-level nuclear waste -- to a dump in Barnwell, S.C., the only place licensed to accept decommissioned reactors. As detailed by a Cox News Service story, published in Monday's Sun, two Cabinet departments are throwing up roadblocks to the plans:
The U.S. Transportation Department has said no to shipping the reactor cross-county over federal highways. Rail lines also have spurned Southern California Edison, citing liability issues. Efforts to ship it by barge were blocked by Panama Canal officials, who say the reactor's weight exceeds their 150-ton limit for radioactive materials. The utility's plan to send the reactor farther south on its ultimate destination to South Carolina, around Cape Horn at the end of South America, is being opposed by the U.S. State Department. The State Department, saying the international waters around Cape Horn are some of the globe's most dangerous passages, prefers the waste to be shipped through the Strait of Magellan. But such a course, because it's in Chile's territorial waters, could be blocked by that nation.
We, too, have concerns about shipping low-level nuclear waste via barges. But what's perplexing is the federal government's newfound concern about shipping low-level nuclear waste while at the same time it's hell-bent on sending 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste to Southern Nevada, waste that's much deadlier than a decommissioned nuclear reactor. We haven't heard the U.S. Transportation Department voice its concern about the thousands of cross-country shipments of high-level nuclear waste to Nevada that would be required over highways if the Yucca Mountain project gets a license to start shipping waste. Indeed, the U.S. Energy Department's plan to send nuclear waste here has the enthusiastic support of President Bush. This double standard is further proof that the federal government doesn't have a clue -- and can't be trusted -- when it comes to ship ping and storing nuclear waste.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 02, 2003
Letter: Secrecy means liquid wastes aimed for Yucca?
Let's look at a possible reason for the closed meetings between the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and the Energy Department over the Yucca Mountain Project.
As everybody knows by now, the Energy Department is not being allowed to reclassify what are now categorized as high-level liquid wastes in tanks at Hanford, Savannah River, and Idaho sites. Several of those tanks are single-walled and are leaking.
Since the wastes, as high-level wastes, have to be buried in a repository, perhaps the secret meetings are about placing those wastes, and not spent-fuel rods, in Yucca.
It seems several utilities are sensing the delay in spent-fuel rod burial because they're building several above-ground storage facilties. The Energy Department had expected to bury the liquid wastes as low-level, and so had not planned to have to bury them in a repository.
Perhaps, therefore, the secret meetings are about how Yucca Mountain would have to accomodate liquid wastes.
Ron Bourgoin
Rocky Mount, N.C.
Editor's note: Ron Bourgoin was a consultant to the town of Rolesville in Wake County, N.C., in 1984 when a site in that area was being considered by the Energy Department as the location for a high-level nuclear waste repository.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 01, 2003
Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt visits Vegas
By Adam Goldman
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt said Monday that building a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain was a mistake and using the Patriot Act for anything other than terrorism was wrong.
The Missouri U.S. Rep.was in Las Vegas for a private fundraiser and held a brief news conference at McCarran International Airport on Monday afternoon. Gephardt attacked President Bush on several fronts, including Iraq, Medicare and Yucca Mountain.
"I have consistently voted against Yucca," Gephardt said. "It's not just because I think it's a problem in this state. It's a problem in all the states that this radioactive material will have to transit through."
Gephardt added that storing tons of nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas was a "bad idea."
Gephardt also touched on the Patriot Act and its use in investigations unrelated to terrorism. The FBI in Las Vegas has acknowledged agents used the Patriot Act to gain financial information in a public corruption case involving elected officials and a strip club owner.
"I think the Patriot Act was something we all thought was necessary after 9-11," he said. "It has been taken to extremes by this Justice Department. I think it needs to be revised."
Gephardt also acknowledged Nevada will play an important role in the upcoming election. Bush was in Las Vegas last week for the first time since becoming president to tout his Medicare reform bill and attend a fundraiser at a hotel-casino.
"Nevada is going to be a big state for us," he said. "If Al Gore had won in Nevada...he'd be president today. We are going to work hard in Nevada."
On Iraq, he castigated Bush for not working with the international community to stabilize the country.
"Inexplicably he has not gotten ... the American soldiers the help that we need," Gephardt said. "I'm glad he went and saw the soldiers in Thanksgiving. But I wish before he had come back he had gone to Paris, Berlin and Moscow and asked for the help we should have gotten a long time ago."
Gephardt said the Bush attitude is not helping the situation in Iraq.
"He's arrogant. He's a cowboy. He acts in a unilateral way. He doesn't work well with others, and we're paying the price for his lack of ability to get the help we need," Gephardt said.
After the news conference, state Republicans issued a statement criticizing Gephardt.
"Dick Gephardt and his fellow Democrats want to raise taxes which would be crippling for an economy on the rebound," Nevada GOP Chairwoman Lia Roberts said.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 02, 2003
LAS VEGAS FUND-RAISING TRIP: Gephardt slams Yucca
Presidential candidate reiterates his opposition to nuclear waste repository
By Erin Neff
Review-Journal
Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dick Gephardt suggested during a Monday fund-raising trip to Las Vegas that nuclear waste should remain at power plants across the country despite plans for a national repository at Yucca Mountain.
Gephardt, a Missouri congressman, reiterated his opposition to the repository at a news conference shortly after arriving at McCarran International Airport from Iowa.
Gephardt said a major derailment of a coal shipment in his congressional district this year highlighted the potential dangers of shipping nuclear waste.
"If that had been radioactive material, it would have been much worse," he said. "The Department of Transportation has predicted that one major derailment will occur. I don't think we need to do that."
After the news conference, Gephardt met privately with Mike Sloan, Mandalay Resort Group's executive vice president and general counsel, and a consistent Democratic donor.
Gephardt's trip originally was scheduled for Nov. 21 but had to be postponed because the congressman went to Washington to vote against President Bush's Medicare reforms.
A private dinner was held Monday, but campaign officials said they did not know where Gephardt was headed. Sloan could not be reached Monday evening.
Gephardt has counted on the support of gaming and organized labor during past visits to Las Vegas, including one earlier this year. He has received donations from Boyd Gaming Group, Harrah's, Station Casinos and the Tropicana so far this year for his presidential bid, according to the latest Federal Election Commission reports.
The former Democratic leader in the House of Representatives told reporters Monday he would win the Iowa caucus on Jan. 19 and that his support in the Midwest would lead to victory over Bush in November.
He said Nevada's Feb. 14 Democratic caucus would be key to that victory, calling the Silver State a battleground.
"This state will have a real role to play," Gephardt said. "If Al Gore had won in Nevada, he'd be president today."
Gephardt's daughter, Chrissie, has been phoning Nevada Democrats seeking their commitment to her father's campaign.
None of the major Nevada Democrats, including the two national committee members, has decided which Democrat to support.
Gephardt is one of five Democratic candidates who have visited Las Vegas this year. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut was in Las Vegas on Nov. 19. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina also have made trips to Southern Nevada.
Gephardt has been consistent in his opposition to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Bush recommended the site last year.
Dean had advocated for the repository as governor of Vermont, and Edwards voted to override Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of Yucca Mountain. Lieberman voted to override the veto, but, like Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, another Democratic presidential contender, had urged an accelerated time frame for shipment of waste if it were approved.
Gephardt didn't mention Yucca Mountain in brief opening remarks to reporters, focusing instead on his electability.
"First of all, I have the most experience," he said.
Gephardt said he is the candidate of "steady hands, reliability and good experience."
He briefly discussed his health care plan and energy plan, dubbed Apollo 21, which would require an increasing percentage of the nation's energy -- up to 20 percent -- be produced from renewable sources such as wind and solar power.
He lashed out at the recently passed Medicare reform legislation, saying "the Republican Party is selling your health care to the highest bidder."
Gephardt also said he thought the USA Patriot Act was being abused by the Bush administration to target areas outside of terrorism.
"In my first five seconds as president, I'll get rid of John Ashcroft," Gephardt said, referring to the attorney general. "We need more strict definitions of what can be done with the act."
The Patriot Act has been used in a political corruption case in Las Vegas, citing provisions regarding money laundering.
Gephardt said Bush's Thanksgiving trip to visit 600 troops in Baghdad was "the right thing to do."
But, he added: "I wish that before he came back, he would have gone to Paris and Berlin and Moscow to get the help that we need."
Gephardt said Bush should have sought NATO assistance and world support earlier.
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Provo Daily Herald
December 02, 2003
Bennett rider would block shipment of waste to Utah
N.S. Nokkentved
The Daily Herald
U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, has introduced a legislative rider that would block the shipment of radioactive waste from federal sites in Ohio and New York to any facility in Utah.
Earlier this year, however, Bennett helped open the door that would have allowed federal officials to force such waste on Utah.
"I agree with Governor Walker that no waste should be stored in Utah that is any hotter than that which has been disposed and processed here for the past 15 years. I believe that state officials, not federal, should make the decisions about how much and how hot," Bennett said in a prepared statement Monday.
The highly concentrated uranium tailings from federal sites in Fernald, Ohio, and Niagara Falls, N.Y., would be at least 25 times more radioactive -- "hotter" -- than uranium tailings now allowed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for disposal at Envirocare of Utah Inc., a private commercial radioactive waste landfill in Tooele County.
In the midst of recent public outcry over an earlier effort to change the classification of the waste so it could be sent to Utah, Envirocare withdrew its license amendment that would have allowed it to accept the waste for disposal.
But that may not make any difference.
Bennett's recent rider, inserted in a federal spending bill that still must be approved by Congress and President Bush, would block the NRC from sending uranium tailings from the Ohio and New York sites to any state with an application to take over regulatory authority for such waste from the NRC.
Utah has applied to the NRC for that authority and a decision is expected next year. If Utah receives the authority, Envirocare would not need the NRC license amendment to accept the Fernald or Niagara waste for disposal. That decision would then be in the hands of state officials.
"Cleanup at the Fernald and Niagara sites can still continue," Bennett said. "But we're changing the law so that Utah will be making the decisions for our state, not the NRC."
But the federal Department of Energy may be running out of options. Before the department decided to send the waste to Utah for disposal, it had designated the Nevada Test Site as the place to send the waste.
"We're back to the Nevada Test Site option," said Gary Stegner, DOE spokesman at Fernald, Ohio. "That's what we're pursuing right now."
Nevada officials, however, have expressed reluctance to allow the waste, even though the Test Site is a federal facility.
And the Energy Department may be reluctant to force the waste on Nevada, because the state already is the department's target for a controversial high-level waste repository at nearby Yucca Mountain.
Stegner referred policy questions to department headquarters in Washington, D.C., but officials there did not return calls for comment.
Bennett insists the current rider is not a change of position. He explained his earlier vote by saying he was not informed of the earlier rider that reclassified the waste and for which he voted because of a personnel change on the subcommittee.
He serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, as well as the subcommittee that inserted the rider, and he served on the House-Senate conference committee that argued to keep the Senate's amendments intact in the final version of the bill.
But the Utah senator has long tried to open the door for additional -- though not necessarily more radioactive -- waste.
In 1999, he wrote NRC Chairman Richard Meserve asking his opinion on the NRC's authority for managing waste generated before 1978 -- like the waste at Fernald and Niagara Falls -- when Congress gave that authority to the NRC.
"A legislative solution would be the most direct approach to clarifying the NRC's responsibilities under (the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act)," Meserve wrote Bennett in reply in March 2000.
"The committee did not support such a proposal," Bennett spokeswoman Mary Jane Collipriest said.
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N.S. Nokkentved can be reached at 344-2930 or at nnokkentved@heraldextra.com.
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Newsday
December 01, 2003
GAO Suggests More Money for Nuke Cleanup
By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON -- Owners of nearly one-third of the nation's commercial power reactors are not setting aside enough money to pay for the plants' cleanup after the end of their useful life, congressional investigators said.
A report by the General Accounting Office, released Monday, said owners or co-owners of 42 reactors were not putting money into a cleanup fund at a rate to ensure that all decommissioning costs would be met once the reactors' operating license expires.
While in the aggregate the industry is ahead of schedule in building up the decommissioning fund, some companies have lagged behind in putting enough money aside to meet cleanup requirements, said the report by the GAO, Congress' investigative arm.
It said this could cause a problem because plant owners are not obligated to share cleanup funds.
The report also criticized the way the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, monitors decommissioning funds, saying the agency relies too heavily on the plant owners' anticipated future contributions without assurances such funds will be available.
A spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group, noted that as of 2000, $26.9 billion had been put into the fund, or 81 percent of the $33 billion that is expected to be needed for shutting down the nation's reactors and removing their radioactive materials.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has never made findings that this funding is insufficient," said NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes.
He also said the GAO report did not take into consideration that "half of our industry already is in one stage or another of extending their licenses an additional 20 years." The report did take into account the 20-year license extensions already approved for 16 plants.
"We fully expect just about everyone is going toward license renewal," said Kerekes, meaning there will be an additional 20 years in virtually all cases involving operating plants to collect money for eventual decommissioning.
But Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who had requested the report and released its findings Monday, said reactor owners are "happily pocketing their profits today (but) ... shirking their duty to save for (cleanup) tomorrow, potentially leaving the taxpayers on the hook."
The GAO also said the NRC is underestimating the potential problem by the way it calculates reactor decommissioning accounts. For example, it said, the agency relies on owners' statements on future funding plans that may, in fact, change.
In cases where a plant has more than one owner, it assumes that a fund held by one owner would be used to compensate for shortages in the other owners' fund, when in fact there is no obligation to do so, according to the GAO.
The NRC "can't guarantee that the companies that profited from selling nuclear energy will do their duty and clean up their mess," said Markey.
William Travers, executive director of operations at the NRC, said in a letter responding to the GAO conclusions that the agency's practice is to review "on a case-by-case basis" whether a licensee has accumulate sufficient money in the cleanup fund.
The NRC's "primary concern ... is to assure that licensees are accumulating fund at appropriate rates," Travers wrote.
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On the Net
General Accounting Office: www.gao.gov
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov
Nuclear Energy Institute: www.nei.org
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The Guardian
December 1, 2003
Bush Signs Energy Appropriations Bill
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Monday signed a $27.3 billion energy and water bill that gave him less than he wanted for research on low-intensity nuclear weapons.
The bill, however, gave Bush most of what he sought for early work on a long-delayed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The legislation, which is packed with hundreds of water projects from coast to coast, including many the administration did not request, was approved by the House 387-36 and by the Senate on a voice vote.
The energy-water bill approved by the House provided half the $15 million Bush proposed for research on ``bunker buster" bombs, designed to destroy underground targets.
It also had all $6 million he wanted for research into ``mini-nukes" of less than 5 kilotons, though the administration will get $4 million of that amount only after giving lawmakers a report on the status of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.
The bill included $580 million for Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The spending, up $123 million from last year, was opposed by Nevada legislators who have long fought location of the waste site in their state.
The legislation funds programs of the Energy Department, the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers and several other agencies.
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Salt Lake Tribune
December 01, 2003
Walker takes reins of fight against nuclear waste site
By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune
Utah's fight against a storage site for nuclear reactor waste will continue, even though the person who led the battle until now has taken a job with the White House.
Gov. Olene Walker, sworn in the same day Mike Leavitt left to become administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said she does not want Utah -- "such a beautiful state" -- to be known as the nation's nuclear dumping ground. She pledged to keep resisting efforts by an out-of-state utility consortium to locate a national, nuclear-waste parking lot on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation.
"I'm strongly opposed to nuclear waste and anything hotter than we currently accept," she told The Salt Lake Tribune.
While the view matches that of her predecessor, Walker faces a vastly different fight than Leavitt did when he vowed six years ago the storage site would be built in Utah "over my dead body." The state's financial resources to mount its fight have shrunk over the years, while the number of battlegrounds where the war is being fought has multiplied.
The fight originally centered on an 820-acre patch of desert land owned by the 121-member Skull Valley Band of Goshutes. In November 1997, leaders of the impoverished band announced they had struck a deal with the consortium to build and operate a central storage site for worn out nuclear fuel now being warehoused at more than 100 nuclear power plants nationwide.
An above-ground, open air "parking" pad of 100 acres was to provide temporary storage for up to 44,000 tons of depleted nuclear fuel, until the lethally radioactive waste goes into underground disposal, presumably at the national repository proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The consortium, Private Fuel Storage (PFS), has been pursuing a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ever since.
PFS has fended off most of nearly three dozen "contentions," or claims of defects, that the state has leveled against the storage site plans.
Then, last spring, the NRC's adjudicatory arm, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, ruled that the risk is too high that a jet fighter associated with the Utah Test and Training Range might crash into the storage site. Lawyers from PFS and the Utah Attorney General's Office continue to conduct closed-door regulatory hearings on the company's assertion that the storage casks would successfully survive such a crash without releasing dangerous nuclear waste.
The NRC, which makes the final decision on licenses, recently instructed those involved in the case to prepare for any appeals they hope to make on issues already reviewed by the licensing board. The order, which basically fast-tracks a step usually left to the conclusion of license board rulings, represents the second time this year the NRC has sought a speedy conclusion to the license process.
The battle over nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation also continues:
* At the U.S. Interior Department, where Goshutes opposed to the PFS project have asked for help in resolving legal and political problems arising over money from the waste project;
* In the 3rd District Court of Utah, where embattled tribal leaders hope to gain control over bank accounts that contain Goshute funds;
* In a Denver federal appeals court, where attorneys for the state are trying to defend five state laws intended to foil the storage facility plans. A federal judge last year declared the laws largely unconstitutional.
* In a Washington, D.C., federal appeals court, where the state hopes to overturn an unfavorable NRC ruling. As in the Denver case, the state basically contends that Congress never gave the NRC authority to license a storage facility like the one proposed for Skull Valley.
* Before a federal grand jury, which is considering allegations of corruption among the Goshute tribal leaders. Federal agents raided the band's South Salt Lake City offices last spring in search of financial documents and computer files in connection with that case.
Skull Valley Goshute Chairman Leon Bear did not return a call seeking comment for this story.
But PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said the consortium hopes that Utah's new governor will meet with proponents and keep an open mind about their project.
"He never even sat down and talked with us about it," Martin said of Leavitt.
Dianne Nielson, director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, doubted the new administration will back away.
Walker "remains opposed to the siting of this facility in Utah," Nielson said. "There is no indication the state's position has changed."
One thing that has changed, however, is the state's financial means. Although legislators devoted $3.8 million to the PFS-Goshute opposition in recent years, there is no additional funding for the fight in the current budget. Budgets are being drafted now and it is not clear how much money the state will pump into the opposition in the future.
Still, state Rep. Stephen Urquhart said it has been Utah citizens -- and not Leavitt -- leading the state's opposition to the project, and that determination persists.
Anne Sward Hansen of the Environmental Justice Project said the handful of Goshutes who have spoken out against the project still need the state government's help with what she described as a fight to protect the tribal members' civil rights. She counted Gov. Walker as "a champion" in that fight.
"I think she could stand up to people," said Hansen, "and that's what we need."
fahys@sltrib.com
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Tribune reporter Rebecca Walsh contributed to this article.
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KSL-TV
December 01, 2003
Walker Will Continue Battle Against Goshute Nuclear Waste
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- New Gov. Olene Walker says she will continue predecessor Mike Leavitt's battle against the proposal to store spent nuclear-reactor fuel rods on the Goshutes' Skull Valley reservation.
"I'm strongly opposed to nuclear waste and anything hotter than we currently accept," she said.
The proposal calls for temporary storage on the Goshute property for up to 44,000 tons of depleted nuclear fuel, until it is sent to a permanent repository, now planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of nuclear power companies, has been pursuing a license for the Goshute site from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The NRC's adjudicatory arm, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, ruled earlier this year that the risk was too great that a jet fighter using the nearby Utah Test and Training Range might crash into the storage site.
PFS contends the storage casks could successfully survive such a crash and the issue still remains before the NRC.
PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said the consortium hopes Utah's new governor will meet with proponents and keep an open mind about their project.
She said Leavitt, who quit to become head of the Environmental Protection Agency, "never even sat down and talked with us about it."
Dianne Nielson, director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, doubted the new administration will back away.
Walker "remains opposed to the siting of this facility in Utah," Nielson said. "There is no indication the state's position has changed."
The Legislature provided $3.8 million in recent years to fight the proposal. Budgets are being drafted now and it is not clear how much money the state will pump into the opposition in the future.
Anne Sward Hansen of the Environmental Justice Project said the handful of Goshutes who have spoken out against the project still need the state's help with what she described as a fight to protect the tribal members' civil rights. She counted Walker as a champion in that fight.
"I think she could stand up to people," said Hansen, "and that's what we need."
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Physics Today
December 01, 2003
MIT Study Sees Nuclear Power as Green Weapon Against Global Warming
Although the public doesn't yet view nuclear power as a way to mitigate global warming, an MIT study says a global tripling of nuclear power generation could avoid nearly 2 billion tonnes of carbon emissions annually.
While new nuclear power plants are not economically competitive with fossil fuels, an MIT interdisciplinary research group is recommending limited federal support of new nuclear power plants as a way to reenergize the industry and lessen the potential impact of global warming. The report, The Future of Nuclear Power, acknowledges the stagnation of the field in recent years, but concludes that "the nuclear option should be retained, precisely because it is an important carbon-free source of power."
The MIT study, cochaired by institute professor John Deutch and physics professor Ernest Moniz, notes that during the next 50 years, "unless patterns change dramatically, energy production and use will contribute to global warming through large-scale greenhouse gas emissions--hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide." The nuclear scenario offered by the study would expand current global nuclear-generating capacity "almost threefold, to 1000 billion watts by the year 2050. Such a deployment would avoid 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon emissions annually from coal plants, about 25% of the increment in carbon emissions otherwise expected in the business-as-usual scenario." (See report at http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/org/n/nuclearpower.)
The study comes when Bush administration officials are talking about a nuclear power "renaissance," and the US nuclear industry is calling for 50 new commercial reactors by 2020 (see Physics Today, April 2002, page 54). Indeed, Deutch said officials in both Congress and the administration paid "complete attention" to his briefings. "I think [the report] is influencing their thinking about parts of the nuclear program, although I don't say that they agree with all of our recommendations."
Moniz, an Undersecretary of the US Department of Energy (DOE) during the Clinton administration, said that in addition to the usual players in the nuclear power world, "those in the environmental community with a deep concern about climate change are really paying attention to the report. The Energy Future Coalition [a nonpartisan, Washington, DC-based think tank] deferred to our report in its discussion of nuclear power. Overall, we're gratified by the level of interest."
Nuclear interest growing
Although interest in commercial nuclear power seems to be growing, the barriers to a rebirth of the industry are significant. The report notes that, "for a large expansion of nuclear power to succeed, four critical problems must be overcome."
The first of those problems is cost. Based on numbers from "actual experience" instead of engineering projections, the study says that a new nuclear power plant costs 6.7 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity. Plausible but unproved reductions in capital and operating costs could lower that to 5.1 cents. Pulverized coal costs 4.2 cents, and natural gas ranges from 3.8 to 5.6 cents, depending on the highly variable gas market. If the high initial cost of a nuclear power plant can be lowered, and if coal and gas are subject to a carbon tax, then nuclear power becomes more competitive. With a $100 per tonne tax on emitted carbon, coal would cost 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour and natural gas would range between 4.8 and 6.7 cents, the report says.
To overcome the high risk of being first to build a new commercial reactor, the report calls for the federal government to "provide a modest subsidy [in the form of a production tax credit] for a small set of 'first mover' commercial nuclear plants to demonstrate cost and regulatory feasibility." The report urges other steps to overcome the regulatory uncertainties facing nuclear power.
The second problem confronting commercial nuclear power is safety, and the report calls for maintaining the current standard of "less than one serious release of radioactivity accident for 50 years from all fuel cycle activity." The standard "implies a ten-fold reduction in the expected frequency of serious reactor core accidents," a reduction that "should be possible to achieve in new light-water reactor plants."
The nuclear power industry concedes that public confidence in nuclear power was seriously eroded by the 1976 nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania and by the Chernobyl reactor meltdown in 1986 in Ukraine. Public resistance to nuclear power has played an important part in the industry's stagnation, so safety has to be a central concern in renewal efforts.
The third hurdle that nuclear power advocates must overcome is radioactive waste. According to the report, "the management and disposal of high-level radioactive spent fuel from the nuclear fuel cycle is one of the most intractable problems facing the nuclear power industry throughout the world. No country has yet successfully implemented a system for disposing of this waste."
The report's authors believe geologic waste repositories can work, but they point to the one site being studied in the US, Nevada's Yucca Mountain, as an example of the difficulty of the problem. Despite 15 years of effort, Yucca Mountain still hasn't been licensed, and even if it is, "new repository capacity equal to the nominal storage capacity of Yucca Mountain would have to be created somewhere in the world every three or four years" if nuclear power is significantly expanded, the report says.
The report recommends that, in addition to Yucca Mountain, DOE launch a research program to "determine the viability of geologic disposal [of waste] in deep boreholes."
The fourth challenge to nuclear power expansion is proliferation. "The current international safeguards regime is inadequate to meet the security challenges" of a dramatically expanded use of nuclear power, the report states. "The reprocessing system now used in Europe, Japan, and Russia that involves separation and recycling of plutonium presents unwarranted proliferation risks. We conclude that, over at least the next 50 years, the best choice to meet these challenges is the open, once-through fuel cycle."
The transmutation debate
Perhaps the most critical analysis of the MIT report came from physicist Burton Richter, director emeritus of SLAC. Richter, who is chair of the Accelerator Transmutation of Waste subcommittee of DOE's Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee, wrote a six-page paper detailing disagreements with the recommendations on future directions of nuclear energy R&D.
"I agree with most of it," Richter said of the report. But in his work on the DOE advisory committee, he said he has "come to believe that transmutation [the transformation of one element into another by bombardment of nuclei with particles] has real potential." Richter noted that waste from the once-through fuel cycle recommended by the report "requires isolation from the environment for on the order of 300 000 years." Transmutation, Richter said, "has the potential to reduce the required isolation time to on the order of a thousand years, greatly reducing concerns about unlikely geophysical events." Moniz responded that the report advocates more research money for transmutation, but the horizon for that technology is too distant to play a role in current efforts to revive nuclear power. Richter said the MIT study should have placed greater emphasis on the cost of carbon sequestration for fossil fuels, which would level the economic playing field and make nuclear power competitive with fossil fuels. Moniz said the authors of the study used a "merchant plant model," meaning they determined costs based on private sector financing. "We based conclusions on actual experience," he said.
Deutch said he hopes the nuclear report is the first in a series of MIT studies on various energy issues. "I think carbon sequestration would be the next study we'd like to take on," he said.
Jim Dawson
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Las Vegas SUN
November 28, 2003
Editorial: Share Yucca facts more generously
If anything goes wrong after nuclear waste is entombed at Yucca Mountain, an environmental disaster bigger than anything the world has ever witnessed could be the result. We know now that the above-ground nuclear bomb blasts at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and early 1960s resulted in thousands of deaths from cancer. Imagine the catastrophe if Yucca Mountain were to begin leaking radiation -- radiation that would be picked up by the wind and driven toward population centers, which have a lot more people today than they did five decades ago.
Given this possible scenario, it seems to us that the Energy Department would be more scrupulous about sharing all of its Yucca Mountain research with Nevada and the multitude of scientists around the country who would eagerly provide peer reviews if asked. Instead, the Energy Department makes it difficult for anyone to access what it's learned so far. A case in point is information developed by the Energy Department that was recently reviewed by Nevada's Yucca Mountain experts. The information bears heavily on the safety of Yucca Mountain, but was received by our experts only after they had filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Plans call for extremely hot and volatile nuclear waste destined for Yucca Mountain to be sealed within metal casks. What Nevada's experts learned from the information was that the Energy Department concluded four years ago that there's a high probability of loaded and sealed casks being subjected to tremendous internal pressure, particularly if they are infiltrated by water or other liquid. The studies producing this information focused on the storage casks now in use at nuclear power plants. Nevada experts say the casks planned for Yucca Mountain, which does have some water flowing through it, are susceptible to the same pressure, which could cause a cask -- especially a corroded cask -- to burst. At the current on-site storage facilities, the casks can be monitored for dryness and any corrosion can be spotted and dealt with. What will happen if the cask s are buried and cannot be monitored?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to receive the Energy Department's application late next year for a license to open Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. The opening could be as early as 2010. For the sake of future generations, we hope the best scientific minds in the country have a chance to review the application -- without having to resort to the Freedom of Information Act.
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Pahrump Valley Times
November 28, 2003
County Commission Preview
Sludge back on the agenda
PVT
A request by the Amargosa Valley Town Advisory Board to ban the import of sewage sludge or impose a significant tonnage fee, will be considered during a Tuesday Nye County Commission meeting at Tonopah.
The meeting begins at 8:30 a.m. The matter of the sludge will be heard at 1:30 p.m. The Funeral Mountain Ranch has been importing sludge from the Orange County Sanitation District for use as fertilizer.
Commissioners Patricia Cox and Candice Trummell will hold a pre-agenda workshop at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at the Pahrump Community Center.
In another item, commissioners are scheduled to set a date for a public hearing on a bill amending loading fees for hazardous materials.
The rescinding of a motion at the Nov. 18 meeting, instructing the Natural Resources and Federal Facilities Department to post meetings on Yucca Mountain, will be considered.
Two members are up for appointment to the Beatty Town Advisory Board and three members to the Gabbs Town Advisory Board, to fill terms that expire in January.
The financing of a proposed detention facility is on the agenda.
Commissioners will consider sending a protest to the Nevada Division of Water Resources over water applications filed by the Las Vegas Valley Water District. A professional service contract with a hydro-geologist to present the county's case is up for approval.
Commissioners will consider setting a public hearing for an ordinance establishing a Nye County Animal Advisory Board.
A contract with Larry Beller and Associates is up for approval for employee relations consulting services. The county will also consider bids for a performance audit of county employees.
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Pahrump Valley Times
November 28, 2003
Leaks at Beatty center
Roof At New Public Building Proves Porous
By Richard Stephens
PVT
Meeting the evening of a rainy Nov. 12, the Beatty Town Advisory Board found itself dealing with the problem of a still-leaking community center roof.
Board Chairman Bert Bertram was reluctant to add the matter to the evening's agenda, citing unspecified criticisms he had received.
Bertram advised everyone that he had spent some time studying Nevada open meeting laws, and that all agenda items would be more carefully and specifically worded in the future.
LaRene Younghans prevailed in getting the matter added as an emergency item to the agenda. Younghans pointed out safety concerns with water dripping into electrical lighting fixtures.
Raphael Construction, the builders of the new community center addition, and main contractors on the roofing job, had been contacted regarding leaks. Some attempt had been made to fix the problem, but the leaks persist, as was evident at the meeting.
Town secretary Mary Ball said that the county purchasing department had sent a letter to the company regarding the problem. She had also called the Nevada Contractor's Board to begin the process of filing a complaint.
The board decided to ask the county commissioners to intervene, perhaps through District Attorney Bob Beckett.
In other Beatty Town Advisory Board news:
• The board revisited the matter of the local AWANA organization's request to paint a game diagram on the community center floor.
Bertram said he had fielded criticism from former Nye County Commissioner Jeff Taguchi, who is pastor of the Beatty Community Church. Taguchi had objected to wording in the board's previous refusal that referred to a possible civil rights violation concerning issues of separation of church and state, according to Bertram.
He said that Taguchi had suggested such language might set a precedent preventing any religious group from using the facility in the future.
Bertram's suggestion was to rescind the original action and to deal with the matter simply on the grounds that no one should be allowed to paint anything permanent on the community center floor, which, he said, was the real basis of the problem.
"It's not about church and state," argued Bertram. "We shouldn't allow any group to paint the community center floor."
Rick Wilson, who had worded the original motion, was reluctant to rescind it, saying he did not want to be pushed around by one person.
Member Johnny Scarborough said the objection on the grounds of separation of church and state was not unreasonable, but he could also see the logic of taking the course Bertram suggested.
After more discussion, Scarborough made the motion to rescind the original action.
The board then voted to deny the AWANA request and to form a committee to establish user policy for the community center.
• In liaison reports, Brad Hunt said the Beatty General Improvement District would be using the old courthouse and jail building, and that the office it has been using would be moved to the airport for use as a pilot's lounge.
Mary Ball said recent problems with two TV channels did not originate with the Beatty translators, but were equipment problems at Angel Peak. A technician had worked on the it, but one channel was still being received poorly, possibly because a dish there had been weakened by winds.
J. R. Schultz had copies of the Beatty bird brochure, which is back from the printers.
Ball said that she was told that the county needs copies of bids from competitors before they will pay for the town's part of the cost of the brochures. From what Schultz said in the meeting, it appears the winning bidder might have been in charge of seeking the other bids.
• Nye County Natural Resources and Federal Facilities Direct Les Bradshaw offered a lengthy report on the county's involvement in the Yucca Mountain Project. Bradshaw gave a broad overview of funding issues and outlined county concerns and needs.
A portion of Bradshaw's discussion covered the possibility of the community taking advantage of any rail system that might be installed to transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, located roughly 20 miles east of Beatty.
He said that the idea was to see what lemonade we could make from the lemon that is transportation.
Bradshaw said Beatty deserves a double gold star due to the federal government's treatment of the community on nuclear issues. The community, Bradshaw reminded everyone in attendance, would not only have to deal with the Yucca Mountain is, but the town is downstream from underground testing contamination, and is the nearest neighbor to low level waste buried at U. S. Ecology.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 27, 2003
CLARIFICATION -- Victor Gilinsky, author of the Nov. 25 commentary in the Review-Journal, " `Miracle metal' an embarrassment for Yucca backers," and former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, also should have been identified as a consultant to Nevada in the state's fight against the nuclear repository.
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Science Daily
November 27, 2003
Unusual Minerals Formed On Stored Nuclear Waste
Source: University Of California Davis
Nuclear fuel waste in long-term storage could form mineral phases that are not well understood, according to research by chemists at the University of Notre Dame and UC Davis and recently published in the journal Science.
Peter Burns, professor of civil engineering and geological sciences at Notre Dame, and graduate student Karrie-Ann Hughes, with UC Davis Interdisciplinary Professor Alexandra Navrotsky and postdoctoral researcher Katheryn Helean, studied the stability of two minerals, studtite and metastudtite, that contain both uranium and peroxide.
The researchers found that studtite and metastudtite may be readily formed on the surface of nuclear waste under long-term storage, possibly at the expense of other minerals, such as uranyl oxides and silicates, which have been more thoroughly studied and are better understood.
Studtites most likely form when radioactivity from uranium-rich rocks or nuclear fuel converts water to peroxide, which reacts with the minerals. Nuclear fuel waste under long-term storage, for example in the proposed Yucca Mountain depository in Nevada, would remain sufficiently radioactive to form studtite and metastudtite at the surface for thousands of years.
Not enough is known about these minerals to know if they will make radioactive wastes more stable or less, Navrotsky said.
"It means that the models used to assess fuel corrosion are incomplete. Whether the end result will be more or less corrosion than without studtite is a combination of thermodynamics and kinetics which needs to be explored further," she said.
Studtite also has been found on the surface of spent nuclear fuel stored at Hanford, Wash., nuclear site and on material at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in Ukraine.
Uranyl peroxides must be considered in assessing the impact of uranyl materials on the release of radioactivity from nuclear waste in a depository, the researchers said. The study was published in the Nov. 14 issue of Science.
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Las Vegas Mercury
November 27, 2003
Democracy in Peril
By Steve Sebelius
AHEAD OF THE PACK: Las Vegas. Always a trendsetter. We pass a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, on the off chance that some other state might legalize homosexual unions. And, sure enough, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court says gay marriage is okay in the Bay State, prompting nationwide calls for amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage. Hey, America, we're already there.
While California started the trend of government-by-initiative, we've got the nation's first just-in-case petitions. Republican activist George Harris has a somewhat questionable drive to repeal all taxes, but just in case his documents are found to be legally deficient, another Republican activist, Dan Burdish, has his own carefully crafted petition to repeal just the payroll tax. Double jeopardy for the tax lovers, and it started right here.
Assemblyman (and city employee) Wendell Williams is at the center of several scandals, but so far it's everyone around him getting fired, demoted, reassigned or accused of impropriety. The political body count connected to him now is five, but we're not done yet.
They pass the PATRIOT Act back in Washington, D.C., with nary a clue about how it could be abused. Then the FBI uses a provision of the act to gather financial information about well-known Las Vegas terrorists Dario Herrera, Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, Lance Malone and Erin Kenny. And they said PATRIOT Act-phobia was unjustified.
As if that wasn't bad enough, a lawsuit is filed alleging that FBI agents used the OnStar system to eavesdrop on the conversations of people involved in the political corruption scandal as they chatted in a car. The system is supposed to enable motorists to get help when lost or disabled; now it's a poor man's roving wiretap. And Vegas is at the forefront.
And as the drought continues to plague Southern Nevada, some businessmen who have been forced to shut down their decorative fountains suggest importing seawater from California to keep the water flowing. It sounds like a good idea to everyone but the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which thinks it would send a bad message. (Conserve seawater? But why?)
President Bush, who got elected thanks to Nevada after promising to apply "sound science" to Yucca Mountain, and then promptly authorized the dump anyway, plans a Las Vegas visit. But instead of saying no, thanks, a bunch of monied locals prepares to help him raise a cool quarter mil at the Venetian. A protest was planned, but Las Vegas apparently still leads the way when it comes to political forgiveness.
Steve Sebelius writes a daily e-mail newsletter, the E-Briefing, upon which Democracy in Peril is based. To subscribe to the E-Briefing at a Mercury reader special price of $20 per year, go to www.lasvegasmercury.com/ebriefing.
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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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