Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, December 9, 2003
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USA Today
December 09, 2003
Nevada keeps on the attack in its nuclear war with feds
By Martin Kasindorf, USA Today
LAS VEGAS — Outvoted in the political arena, Nevada will ask a federal appeals court next month to block the U.S. government from burying the nation's deadliest nuclear waste in the desert state.
Despite Nevada's objections, President Bush and Congress last year approved a permanent national repository for 77,000 tons of radioactive waste on federal land 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. That defeat for Nevada merely heated up the fight the state has waged since 1982 to nuke the $58 billion Yucca Mountain Project. It has been one of the most contentious not-in-my-backyard environmental feuds between a state and the federal government.
On Jan. 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear nine lawsuits filed by Nevada, Las Vegas and Clark County, Nev. Defendants include Bush, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Environmental Protection Agency. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, which authorized a nuclear-waste repository, said that any lawsuits over the project must be heard in the D.C. court.
Nevada alleges that the other 49 states have violated the Constitution by ganging up on a state of 2 million people to arbitrarily impose "this universally unwanted burden."
Although it's the fastest-growing state, Nevada remains politically weak. Ranking 35th in population, it has just three members of the U.S. House of Representatives, along with two senators. Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican, last year exercised an option that the 1982 federal law gave him to veto the repository. Congress overruled his veto.
Guinn "has said from the get-go he believes the legal arena is where this issue should be decided," Guinn spokesman Greg Bortolin says. "He believes we'll get a much fairer shake."
Court rulings are likely in mid-2004 on Nevada's constitutional and statutory claims. The outcome could be pivotal in determining whether spent fuel from nuclear power plants, Navy vessels and research reactors will be shipped to Nevada, or will keep piling up at 77 temporary storage sites in 31 states.
Abraham says the nuclear waste is a target for terrorist attacks at the current storage sites. Nevada opponents say putting thousands of shipments on roads and railways into Nevada is riskier.
"Six times a day it comes through town, for the next 20 years," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman says. "There's got to be an accident. You don't need a ... missile (to make the waste deadly). Wherever it takes place, the area will become a ghost town overnight."
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas led the city to enact an ordinance in 2000 making it unlawful to transport through the city "any high-level nuclear waste for delivery to a repository for nuclear waste." Truckers and railroad engineers convicted under the law would face a six-month jail term, a $1,000 fine or both.
Marta Adams, a senior deputy Nevada attorney general, concedes that the law might not stand up in court against federal authority. "But you've got to admit it has populist appeal," she says.
In another skirmish, Nevada's state engineer is denying the federal government the water it would need to operate a nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, saying it would be "detrimental to the public interest." On hold, pending the outcome in the D.C. appeals court, is a suit the U.S. government brought in Nevada federal district court to get the water.
Before losing the decisive U.S. Senate vote on Yucca Mountain in July 2002, Nevada spent $3 million on public relations campaigns to try to convince people in other states that shipping nuclear waste to the mountain would raise the possibility of terrorist "dirty bomb" attacks that could endanger thousands of communities across the USA.
A dirty bomb attack probably would involve the use of conventional explosives to spread radioactive material; that could create a toxic cloud and make the explosion site uninhabitable for years.
While under pressure from Nevada to stop the repository, the Energy Department also is being pressured to start digging waste-disposal tunnels at Yucca Mountain.
Electric utilities have won court rulings that said the department breached contractual obligations to start taking the utilities' used-up reactor fuel by 1998. Power companies have begun suing for damages that could total $56 billion, the Nuclear Energy Institute says.
Bush could pay a political price in Nevada for supporting the project.
Bush carried the state in the 2000 presidential campaign after promising that, if elected, he wouldn't approve a repository unless "sound science" supported it. Goodman and other officials in Nevada say Bush broke his promise. They say Yucca Mountain's fractured volcanic rock is geologically unsuitable to shield water supplies from toxic waste that inevitably will leak from storage canisters.
Nevada was an outpost of 160,000 people when it cheerfully hosted atmospheric tests of nuclear bombs near Yucca Mountain in the 1950s.
But sentiment toward nuclear risk has shifted as the tourism-dependent Las Vegas area has boomed to 1.6 million people. Polls show that two-thirds of Nevadans support the state's legal battle to shun waste that will remain radioactive for an estimated 250,000 years.
In a June survey of 680 Nevadans for a nuclear industry group, 54% said they strongly disapproved of Bush's move. Overall, only 26% said they would vote for Bush in 2004, while 36% said they favored a Democrat; 32% said the Yucca Mountain conflict wouldn't affect their vote. Pickets protesting the Yucca Mountain repository marched outside Las Vegas' Venetian hotel-casino when Bush spoke there at a campaign fundraiser Nov. 25.
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, stumping in Las Vegas on Oct. 28, said he had supported the Yucca Mountain facility as governor of Vermont because "I wanted to get that stuff out of my state." But "now that I'm running for president, I've seen the light."
Opposition to Yucca Mountain is virtually unanimous among top Nevada politicians. Republican Sen. John Ensign says of Bush: "When he's right, I'm with him. When he's not, we go our own way."
Ensign and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., have joined to keep federal money for the Yucca Mountain project on a shoestring. State Attorney General Brian Sandoval, a Republican who heads the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign in Nevada, is directing the legal effort against the project. He has hired 11 private lawyers. Joseph Egan of McLean, Va., an MIT-trained nuclear engineer, is lead outside counsel.
Former Nevada governor Bob List, a Republican, has broken ranks. He has become a paid consultant to the nuclear industry. List says the repository would be safe and that "some public officials are more motivated by getting re-elected than by honest concerns for safety and the environment."
The U.S. government "has always been an easy whipping boy for Nevada candidates," says List, who admits having taken "body blows from the media and from friends" for his position. He says the federal government "owns 87% of the land (in Nevada) and has always been our absentee landlord, with a big shadow dominating the Silver State landscape. Ranchers, miners, hunting and fishing interests all quarrel with it."
List says Nevada should stop fighting and start negotiating for millions of dollars in federal "impact mitigation" payments for teachers, roads and law enforcement. The 1982 nuclear-waste repository law authorizes such payments.
Nevada contends in its lawsuits that the U.S. government has violated that law by abandoning stable, deep rock as the "primary" Yucca Mountain barrier against nuclear contamination. Nevada says U.S. officials lost confidence in the mountain, jimmied the regulations in 2001 and now rely chiefly on sturdy storage casks and other "engineered" barriers.
On that basis, Adams says, a repository could be placed anywhere. Without a "rational, objective" geologic standard that requires singling out Nevada for sacrifice, she says, "it's like taking all the soldiers that are fighting in Iraq just from one state."
Energy Department officials say the linchpin of their legal response is that Congress made many of Nevada's challenges moot when it passed the resolution approving Yucca Mountain as the repository site.
The "new law" waived any failure by the government to observe previous laws, government briefs say. The feds also say the 1982 law and later amendments allow a "total system performance" approach to safety that can give geology a secondary role.
Opposing Nevada's constitutional claims, the Energy Department says that the Constitution gives the federal government broad power over its own land — and that Nevada wasn't denied a voice in the political give-and-take over the repository.
The Energy Department says that Yucca Mountain would be safe for the public for at least 10,000 years. The agency is eager to win in court and then get through a final step: obtaining an NRC construction and operating license in hopes of opening the repository in 2010. Science-intensive licensing hearings are expected to take three or four years.
If the process gets that far, Nevada plans to roll the dice again in opposing a license. The state has retained a corps of scientific consultants to testify. NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan says Yucca Mountain won't open until 2015 at the earliest.
Even the NRC process is "not the last thing" for Nevada, Ensign says. Convincing Congress that a 30-year transportation program for the nuclear waste is too expensive "may be what kills this thing in the end," he says.
"This fight, even if we don't win, is all about how you really can take (the federal government) on and make a difference," says Bob Loux, who heads the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "This is the best game in town. We've enjoyed fighting them."
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Reno Gazette-Journal
December 08, 2003
Letter: Make states pay for waste storage
Re Yucca Mountain:
I find that most Nevadans do not want this unless there is compensation for their putting up with the high risk of environmental (potential) problems linked to long-term storage.
Since this is being forced on Nevadans, I think charges to store and contain the nuclear waste should be assessed on the states that ship their waste here.
Royalties should be paid to all Nevada citizens that have lived in the state five or more years and still reside in the state. No handout for those who have moved out of state.
We must make those who shoved it this way pay for it!
Cynthia Smith, Fallon
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Tullahoma News
December 09, 2003
City gets $24,300 grant from FEMA
Brian Justice
In an effort to further ensure public safety, the City of Tullahoma has applied for and has received a $24,300 matching grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
John Riley, city emergency management director, said the city's share would be $6,075 of the total with the federal government paying $18,225.
The grant is part of FEMA's hazardous mitigation program, and the money will be used for hazardous materials prevention and other disaster-related efforts, Riley said.
He said the city's contribution can be through in-kind labor, and he intends to draft hazardous mitigation plans, saving the $6,075 requirement.
The federal program provides grants to states and local governments to implement long-term hazard mitigation measures after a major disaster declaration.
Riley said the purpose of the program is to reduce the loss of life and property due to natural disasters and to enable mitigation measures to be implemented during the immediate recovery from a disaster.
The grant money may be used to fund projects that will reduce or eliminate the losses from future disasters.
The FEMA Web site says that projects must provide long-term solutions to problems.
For example the elevation of a home to reduce flood risk is preferable to buying sandbags and pumps to fight high water.
In addition, a project's potential savings must be more than the cost of implementing the project.
Funds may be used to protect either public or private property or to purchase property that has been subjected to repetitive damage.
Tullhoma's project equipment list calls for hazardous materials computer support software, a printer, a computer monitor, financing for public meetings, developing a hazard mitigation planning team, training money and funding for secretarial expenses.
Riley said the equipment will be used to chart and label potentially hazardous areas, identify flood-prone areas and other places where chemical spills could occur.
He said such preventive measures are paramount, considering the country have been a victim to terrorism and remains in a defensive state.
Riley said Tullahoma has a regional airport and railroad usage as a major tranportation thoroughfare. He said the circumstances make disaster planning a high priority.
He referred to Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The long-delayed nuclear waste dump, which has received final congressional approval, is eventually expected to hold 77,000 tons of highly radioactive materials, mostly from power plants.
The project could have a local impact to the southern Middle Tennessee area because nuclear waste would probably be shipped by rail through Tullahoma and on nearby Interstate 24 by truck.
Allen Benson, Department of Energy/Yucca Mountain public information officer, previously said that the earliest shipments would be passing through the area would probably be 2010.
The mountain, a ridge of volcanic rock and ash, is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and adjacent to the Nevada Test Site where the government detonated scores of nuclear bombs during the Cold War years.
Benson said specially designed railroad cars would be used to transport nuclear waste. He added they would probably pass through Tullahoma, carrying material from nuclear generation plants in Tennessee or Alabama and South Carolina.
Riley said Tullahoma needs to be proactive in disaster planning.
"The railroad line running through here is the main line between north and south," he said. "The Office of Emergency Management is continuing to update our emergency response plans so we can meet our needs."
Riley said Tullahoma has always taken a proactive approch to emergency management issues.
"I don't think people realize how fortunate we are in Tullahoma," he said. "We have a Board of Mayor and Aldermen concerned about the city and how it is successful.
"I feel right now we're a lot better off than we were two years ago."
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U.S. Newswire
December 08, 2003
What's Next in the Yucca Nuclear Waste Controversy? Reporters- Only Briefing with Experts on the Yucca Issue
To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor
Contact: Kris Geddings, 202-965-6680, or Nancy Bennett, 800-834-1110, both for the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects
News Advisory:
On January 14, a three-member panel of D.C. Court of Appeals judges will hear six consolidated cases brought by Nevada against the Department of Energy's project to build a high level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from all the nuclear power plants in the country.
The legal process, which has been moving ahead quietly, is more important than last year's highly publicized Congressional vote. Should Nevada prevail in any of the lawsuits, DOE would have to go back to the drawing board and the ensuing delay and added expense could kill the project.
Yucca Mountain Press Briefing Luncheon
Dec. 18, noon to 2 p.m.
National Press Club Zenger Room
(Limited seating -- R.S.V.P. to Nancy Bennett, 800-834-1110)
Speakers:
-- Bob Loux, executive director, State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects
-- Joe Egan, Nuclear Attorney representing Nevada in the lawsuits
-- Victory Gilinsky, former Commissioner, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Nevada's chief attorney, Joe Egan, will explain Nevada's position in the lawsuits and what to look for in the oral argument before the Court. The briefing would also be an opportunity to discuss the basic substantive safety and waste policy issues with Bob Loux, Nevada's top nuclear official, and Victor Gilinsky, a consultant to Nevada and a former NRC commissioner.
-- What are the key safety issues at Yucca Mountain?
-- How has Nevada contributed to evaluating the safety issues?
-- What is the significance of the latest Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board report on the likelihood of waste package corrosion?
-- What are the reasonable alternatives to Yucca Mountain?
-- Does stopping Yucca Mountain threaten the future of nuclear power?
-- What is DOE likely to encounter in a licensing hearing before the NRC?
For more information: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
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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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