Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
December 16, 2003
Editorial: Strange way of defining friendship
Weekend Edition December 13 - 14, 2003
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval is threatening to file more lawsuits against the Energy Department if federal funding isn't restored for state and local government oversight of the Yucca Mountain project. Last week Sandoval sent a letter to the Energy Department and the Office of Management and Budget, noting that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires that the federal government give Nevada money for scientific oversight of the project, which, if given a license, would result in the burial of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in Southern Nevada.
We agree with Sandoval and other Nevada officials that the federal government should live up to its obligations to provide our state with this funding. But, in light of how shabbily this state has been treated in the past by the federal government in singling out Nevada for the nation's nuclear waste dump -- despite plenty of evidence of just how dangerous it would be to ship and bury the waste here -- we can't say that we're surprised. What is amazing is just how little money we're talking about in the larger scheme of things. In Bush's proposed $591 million budget for the Yucca Mountain project, he eliminated $2.5 million provided to Nevada and $6 million to local governments devoted to research and other oversight activities of the proposed dump.
It was way back in February when Gov. Kenny Guinn sent a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, objecting to the loss of funding. Sandoval mentioned in his recent letter to Abraham and Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua Bolten that Guinn still hadn't received a response more than nine months later. You'd think that the president, who referred to Guinn as his "close friend" during Bush's Las Vegas fund-raiser three weeks ago, would have been able to find some money for Nevada -- or at least drop him a line.
A large part of the problem is that Republican officials in this state, such as Guinn and Sandoval, are sending mixed signals to Bush, who last year recommended to Congress that the Yucca Mountain project go forward -- despite his 2000 campaign pledge that he would base his decision on "sound science." Sandoval, don't forget, is chairman of Bush's 2004 campaign in Nevada and Guinn is an honorary co-chairman of Bush's Nevada re-election effort. Guinn's partisan fealty also doesn't help matters when he tries to downplay the huge differences between him and Bush over Yucca Mountain. "As Ronald Reagan used to say, if people agree with you 80 percent of the time, they're your friend, not your enemy," Guinn has said. For Nevada's sake, Guinn needs to find a new friend.
---------------------------
Progressive Trail
December 16, 2003
Home Home on the (Radioactive) Range
by Chip Ward
Published by Tom Dispatch
The high and dry Great Basin Desert covers much of western Utah and most of Nevada. Its vast scenery -- barren gray ranges and sage covered plains -- are an acquired taste that few Americans have acquired. Most consider the lonely drive from Salt Lake City to Reno a sleep-inducing and bladder-busting ordeal. Home to flash floods, wildfires, coyotes and seismic catastrophes, the Great Basin is unloved and, therefore, easily abused. It is where we once practiced atomic, then chemical and biological warfare. It is covered with bombing ranges. Today, it is becoming a time-bomb graveyard for nuclear waste that cannot be abided where it is generated.
Those of us who live on the boundaries of such Great Basin facilities as the Nevada Test Site, or the nuclear reservation at Hanford, Washington, or Dugway Proving Grounds have been "downwinders" before. We know how the economics of costs, risks, and liabilities can get translated not only into federal policy but also into ecological disaster and human tragedy. We know that nuclear utilities and their federal facilitators would turn our landscape into a radioactive wasteland and that we are on the frontline of a national struggle.
At first glance, this does not bode well for those who have long fought nuclear technology and its corporate owners. The Great Basin, after all, is sparsely populated and its citizens are politically weak. Mostly Mormon, they are inexperienced in the art of grassroots politics. A local joke goes: how many Utahns does it take to screw in a light bulb. The answer: five - one man to pronounce Heavenly Father's will, another to lead prayer while screwing in the bulb, and three women to provide childcare and refreshments. Recently, however, political activists in Utah won a big one, a hinterland victory that has gone mostly unnoticed but should encourage activists everywhere. If a handful of determined citizens can beat the big boys in Utah, we can win anywhere.
Facing a Mobile Chernobyl
Utah and Nevada get it both ways. After enduring the insidious consequences of fallout from a hundred above-ground tests of our atomic arsenal, plus leakage from hundreds of underground nuclear tests, we are now asked to abide the results of the "peaceful atom" as well. Utilities that own nuclear power plants elsewhere in the country have for decades been accumulating the waste stream from Hell. So-called "spent" fuel rods from reactor cores are the most irradiated substances on the planet and, unshielded, can kill the unwary bystander within minutes of exposure. They remain dangerous for 20,000 years. After fifty years of studying what to do with such "high-level" nuclear waste, the federal government has assumed responsibility for imposing a "solution" where there is none. Nevada is slated to get forty years' worth of accumulated spent fuel, now stored near reactors across the nation. A "permanent" repository under construction at Yucca Mountain near the Nevada Nuclear Test Site will be the most expensive taxpayer-funded engineering project in history.
Permanence is a dicey concept out here. Yucca is not as safe as an easterner might suspect. The desert only appears static. We live in a dynamic landscape where the earth cracks and shifts suddenly and unimpeded winds lift dust into the jet stream. As Mount St. Helen showed in 1980, even supposedly dormant volcanoes sometimes blow and drift eastward.
The feds also promised the nuclear industry that they would facilitate the development of a "temporary" site to park used fuel rods while they await transfer to Yucca Mountain. When they failed to do so, a consortium of several nuclear utilities came up with a Plan B. Calling themselves Private Fuel Storage, they are trying to ship their accumulated spent-fuel rods to a dirt-poor Goshute Indian reservation in Skull Valley, Utah, until the Yucca Mountain facility can be completed in ten years or so. The state of Utah has held PFS off, arguing that the "temporary" site will sooner or later become permanent because an additional twenty or more years down the road, when Yucca Mountain is filled, there will be enough accumulated fuel rods to fill Skull Valley as well, and still leave more in storage around the power plants that generated them.
Far from solving a staggering and intractable problem, Nevada and Utah argue, Yucca Mountain and Skull Valley simply allow that problem to be replicated and compounded again and again. The Great Basin is slated to be used as an enabler for some very toxic collective behaviors. In the meanwhile, all that dangerous high-level nuclear waste will be hauled across watersheds, over aquifers, and through communities -- thousands of shipments vulnerable to terrorist attacks and inevitable accidents along the way. Most will carry the cesium equivalent of more than two hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs. Millions of Americans will be in the path of what critics are calling "Mobile Chernobyl."
But wait, there's more. The nation's nuclear power infrastructure is aging and must be rebuilt if nuclear power is to continue. Since it is no longer possible to site a new nuclear power plant anywhere that lobotomy-free citizens live, the industry cannot perform the usual "walk-away-and-let-the-government-clean-up" act it perfected while mining and processing the uranium that is its raw material. No, the old power plants will have to be torn apart and rebuilt in place. The result will be yet more hot and dangerous debris, hundreds of thousands of tons of "low-level" nuclear waste generated by ripping out and rebuilding that infrastructure. Low-level radioactive waste comes in three alphabetic categories: A, B, and C. B and C wastes are the hottest and most problematic. Previous attempts to isolate and store such wastes failed badly in wet climes like South Carolina. After all, radioactive materials migrate easily once they reach water. To upgrade and go on, nuclear utilities desperately need a dry rug to sweep their hot debris under, so our desert lands are now targeted.
The government's policy for dealing with this developing component of our intractable nuclear waste dilemma has also collapsed and is being conceded to the private sector. An entrepreneur named Khosrow Semnani is becoming the nation's first radioactive-waste multimillionaire and wants to become even richer by filling the gap between the drive to keep nuclear utilities profitable and the inability of federal agencies to pimp their tainted waste stream. Semnani, who gave his corporation the tree-hugging moniker Envirocare, operates a large landfill for A-level radioactive waste, mostly contaminated soils, on Utah's West Desert. He has come close to establishing a monopoly of the market for A-level radioactive waste and is now bidding to corner the emerging market in B and C-level debris.
The federal government has been an expensive, unresponsive, and careless steward of the nation's nuclear waste. Any citizen who has tried to influence a hearing of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission knows that its relation to sound science, open information, and citizen inclusion is a lot like the relationship between justice and a drive-by shooting. But the experiment in privatizing the radioactive-waste problem on Utah's western desert has revealed the dramatic shortcomings of that alternative.
When Semnani was applying to Utah for a permit to develop his dump, he paid $600,000 in gold coins and condos to the director of the state's radioactive waste agency who is now serving time in prison, not for extorting the money or receiving a bribe but for failing to report his ill-gotten gains to the IRS. Semnani's lawyers first kept him out of jail and then turned their attention to the corporation's peskier critics -- the Sierra Club's Cindy King, for example, is fighting off a $142 million defamation suit. Despite his less than stellar reputation, Semnani went on to become a major contributor to many Utah gubernatorial, congressional, and legislative candidates. Utah's political patriarchs who zealously guard their flock against the dangers of sex education and beer commercials saw no problem in accepting Semnani's glowing largesse.
High Noon and the Mormon Temple of Doom
Just three years ago, Envirocare looked unbeatable and was rolling toward whatever regulatory and legislative permission it needed to expand into the B and C market when a handful of determined activists threw themselves in its path. A grassroots group, Families Against Incinerator Risk, originally formed to oppose the incineration of chemical weapons, led the resistance. FAIR created literature and a web site, taught workshops, held debates, wrote letters, turned out citizens for hearings, lobbied, generated news stories, held demonstrations, cultivated allies, and finally morphed into a broader coalition, the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, or HEAL Utah.
FAIR/HEAL's task was made harder by a local political culture that could not be more hostile to change initiated from the bottom. Utah has a thin history of grassroots and labor organizing and we haven't acquired the skills and native leadership to resist powerful corporations and their government agency allies. Culturally, the Mormon majority is not disposed to challenge authority. My heck, as we would say here, we don't even have a viable two-party system. Except for Salt Lake City itself, Republicans utterly dominate the state legislature and local governments and a rightwing "Cowboy Caucus" dominates the Republican Party. Here the notion of checks and balances applies mostly to banking transactions. Debate in Utah's Legislature tends to be the intellectual equivalent of marrying your cousin.
State regulators get their budgets and marching orders from legislators hostile to regulation in general and environmental notions in particular. Because the ideal Mormon family includes five to ten kids, our population profile is closer to Bangladesh than Bangor, Maine, and our legislators are desperate for the revenue necessary to educate so many. They are pleased when deserts once used as military toilets for nerve gas and anthrax can be turned into pay toilets for commercial hazardous waste. The result is a notoriously weak interpretation of environmental law and policy followed by timid enforcement. Under former governor, now EPA director Michael Leavitt, Utah regulators were more like lap dogs than watch dogs with only one trick in their repertoire: roll over. Predatory corporations peddling toxic waste disposal, who knew an anemic civic environment when they saw one, took full advantage. Each new environmental horror pried opened the gate a bit further for the next poisonous monster to slither in.
Semnani's bid to take on hotter radioactive wastes was held off through three legislative sessions before a task force, stacked with Envirocare supporters, was assigned to study the issues and resolve the debate once and for all. The outlook seemed bleak. But within months, FAIR/HEAL, under the leadership of 27 year-old activist Jason Groenewold, managed to strip the task force of its credibility. Recent polls show more than 85 percent of Utahns are opposed to importing the hotter wastes.
The fat lady might have cleared her throat, but she wasn't quite ready to sing. Then Utah's newest congressman, aptly named Rob Bishop, jumped into the fray. A former paid lobbyist for Envirocare, he quietly facilitated a Department of Energy attempt to circumvent the company's failure to get state permission to import C-level wastes from Ohio that the feds were desperate to move. Three years of vigorous civic dialogue was, it seemed, about to be short-circuited with a wink and a nod. Utah citizens were outraged.
Crowds of angry citizens dogged Bishop's appearances, shouting to be heard. His arrogant response to their criticism -- that "lay" people, too dumb to grasp such complicated scientific issues, should stand aside and let the technicians do their job -- only heightened the backlash. Letters to the editor flooded the newspapers. Talk radio chimed in loud n'clear. Every major media outlet denounced the importation of radioactive waste. When we found out that our top political patrician, Senator Bob Bennett, had tried to create a backdoor loophole through which Envirocare might slip the waste, the crowds turned on him, too.
Then a funny thing happened. Olene Walker, our quiet, bumbling, grandmotherly 72 year-old lieutenant governor took office when Leavitt moved to the EPA. We were told that our first female governor would just fill Mike's place for a year until a new patriarch could be chosen. But on her first day in office she sternly denounced the Bishop-Envirocare deal as well as the importation of hotter waste in general and vowed to block any of it from happening. Bennett, noting the cheers for Olene and the punishment doled out to Bishop, immediately did a 180 turn and proclaimed himself ever against radioactive waste. The co-chair of the legislative task force then promptly abandoned Envirocare, followed by two prominent Republican candidates for governor.
A tipping point had been reached. The final blow was delivered by the Alliance for Unity, a coalition of the state's top religious leaders, and Salt Lake City's Mayor Rocky Anderson, Utah's most progressive political leader. It includes a very high official in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- that is the Mormon Church. When the Alliance came out against importing hotter waste, a gasp could be heard from one end of the state to the other. The Mormon member would never have accepted the statement without the explicit agreement of the church's prophet and leaders. The almighty Church itself had spoken. Envirocare admitted defeat and withdrew its bid for the Ohio waste.
A grassroots citizen movement driven by an organization led by a 27 year-old with only three staff members and an annual budget of less than $150,000 had just soundly thrashed a well-connected corporation with an annual income of at least $50 million and a team of top-drawer lawyers, lobbyists, and PR flacks. While the citizen David stood triumphant, the nuke-waste Goliath covered his wounded eye and howled. Supporting the importation of even "low level" radioactive waste into Utah is now seen as politically suicidal and the nuclear industry has lost a crucial option for avoiding a problem it must, but cannot, solve.
There is never closure in politics. The campaign to keep high-level nuclear waste out of Utah and Nevada and to expose the coming Mobile Chernobyl that will be heading to Yucca Mountain is just beginning. We must educate our fellow Americans in the East whose utilities are so ready to tag us with the risks, costs, and liabilities of a power source we neither used nor benefited from. Our slogan must be: "No more enabling the nuclear industry anywhere - stop the madness now." Other greedy and dangerous schemes will, no doubt, be hatched. But on this one, we won -- hands down. If we can win here, hope is alive and well.
Chip Ward is the author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West and the forthcoming Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land (Island Press). He has worked for more than a decade as a grassroots organizer, co-founding several environmental groups in Utah (West Desert HEAL, Families Against Incinerator Risk, Citizens Against Chlorine Contamination, HEAL Utah) where he is also the assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library System.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
December 15, 2003
Yucca case returning to U.S. District Court
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department does not plan on asking the U.S. Court of Appeals to rehear a conflict-of-interest case brought against the Energy Department over a Yucca Mountain project contract.
The suit was filed by a law firm trying to get an estimated $16.5 million contract to review the Yucca Mountain project's license application, according to the Justice Department.
This means that by the end of the week, the U.S. Court of Appeals will be able to formally move the case back to the U.S. District Court in Washington, said attorneys familiar with the case.
No one would speculate on what will happen next since the case is still pending. It is unclear if the case would be conducted through paper negotiations or in another set of oral arguments in the District Court.
But if the court finds that the Energy Department didn't consider the potential conflicts with the Winston and Strawn, the law firm that initially won the contract, the court could award the contract to another law firm.
That could mean a delay in the project because all of Winston's work may need to be reviewed, said Washington attorney Joe Egan when the original court decision came down. Egan works for Nevada on its opposition to the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The law firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Green and MacRae sued the Energy Department when it lost the $16.5 million contract to rival law firm Chicago-based Winston & Strawn. LeBoeuf said the other firm had conflicts of interest to do Yucca Mountain project review work since it had already done previous work for the main contracting company working on the project. Once Winston withdrew from the project in 2001, LeBoeuf thought it's firm should automatically get the contract but it did not.
The Energy Department is using a closed-method of seeking new legal counsel and will not confirm if a new law firm has been selected to review the project.
Winston stopped working on the project after the Energy Department's inspector general concluded the firm did not tell the DOE it had lobbied for the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute.
On Oct. 28, the appeals court sent the case back to the U.S. District Court in Washington to see if the Energy Department ruled out any conflict of interest actions before hiring former legal counsel.
"The department knew or should have known that awarding the Yucca Mountain contract to Winston created an apparent conflict of interests for Winston that required further scrutiny," according to the opinion filed by Judge Judith Rogers.
Rogers wrote that some facts were missing from the record that would have clearly shown how the department evaluated the contract. The lower court's opinion was not adequate for the appeals court to issue its own decision or award the contract to LeBoeuf, Rogers wrote.
The appeals court said the district court "shall" address whether awarding the contract to Winston violated Nevada's Code of Professional Responsibility, as set out in the Energy Department's own guidelines.
The district court also would determine if a direct award of the contract to LeBoeuf would be suitable.
The Justice Department had 45 days to ask the court to rehear the case before it could be officially moved back to the District Court. That timetable ended Friday and the Justice Department said it does not plan on filing for a rehearing.
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 13, 2003
DOE to speed work on Yucca questions
Most research to be provided to federal regulators by August
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department plans to speed its work to respond to key technical questions that regulators have raised about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
DOE planners submitted a revised schedule on Nov. 18 to provide the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with added research and answers on 134 outstanding issues, such as whether waste containers will work and how the repository might be affected by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The new schedule envisions DOE handing over its research on all but one item by August, four months before the department anticipates filing a repository application with the NRC.
The remaining issue, raised by NRC in October, will be answered in the application, a department official said. It could not be learned Friday what that entailed. Previously, the Energy Department's responses on about two dozen items were not scheduled to be submitted until next fall, just weeks before the application is filed.
At least two major items -- dealing with waste package corrosion and environmental conditions within repository tunnels -- were to be completed in April 2005 and August 2005, months after license submission.
Complete responses on those items now will be submitted next April, according to Joseph Ziegler, director of the Office of License Application and Strategy.
While some juggling was done on individual agreements, "significant improvement has been made in the overall schedule," Ziegler said in a letter accompanying the reworked schedule.
Bob Loux, head of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, expressed skepticism about the new DOE plan. He said it does not guarantee the department's work will be complete or acceptable to NRC regulators.
"There's two problems here," Loux said. "Just because the material is submitted to NRC doesn't mean it will be accepted. The date of submission is not a relevant target."
Also, Loux said, it appears DOE still will miss a deadline to have all relevant documents loaded into a shareable NRC database being developed for the agency's Yucca licensing. He said documents are required to be inputted six months before the license request is filed.
Regulators initially had raised 293 questions about how the repository would work to contain radioactive particles from decaying spent fuel. NRC officials said 83 have been settled and others are in various stages of review by the NRC.
DOE spokesman Joe Davis said Friday the new timetable stems from a plan unveiled in June to "bundle" the outstanding agreements into issue categories that scientists believe could be tackled more efficiently.
"We are trying to make sure the whole bundling operation as well as the key technical issues are presented to the NRC in a manner that paints a full picture," Davis said.
The revised schedule indicates DOE will submit most of its work between next March and August.
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
December 12, 2003
Yucca Mountain Concessions
State leadership looks at benefits
Neth Addresses Nevada Legislature's Commission On High-Level Radioactive Waste
By Mark Waite
PVT
Nevada state leaders talked about possible concessions in the Yucca Mountain Project, as top Department of Energy representatives eyed a license application that will be submitted a year from now, with startup of the nuclear waste repository by the end of 2010.
"It looks like the train is going to be rolling in the very near future. What's out there now that the State of Nevada can start taking advantage of in benefits?" State Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas asked, during a meeting Wednesday of the Nevada Legislature's Commission on High-Level Radioactive Waste.
John Arthur, deputy director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said any benefits to the State of Nevada will have to be decided by Congress.
"Right now we're in a major (litigation) type of environment," Arthur said. But he added, "There's nothing to preclude those types of negotiations to occur."
"We feel very left out of the process in a lot of ways," said Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, R-Reno. "We don't want to be ignored in the process."
Angle asked about any health or education benefits from the DOE. "Nevada, as long as we're singled out to take this, we have to have some compensations along the way and some feeling of security," she said.
Arthur said he takes the suggestion of education benefits seriously. "We have a large percentage of our funds we spend in the state university system," he said, adding there could be money spent on advancing science and math curriculums in Nevada public schools.
Later, after a presentation by Nye County Commission Chairman Henry Neth, Angle asked: "You are hoping for a hospital facility in Pahrump. I could see that as one of these preparedness provisions. If you are going to be a first responder you need to have a hospital there." She also asked about Nye Regional Medical Center in Tonopah.
"If we have to wait until 2008, 2010 for that hospital to be built and depend on the Department of Energy to build it, I'm not sure I'll be alive to see that," Neth replied.
Neth's presentation mentioned Nye County had no say in the withdrawal of 1,200 square miles for the Nevada Test Site and close to 3,000 square miles for the Nellis Test and Bombing Range.
But regarding Yucca Mountain, Neth said, "Whether this implementation is successful depends on the ability to negotiate for benefits for the health, safety and welfare of our citizens."
Neth advised the committee that Nye County has outlined a position of neutrality on the Yucca Mountain Project. He mentioned the county's preference in 1998 for a rail route and a 1999 resolution that expressed a preference for a rail route through the Nevada Test Site.
"Unfortunately our friends at the air force have opposed this," Neth said, adding it's ironic since the air force contributes little to the county's economic development.
Arthur said his staff is working with a Air Force major general to iron out concerns over transportation, including an aircraft analysis.
"We fully expect road and rail route decisions will be purely political and made elsewhere," Neth told the commission.
Sen. Neal was interested in knowing how much the state could charge the federal government in shipping fees for the nuclear waste. The State of Indiana charges a port of entry fee.
Neth said the Yucca Mountain Project will sit in the middle of Nye County, within several miles of transportation corridors, roughly 20 miles from both Beatty and Amargosa Valley, and within 50 miles of Pahrump, the county's population center.
"This project must be a true long term success if it moves forward," Neth said.
Angle asked whether Nye County had any say in the U.S. Ecology waste site outside Beatty. Neth said by his understanding, that license application was submitted to the federal Environmental Protection Agency by a private entity, land that was withdrawn for the project by the Bureau of Land Management.
While Neth outlined a Nye County position of neutrality, Irene Navis, program manager for the Clark County nuclear waste planning department, said Clark County went on record formally opposing the project in 1997.
"This is not a done deal due to the many steps needed to accomplish the process DOE outlined this morning," Navis said.
Clark County is concerned about transportation problems, unfunded mandates by the federal government, an impact on property values and terrorism concerns which have increased after 9/11. The county's objections could include endangered species and impacts to minorities including (American) Indians.
While the environmental impact statement focused on rail routes, Navis said, "There is still a lot of focus in that EIS on truck transportation.
"We believe that the shipment campaign is going to be longer than 24 years," Navis said. "We believe the shipments will be something just short of 40 years."
Congress is required by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to consider a second nuclear waste dump by 2007, she said, speculating Yucca Mountain will merely be made larger. "We believe the cap of 77,000 (metric) tons will be lifted and the capacity extended."
While Arthur boasted of the safety record of past nuclear waste shipments - mentioning one collision in New Mexico with no radioactive release - Navis said there's a potential of 63 accidents with a release of radiation during the shipping campaign.
Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said there will be 174 shipments per year, of which 140 will go by rail. Five corridors have been identified for rail routes, the route through Nellis Air Force Base has been designated a "non-preferred route," she said.
Chu told Sen. Neal the entire project, including shipping, could cost $56 billion, of which $14 billion has already been spent.
Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, indicated the state could stop the project through legal action. Six state lawsuits have been consolidated into one and will be heard in a federal appeals court Jan. 14, he said.
The lawsuits involve claims the DOE threw out existing environmental regulations that would've prevented the nuclear waste repository, Loux said. The state is also challenging the DOE goal to control radioactive exposure levels to 15 millirems within 12 miles of the repository, he said, the level of a normal chest X-ray is 20 millirems. Finally, there is a constitutional challenge to the joint resolution of Congress to override Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto.
"There's no real reason to be in Nevada. You could put these containers anywhere," Loux said.
Loux said the government's original reason to ship the waste to Nevada was because the local geology would provide some protection from radiation, the government is now admitting in a performance assessment geology would only provide 1 percent of the protection. The state has focused its research on the possibility of volcanic activity and the corrosion of the containers due to the heat of the radioactivity, he said.
If radioactive material leaks from Yucca Mountain, Loux said, "it shows up in drinking wells in Amargosa Valley, including the Ponderosa Dairy, within 200 years."
We are very committed to a safe disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel," Chu said in her closing remarks.
But Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce, D. -Las Vegas, asked, "You seal it up and walk away and hope everything goes well for 10,000 years?"
Arthur said there will be a long post closure period to make sure the repository maintains its integrity.
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
December 12, 2003
County Commission Preview
Vote on master plan scheduled
By Mark Waite
PVT
Nye County Commissioners will vote on whether to accept the Pahrump Regional Planning District master plan during a special meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday at the Bob Ruud Community Center.
The Pahrump Regional Planning Commission recommended commissioners accept the plan at a Nov. 19 meeting, after making some last minute alterations, primarily to the land use map.
During a regular meeting beginning at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, commissioners will consider creating a capital improvements advisory committee to study the imposition of impact fees. The Pahrump Town Board requested the item.
A professional services agreement for a storm water management study on Winery Road is up for approval at 10:45 a.m.
Commissioners are expected to set a date for a public hearing on a bill requiring an engineer to verify percolation tests for septic tanks, a condition being required by the Nevada Board of Health in order for Nye County to continue using Charles Abbott and Associates to hold septic tank inspections. A discussion on possible alternatives to that policy will also be discussed, in a timed item at 11 a.m.
A public workshop may be scheduled with the State Water Division over a new state law, which becomes effective July 1, 2005, related to domestic wells.
A plan by the Chicken Ranch brothel to offer public stock will be under discussion by the Nye County Liquor and Licensing Board at 9 a.m.
Lynn Carrigan, representing the Nevada Board of Health, will give a presentation on options available for grants to establish a health department in Nye County at 2 p.m.
The Nye County 2004 Nuclear Waste Repository Program Office for oversight of Yucca Mountain is up for approval.
Commissioners will consider a lease and the building costs of juvenile and adult court overflow for buildings at the Calvada duck pond.
The Nye County Federal Impact Advisory Board mission statement, bylaws and charter, are up for approval. A budget and funding source for the board will be considered.
A site for a pilot program under the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Brownfields program may be selected. The Brownfields program allocates federal money to clean up contamination.
Appointments to fill two expiring terms on the Amargosa Town Advisory Board are up for approval. Two commissioners are scheduled to be appointed to positions on a management committee reviewing applications for ground water in rural counties by the Las Vegas Valley Water District.
---------------------------
KRNV
December 12, 2003
Panel plans hearing on Nevada nuke dump hurting military training
Will shipments of the nation's radioactive waste to a planned nuclear waste dump in Nevada hurt training at nearby Nellis Air Force Base?
That's what the chairman of the Senate military readiness subcommittee wants to try to answer with a hearing next month in Las Vegas.
An aide to Nevada's Republican senator, John Ensign, says the subcommittee is scheduling a hearing the week of January 12th.
Ensign chairs the subcommittee. He says the hearing probably will also look at the effect that shipments to the Yucca Mountain project might have on military installations in other states.
The Air Force has expressed concerns to Congress that training at the vast Nellis training range north of Las Vegas could be interrupted by shipments of nuclear waste to the dump, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The issue is among hundreds of questions the Energy Department is trying to address before it files a repository application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission late next year.
---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------
Yucca Mountain News Clips - Tuesday, December 16, 2003