Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 30, 2004
JOHN SMITH: Even Gibbons can see trouble for Bush on Yucca Mountain issue
You won't find a more loyal supporter of President Bush than Nevada Rep. Jim Gibbons.
Outside members of Bush's own family and Cabinet, Gibbons is at the top among the ranks of the president's faithful soldiers.
Hear Gibbons speak, and you'll learn how right Bush is on Iraq, al-Qaida, Saddam Hussein, the economy, and the constitutional controversies that have cropped up during the war.
But even Gibbons, loyal and true and lobbying diligently behind the scenes for a possible opening in the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, knows real political trouble when he sees it glowing in the distance.
And Gibbons sees it coming in the form of Bush's signing of legislation supporting the development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
"Yucca Mountain really makes a very complex political spectrum for the people of Nevada," Gibbons said. "There are so many people who are adamantly opposed to that issue here in the state. The president signed the bill that came to his desk after a vote of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. And as a result, he carries that on his shoulder now from the people of Nevada, that he signed the bill that said that they could go forward with the permitting process."
Some will say he was only stating the obvious and that Nevadans long ago tuned out the Yucca lament, but for a true-blue Republican stalwart like Gibbons it amounts to a remarkable admission.
Such rhetoric is expected from Democrats. Senior U.S. Sen. Harry Reid doesn't pass a day without blasting Yucca and ridiculing the Bush administration for its encouragement and complicity. (He's careful to leave out the many times his fellow Democrats in Washington, Sen. John Kerry excepted, have betrayed the state's desires on the issue.)
Democrats hope that Bush's signature on the Yucca legislation will reverberate with undecided Nevada voters and tip the balance in their favor. And they've tried to make hay out of the boneheaded plan, since aborted, by the state GOP to place language in the Republican platform calling for negotiating for Yucca benefits. Barnum & Bailey wishes it could get its elephants to roll over and beg for peanuts as quickly.
"That's one I completely disagreed with," Gibbons says quickly, "and we had them taken out. ... It shows you the difference of opinion of people throughout the state of Nevada. Those people who are not adjacent to Yucca Mountain obviously have a different view of it."
As he well knows, most of the state's voters are adjacent. He rose to political power in the rurals, but that's not where his future is. Given an opportunity to get 100 percent of the rural vote or 60 percent of the vote in Clark and Washoe counties, Gibbons would take the urban corridors over the hard-right hinterlands, where you'll find more talking donkeys than Democrats.
Even his plug-in rhetoric doesn't sound convincing.
"In my view, the question of Yucca Mountain is going to be answered in the courts," he says. "It can't be answered in the White House anymore. It can't be answered in Congress. It has to be answered in the courts because that's where it is today."
Politically speaking, it's in the Republicans' court.
Gibbons recently participated in the successful Nevada congressional effort to trim the 2005 budget for Yucca down to $131 million, 85 percent less than the Department of Energy's request, at least temporarily crippling the project's progress. But it can't change the fact Bush signed off on Yucca Mountain.
"I think Yucca Mountain is a terrible, terribly heavy political weight to bear in this state," Gibbons says. "I think there's a lot of people who would like to see it a bigger issue. And there's a lot of us who think that it's part of the politics we deal with every day and that the Nevada voters will be able to judge who they want to lead this nation accordingly."
But if swing voters remain undecided, come Election Day the Republicans will have problems.
They've lost the Yucca Mountain issue, and even the president's loyal soldier admits it.
John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.
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UN Observer
June 28, 2004
Congress Passes Bill to Force Payment on Western Shoshone Land Struggle -- A Sad Day for the Rule of Law in the United States, but the Fight´s not Over Say the Western Shoshone.
Crescent Valley, Nevada, U.S.A. As of Friday morning, the Western Shoshone Distribution Bill has passed both houses of Congress and is on its way to the Bush Administration for signature. The bill would authorize an alleged payoff of approximately 15 cents an acres for tens of millions of acres of disputed lands in Nevada, Idaho, Utah and California. A majority of tribal councils, representing approximately 80% of the population, the Western Shoshone National Council and all the traditional people strongly oppose the bill, they are supported by the National Congress of American Indians and Amnesty International. This formal opposition was apparently ignored however and an undocumented, unverified straw poll was used instead by the Bush Administration and Nevada legislators to justify the legislation.
White House staffer Jennifer Farley, Deputy Associate Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, informed one Shoshone Tribal Chairman that the bill was “red hot’. The significance of the issue to the White House is apparent: Copies of Assistant Secretary of Interior Stephen J. Griles´ calendars reflect meetings with Interior Department legal staff, including Bush´s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals nominee, William Myers, regarding “Western Shoshone Trespass (Dann Sisters)’ just six months before the Department of Interior started military-style seizures of livestock owned by Western Shoshone traditionalists, including grandmothers Mary and Carrie Dann.
The land base at issue is the third largest gold producing area in the world and cited by a 1999 Interior report as the number one investment opportunity for extraction companies. It is also the site where the nation´s nuclear waste repository would be located, Yucca Mountain, and the home to the Nevada Test Site and Federal Counterterrorism Facility where the Bush Administration has talked of reopening nuclear testing. Both Bush and his political advisor Karl Rove, have made personal visits to Nevada in the last thirty days.
“I am utterly disappointed. It´s unbelievable that the U.S. body that makes the laws has acted in this manner. The fight is not over. A fraud is a fraud - Individuals cannot sell out a nation and the bill, although a threat politically, does nothing to change our inherent rights or our Treaty rights. Congress was informed of all the facts that touch upon this issue. We will use the Treaty of Ruby Valley to stop Yucca Mountain and to protect our lands. Our title is still intact.’ Stated Raymond Yowell, Western Shoshone National Council.
“The self-described, private group who pushed for this money are not members of any federally-recognized council and have no authority to speak on behalf of our Tribe or the Western Shoshone Nation. The Nevada legislators and the Bush Administration have been well-advised of this fact. The way this legislation was handled makes an absolute sham of the stated government to government relationship and responsibility of the U.S. government.’ Stated Hugh Stevens, Chairman of the Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone Nation. “Senator Reid has made numerous public commitments regarding resolving land issues for our communities. We will be looking for him to stand by that commitment in an expeditious fashion. We demand that our land issues be resolved in good faith in the same “hot line’ fashion as the distribution.’ He added.
Mary Gibson, Western Shoshone states: “It´s not over, we still exist and we still have our rights to our land. It makes me sad and angry that myths continue to cloud the Truth in this country. This struggle isn´t a Shoshone v. Shoshone battle, the underlying issue here is the U.S. responsibility and accountability for a Treaty with the Western Shoshone Nation. As long as the people in the U.S. allow this to happen it will continue to happen.’
For additional info, contact the Western Shoshone Defense Project at (1) 775-468-0230.
Western Shoshone Defense Project
P.O. Box 211308
Crescent Valley, NV 89821
United States of America
(1)(775) 468-0230
Fax: (1)(775) 468-0237
http://www.wsdp.org
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Financial Times
June 28, 2004
US struggles to revive nuclear power industry
By Sheila McNulty in Houston
As the US struggles with high oil and gas prices and an overdependence on foreign suppliers, Washington is trying to get a reluctant nuclear power industry to build itself up as an alter- native.
The US energy department is providing incentives to encourage US power companies to apply for licences to build the first new nuclear plants in 25 years. The department is also considering building a plant of its own.
The 103 operational US nuclear power plants are so old they are being forced to apply for 20-year extensions on their 40-year operating licences. Even though they provide 20 per cent of the nation's energy, no provisions have been made to continue that supply, much less increase it, once the plants are too old to operate.
A tedious application process, high costs and public resistance have made utilities skittish about new nuclear power for decades. In 1979, a partial core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island - which remains the worst-ever US nuclear plant accident - awakened the public to nuclear power's danger.
In 1984, public opposition prevented a completed $5.3bn (?4.35bn, £2.9bn) plant from opening in New York state. The devastating Chernobyl accident in Ukraine two years later all but finished the debate.
Today Mark Urso, who works in the nuclear services division of Westinghouse Electric, gives talks on nuclear energy. "Typically, the only thing they [the public] know or ask questions about are the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," he says.
There is another, arguably bigger obstacle than public opinion: the build-up of nuclear waste. Without an offsite repository, nuclear plants must store their own waste onsite. And when storage space is full, the plant can be threatened with closure.
Efforts to set up a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, have been blocked for years by the state's governors and members of Congress, regardless of party.
Lee Raymond, chief executive of ExxonMobil, the world's biggest publicly listed oil and gas company, has stated that nuclear has great potential, especially from an environmental standpoint. But he has noted that political opposition makes nuclear power a poor contender for meeting the rising US energy demand.
"The political reality in the US today would lead to the conclusion that there will not be any more nuclear power plants built in this country for a long time," said James A. Baker, the former secretary of state to President George H.W. Bush.
The utilities seem reluctant to prove them wrong, in spite of improvements in plant safety, mandated by US regulators, lower operating costs and a streamlined application process.
"No one has ever tried to use [the new process], so there is a lot of uncertainty about how the process will work," says William D. Magwood IV, director of the energy department's Office of Nuclear Energy.
The department has agreed to split costs to get three commercial operators to apply for permits to build new plants on specific sites.
Mr Magwood expects the Yucca Mountain dispute will be settled, allowing the site to begin receiving waste by 2010. Environmental concerns over fossil fuel pollution will force nuclear to the forefront, he says, noting that nuclear waste is contained as solids, not released into the air. President George W. Bush has aimed to reduce the economic growth-carbon emissions ratio by 18 per cent by 2012.
Many believe there is no better option than nuclear power for environmentally friendly energy. Larry Foulke, president of the American Nuclear Society, says: "It is unrealistic to think we can power factories with solar and wind mills."
But David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, believes the US must replace its ageing nuclear facilities. "We're now headed toward the wear-out phase, and we need to be on our guard," he says.
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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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