Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, December 18, 2003
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Rutland Herald
December 17, 2003
Entergy: No state OK needed for storage
By Susan Smallheer
Herald Staff
BRATTLEBORO - Entergy Nuclear says it doesn't need state approval to store high-level radioactive waste in special casks outside the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon.
But the company says it hasn't decided what regulatory path to take.
Entergy is running out of storage space at the Vermont Yankee reactor for the highly dangerous spent nuclear fuel. And its storage problem will only be made worse if the company gets permission to increase power production, which in turn will increase the amount of spent fuel by 20 percent.
If Entergy uses one of 14 cask designs currently approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it can store the fuel on site without state approval under the terms of its current operating license, said Diane Screnci, an NRC spokeswoman.
Screnci said 26 nuclear reactors around the country are storing spent fuel in the so-called dry casks while waiting for the federal nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada to be completed in 2010.
While Entergy and the NRC are claiming state approval is not needed, Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien said the state is not ready to concede.
He referred to the state law covering radioactive waste, and said the state didn't have a pending application.
State law says that "no facility for deposit, storage, reprocessing or disposal of spent nuclear fuel elements or radioactive waste material shall be constructed or established in the state of Vermont unless the General Assembly first finds that it promotes the general good of the state."
The law states there must be either a bill or joint resolution in the Legislature to approve the facility. However, the law does not cover "temporary" storage of spent nuclear fuel.
"Entergy may have one take on the statute, but we're going to take a serious look at that," O'Brien said. "We wouldn't make that presumption. The state would have to approve those facilities."
"We're assured by Entergy they have no immediate plans for dry cask storage," he said.
Former Gov. Howard Dean always said that no spent fuel would be stored at Yankee because of its proximity to the Connecticut River, but Gov. James Douglas said last week that his administration hasn't made a decision on dry cask storage.
Entergy is the middle of asking for state approval to pour a concrete slab, 150 by 70 feet, to house a large temporary building that would be used as part of its quest to retrofit the Vernon reactor to produce more power.
The slab, Entergy says, would be a much simpler structure than a high-level radioactive waste facility.
Entergy spokesman Brian Cosgrove said earlier this week that the company hadn't decided what path to take about the storage of high-level radioactive fuel, currently stored in the spent-fuel pool in the plant's reactor building in Vernon.
"We are currently looking at our options for proceeding with applications for dry fuel storage at Vermont Yankee," Cosgrove said. "Any final decisions on how to proceed with dry fuel storage most likely will be made after the PSB rules on the power uprate docket in March."
Cosgrove said the company was focusing on the so-called power uprate, which would increase power produced at the reactor by 20 percent, or 110 megawatts, to 650 megawatts, rather than waste disposal. The increased power production will increase the amount of spent nuclear fuel also by 20 percent.
Without the power uprate, the plant is expected to run out of storage space in 2008, even with repeated re-racks of the old fuel within the deepwater pool, which is immediately adjacent to the reactor.
Under a dry cask scenario, according to documents at the NRC, the oldest and coolest fuel - which in Vermont's case has been in the spent fuel pool for about 28 years - would be transferred to the casks, which are cooled with air rather than water. Thus the "dry cask" label.
The casks typically consist of a sealed metal cylinder containing the spent fuel placed within a metal or concrete outer shell, according to the NRC Web site. The casks are set on a concrete pad.
Entergy officials have categorically denied that the large cement pad for the temporary repair building would be used for dry cask storage.
Raymond Shadis, staff advisor for the anti-nuclear New England Coalition, said that in Maine, where he has been involved with nuclear issues for more than 20 years, the state lost its fight over NRC pre-emption.
Maine Yankee nuclear power plant is being dismantled, and about two-thirds of its spent nuclear fuel is already being stored in dry casks on the site of the old plant, he said.
In Maine's case, even if Yucca Mountain opens in 2010, Shadis said, high-level waste will remain at the Maine plant until 2028 before it is all transferred to Nevada.
"This is 25 years down the road," he said.
A Maine state board was concerned about various environmental and safety issues about the waste, but the company sued to keep jurisdiction on the federal level and won.
"I think there are legal hurdles and you would really have to be aggressive," Shadis said.
Spent nuclear fuel is also being stored in dry casks at the dismantled Yankee Rowe plant, which is in Massachusetts, about a mile from the southern Vermont town of Readsboro in Bennington County.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 17, 2003
Survey: Nevada's Democratic superdelegates undecided
By Brendan Riley
Associated Press
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Most of Nevada's automatic delegates to the 2004 Democratic National Convention say they're undecided on a presidential candidate - but figure any of the party's presidential contenders would be better than President Bush.
Six of the seven "superdelegates" said they remain undecided following last week's announcement by Al Gore, the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate, that he's backing former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.
Only one, Brian Wallace, the state Democratic Party's first vice-chairman and also chairman of the Washoe Tribe, had a solid endorsement - for former Gen. Wesley Clark of Arkansas.
Wallace said he has signed on for Clark's campaign after talking with him and deciding "he's quick to understand and respect indigenous peoples' issues, most of the things we value."
State Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, a national committeewoman, said that under party rules she can't commit prior to the April 16-18 state Democratic convention in Las Vegas - and in any case remains "an old Al Gore fan. I still wish he'd run."
Since he's not running, Titus said "good things" can be said about all the other Democratic presidential hopefuls.
"Even the weakest of them would be better than George Bush," she said. "We can't take four more years of him."
If Dean becomes the nominee, Titus said that for him to win Nevada's five electoral votes he'd need a running mate such as Clark or John Edwards, who would appeal to more conservative voters unwilling to back Bush.
"Dean has gotten people excited," she said. "But I don't think he'd play strong in Nevada" because of the state's conservatism and strong military support.
While the president has benefited politically from the capture of Saddam Hussein, Titus said "that doesn't change peoples' attitudes about his exit strategy from Iraq."
State Democratic Party Chairwoman Adriana Martinez, while also remaining uncommitted, agreed a Dean-Clark combination might succeed in Nevada - and echoed Titus by saying "any combination of candidates would be better" than Bush.
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he's not endorsing anyone yet, but it's clear that Gore's backing of Dean solidified him as the Democratic front-runner and could propel him to the party's presidential nomination.
"It's Dean who prior to this endorsement was the person everyone was trying to catch," Reid said. "It's still going to be that way - but this propelled him a little more."
Reid also said that with Dean's anti-war message, "he obviously comes off much differently than the other candidates" in the race for the nomination. Asked how Nevada voters will react to that message, the senator said, "We'll have to wait and see."
National Committeeman Steven Horsford of Las Vegas said he, like Titus, isn't endorsing anyone before the state party's convention. But he said he's leaning toward Dean or U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Horsford and other superdelegates also brought up the issue of the high-level nuclear waste dump that the Bush administration favors for Nevada's Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"Yucca Mountain is a big issue for Nevada," Horsford said. "Whoever the Democratic nominee is, that person has to be right on that position."
Other "superdelegates who aren't endorsing anyone yet include U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates.
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Pahrump Valley Times
December 17, 2003
DOE plans to speed up repository work
By Steve Tetreault
PVT 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, like whether waste containers will work and how the repository might be affected by earthquakes and volcanic eruption.
The new schedule envisions DOE handing over its research on all but one item by next August, four months before the department anticipates filing a repository application with the NRC in December 2004.
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 three major items - dealing with waste package corrosion and environmental conditions within repository tunnels - were to be completed in April 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 there was some juggling made 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 believed 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.
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Pahrump Valley Times
December 17, 2003
Yucca Mountain Update
Air Force fights YMP transports
By Steve Tetreault
PVT Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - The Senate military readiness subcommittee is planning a hearing in Las Vegas next month to explore whether the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository could hamper Nellis Air Force Base training.
The panel has tentatively scheduled a hearing for the week of Jan. 12, according to Jack Finn, spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.; the subcommittee chairman.
A witness list still is being formed, Finn said. Among those expected to be invited are officials from Nellis, and the session may be held on base as well.
Finn said the panel "will gauge the impact on the proposed (nuclear waste) transportation routes on our military. We want to make sure that no projects will interfere with their mission readiness and support."
The hearing likely will expand beyond Nevada to examine how the Yucca Mountain Project might impact military installations in other states along nuclear waste shipping corridors, Finn said.
The session would allow Air Force officials to expand on concerns they expressed to members of Congress this fall about the nuclear waste repository being planned 50 miles north of Pahrump.
Air Force Secretary James Roche and Gen. John Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said in a September letter that they oppose transportation routes to the repository that would cross the Nellis Air Force Range, the 4,562 square mile swath of central Nevada, including a huge portion of Nye County, where new attack jets and pilots are run through testing.
They also expressed concern about possible airspace restrictions near training corridors that could affect testing on the unmanned Predator spy plane and the F-22 Raptor, the latest-generation fighter jet.
Finn acknowledged the hearing would present Ensign and other opponents of the Yucca project a new opportunity to poke holes in the program that is unpopular in most of Nevada.
"This is another avenue, but the (training) issue itself is very serious to (Ensign)," Finn said.
At the urging of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the DOE is continuing to study potential threats to the Yucca repository from aircraft crashes. The issue is among 200 items DOE is trying to address before it files a repository application with the NRC late next year.
At a Las Vegas meeting last month, DOE official Paul Harrington said Air Force officials have advised repository planners they anticipate increasing the number of training flights over the Nellis range and in the airspace of the adjacent 1,375-square-mile Nevada Test Site. Yucca Mountain sits along the test site's southwestern edge, 20 miles east of Beatty and an equal distance north of Amargosa Valley.
DOE officials said their calculations of aircraft hazards near the repository need to be revised as a result. Critics of the Yucca project contend military operations cannot co-exist with nuclear waste storage. They have drawn parallels between the Nevada repository and the Private Fuel Storage nuclear waste project in Utah that was set back after questions were raised about threats from training flights at nearby Hill Air Force Base.
DOE officials said they doubt air traffic will prove an obstacle to the repository project. They say most flight routes skirt the repository's airspace and only a limited number over-fly the surface facility area.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 16, 2003
Control over hazardous shipments questioned
By Cy Ryan
<cy@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Capital Bureau
CARSON CITY -- A Sparks assemblyman complained to his colleagues and to leaders of the Nevada Highway Patrol Monday that there is little control over the hazardous materials that are being transported across Nevada highways.
"We're letting everything come in," said Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks.
The comments came at a meeting of the Legislative Commission to approve regulations from the Highway Patrol that mirror federal rules on the shipment of hazardous waste. Most of the changes were minor, but Wideman said they needed to allow Nevada to continue to enforce the regulations.
The legislative commission approved the regulations but not before Anderson asked some pointed questions and noted his skepticism about whether the public is being adequately protected.
Anderson asked if adopting the regulations would make for stricter enforcement of the regulations.
Major Bob Wideman of the Nevada Highway Patrol said, "Failing to stay current makes us less efficient than in the present."
While these changes in the state regulations will comply with federal rules, Anderson said, "We don't have a great deal of confidence in the federal government looking out for the citizens of Nevada." He said he would like to seek more effective enforcement.
"Two years ago we had no clue about the material coming in and going out," he said.
Since 9-11, Anderson said, security has become a "major thing," but nobody knows if a "dirty bomb" or other hazardous materials are being hauled by trucks in and out of Nevada.
Wideman said the commercial enforcement division of the patrol conducts roadside inspections and sets up checkpoints to see what is being shipped and whether it complies with regulations.
Wideman and NHP Lt. Bill Bainter said that 705 licenses were issued for companies to ship hazardous waste through Nevada. They said there were 1,209 stops made of trucks carrying hazardous materials last year. And most of them "toe the line," the troopers said.
They agreed that not every truck is inspected, but they said the patrol does "a good job" in its inspections.
John Rhode of the patrol said the NHP even conducts inspections of high-level nuclear waste coming in and out of the Nevada Test Site to see if safety regulations are being followed.
Bainter said hazardous materials range from gasoline to paint. And the commercial enforcement staff looks for such things as whether the shipment contains what is authorized, if the load is secure, whether the driver has a logbook and if there are the proper placards on the trucks.
Bainter said overall there were 17,000 inspections of trucks last year that were not only carrying hazardous materials but also other items. And there were 50,000 violations noted, he said.
He said he did not know the number of violations involving trucks carrying hazardous materials, however.
Wideman said that the commercial enforcement unit has stepped up its enforcement. It has 43 officers in Las Vegas and Reno and it has increased its enforcement efforts by 50 percent, he said.
Wideman said the patrol was conscious of the budget restraints of the Legislature and did not set up stations at the borders to check each and every truck.
In addition to approving the hazardous materials regulations, the Legislative Commission also approved the regulation of the state Gaming Control Board for the live entertainment tax that goes into effect Jan. 1.
The Nevada Gaming Commission meets Thursday to approve the regulations that impose the 10 percent new tax, which replaces the casino entertainment tax that applied only to gaming casinos.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 16, 2003
Environmentalists target Ensign
Groups say bill would give Yucca nuke dump advocates boost
By Launce Rake
<lrake@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
Environmental groups are targeting Sen. John Ensign in their campaign to defeat a controversial energy bill championed by the Bush administration.
Environmental groups say the bill, which advocates say would reduce reliance on foreign energy sources, would provide a huge impetus to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump through more than $5 billion in subsidies to the nuclear industry. Groups that are targeting Ensign include the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Coalition, the National Environmental Trust and other environmental, consumer and labor groups.
Ensign has said he is against the bill but voted to end a filibuster Nov. 21, arguing that he wanted to open up debate on the issue. A vote for "cloture" to kill the filibuster, however, fell three votes short of the 60 needed in the Senate and the bill did not come up for a vote.
The bill is expected to come before the Senate again in January. This time, opponents believe the bill would pass and go to the White House for the president's signature.
"We're hopeful that Sen. Ensign will have had a chance to see how bad this bill is for Nevada," said Brian O'Donnell, associate director of the Wilderness Society's support center in Durango, Colo.
Through a spokesman, Ensign reaffirmed his position Monday to end the filibuster and bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Ensign's fellow Republicans in the House and Senate support the bill. Reps. Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons supported the bill, which passed the House along mostly party lines.
Rep. Shelley Berkley and Sen. Harry Reid, the Democrats in Nevada's congressional delegation, both have opposed the bill.
O'Donnell said Ensign's vote to end the filibuster is critical.
"If we don't win on the cloture motion, then it will become law," O'Donnell said. "Ensign is really going to be key on this. If Ensign holds the line on this, than they're really going to be stuck."
Other environmentalists agree, promising a campaign to focus on the Nevada senator.
"The cloture vote in the Senate is an up or down vote on Yucca Mountain," said Dan Geary, Nevada spokesman for the National Environmental Trust.
Ensign's press secretary Jack Finn suggested that the vote to end or support the filibuster was not about Yucca Mountain alone.
"The statement that a vote for cloture is a vote for Yucca Mountain is almost too ridiculous for comment," Finn said. "The senator felt, much like the vote for judicial appointees, the Energy Bill deserved a straight up-or-down vote."
Ensign still believes the up-or-down vote is important, Finn said. The bill is not all bad, he added.
"There are a lot of good things in it, a lot of good things for Nevada in it, but there was just too much in this bill," Finn said. "It was too big, too broad and he would have voted against it."
Nevada's other Republicans on Capitol Hill have seen enough positives in the bill to outweigh the subsidies for Yucca Mountain. Rep. Jim Gibbons voted for the bill, despite support for the nuclear industry, because it included broad support for renewable energy, including tax breaks for underground, geothermal energy.
"The congressman ardently supported the geothermal provisions," said Amy Stanbauer, Gibbon's spokeswoman. "Geothermal production is a huge boom for Nevada. To be able to tap into those resources is vital in terms of promoting clean, renewable alternative energy in this country.
"It is time to tap our own domestic capabilities to meet our own domestic needs," she said.
Porter's spokesman Adam Mayberry agreed.
"It would provide for the first time a national integrated energy plan that enables us as a nation to become less dependent on foreign oil," Mayberry said, calling the support for renewable energy sources that Nevada has in abundance "unprecedented."
"We have never made such a financial commitment to renewable energy before."
But opponents characterize the bill as a pork-laden product of insider politics. The bill would limit environmental lawsuits, free up coastal and federal lands for oil drilling and create more air pollution, they argue.
The bill has been a flashpoint for environmentalists since the Bush administration solicited opinions from energy industry lobbyists just a few months into his term.
Environmentalists have tried to open up the records of the closed-door meetings between Vice President Dick Cheney and the energy lobbyists since shortly after President Bush took office.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear arguments from the Bush administration about why it should not be required to turn over the records of Cheney's energy task force.
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St. George Daily Spectrum
December 17, 2003
In Our View
Government owes fallout victims debt
They loved, trusted and, in many instances, died for their country, not on foreign battlefields, but in their homeland.
They are the Downwinders, the victims of poisoning from nuclear fallout that was generated by the detonation of experimental atomic weapons at the Nevada Test Site for decades.
On Monday, politicians and scientists from the National Research Center met in St. George to discuss widening the parameters -- both physically and geographically -- for claims to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, spoke at the event.
Why did they come to St. George?
Was it for firsthand testimony on the plight of many of the aging victims of this great American tragedy or was it a clever public relations move?
We believe it was the latter.
As they are today, Southern Utah residents of the 1950s and 1960s were honest, trustworthy people who believed a government that told them not to worry about the falling dust created by nuclear tests, even when scientists clad in heavy anti-radiation suits and armed with Geiger counters would enter public places and test residents for radioactivity.
It wasn't until 1990 that the federal government acknowledged that it owes financial compensation to those who suffered a number of forms of cancer as a result of the testing. It has yet, however, to accept the moral responsibility as it unconscionably prepares to dump more highly toxic nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, lowers the standards to allow for storage of other nuclear waste in the West and approves a $25 million bill to update the Nevada Test Site where, we fear, underground testing of so-called bunker-busting, mini-nukes looms in the not-too-distant future.
The RECA meeting was convened to take testimony from regional Downwinders, but there is mounting evidence that the dirty radioactive fallout spread farther than Southern Utah. Scientific studies purport that clouds of nuclear waste followed the jet streams, collecting heavily in the atmosphere and dropping huge loads of radioactivity from here to Albany, N.Y.
Before we ask, "What about those victims?" we must first come to grips with the fact that within the state of Utah, Juab, Emery, Sanpete and Grand counties are omitted from the program.
No matter how the politicos try to spin this, the federal government has a huge debt to pay for those lives, a debt that goes far beyond the simple act of throwing money at the victims and hoping they will go away.
That debt will only be paid when our leaders examine their consciences and come up with more practical solutions to the nuclear waste issue rather than taking the easy way out and dumping it in an area that carries little political clout.
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Stateline.org
December 15, 2003
States push pollution rules, power line authority
By Kathleen Murphy, Staff Writer, Stateline.org
The midsummer power outage that turned off lights from New York to Toronto to Cleveland also turned a spotlight on the nation's electric power transmission system … and the picture it revealed was troubling.
It was by far the largest blackout in U.S. and Canadian history, leaving millions of people without power on a hot summer afternoon and stranding tens of thousands in downtown streets and skyscrapers. It took two days to restore power in some parts of the Northeast, and parts of Ontario suffered rolling blackouts for more than a week after the Aug. 14 breakdown.
It was all a vivid reminder that, as Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham put it, “We have yet to get our energy house in order.’
But it was not the only such reminder during 2003. Americans also suffered through price spikes for gasoline, home heating oil and natural gas; and Californians – who know all about rolling blackouts – became accustomed to paying $2 a gallon at local pumps.
The Great Northeast Blackout of 2003 lacked the romance of the Northeast blackout of 1965 and the New York City blackout of 1977. Revelations of power-grid vulnerability were grim. A task force convened by U.S. and Canadian authorities concluded in November that human and computer errors set off the chain of events.
A filibuster in the U.S. Senate held up passage of an energy bill that would have given the federal government more power to decide where high-voltage power lines should go in much the way it has long enjoyed authority to create rights-of-way for oil and natural gas pipelines.
Those provisions were only a small part of the $31 billion, 1,148-page energy bill – the first major overhaul of U.S. energy policy in more than a decade -- but they were a controversial one.
The National Governors Association lobbied against the federal siting provisions, which would preempt state authority if a state failed to approve the siting request within one year, said Diane Shea, director of the NGA´s natural resources committee.
Marilyn Showalter, chairwoman of Washington´s Utilities and Transportation Commission, said federal review of power line locations would lengthen decision-making and fix something that isn't broken.
State policymakers will continue to struggle in the new year with how to pay for improvements to the century-old transmission grid. Some states want to look at regional solutions for funding power grid improvements while others prefer using traditional rate-based methods, said Robert Burns, senior research specialist at the National Regulatory Research Institute.
While states don´t want to relinquish authority over the placement of power lines, some sued the federal government in 2003 for what they regard as lax enforcement of federal clean air and water rules. A dozen sued the Environmental Protection Agency to stop what they contend is backsliding in the fight against pollution and smog.
Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington asked a federal judge to block the EPA from weakening regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. California sued separately.
That agency, meantime, got new leadership in November when Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt left his state post to take the EPA helm as successor to Christine Todd Whitman.
In his first remarks as EPA administrator, Leavitt said, "Environmental protection needs to be more than just an agency. It needs to be an ethic."
But some environmentalists feared that federal clean air and water regulations would be further weakened on his watch. As Utah´s governor, Leavitt championed a constitutional amendment to give states more power. Lawson LeGate, senior southwest regional representative for the Sierra Club, an environmental lobby, said, “I see this gap between states and the administration widening, not narrowing, after the governor's appointment."
A key issue in the multistate lawsuit is whether to consider carbon dioxide, which accounts for 32 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. States say yes; the Bush administration says no.
Other noteworthy developments in 2003 on the energy and environment fronts:
Nevada kept maneuvering in the courts to block a federal plan to store tons of radioactive waste at the Yucca Mountain site in 2010.
As gasoline prices surged to record highs in late summer, attorneys general in California and Connecticut opened investigations into possible price-gouging.
Natural gas inventories rebounded in the fall as moderate weather eased demand.
States, strapped by sluggish economies, curtailed spending on environmental protection. The Environmental Council on the States reported that states spent just 1.4 percent of their budgets on the environment in 2003, the lowest in 17 years of study.
Contact Kathleen Murphy at kmurphy@stateline.org
Editor´s Note: The full energy story will appear in our State of the States 2004 publication, available online and in print in January.
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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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