Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
June 23, 2004
Berkley introducs bill to redirect nuke funds
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Waste Fund should be used to keep nuclear waste at nuclear power plants, not to continue to study or move waste to Yucca Mountain, according to Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
Berkley reintroduced a bill Monday that would redirect money paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund by nuclear power users to pay for research and development of onsite storage.
Under current law, the money now paid into the fund goes toward the Energy Department's nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but Berkley's bill would put it toward keeping waste at power plants longer, reducing the number of shipments of waste and studying how to decrease waste radiation levels.
"This solution will give science the time to develop advanced technological solutions to the nuclear waste problem," Berkley said.
She has introduced the bill before but it did not move forward. Berkley spokesman David Cherry said introducing the bill again, even as the congressional calendar gets shorter, will remind people that there is an alternative to Yucca Mountain, especially with the funding problems it is having.
"It's the one bill that recognizes reality," Cherry said. He said Berkley wants to break the thinking that the money should only be used for Yucca and nothing else.
The nuclear industry insists storage at nuclear power plants is safe but the spent fuel was not meant to stay in storage pools or dry containers permanently. Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Mitch Singer said the whole purpose of the fund is to get the spent fuel into permanent, geologic storage.
But Berkley points out that even if all the waste would be moved to Nevada, some would remain at sites across the country.
"As long as nuclear power is being produced, there will always be some amount of nuclear waste stored onsite," Berkley said. "Rather than reduce the number of locations where nuclear waste is stored, Yucca Mountain will only add one more to the list."
Federal law limits Yucca Mountain to hold 77,000 tons of spent fuel, but the department by law has to go to Congress before 2010 to explain its plan on what to do with the amount of waste above that limit.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 23, 2004
Editorial: Funding for Yucca in question
Las Vegas SUN
An influential senator who supports the Yucca Mountain project hopes to break a deadlock in Congress over funding a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is seeking a one-year, 60 percent increase in the federal fees that already are imposed on nuclear power customers to help pay for the multibillion-dollar Yucca Mountain project. Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., are working together to stop Domenici's plan in the Senate so that it can't considered by the House, which is much more hospitable to building a nuclear waste dump. But if Domenici is successful, The Wall Street Journal reported this week, $446 million could be raised under his plan, something that should alarm Nevadans because it would place the Energy Department just that much closer to building the dump.
The Bush White House would love to speed up the process in which it hopes to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in Nevada, and the administration's Republican supporters in Congress may be all too happy to oblige the administration with any plan that solidifies funding for Yucca Mountain. For that matter, the nuclear dump's supporters want to get the project's application approved by federal regulators as quickly as possible before it's too late -- more information keeps accumulating as to why it's improbable that the site could safely contain the radioactive waste. In addition, the dump's backers don't want questions to keep mounting, and public opposition to swell, regarding the dangers of shipping man's deadliest waste cross-country by rail and by highway; transporting nuclear waste almost certainly would result in an accident and the shipment s would be a target for a terrorist attack.
It does seem odd, with Nevada a toss-up state in what looks to be a razor-close presidential election this year, that Republicans would once again seek to alienate this state's voters. The first time, of course, was two years ago when President Bush persuaded Congress to approve his plan to send nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. In doing so, Bush broke his 2000 campaign pledge that he would use science, not politics, to decide Yucca Mountain's fate. But Bush never really has shown that he cares about the concerns Nevadans have regarding Yucca Mountain. That helps explain in part why John Kerry, who has kept his word and consistently opposed the Yucca Mountain project, is gaining traction in Nevada.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 23, 2004
Berkley revives bill to block Yucca funding
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., has revived a bill that would block funding for the Yucca Mountain Project while encouraging utilities to store spent nuclear fuel at their power plants.
Similar legislation that Berkley introduced in the last Congress gained little attention but is her preferred alternative to burying nuclear waste in Nevada.
The bill introduced on Monday would prohibit the Energy Department from making use of an industry-funded nuclear waste account to advance the underground repository being developed at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Instead, it would steer the fund towards research and development of technologies that would decrease the radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel and allow the waste to be stored for longer periods at power plants.
"On-site storage of high level nuclear waste is already taking place at nuclear power plants across the nation," Berkley said in a statement. "My bill would invest resources in securing and expanding these storage facilities."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 23, 2004
Senator seeks bailout for Yucca project
Domenici seeks way to get utilities to give
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The nuclear industry is resisting the idea of contributing millions of dollars extra to bail out the Yucca Mountain Project, although a senator pushing the plan said Tuesday it may be the only way to keep the proposed nuclear waste repository alive.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said he would seek to refund utilities if they agreed to contribute $466 million to break a budget impasse threatening the Nevada project.
"We probably can sweeten it up by saying they get that money back," said Domenici, who is chairman of the Senate energy committee. "I think there's a way to put that in the bill."
Domenici has proposed legislation that calls for a one-time 60 percent surcharge on the fees that nuclear utilities pay into a special repository fund.
The short-term charge would be tied to a long-term change in the fund that would make it easier to extract money to build the project through the rest of the decade.
The Energy Department estimates it will need an average $1.3 billion annually for construction and waste transportation, more than double what Congress has allocated in any year so far.
"If they kick in the money, they would only need to kick it in for one year, then the fund would be available forever," Domenici said. "That is what we want to do."
Without a fix, Domenici said the Energy Department faces a steep budget cut at Yucca Mountain that threatens to "shut them down in three or four months."
"I want to make sure everybody understands what the alternative is," he said. The Energy Department's $880 million request for next year would be cut to $131 million, he said.
Officials at the Nuclear Energy Institute and utility organizations said they would have a hard time swallowing more fees when the repository fund has a balance of $14.4 billion that is effectively locked by congressional budget rules.
Nevada's senators also are organizing against the proposal, according to Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.
Ensign said Domenici could find money for the repository if he wanted, and was using Yucca Mountain as an front to avoid budget cuts in other programs he likes.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 23, 2004
Presidential Politics: Kerry poll numbers improve
National numbers give Nevada backers of Massachusetts senator reason to cheer
By Erin Neff
Review-Journal
A chief strategist for John Kerry's campaign said Tuesday that the political winds of change in Nevada have shifted toward the Democratic presidential candidate.
Mark Mellman, a pollster retained by the Kerry campaign, said Kerry's lead in several national polls shows his candidate to be in "extraordinary position" with 131 days left until the election, especially in 17 battleground states.
"There are national issues and there are local issues, and nationally when people say they think (President) Bush misled the American people on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that reinforces the view people in Nevada have about Yucca Mountain," Mellman said in a telephone interview after a conference call.
Kerry was seen as more honest and trustworthy than Bush, 52 percent to 39 percent, in an ABC News/Washington Post poll completed Sunday.
Bush won Nevada in 2000 by less than 4 percentage points or about 21,500 votes. While a candidate that year, he issued a statement promising to base any decision on a national nuclear waste repository on "sound science, not politics." Shortly after taking office, his administration began the steps to put the waste at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Democrats have derided his "sound science" comment ever since, noting he approved the site one day after it was recommended by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
The Bush administration and campaign officials have said Bush indeed based his decision on science and note that the issue will be examined in court and before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
During the conference call, Mellman highlighted several national polls, including the ABC News/Washington Post poll, which has Kerry leading Bush by 4 points among registered voters.
The poll shows the country trending away from Bush, with exactly 50 percent of Americans approving the way Bush is managing the war on terrorism, down 13 percentage points since April.
Two months ago, Bush led Kerry by 21 points in the same poll when voters were asked which man they trusted to deal with the terrorist threat. The poll shows 48 percent now favor Kerry to 47 percent favoring Bush.
Mellman cited similar movement toward Kerry from late April to early June as evidenced in the results of six other national polls, including surveys done by National Public Radio and CNN/Gallup/USA Today.
"This is historically unprecedented," Mellman said. "In the last 50 years, no challenger has led the incumbent at this stage of the race. In fact, at this stage the incumbent has had a double-digit lead."
"Bush is just extra feeble at this stage," he added.
Tracey Schmitt, Bush-Cheney spokeswoman, said the campaign has anticipated a tight race and had detailed those expectations in memos earlier this year.
"We always said that we expected this race to be just as close as 2000," Schmitt said.
She said Kerry would be better served remedying "his lack of plans" than on touting poll numbers at this stage in the election.
Mellman did not discuss any Nevada-specific numbers Tuesday.
A poll conducted for the Review-Journal in mid-March showed Bush with an 11-point advantage in Nevada, with 9 percent undecided and 4 percent for Independent candidate Ralph Nader.
Nevada Kerry campaign operatives said although they had no polling in the state to suggest the race tightening here, they have anecdotal reasons to believe the tide is turning.
"We're doing better here than John Kerry expected to, frankly," said Sean Smith, Kerry's Nevada spokesman. "The Republicans keep sending their highest officials out here and I think that's a telling sign that Nevada is trending toward Kerry right now."
Bush spoke at a campaign event in Reno last week, and Vice President Dick Cheney spoke Monday at a campaign event in Henderson. White House political adviser Karl Rove was in Las Vegas and Reno on June 12.
The Bush campaign in Nevada referred questions about the state to Schmitt.
Schmitt said two numbers in the poll, including a question about Iraq show Americans do support Bush in greater numbers than they do Kerry.
Bush was more trusted than Kerry on Iraq, 50 percent to 45 percent, according to the ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Democrats in Nevada believe Kerry will continue to get a bounce in this state in the coming weeks. Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11," which is critical of the Bush administration's war on terrorism, opens in Las Vegas this weekend and is being tied to several events. President Clinton will be in Las Vegas on Sunday to raise money for the state party.
The Washington Post contributed to this report.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
June 23, 2004
Plan seeks more cash for Yucca waste site
Nuclear plants: Surcharge would help fill possible gap in project financing.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nuclear power utilities might be asked to pay more for a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada, under a Senate plan aimed at filling a Yucca Mountain project budget gap.
The proposal is by Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M. It reflects concern that plans to open the repository in 2010 could be crippled if Congress grants just $131 million of the $880 million the Bush administration requested for the 2005 fiscal year.
Domenici´s plan would impose a one-year, 60 percent surcharge on fees nuclear utilities and their customers contribute toward entombing the nation´s most radioactive waste at the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The surcharge would add $446 million to the $750 million ratepayers already are due to put toward the project this year. With the congressional budget grant, the Yucca Mountain project would get about the same $577 million it received in the 2004 fiscal year.
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, the top Democrat on the committee, said he would be surprised if Domenici´s plan gains approval.
Reid of Nevada works to cut the Yucca Mountain budget every year and strongly opposes letting the Energy Department get money for the project without congressional oversight.
U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., previously blocked a Senate proposal that would have let the Energy Department tap money for Yucca Mountain without competing with other federal programs.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has said that without a budget fix, 1,700 project employees, or about 70 percent of the Yucca work force, could be laid off this summer.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee plans Thursday to consider a bill by Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, to funnel to the Yucca Mountain project $750 million a year each of the next five years.
The committee will meet one day before the House votes on the Energy and Water Development spending bill, which contains the $131 million Yucca budget.
Utilities since 1982 have contributed $15 billion to a nuclear waste fund for the Yucca project. The money comes from an assessment on users of electricity generated by nuclear reactors.
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Grist Magazine
June 23, 2004
Swing Dance
EPA chief Mike Leavitt hits the swing states
by Amanda Griscom
Have a look at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt's calendar over the last several months and you'll notice that it appears to be in lockstep with the Karl Rove playbook.
"I'd hardly call it coincidence," said Beth Viola, a leading environmental strategist for the Kerry campaign, "that after the EPA spends nearly four years pandering to industry, all of a sudden Leavitt is waltzing around battleground states in a green mantle -- doling out grant money, announcing new initiatives, threatening industry with enforcement actions, making amends to swing voters like hunters and anglers [who are] disgruntled about rollbacks. It's quite a show."
Leavitt's recent wave of swing-state politicking has won his agency the moniker "Election Protection Agency" in Beltway circles, according to Aimee Christensen, director of Environment2004, an organization committed to motivating voters on environmental issues. And many campaign analysts expect Bush's greenwashing efforts to intensify. Republicans still remember pollster Frank Luntz's 2003 memo [PDF] declaring that, "The environment is probably the single issue on which the Republicans in general -- and President Bush in particular -- are most vulnerable," a sentiment supported by subsequent Luntz polls. And in early June, Yale University released a comprehensive nationwide report in which 84 percent of respondents said the environment would be a factor in their presidential vote and 35 percent called it a "major factor."
To get a sense of Leavitt's damage-control efforts, consider his whereabouts last week: Wisconsin and Michigan, currently two of the hottest swings states. On "Ask the White House"-- a get-to-know-your-officials Q&A feature on the official government website -- Leavitt wrote: "I am in Ann Arbor, Michigan, meeting with Governor Granholm and state and local elected officials to discuss the Great Lakes. I have also just presented a Clean School Bus Grant to the Ann Arbor Public School District, and tomorrow will [be traveling to Milwaukee to] announce nearly $76 million in grants to restore brownfields in our country to useable land."
Brownfield grants help revitalize polluted industrial sites for development and community use. Leavitt awarded Wisconsin (another swing state) $10.38 million for that cause, the biggest check given to any state competing for the money. In fact, of the five largest brownfield grants, all but one went to a swing state: Michigan got $7.05 million, Pennsylvania got $3.21 million, and Missouri got $2.65 million. (California, which is not in play in the upcoming election, got $8.2 million.)
Viola says that the brownfield grants, though much needed, are also an easy political giveaway in an election year. "Leavitt shows up with a bag of money saying, 'let's clean up your communities,' and the assumption is that voters will just forget about three abysmal years of assault on public health."
The Bush EPA denies any political motivations behind the brownfield and Clean School Bus grants, which help schools convert old diesel buses to cleaner technologies. Dave Ryan, an agency spokesperson, insisted that the brownfield grants were determined by a panel of career employees, not by Karl Rove, and that making the announcement in an election-year hotspot was just coincidence: "Look, Milwaukee may be a politically hot city but this was about brownfields, not politics," he told Muckraker, "Milwaukee has historically done an excellent job with brownfield restoration. That's why we picked it."
Maybe so, but connect the dots between the other announcements and initiatives the EPA has unveiled this election year -- and those it hasn't -- and it's hard to deny that they paint a distinctly politicized picture. In January, Bush requested new funding (albeit far less than what environmentalists deemed necessary) in the 2005 fiscal year budget to restore the Great Lakes. Leavitt has since made nearly half a dozen trips to the region, which is dense with swing states, to publicize these efforts. Meanwhile, he has faced a storm of criticism from officials and activists in that region and beyond for his failure to provide reasonable protections against mercury pollution in America's waterways.
Then, in April, there was the Earth Day announcement that the Bush administration planned to move from its "no net loss" of wetlands to a new goal of an overall increase in wetlands every year. One (non-election) year earlier, the administration had proposed a controversial plan to strip federal protections from up to 20 million acres of wetlands. Critics called the move a blatant appeal to the hunting and angling community -- a traditionally Republican constituency that has been so outraged by the administration's attempted assault on wetlands that it marched on Washington in January.
Next, in late May, Leavitt dropped by Las Vegas, Nev., another swing state perturbed over environmental matters -- most notably, nuclear waste storage in Yucca Mountain. His reason for showing up: to promote a waste-recycling program known as "America's Marketplace Recycles!" at the national convention of the International Council of Shopping Centers. The program calls on mall developers and retailers to recycle construction debris and use recycled products. "Shopping centers are a magnet for young people. What better place to teach our youth the value of recycling?" Leavitt said, but failed to mention that his host state would have to add a fourth "R" -- "radioactive" -- to "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle."
And it was in the swing states Minnesota and Missouri -- in addition to Washington, D.C. -- that Leavitt announced (yes, repeatedly) the landmark controls for diesel emissions that the EPA rolled out last month. (On its campaign website, the administration listed those controls as one of its leading environmental achievements well before they became official.) Kevin Curtis of the National Environmental Trust notes that the only companies that could suffer financially from these diesel regulations -- Caterpillar and Cummins -- are headquartered in states where the presidential election outcome is a sure thing: Illinois (blue) and Indiana (red). (In fairness, Leavitt also announced the rule in Illinois.)
To further emphasize the EPA's commitment to clean air, Leavitt put in a feel-good public appearance in Tennessee -- another swing state. In mid-May, he traveled to Knoxville to commend a company for developing technology to limit the pollution generated by idling trucks. "[These are] ideas big enough to change the world," Leavitt beamed as he praised IdleAire Technologies Corporation.
"It's stunning that he had time to do this but has refused repeatedly to meet with manufacturers of mercury-pollution filters," said Frank O'Donnell, director of Clean Air Trust. "The visit had nothing to do with policy developments of any kind. It was just another throwaway PR stunt."
Christensen added that the EPA is squandering its energy on politics at a time when so many public health concerns are being neglected: "Not only has Leavitt made all his major announcements in swing states -- at the exclusion of others -- he's been incredibly selective about spotlighting certain problems while he neglects the countless public-health controversies that loom larger than ever."
It's only reasonable to expect that any administration will spin its activities during a presidential campaign; that's simply part of election-year gamesmanship. But in the context of the escalating environmental concerns that this administration is failing to address -- climate change, mercury pollution, drilling on public lands, lapses in enforcement, manipulation of sound science, disregard for due process -- this particular administration's political maneuvers have spun out of control.
Muck it up: We welcome rumors, whistleblowing, classified documents, or other useful tips on environmental policies, Beltway shenanigans, and the people behind them. Please send 'em to muckraker@gristmagazine.com.
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The Oregonian
June 23, 2004
No more waste in our back yard
The Department of Energy should abandon plans to dump more nuclear trash at the Hanford reservation
The Pacific Northwest should have no part of the dangerous game of hot potato the Bush administration is playing by proposing to juggle nuclear waste from one region of the country to another.
The Northwest already has enough nuclear poison on its hands, thank you. The abandoned bomb-making site of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on the Washington side of the Columbia River upstream from Portland already is the most polluted place in North America.
Hanford is supposed to be a cleanup site, not a national dumpsite. The U.S. government already spends billions of tax dollars every year at Hanford to help prevent radioactive wastes from creeping into the groundwater, seeping into the Columbia and threatening millions of Northwesterners downstream.
Now the Bush administration wants to treat Hanford as a cleanup site and as a national nuclear dump. It wants to ship to Hanford tens of thousands of truckloads of so-called "hot" trash from nuclear weapons stations across the country. Hundreds of these trucks would come rolling into Hanford on Oregon highways, through Oregon communities, every year.
The Oregonian's Jim Lynch reported Sunday on Washington Initiative 297, a citizen campaign aimed at blocking the Department of Energy's plans by preventing shipments of waste into the state. The initiative on the November ballot is almost certain to be approved by Washington voters, but it's not clear if it would withstand legal challenges.
In any case, the Washington initiative is an imperfect answer to DOE plans. If states are allowed to block shipments of nuclear waste, Oregon and Washington ultimately could be the losers. The Northwest is depending on long-term plans to ship Hanford's deadly waste to a permanent nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
Nine members of Washington's and Oregon's congressional delegations signed an April 29 letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham objecting to the plan to use Hanford as a dump. We join them in urging the Bush administration to abandon the idea of sending more nuclear waste to Hanford.
The communities and people of the Columbia River have done more than enough for the nation's nuclear weapons capability and its nuclear industry. It is imperative that Hanford not be seen or used as a national or regional repository for nuclear waste.
It looks to us like the Department of Energy is playing a shell game, moving nuclear waste from other communities to Hanford, shifting the danger and political pressure from one place to another. Maybe that helps some nuclear communities let off political steam, but it's dangerous in a time of terrorism to shuttle waste all around the country.
It's wrong to put the nation's nuclear waste on the road, and adopt a plan that requires it to be moved at least twice. This country's radioactive material belongs in a permanent repository, not on Oregon highways, or dumped on top of more nuclear waste at Hanford.
Our back yard is poisoned enough.
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Lincoln County News
June 23, 2004
Maine Yankee Spent Fuel Could Relocate in 2010
By Greg Foster
A federal Dept. of Energy (DOE) official said the DOE still has plans to start receiving spent nuclear fuel in 2010 at the national repository in Nevada, and included the decommissioned Maine Yankee plant within that time frame.
“We had a very robust transportation program that really shrunk, but it is being revitalized so that it will be ready to go in 2010,’ said Susan Smith, senior policy analyst for the DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
That is what Maine Yankee has been hoping for all along so that all of it is gone from the onsite dry cask storage facility in Wiscasset by 2020-23, which is what the company expects, according to Mike Meisner, company vice president and chief nuclear officer.
The company has put in its bid for early departure of the fuel, which could very well be among the first plants to have its spent fuel relocated, said plant spokesman Eric Howes.
“They don´t take it all at once, though,’ he said. “Our hope is they would. We´ve made the pitch.’
As Maine Yankee officials understand it, the plan is a round robin of spent fuel transportation from plants all over the country, but that is according to the 1996 reception plan for queuing of power plants for removal. However, according to Smith, an updated version is due soon.
The criterion is that the oldest fuel will go first, and that is a positive thing for Maine Yankee, which faces a valuation court battle with the Town of Wiscasset over its $212.8 million assessment based on land use for spent fuel storage.
“Maine Yankee has some of the oldest fuel in the country,’ Howes said.
In 2003, Maine Yankee received a $3.45 million tax bill, but plant officials maintain that the plant, including the storage facility, is not worth more than $4.3 million.
While updating the plant´s Community Advisory Panel (CAP) on the repository project June 17, Smith gave details to members about progress toward the DOE´s 2010 target date to start receiving waste contingent upon various factors, namely funding.
This year the DOE is seeking Congressional approval to authorize use of $880 million of $15 billion in funding that ratepayers have supplied specifically for the Yucca Mountain project, Smith reported.
Smith said that her office is trying to prevent the money designated for the Yucca Mountain project from going into the general fund, as has been the practice.
CAP Chair Marge Kilkelley fought on behalf of the ratepayers for the same thing while she was a legislator.
“People are being asked to pay over and over and over again for the same purpose,’ she said.
Although much of the information Smith gave is not new, there were a few new developments she mentioned. A major change is the DOE´s decision in March or April to prepare a national rail transportation plan as opposed to trucking the fuel.
Another change concerns details of how the DOE plans to store “hotter’ and newer material in a waiting area of Yucca Mountain before placing it in a more permanent location in the repository.
Smith also told CAP members that the DOE is purchasing 100 reusable shipping casks for the entire removal process throughout the United States. The dry casks, such as those at Maine Yankee, will go inside the shipping casks for transportation to Yucca Mountain.
Because of the prospect of new technologies developing now and in the future in the field of high level nuclear waste disposal, the DOE has made the decision to be more flexible in its time schedules for construction and reception of fuel.
A while ago, the DOE had thought the repository should be complete before any reception of fuel, but now the thought is to complete it in stages and allowing some fuel to be taken by 2010. The phased-in alternative plan will enable the DOE to take advantage of the new technologies, Smith said.
Smith listed aspects of the timeline for the completion of the repository including licensing by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, settlement of suits against it by the State of Nevada, and other factors, including costs, which by the 2010 deadline is expected to reach $1.6 billion.
The DOE now has been considering the possibility of recycling some of the spent fuel after storing for a time, according to Smith, but the DOE office she is associated with is mainly concerned with storage of the spent fuel.
Smith agreed to return to the CAP with more in-depth information or to send an expert for a specific topic.
In other news for the CAP panel, Bill Henries, director of engineering for the decommissioning project at Maine Yankee, gave details of the planned demolition of the containment dome and columns which is scheduled for sometime around Labor Day this year.
It is the first time a containment dome has been demolished, he said. Arches have been cut away from the concrete on the sides of the dome forming columns around it in preparation for the first step. Later, workers will cut away the steel liners leaving concrete columns supporting the dome.
A series of explosions in a spiral pattern from the bottom to the top of the columns will be used to level them and to cause the top of the dome to drop.
To accomplish that, workers will laterally drill the columns for explosives and position cable fencing around them to contain chunks of concrete that otherwise might fall some distance away.
The public will be notified prior to the explosions. Vibrations are expected from the falling dome, which weighs about 20 million pounds. The explosions are expected to be similar to those used to level the turbine building last year.
In other business, Meisner reported that decommissioning is on schedule, making the mid-2005 deadline for completion still possible. Currently, it is 90 percent complete with about 200 workers onsite and 5.2 million project hours to date.
Currently work is underway for the spent fuel pool cleaning and the drain down is nearly complete, according to Meisner. Also, work is on track for the July building demolition, he said.
As of June, he reported that about 230 million pounds of waste has been shipped, representing about 75 percent of the estimated total 308 million pounds.
Soil remediation is continuing and is expected to be ongoing into the fall.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
June 23, 2004
Foes' ads to hit air before Bush lands
Democrats plan a radio barrage. The President will speak in North Phila., then attend a fund-raiser in Villanova.
By Thomas Fitzgerald
Inquirer Staff Writer
Even before Air Force One lands this morning at Philadelphia International Airport, Democratic foes will start pounding President Bush with radio ads meant to muddy his message.
The effort by the Media Fund, a liberal advocacy group, represents the latest tactical wrinkle in the presidential campaign: the preemptive attack. In the 24/7 media world, political analysts say, "rapid response" is no longer fast enough. You have to hit first.
In a 60-second spot, the Media Fund accuses Bush of breaking promises he made four years ago, citing cuts in educational funding, the loss of 1.9 million jobs nationally, and higher costs for health insurance. Each charge is preceded by a snippet of Bush's speech accepting the Republican nomination in Philadelphia four years ago.
"This is Wednesday, June 23d, and George Bush is back in Philadelphia," the announcer says. "Mr. Bush - before you bring us one more promise, stop breaking the promises you made four years ago."
Bush is scheduled to speak on compassion and HIV/AIDS in North Philadelphia at People for People, the charitable arm of the Greater Exodus Baptist Church. The head of both the charity and the church, the Rev. Herbert Lusk II, has been an ardent Bush supporter, and the administration has given at least $1 million in federal grants to programs there.
The President will announce the release of $500 million for new treatment and prevention programs in 14 nations and will add Vietnam to the list of recipients of the United States' emergency AIDS funds, senior administration officials say.
After the speech, the presidential motorcade will zip to Villanova for a fund-raiser at a private home that is expected to bring in up to $1.5 million for Victory 2004, the Republican Party's coordinated campaign in battleground states.
"I see no diminution of support and enthusiasm for the President," said lawyer David Girard-diCarlo, the organizer of the event. "It's going to be a significant success."
The Media Fund will be there to bracket both events, having bought time on the five highest-rated radio stations in the Philadelphia market. Its message also was set to run in a full-page ad in today's Inquirer.
The group has done similar targeted marketing in other battleground states, preceding presidential visits with ads in West Virginia, Ohio, Nevada and Missouri.
Erik Smith, president of the Media Fund, said the group had found through polling and experience that concentrated advertising during a presidential visit had more pop.
"We know that presidential visits tend to focus people on politics more than on a typical day," Smith said. "It's the same reason advertisers try to sell golf equipment during the U.S. Open: You've got an audience that is focused on something."
William Benoit, a professor of communications at the University of Missouri who has written five books on presidential campaign advertising, said the Media Fund's approach was a continuation of a trend toward ever more finely targeted pitches.
"This is a new wrinkle - it's what you get when you have obscene amounts of money on both sides," Benoit said. "They're trying to target very specific audiences."
Smith said that rapid advances in technology had made it possible to whip up an ad tailored to an individual market within 12 hours. On Monday, the Media Fund hit Bush on job losses in Ohio as he attended events in Cincinnati. During an earlier presidential visit to Nevada, the group focused on the administration's plan to dump radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain in that state.
The Bush campaign used the same preemptive technique in March, when it aired ads in West Virginia attacking Sen. John Kerry's votes on defense issues while the presumptive Democratic nominee campaigned in the Mountain State.
The Media Fund, which has spent about $25 million so far this year on advertising nationally, is dedicated to defeating Bush but is prohibited from coordination with the Kerry campaign. It is one of a Democratic network of "527" groups, named for the section of the tax code allowing them to operate, that can accept soft-money contributions ostensibly banned under new federal campaign-finance laws.
A sister "527" group, America Coming Together, held a rally at City Hall yesterday to amplify the message of what organizers characterized as Bush's broken promises.
The Bush campaign continues to maintain that these groups violate the spirit of the law, even though the Federal Election Commission recently decided not to rule on the legality of the groups until after the election.
"It's still our opinion that this is coordination, it is illegal, and its express intent is the violation of the campaign-finance laws," said Kevin Madden, a spokesman for the Bush reelection team.
The Bush campaign says it is coincidental, but it is launching its own statewide radio buy today, reminding voters that 45,000 jobs have been created in Pennsylvania in the last three months.
Madden said the ad highlights the President's "positive vision" in contrast to the "negativity and pessimism" coming from the Democrats.
Contact staff writer Thomas Fitzgerald at 215-854-2718 or tfitzgerald@phillynews.com.
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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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