Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, June 28, 2004
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
June 28, 2004
Editorial: For now, a victory in Yucca fight
Las Vegas SUN
A war is looming in Congress over the agreement on next year's budget for Yucca Mountain. For now, however, Nevada has won an important victory. For that matter, the victory belongs to the whole nation, as security and safety will be at risk immediately if the go-ahead to open Yucca Mountain is ever granted. Located just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the mountain is the planned site for burying the nation's high-level nuclear waste.
On Friday, in the first major battle over the 2004-2005 Yucca budget, the House voted to authorize only $131 million. This compares to the current-year budget of $577 million and the $880 million the Bush administration is hoping to receive for next year.
Nevada's representatives in the House, Jim Gibbons, R-Reno, Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas and Jon Porter, R-Henderson, lobbied successfully against an amendment by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, which would have added $750 million to the budget. It seems almost paradoxical for representatives to work against money destined for their own state. But Gibbons, Berkley and Porter have our full support as they work to cut every cent possible out of the Yucca budget. Ideally, Congress -- and perhaps a John Kerry administration -- will come to its senses and halt work on this dangerous project. In the meantime, we welcome anything that does the next best thing, which is to slow it down.
The Energy Department says it will now work with the House and Senate to get Yucca's funding for next year restored, which is a highly possible scenario in Washington. The Yucca budget was contained in a larger House energy and water bill, which could yet undergo several revisions. The Senate will vote separately on Yucca Mountain's budget sometime after July 4. Then the House and Senate will appoint a committee to confer on the final number.
If the $131 million stands, the Energy Department says it will have to lay off 1,700 workers at Yucca Mountain, meaning that the dump's planned opening date of 2010 could not be met. In our view, there should never be an opening date, because the mountain's geology will never be adequate protection against the more than 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste planned for burial there. And common sense is all that's needed to understand that transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain will endanger every community along the thousands of miles of rail and highway routes.
Gibbons, Berkley and Porter voted against even the reduced budget, because they do not believe any money should be spent on Yucca. Neither do we.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
June 28, 2004
Editorial: White House secrets
Las Vegas SUN
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court handed the Bush administration a victory, refusing to order Vice President Dick Cheney to reveal secret records from an energy task force that he headed. The Supreme Court did send the case back to a lower court so that it could be reconsidered, but the reality is that it will take years to resolve the matter -- well after November's presidential election. That means no embarrassing revelations could come out about the sway that corporate executives had regarding the White House's energy policy, a reason why administration officials were ecstatic about the decision.
The public, of course, is the loser. We should know by now just how much influence that utility, oil and gas executives had in developing the White House's energy policy. We in Nevada are particularly interested in the meetings that nuclear power executives had with Cheney's group before President Bush submitted his plan to Congress to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. But, fortunately for the White House, it had enough support on the Supreme Court to continue its stonewalling ways.
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 28, 2004
Clinton talks tough at party fund-raiser
Bush tax cuts, Yucca Mountain rile crowd during speech at Rio
By Erin Neff
Review-Journal
President Clinton not only raised more than $500,000 for Nevada Democrats on Sunday, he also offered them plenty of reasons to vote for presidential candidate John Kerry.
In a 37-minute speech at the Rio, Clinton decried President Bush's tax cuts because he said they helped turn his $5.8 trillion surplus into a $5 trillion deficit.
"It's hard to lose $10 trillion in three and a half years; you got to work at it steady," Clinton said.
He drew laughter several times when he mentioned the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 as "Bill Clinton's tax cuts," because, he said, as a wealthy American, he benefited more than the average Joe.
"You know how mean they were to me; all of a sudden I got out and got rich, and now I'm the most important person to them in the world," Clinton said.
There was no Republican protest or response to Clinton's visit.
Clinton began his speech at the $1,000-a-person dinner by discussing the struggle for leadership in the country during various times in American history, from the Founding Fathers, through the Civil War, the industrial age and the tumultuous 1960s.
Clinton said no election has greater ramifications for the nation than the current one, and he pointed to Nevadans to make a difference.
"Your country's on the line; this state could make a difference, so bring it home," Clinton said as he ended his remarks to a standing ovation from 350 pairs of satisfied ears.
As he spoke of Bush's fiscal policies, he discussed the deficit in terms that he said the average voter would understand. He gestured to the waiters who had just served filet mignon and chocolate torte and said the Bush administration steals their Social Security to enable people such as himself, with the $10 million advance he received for his memoir, to have their tax cuts.
"They're not disciplined and mature; they're like kids who got their trust funds early and went out and squandered it," Clinton said.
Outside the ballroom, fans had lined up hours before his speech holding copies of Clinton's recently released book, "My Life," and hoping for a glimpse of the 42nd president.
"We love him," said Jan Primavera of Las Vegas, holding an audio version of the memoir. "He's a good, solid leader."
Three recent high school graduates from Salt Lake City said they hit the road at 5 a.m. Sunday because they heard Clinton was going to have a book signing in Las Vegas.
"He's one of my heroes," said Jason Vorhees, 18.
But Clinton didn't mention the book, which many feared would distract from Kerry's campaign.
Clinton praised Kerry, saying he has a quality that is important in a president. As a senator, Clinton said, Kerry always talked to him about poor, inner-city children, despite his wealthy upbringing and lifestyle and the fact that poor children don't vote, and their parents rarely do.
"We're living in a world where presidents need to put things together," Clinton said. "You cannot have a president who is not curious, and you cannot have a president who doesn't like to be around people who know more than he does."
Clinton also mentioned the Yucca Mountain Project, saying he didn't pander to Nevadans when he was president. He said he would have supported the nuclear waste repository if he had been convinced it was scientifically safe. He said he decided it wasn't and vetoed every attempt by Congress to designate Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the repository site.
"If you vote one more time for this administration, they will think you are voting to green light this because it has all been a chuck-and-a-jive here in Washington. But the other stuff, that's even bigger. You will not recognize the America you want for your children and grandchildren if you let these people have the Congress and the courts and the White House for four more years," Clinton said.
---------------------------
Reno Gazette-Journal
June 28, 2004
Letters for June 28, 2004
Earthquake a danger at Yucca Mountain site
As a geologist, I am getting tired of President Bush and his representatives telling us that Yucca Mountain is a safe site to store the nation´s nuclear waste for the next 20,000 years.
That being the case, why does a current college textbook titled,“The Earth: An Introduction to Physical Geology,’ Third Edition, show two maps on page 405 that show Yucca Mountain in a major risk of seismic destruction zone as well as a high level of ground motion during an earthquake?
If that isn´t enough to give you cause for concern, then take a look at the “Earthquakes In California and Nevada’ map published by the U.S. Department of Interior Geological Survey, Reston, Va., 1999, which shows hundreds of earthquakes between 1980 and 1994 in and around the Yucca Mountain site. Twelve of those earthquakes have been of a magnitude of 5.5 or greater.
Unfortunately for Yucca Mountain and the human race there is no such thing as an earthquake proof building/facility.
Paul Hauser
Reno
---------------------------
Cincinnati Post
June 28, 2004
Paris is worth a Mass
WASHINGTON -- John Kerry recently stopped in Las Vegas to say: "Rest assured, Nevada. If I'm president, Yucca Mountain will not be a depository." Back to mind comes Chic Hecht, a one-term Republican senator elected in 1982, who said he opposed using Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a nuclear waste "suppository."
Also to mind comes the French sovereign known as Henry of Navarre (1553-1610). More about him anon.
The problem of nuclear waste has been studied for 50 years. Twenty-two years ago Washington took responsibility for that waste -- there are 49,000 metric tons of it -- stored in 131 sites in the 39 states with nuclear power plants. Seventeen years ago Congress selected Nevada -- the federal government owns 86 percent of the state -- for the repository. Beginning in 2010, the waste is to be put 1,000 feet underground, on 1,000 feet of rock, in steel containers in 100 miles of storage tunnels within the mountain. But in 1996 President Bill Clinton promised to veto any attempt to make Nevada even a temporary repository. That promise helped him beat Bob Dole there by just 4,730 votes, the smallest state margin that year.
In 2000 George W. Bush promised not to make Nevada a temporary repository, but said "sound science" would guide him regarding establishing a permanent repository there. He beat Al Gore 50-46 (301,575 to 279,978). A switch of 10,799 votes would have made Gore president.
In 2002 Bush approved Yucca Mountain as the permanent site. Congress said Nevada's governor could veto the selection, but that his veto could be overridden by majorities in both houses. He vetoed it; Congress overrode him.
By this protracted dance of democracy the interests of an American majority -- 161 million live within 75 miles of today's storage sites -- prevailed, respectfully, over the objections of an intense minority, the approximately 2 million people who live in southern Nevada. Kerry's willingness to overturn this accommodation reflects a cold, and factually correct, calculation having nothing to do with the national interest: for the intense and compact Nevada minority, unlike for the diffuse American majority, this is a vote-determining issue.
Kerry's message to Nevadans testifies to his readiness to do whatever it takes to win. As does his recent vow that, if elected, he would renegotiate the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). He would try to force signatory nations (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and, soon, the Dominican Republic) to adopt labor and environmental standards more pleasing to him. The ostensible purpose of this would be to improve the lot of labor in those nations. But the primary purpose of the renegotiation would be to raise production costs in those countries, making imports from them less competitive with American products.
Time was, Kerry was a free trader. Now he favors "fair trade," as defined by his labor allies. But he still is a critic of what he and likeminded people consider the Bush administration's obnoxious tendency to tell other nations how to behave.
The Wall Street Journal reports that "it would be unprecedented for a newly elected president to turn his back on a major trade deal negotiated by his predecessor." Unprecedented and, in Kerry's case, inconsistent.
When Kerry and kindred spirits criticize what they consider the Bush administration's bad diplomatic manners, they often cite its withdrawal from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change. It is understandable that they do not dwell on the fact that the Clinton administration refused to submit it for Senate ratification, or that the Senate voted 95-0 for a resolution against proceeding with the protocol as negotiated. The junior senator from Massachusetts said "no one in their (sic) right mind" would favor it as it is.
Regarding Yucca Mountain and CAFTA, Kerry's comportment reflects toughness about subordinating considerations of principle to the exigencies of winning power. Someone in the White House has naughtily said that Kerry "looks French." The truth is that he wears Hermes neckties, which are French, and he speaks French. But his real French connection is his spiritual kinship with Henry of Navarre. Henry was raised a Protestant but converted to Catholicism -- twice -- for political reasons. His explanation still resonates with those politicians who believe, as Kerry does, in doing whatever is necessary: "Paris is well worth a Mass."
George Will is a nationally syndicated columnist.
---------------------------
Salt Lake Tribune
June 28, 2004
White House help sought on N-dump
By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON -- Mired in red tape, the head of Private Fuel Storage turned to an offshoot of Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force for help in making the firm's proposed nuclear waste storage facility in Utah a reality.
In a letter, Private Fuel Storage Chairman John D. Parkyn asked the White House Task Force on Energy Policy Streamlining to force the Defense Department to complete a study on whether putting the nuclear waste near the sprawling Utah Test and Training Range might hinder the preparedness of the Air Force, which uses the range in Utah's west desert for combat practice.
Until the congressionally mandated study is completed, the Interior Department cannot approve Private Fuel Storage's request to build a rail line across federal land to the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, where the company plans to store 40,000 tons of radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants.
"The failure of the Department of Defense to undertake this study, as directed by law . . . offers a prime example of a federal agency's inaction thus delaying or stopping the orderly, ongoing licensing of a facility that is key to the continued production of electricity from nuclear power generating facilities throughout the nation," Parkyn said in his letter to the energy task force.
The 2001 letter was among thousands of pages of Energy Task Force documents obtained recently by the Natural Resources Defense Council through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against the vice president.
Parkyn's plea appears to have prompted a meeting between Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles and Tod Neuenschwander, Private Fuel Storage's lobbyist at the time. Griles calendar shows he met with Neuenschwander on Nov. 1, 2001, to discuss the waste storage proposal.
It also generated a letter from the director of the task force, Virginia Stephens, to Interior Department officials, asking what needed to be done to move the Private Fuel Storage project forward.
Dana Perino, spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the letter to Interior was essentially a form letter and the task force sent similar letters to other agencies to gather information on issues brought to its attention.
In its response to the task force, the Interior Department's associate deputy secretary, James Cason, said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs to license the PFS facility and the Bureau of Indian Affairs needs to sign off on the lease with the Goshute tribe before the Bureau of Land Management can OK the rail line. Neither step is expected to be taken until at least late in 2004.
Perino said the task force has not taken any further action to assist Private Fuel Storage.
The Defense Department still has not completed its study on the potential effects of the dump on the Air Force range. Pentagon spokesman James Turner said the Air Force is preparing the report internally for the Defense Department and it is expected to be complete by the end of the year.
"We have certainly tried in a number of different ways to encourage the Department of Defense to do this study," said PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin. "We'd like to see it done and over with, because it is just another part of the process that has to be done before we can carry through with our project."
The closest the Pentagon has come to taking a position on the waste dump came in a 2002 affidavit by Gerald Pease Jr., associate director for ranges and airspace for the Air Force, who said that the Utah Test and Training Range is a "vital and irreplaceable part of the test and training infrastructure at the Department of Defense."
"Degradation of our operational test and training capabilities would be unacceptable. Consequently, any proposed location must not restrict current UTTR operations," Pease said.
Attorneys for Private Fuel Storage and from the state are scheduled to go before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in August to argue the final issues remaining before the NRC makes a licensing decision.
Parkyn's letter was the only request for assistance that the task force received from nuclear energy producers. There was no mention of it in the White House Task Force on Energy Policy Streamlining's report issued in December 2002, although it was included in the public comments to the task force.
At roughly the same time that PFS sought aid from the White House, Utah's senators were working to stop the dump.
In July 2002, Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett met at the White House with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and agreed to vote to build a permanent nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nev., in exchange for assurances the senators felt would prevent the PFS' Skull Valley dump from being built.
gehrke@sltrib.com
---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------