Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, December 8, 2003
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Las Vegas SUN
December 08, 2003
Closed NRC-DOE meetings questioned
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval has filed a formal complaint about another round of closed-door meetings that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department are conducting this week.
Commission staff members are meeting with Energy Department officials to talk about technical details of the Yucca Mountain nuclear spent fuel storage project, planned for 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The meetings are closed to state officials and the public, according to memos from the NRC.
The latest set of meetings is to last through the week and were to begin today. Two weeks ago the first set of technical meetings took place in Las Vegas.
Nevada officials spoke out against the meetings, saying they saw no reason for them to be closed. The Nevada congressional delegation filed formal complaints, and now Sandoval has followed suit regarding the second set of the meetings.
"As I am sure you are aware, secret meetings between a prospective license applicant and the NRC will further undercut public confidence in NRC as an independent regulatory agency," Sandoval wrote to commission chairman Nils Diaz. "This is especially true in Nevada where the public is already convinced that the NRC is working hand-in-glove with DOE to build a repository at Yucca Mountain."
Sandoval said that other than matters involving classified materials or homeland security issues he could not "conceive of any reason that these meetings should be closed."
The NRC said these types of meetings are normal in other reviews of license applications, and they have not been open to the public before.
A commission inspector general report issued last year found the previous meetings did not violate any laws.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 08, 2003
Redford praises Reid, blasts Bush's energy bill in Nevada stop
By Martin Griffith
Associated Press
RENO, Nev. (AP) - Actor and longtime conservationist Robert Redford criticized the Bush administration's energy legislation, calling it one of the worst bills he's seen in his lifetime.
At a news conference before attending a fund-raiser for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Redford said the bill was flawed from the start since it was designed behind closed doors by Vice President Dick Cheney and oil industry executives.
"It's one of the greatest disgraces in my time," Redford said Sunday. "It's a bad bill, it's a horrible bill.
"I think the American people are being really ill served right now and I think no where is it more disgraceful than in how the environment is being treated," he added.
Redford said the legislation places too much dependence on fossil fuels and not enough stress on alternative energy sources and conservation measures.
Republican congressional leaders have vowed to return to the measure early next year after falling two Senate votes short of sending a bill to Bush in November.
About 150 people attended Reid's $500-a-head fund-raiser at the south Reno mansion owned by John Harrah, the son of casino founder Bill Harrah. Reid, who's up for re-election next year, has raised about $5.1 million.
Redford and Reid have worked together on environmental issues and Redford wants Reid to hold his position as minority whip - the second-highest Democratic position.
Redford hailed Reid for his efforts to protect Lake Tahoe and for his opposition to a federal nuclear waste dump at Southern Nevada's Yucca Mountain. The dump is supported by the Bush administration.
"Not only is Sen. Reid a tremendous national figure, but he's great for the state of Nevada," Redford said. "I'm aware of what he's done to protect the state's interests."
Redford said Reid would continue to stand up to the Bush administration's environmental policies, including efforts to relax the Clean Air Act.
He accused the administration of misleading the public by calling its air quality legislation the Healthy Skies Initiative.
"As far as I'm concerned, when I hear the words `we're out to protect the American people' I realize not only is that not true but we're harming the American people," Redford said.
"I've never known an administration more narrow, more limited and more mean; the lack of respect and the meanness is beyond me ... I believe that now, for my lifetime, I've never known a time more threatening and more dangerous to the American people at large or the country at large" on a wide range of issues, he added.
Redford is best known for his roles in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Natural." He won an Academy Award for directing for the 1980 film "Ordinary People."
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State of Nevada
December 4, 2003
Offiice Of The Attorney General
Nevada Department of Justice
AG Sandoval: Yucca Secret Meetings a Disservice to State of Nevada, Concerned Public
Carson City—Attorney General Brian Sandoval today expressed Nevada´s opposition to closed meetings between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy in a letter to Nils J. Diaz, Chairman of the NRC.
“Other than those that concern classified materials or homeland security issues, these meetings should be presumed open for the public good,’ said Sandoval. “The Yucca proposal raises health, safety and security concerns not just for Nevadans, but for all Americans due to the transportation of nuclear waste. For those very same reasons—health, safety and security—the waste should remain at production sites, in dry casks proven good for at least one hundred years, until the problem of long-term storage is truly resolved.’ Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams added: “It´s incomprehensible that closed meetings would occur between a regulatory agency and a regulated agency that is seeking licensure from that very same oversight body except in extraordinary circumstances. We were specifically excluded, so it´s hard to believe that it´s a matter of national security or classified documents.’
According to the transportation plan for nuclear waste, the proposed Yucca repository will be full following thousands of shipments at a rate of about three per day, 365 days per year for over thirty years. Bob Loux, Director of the State´s Agency for Nuclear Projects, has argued that this plan indicates that Yucca is not a “central’ repository at all because once Yucca reaches capacity according to the plan, current rates of production would guarantee that at least as much waste would still reside at the distributed sites as would be stored in Yucca itself. “It´s a plan for proliferation of nuclear waste storage sites, not a plan for centralization,’ he said.
Nevada presents its court cases with opening oral arguments on January 14th, 2004 in the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 06, 2003
NRC schedules closed sessions
Meetings set on Yucca Mountain project
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled a second set of closed-door sessions on the Yucca Mountain Project, prompting Nevada's attorney general to file a complaint charging secrecy in the nuclear waste program.
NRC staff members are scheduled to meet Monday through Friday in Las Vegas with counterparts from the Department of Energy to evaluate plans for the proposed spent fuel repository, according to an NRC memo.
"At this time the evaluation of DOE is not open to public observation," read the memo by NRC senior quality assurance engineer Thomas Matula, who added more sessions would be held in the future.
At the same time, NRC staff is considering new policy that could keep the public out of similar Yucca Mountain evaluations, agency officials confirmed.
The NRC and the Energy Department held an initial set of closed-door meetings Nov. 17-21 in Las Vegas. Those were protested by Nevada officials and opponents to the repository project, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
On Friday, state officials said they have not received a satisfactory explanation why they are not allowed access to meetings about the repository.
"It's just clear they are blowing us off without any rationale," said Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval sent a complaint Tuesday to NRC chairman Nils Diaz.
"Other than matters concerning classified materials or homeland security issues, I cannot conceive of any reason that these meetings should be closed," Sandoval said.
Sandoval said the meetings would increase perceptions in Nevada that the NRC, an independent regulator, "is working hand-in-glove with DOE to build a repository at Yucca Mountain."
Last year, NRC Inspector General Hubert Bell investigated a similar complaint that Nevada leaders were being kept out of the loop on discussions between the NRC and the Energy Department on the repository. After a two-month investigation, Bell concluded the contacts were proper.
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Las Vegas Sun
December 06, 2003
Nevada attorney general files complaint over Yucca meetings
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled a second set of closed-door meetings to discuss plans to bury the nation's nuclear waste in southern Nevada, prompting the state attorney general to lodge a complaint with the commission chair.
NRC staff members are scheduled to meet with Department of Energy officials next week in Las Vegas to evaluate plans for the Yucca Mountain site, which received congressional approval last year. The Energy Department is preparing an NRC licensing application to open the repository in 2010.
The NRC and the Energy Department held a set of closed-door meetings in Las Vegas in November. Those were protested by state officials and opponents to Yucca Mountain, which is located 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
State officials said Friday they have not received a satisfactory explanation why they are not allowed to attend these meetings.
"It's just clear they are blowing us off without any rationale," said Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval sent a complaint Tuesday to NRC chairman Nils Diaz.
"Other than matters concerning classified materials or homeland security issues, I cannot conceive of any reason that these meetings should be closed," Sandoval said.
Sandoval said the meetings would increase perceptions within the state that the NRC, an independent regulator, "is working hand-in-glove with DOE to build a repository at Yucca Mountain."
Last year, NRC Inspector General Hubert Bell investigated a similar complaint that Nevada leaders were being kept out of the loop on discussions between the NRC and the Energy Department on the repository. After a two-month investigation, Bell concluded the contacts were proper.
Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal
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Pahrump Valley Times
December 5, 2003
Yucca Mountain
Threat to nation's nuke facilities will be assessed
By Steve Tetreault
PVT Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Congress is directing independent science experts to take a fresh look at whether highly radioactive nuclear waste stored at commercial power plants could be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
The National Academy of Sciences is assembling a 10-member panel to perform a six-month study requested by the chairmen of House energy and homeland security subcommittees.
Reps. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., head of the panel that funds homeland security programs, and David Hobson, R-Ohio, who leads the energy and water subcommittee, inserted $1 million into an energy spending bill for the study.
President Bush signed the bill into law on Monday.
"Chairman Rogers believes that the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and the (Department of Energy) have looked at the safety and environmental issues associated with spent nuclear fuels but not necessarily the security focus," said Jeanne Wilson, a staff assistant on the homeland security subcommittee.
Rogers wants "an up to date, unbiased, objective study of nuclear facilities security," Wilson said. "The chairman's view is we need to have someone take a look at the issue."
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham cited nuclear plant security as one of the underpinnings of his recommendation last year to build a spent fuel repository at Yucca Mountain.
Abraham argued the highly radioactive material would be safer stored in the desert than left at power plants, although the NRC and the General Accounting Office have said in recent studies the likelihood of harm from terrorist attack or severe accidents at nuclear storage sites is low.
It is unlikely the new study would touch on Yucca Mountain, officials said. The academy, a congressionally chartered body that advises the government on science and technology issues, has another study ongoing on safety issues associated with shipping nuclear waste to the Nevada site.
Congress directed the NRC, the Energy Department and the Department of Homeland Security to cooperate with the academy on the plant security study. Jon MacLaren, homeland security director of physical infrastructure security, was assigned to the study.
Officials began forming study plans during a daylong meeting Wednesday of the academy's board of radioactive waste management. The academy's findings would be classified although an unclassified summary would be published later, staff director Kevin Crowley said.
Speaking to board members, Wilson said lawmakers are being told by the Department of Homeland Security that al Qaeda terrorists are still interested in crashing planes into high profile structures like nuclear plants, or stealing nuclear materials to make dirty bombs.
At the same time, she said, they are hearing from vendors wanting to sell harder nuclear waste storage and transportation casks.
The academy will study potential safety and security risks of spent fuel presently stored in cooling pools at 103 commercial reactor sites, and whether the fuel assemblies would be safer kept in above-ground casks at the reactors.
Experts also will evaluate various cask designs, including dual use canisters that could avoid having to repackage fuel assemblies for shipment to the Nevada repository.
Robert Budnitz, a nuclear consultant, questioned whether Congress allowed enough time to tackle an ambitious study.
"You can't do this job in six months with 10 volunteers," he told the board.
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Pahrump Valley Times
December 5, 2003
Trummell: Post YMP agendas
Commissioner Named Liaison on Nuclear Waste Issues
By Mark Waite
PVT
TONOPAH - Nye County Commission liaisons on nuclear waste met with their counterparts from Esmeralda and Lincoln counties, in Goldfield Wednesday, the second meeting of the new tri-party working group on Yucca Mountain transportation issues.
While no agenda was published, Commissioner Candice Trummell pushed unsuccessfully for posting meetings county officials attend that concern the Yucca Mountain Project. Commissioners voted 4-1 to require posting agendas at a Nov. 18 meeting in Pahrump, but rescinded that action Tuesday.
Commissioner Midge Carver, who requested the rescission, said it would interfere with the way the county normally conducts business. Carver said she normally receives enough e-mails from the Nye County Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities, it's almost like Spam.
"We had liaisons I felt we should trust to do what we needed to do. We didn't need to be informed of every single, solitary thing that happened. Because we are, in effect, notified of all the meetings by e-mail, what more could we possibly want?" Carver asked.
"It's ludicrous at best to feel that this can happen and happen efficiently. I guess that's the thing," she said.
At the Nov. 18 meeting, Les Bradshaw, director of Nye County Natural Resources and Federal Facilities, complained it would be cumbersome to post agendas and comply with all the conditions of the open meeting laws for every meeting on Yucca Mountain.
Trummell said she didn't believe the federal facilities office was doing a good enough job of notifying commissioners what was going on. Trummell said she wouldn't support an action if three commissioners can't attend the meeting. Three commissioners would constitute a quorum, which would require publishing an agenda.
"This was a group set up not necessarily to get input from the public," Carver said. She added, "They still have to come before the commission to make a decision."
Carver implied Trummell's suggestion to publish agendas stemmed from a meeting with officials from the three counties that was held in September in Amargosa Valley. Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, convened it. That meeting was denounced in Las Vegas as a secretive attempt to divide the counties on Yucca Mountain issues.
"The situation was certainly manipulated. This item was meant originally to try to remove the ability to manipulate as much as possible," Trummell said.
Coincidentally, it was announced at the Tuesday commission meeting that Trummell would replace Commissioner Joni Eastley as Nye County's liaison on nuclear waste issues. County Commission Chairman Henry Neth is the other commission liaison on nuclear waste; he served in that capacity with former Commissioner Jeff Taguchi.
Trummell said she listened to a teleconference of the 10 counties receiving Yucca Mountain oversight funds. Various county officials, she said, agreed to divide the money in the traditional manner. In that case, Nye County would receive $1.34 million in 2004, down from the $2.01 million in this year's allotment.
Trummell has taken an active interest in Yucca Mountain during her first year on the commission. She asked commissioners to take a stand opposing a rail route to ship nuclear waste through Pahrump Valley and released results of a statewide survey on Yucca Mountain.
Trummell said Lincoln County posted an agenda for the Goldfield meeting, since all three Lincoln County commissioners would be attending.
Eastley said it wasn't her intention to attend any of the Yucca Mountain meetings, now that she's no longer a county liaison. Commissioner Patricia Cox, who lobbied to be appointed a Yucca Mountain liaison last January, said she'd only attend if the full commission were requested to be there.
"We do have to start trusting each other in bringing back the report and the information and staff does inform all the commissioners when meetings are taking place," Cox said.
Trummell noted that it was the second time commissioners made a decision in front of a packed audience in Pahrump and reversed themselves when no one was there in Tonopah. She said the other decision involved a flip-flop over the establishment of a Nye County health department.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 04, 2003
Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: A vote for sanity
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
If I Could vote for Dick Gephardt tomorrow for the presidency of the United States, I'd do it.
Why? Because he understands the absurdity and undeniable danger inherent in shipping high-level nuclear waste across this entire country, through cities large and small, over bridges, on barges and on rail cars that pass thousands of schools full of little kids, just to bury it a few miles from Las Vegas.
If Joe Lieberman were on the ballot today, I'd vote for him, too. The same is true for Sen. John Kerry and any other candidate who believes that Yucca Mountain is a bad idea, not only for the 1.5 million people who live in Las Vegas but also for more than 100 million other people whose lives will be in danger with every one of the thousands of trucks and trains that will roll past them over the next three decades.
Why is it so hard to understand that high-level nuclear waste is not good for children and other living things? Why are some people so quick to accept the word of those whose financial interests are directly tied to the nuclear power industry when they tell us not to worry, that the government has it all under control and that the Department of Energy's ability to deal with radioactive waste gives us all reason to be secure in our homes and at work?
Is it possible that some Las Vegans have been so blinded by the gold in President George W. Bush's tax cuts that they have taken leave of their senses and their long-term health and financial interests in Las Vegas? Could it be that there are so many people who believe that only President Bush can lead us out of the valley of terrorism, and because of that they are willing to hock their kid's futures on his plan to bury the nation's radioactive garbage in our backyard?
This is not an anti-Bush column, it is an anti-anyone who thinks that shipping 70,000-plus tons of nuclear poison through most major population centers and down Interstate 15 on its way to Yucca Mountain is either a good idea or a necessary evil in the effort to find a solution to radioactive waste.
When Congressman Richard Gephardt was in Las Vegas earlier this week he did what any smart politician should do. He told the people of Nevada that shipping the nuclear waste across the country was nuts and that it is a better idea to leave that stuff at the power plants where it is made and currently resides.
The difference between Gephardt and President Bush, for example, is that when candidate Bush was in Nevada asking for votes he sided with science as the determinant for where that garbage should go and, as soon as he took office, changed sides to cozy up with his financial backers in the power industry to do what they wanted, not what was right or what he promised.
Gephardt has maintained his opposition to Yucca Mountain regardless of where he speaks. He is consistent. Bush is not.
Even the Democratic candidates who voted in the U.S. Senate to seal Nevada's fate under tons of nuclear waste are consistent. I don't agree and can't see myself voting for anyone who acted against Nevada's interests on such a life-and-death matter but, at least, they say the same thing wherever they go.
Whether it was a major coal shipment that derailed in Gephardt's district earlier this year, or a truck that drove itself off a bridge into the Arkansas River last year, or any number of tractor-trailer accidents on the nation's freeways that tie up traffic while their contents are cleaned up, there is no denying the fact that had those been full of high-level radioactive waste instead of coal, or fuel oil or any number of dangerous but far less deadly materials, the results could have been devastating.
And just in case anyone has developed a bad case of trust in the private sector's ability to be concerned about safety, consider the latest comedy act involving Southern California Edison's attempt to transfer a 770-ton used nuclear reactor to South Carolina.
The same government that sees nothing wrong with opening our nation's highways to high-level waste trucks and the potential terrorist attacks and accidents that will go with that plan, had been opposing Southern California Edison's idea of using our federal highways and byways for their burial scheme. Other governments have also said no to shipping the reactor over, under, around and through the Panama Canal or the treacherous waters of Cape Horn. And, still, the private owners of the nuclear reactor kept trying.
But the government charade ended earlier this week when it caved in to the monied interests. The U.S. Transportation Department decided, after all, to approve the shipment around the tip of South America.
It's a decision, however, that won't be good for regular people. Doesn't the government know that ships sink?
The bottom line is this: Nuclear waste is something no one wants and almost everyone will soon get thanks to the politicians who say one thing and do another. So, if you count yourself among those who think that radioactivity is bad for you and your family, consider how you want to hold those people accountable who are delivering that stuff practically to your door.
There is nothing complicated about the answer. Those who don't care about my health, my future and that of my family do not get my vote.
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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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