Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, June 9, 2004
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Times-Standard
June 09, 2004
County hears report on power plant decommissioning
By James Tressler
The Times-Standard
EUREKA -- A report on the decommissioning of the Humboldt Bay Power Plant presented to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday turned out to be a relatively low-key affair.
Roy Willis, plant manager, discussed plans to dispose of the nearly 400 spent fuel rods that have remained onsite at the plant ever since it was shut down in the early 1980s because of seismic concerns. The plant is located atop a faultline.
The plan is to store the rods in five 10-feet-tall casks and ultimately ship them to a long-term storage facility, which the federal government has tentatively identified as being located in Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Willis said he expects the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a license needed for the casks by August 2005. The casks won't actually be up and running until 2009. The federal permanent storage facility is expected to be open by 2010. Humboldt County probably won't be able to ship the rods to Nevada until four to five years after, Willis said.
The plant has received about $10 million from the state's plant decommissioning trust fund for the licensing. Willis estimated $30 million will be needed to acquire material and construct the casks, plus another $26 million to complete the decommissioning project. That money is also slated to come from the trust fund, which is managed by the California Public Utilities Commission.
Willis' report was made at the request of 1st District Supervisor Jimmy Smith, who represents the area near Humboldt Hill where the plant is located.
"We're trying to get the word out," Willis said, adding the public is invited to attend an informational meeting set for June 12 at the Wharfinger Building.
Smith asked Willis how water quality is maintained in the plant. Willis said water that comes into the facility, especially rain water, is analyzed for potential radioactive contamination before the water is discharged back into Humboldt Bay.
Eureka resident Aldo Bongio said he expects the decommissioning process to move forward without changes to the timeline.
"Stick to the timeframe: don't extend it another five years and keep collecting your paychecks," Bongio said.
In other business, the board voted unanimously to send to its budget task force recommendations by the Humboldt Taxpayers League to slash some $800,000 in perks to help with the county's cash-strapped budget.
According to the league's report, the county pays some $105,800 in annual "benefit allowances" to each elected and appointed official. That's a payment of $3,920 to each official. There are 12 elected and 15 appointed officials in county government. Along with the benefit allowances, the county pays $53,100 annually in deferred compensation to these same officials -- checks equal to three weeks pay -- on July 1. League representatives also say the county could save $615,700 in annual benefit allowances given to the remaining 185 management and confidential employees, such as executive secretaries.
While the recommendations will be considered by task force, the supervisors said they'd received additional information by county Personnel Director Rick Haeg that may dispute some of the figures the league has put forth.
"They've done some good work," said 4th District Supervisor Bonnie Neely, a budget task force member. "We're definitely going to discuss their recommendations."
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Japan Times
June 9, 2004
U.S. researcher warns MOX fuel plan is too costly
By ERIKO ARITA
Staff writer
Japan should rethink its plans to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and consider the much cheaper alternative of disposal, according to a nuclear power expert from the United States.
Resource-poor Japan plans to turn the plutonium and uranium gained through reprocessing into mixed oxide uranium-plutonium fuel, known as MOX, for use in conventional nuclear reactors, but this process is more expensive than disposing of the fuel, says Steve Fetter, a professor at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland.
Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. is currently building a fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, where it hopes to begin producing MOX fuel in 2006.
But Fetter says his studies show the price of electricity generated from burning MOX fuel at a conventional nuclear reactor is about 10 percent higher than electricity derived from uranium.
"If Japan wants to reconsider reprocessing, now is a good time -- before (the plant in) Rokkasho operates," Fetter said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.
The government's Atomic Energy Commission is currently reviewing its long-term nuclear power development plan amid calls for closer scrutiny of the nuclear fuel recycling program.
Although MOX fuel is planned for use in conventional and fast-breeder reactors, nuclear power plant construction has met with stiff resistance in recent years, and Monju, the only fast-breeder reactor in Japan, has been shut down since an accident in 1995.
Fetter gave a presentation to the commission last week in Tokyo on the results of his study -- conducted jointly with Harvard University researchers -- on the cost comparison of reprocessing and disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
Fetter does not object to using nuclear energy, as it would help alleviate global warming, but he explained how spent fuel reprocessing at the Rokkasho plant is not economically viable.
The current price of uranium is about $40 per kg, but unless the figure tops $1,650, the cost of electricity generated by MOX fuel from the Rokkasho plant will continue to be more expensive than that from conventional nuclear power generation, he said.
"Advocates (of reprocessing) argue that the cost difference is small and will disappear soon if demand for nuclear power grows," Fetter said. "But we argue that the cost difference is significant and is likely to persist for a long time -- at least 75 to 100 years."
Japan's decided in 1967 to use nuclear fuel recycling as a way to secure a stable energy supply. At that time, Fetter noted, it was believed that nuclear energy demand would grow quickly and that uranium resources were relatively scarce.
In fact, the demand for nuclear power has grown slowly in the last four decades, and the price of uranium has decreased due in large part to the discovery that it is more abundant than was previously estimated, the professor said.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, uranium deposits worldwide are estimated at 16 million tons, enough to last about 270 years at the current rate of consumption, he added.
Most of Japan's spent nuclear fuel is now being stored at nuclear power plants. However, some plants are beginning to reach maximum capacity.
Fetter blasted the argument that fuel reprocessing would help solve the nuclear waste problem, saying that heat and radioactivity levels are still high in the waste from the recycling process and it too has to be stored somewhere.
"In fact, spent MOX fuel is hotter and more radioactive than spent LEU," the low-enriched uranium fuel used at conventional nuclear power plants, he said.
The U.S. government has decided to dispose of spent nuclear fuel in a geological repository currently under construction at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Fetter recommended that Japan also build a geological repository or an interim storage facility for spent fuel, but he acknowledged that local opposition often makes it difficult to find such a site.
Antinuclear activists argue that such resistance is not surprising. According to the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, a Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization, it would take millions of years for the radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel to decay.
Japan Nuclear Fuel has said it plans to start trial operations with depleted uranium at its Rokkasho plant this month, but Fetter said Japan should halt the reprocessing program before trials take place.
"The facility will become radioactive (from the trials), and you will have to spend a lot of money to decontaminate it," he said.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 08, 2004
REMEMBERING REAGAN: Changes in nuclear arsenal recalled
Test site faced new challenges, ex-official says
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Longtime Las Vegas resident and Nevada Test Site official Troy Wade was involved in some of the most important nuclear weapons and strategic defense decisions of Ronald Reagan's presidency.
In 1988, Wade sat in on a National Security Council meeting at the White House. During the meeting, Reagan pondered drastic changes in the nation's nuclear weaponry.
The discussion focused on the so-called "Midgetman" weapon, a shift from the massive, multi-warhead missiles built in the era of mutually assured destruction, to smaller, single-warhead systems.
"That was one of the things he was pushing. He wanted to develop smaller nuclear weapons that were more effective and more mobile," Wade said Monday, recalling other sessions he participated in as the assistant secretary of energy for defense programs.
Reagan set the national weapons laboratories and the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, on a course for new challenges, Wade said.
Reagan died Saturday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.
"I think early on in his administration he pushed defense. And, in his '83 speech about `Star Wars,' he said the same kinds of brains that developed nuclear weapons now need to develop ways to counter nuclear weapons," Wade said Monday.
What surfaced was the "Star Wars" initiative, a nuclear bomb-pumped X-ray laser, at the Lawrence Livermore lab in California. Project manager Roy Woodruff was adamant that the X-ray laser, a space-based device that would knock out enemy nuclear missiles with intense X-rays, wasn't as far along as the late H-bomb brain trust Edward Teller had claimed.
Teller had met with Reagan seven months before Reagan delivered his famous "Star Wars" address on March 23, 1983. In that speech, Reagan explained his vision to "embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive."
Whether "Star Wars" was as effective as Teller had advised Reagan, it forced the Soviets to invest in similar technologies for fear their weapons would be made obsolete.
"There was a very good chance that if he (Reagan) really pushed defense and if he really pushed `Star Wars,' that he could just simply break the economy of the Soviet Union.
"I don't think he ever wanted to go to war," said Wade, the chairman of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation. "I just think he wanted to break the economy of the Soviet Union, and he did."
Wade estimated that as billions of dollars was spent on programs such as the X-ray laser, the Soviets were spending huge amounts to explore similar weapons systems. In 1986, at Reykjavik, Iceland, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev asked Reagan to give up "Star Wars." Reagan wouldn't do it. "They left the Reykjavik summit mad at one another," Wade said.
In May 1988, Wade went with Reagan to a summit in Moscow, the last in his presidency. The warming of relations with the Soviets to verify limits on the size of nuclear weapons tests had begun.
The discussions led to the Aug. 17, 1988, Joint Verification Experiment, dubbed "Kearsarge," at the Nevada Test Site. In that unprecedented nuclear test, Soviet scientists observed the detonation on location. A second test was later conducted in the Soviet Union while U.S. scientists watched and verified the data.
Wade was the senior Department of Energy official at the Moscow summit that led to the agreement to conduct the treaty verification experiments.
The agreement, Wade said, "was a very important thing to this country and a very important thing to Nevada."
Wade noted that Reagan also signed the 1982 nuclear waste policy law that started the government's search for a nuclear waste repository site. That search later was narrowed to Yucca Mountain, on the southwestern edge of the test site.
Wade said he admired Reagan for being able to pick "really high-class people" for his administration. "And when you're president of the United States, you're only as strong as the people that surround you."
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Reno Gazette-Journal
June 08, 2004
GOP bringing out big guns, taking no chances in Nevada
Editorial (more stories by author)
It was to be expected that the state Republican Party would bring out some big guns for the fund-raiser on Saturday. Karl Rove, as the president´s chief political adviser and image-maker, is a natural, since he also is a former resident of the area.
The state´s top Republicans pooled their resources to sponsor the event at which Rove is scheduled to speak, even though they´re already pouring millions into Nevada, one of the “battleground states.’ They´re taking no chances in this state with its voters so evenly split by party and its history of narrow elections … and the administration´s disappointing policies on Yucca Mountain.
As the president´s chief strategist, Rove seems nothing so much as Bush´s right-hand man, operating in the background to ensure that everyone in the White House, including Bush — keeps to the political script. If you influence him, you influence the president. Certainly, he´s adept at influencing voters, credited for an image that moved the president into the Texas governor´s mansion and into the White House.
The name of the election game is “influence,’ of course, persuading people to get their vote. For that purpose Rove is a notable in Washoe County. Though he lived in Sparks for only a few years as a child, it´s likely he still has friends and schoolmates here. And the next best political asset to being a “native son’ from anywhere is being a former resident … someone who understands the region and its people.
Now that Democrats (for all practical purposes) have settled upon a presidential hopeful they expect will be their nominee, Rove and his staff can really go to work.
He´s gearing up now, crisscrossing the country, winning friends and influencing people. His next stop is Reno.
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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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