Yucca Mountain News Clips - Wednesday, July 7, 2004

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, July 7, 2004
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Congressman Jim Gibbons
July 06, 2004

Nevada´s Delegation Calls on DOE to Improve How Public Documents on Yucca are Posted for the Public

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Representatives Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.), Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), and Jon Porter (R-Nev.) and Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) today announced they are calling on the Department of Energy (DOE) to improve the manner in which they have posted documents related to the license application for Yucca Mountain. The regulations mandating the release of the documents also require the documentation to be easily available to the public. The Nevada Delegation contends the disorganized and complex web of papers posted on the database fails to achieve this goal.

The text of the Delegation letter to DOE Secretary Abraham follows:

Dear Secretary Abraham:

On June 30, 2004, Nevada´s Congressional Delegation received notice that the Department of Energy (DOE) would be making public and available online over 5.6 million pages of documentary materials related to the Department´s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository license application. As you know, the Nuclear Regulator Commission (NRC) mandated this action through 10 C.F.R. Part 2, Subpart J. This regulation outlines the items that must be made public, the schedule for this public posting, and the manner in which they must be posted.

After having viewed portions of the data available at http://www.lsnnet.gov, it is troubling to find that the information posted on this database falls far short of meeting the requirements mandated by the NRC. According to DOE predictions from this February and April, the DOE planned to make available between 3 and 4 million documents totaling an estimated 36 million pages. While this is a large amount of data, the NRC requires that it all be certified and posted as part of the Yucca Mountain licensing process. We fully expect DOE to comply with this imperative requirement not in part, but in its entirety. The purpose of the NRC regulation is to make the documentation easily available publicly as a substitute for a protracted legal discovery period. However, with the current status of the NRC Licensing Support Network, it is difficult to comprehend how the objectives of the NRC regulation will be met.

Further, we have strong concerns regarding the disorganized and complex manner in which DOE has posted the portions of the data that are available. Primary among these concerns is that there is no readily available index or bibliography of the data available on the site. The information on this site should contain answers to important safety, security, and health questions. The DOE must, at the very least, provide an index, site map, or bibliography to assist Congress and the American public in locating the documents of concern.

We understand that the NRC will appoint an administrative officer in the coming days to hear disputes regarding the network. With this letter, we strongly encourage your agency and those overseeing the NRC Licensing Support Network to take the above concerns into consideration.

For more information, contact:
Amy Spanbauer
Press Secretary
Congressman Jim Gibbons
Phone: 202-225-6155
FAX: 202-225-5679
URL: http://wwwc.house.gov/gibbons/press_contact.asp

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Las Vegas SUN
July 07, 2004

Work halted on NRC data for Yucca Mountain

By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Work on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's database of Yucca Mountain project documents will be halted until the commission appoints a pre-license application officer, according to a letter sent Tuesday.

This means the commission's progress indexing the Energy Department's documents, as well as Nevada's objections to the database, will have to wait until an officer is named. The appointment is expected to come next week.

An Energy Department request to delete some documents that contain private information, such as Social Security numbers, also will have to wait, Daniel Graser, administrator of the commission's Licensing Support Network, wrote to Commission Chairman Nils Diaz Tuesday. Graser said he does not have the authority to delete information from the database.

Graser wrote that he had deleted some documents at the department's request before the database was certified as complete, but now, under law, the pre-license application presiding officer must be involved in any changes.

The Energy Department declared as certified the database of 5.6 million pages of documents related to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project, posting the documents a Web site, but has yet to send all of those documents to the commission to put on the official database that will be used during the license hearings.

The department plans to give the commission a license application for the Yucca project, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, proving it can safely store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste inside the mountain.

Graser said he will not make the department documents available on the commission's network and that the department's efforts to see what other documents may contain private information could delay its availability for an "indeterminate period of time."

Commission spokeswoman Sue Gagner said this means Graser will not finish indexing the records that he has until the officer determines how to handle it.

Attorney Joe Egan, who represents Nevada on Yucca issues, said the "NRC is following its own rules to the letter."

He said Nevada will have to wait to contest the certification until an officer is named.

Members of Nevada's congressional delegation said they are troubled by the confusion and problems surrounding the documents and on Tuesday they complained to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

"The purpose of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-- regulation is to make the documentation easily available publicly as a substitute for a protracted legal discovery period," the delegation wrote to Abraham. "However, with the current status of the NRC Licensing Support Network, it is difficult to comprehend how the objectives of the NRC regulation will be met."

Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev. and Harry Reid, D-Nev., along with Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Jon Porter, R-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev. wrote that the information on the Web site should contain safety, health and security questions and " at the very least, provide an index, site map, or bibliography to assist Congress and the American public in locating the documents of concern."

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Las Vegas SUN
July 07, 2004

Edwards has supported Yucca, college betting ban

By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John Edwards, presumptive Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's pick for vice president, has voted against positions taken by Nevada officials on two of the biggest state issues considered by U.S. lawmakers.

Edwards, D-N.C., supported the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project and an effort to ban betting on college sports in Nevada.

Edwards co-sponsored the 2001 bill that would have outlawed betting on college sports in Nevada, a measure stridently opposed by Nevada officials, the state's federal lawmakers and top casino industry executives.

He voted against an amendment offered by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., during a Senate Commerce Committee markup of the bill that would have stripped the ban, according to congressional records.

"I think it is very important for us to send a clear and unmistakable signal that we do not condone gambling on college sports," Edwards said, according to a May 2001 press release.

Ensign's amendment failed on with 10-10 vote in the committee. Committee members Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, did not vote on the amendment. An amendment needs to win a vote to pass. A final Senate vote on the bill never occurred.

It is not known if his position on the betting ban has changed, according to Edwards' office.

Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association, said his organization does not take sides in presidential races, but acknowledged that this is one local issue that could impact how people in Nevada vote in November.

"I don't think it will be an issue other than in Nevada," Fahrenkopf said. "If he becomes vice president, I don't think this is something that's going to be on his agenda to push."

Fahrenkopf said he was not sure if voters would not choose the Kerry-Edwards tickets based on that one issue. He said the betting ban is the only time Edwards has spoken out on gaming issue.

Also, Edwards voted in July 2002 to allow the Yucca Mountain project to proceed.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he has spoken with Edwards and Edwards now agrees with Kerry's opposition to the project. North Carolina has five nuclear reactors. Since 1983, ratepayers have put just over $1 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund, a federal account set aside to fund the Yucca Mountain project. The account has about $14 billion in it but Congress continues to give less money to the project than the department requests.

Massachusetts only has one nuclear reactor and ratepayers have put $213.7 million into the fund since 1983, when it was created.

Edwards co-sponsored a bill in November 2002 aimed at making nuclear waste shipments to Yucca safer.

"We need a secure and central place to permanently store the nation's growing and scattered stockpile of nuclear waste, but we also need to make sure we ship the waste in the safest way possible," Edwards said, according to a press 2002 press release.

His release says "Yucca Mountain will offer a safe, central repository for the estimated 77,000 tons of nuclear material expected to be shipped to Nevada during the two decades after the national disposal site opens."

The bill would have set aside $6 million in 2003 to improve transportation routes and to train state and local emergency workers to respond in the event of accidents, among other provision, but it did not move anywhere.

Nuclear industry sources say Edwards has not been vocal for or against nuclear power or the Yucca project. If elected, his opposition to the project he now shares with Kerry could be just that he would support the president's policy, sources said.

Nevadans donated $83,654 to Edwards during his campaign for president, with $44,906 coming from Las Vegas, mainly from law firms, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that collects campaign finance data.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 07, 2004

Editorial: Edwards a great choice

Las Vegas SUN

It's no surprise that a day after Sen. John Kerry chose Sen. John Edwards as his running mate, the two are beginning their campaign together in Ohio. The Economist magazine described Ohio as "the very definition of a swing state." The political culture in the Buckeye State is conservative, yet the residents are restive. Under the Republicans in the White House and the Republican majority in Congress, they have experienced massive job losses.

The political climate in Ohio is not much different from the rest of the crucial swing states, which will decide the election. After four years of economic upheaval under Bush-Cheney, people are ready to listen to the Democratic candidates. But to really listen, and to really become enthused and energized, they need a gifted speaker. John Kerry has obviously touched a chord -- the polls already show him even or a little ahead of President Bush. But Kerry must have realized that in all of the campaign appearances, speeches and debates ahead, he's going to need someone of extraordinary appeal by his side.

A trial lawyer for 20 years, representing people in product liability, personal injury and medical malpractice cases, Edwards earned millions. But his political philosophy, which comes through so earnestly in his speeches, is the polar opposite of the Bush/Cheney ticket, which counts the "haves and the have-mores" as its core constituency. Edwards' values were formed in his childhood in the Carolinas, as the son of parents who worked shifts down at the local mills. In the Democratic primaries earlier this year, Edwards went from near-political obscurity as a freshman North Carolina senator, to the presidential candidate who finished second to Kerry and who had made a resounding national impression with his impassioned theme of "two Americas."

We believe Edwards was an excellent choice. In an age more and more being defined as polarized, Edwards is able to win people over with his concern for ordinary Americans, his easygoing manner, his intelligence, his optimism and his positive approach to campaigning. We see Edwards rising to the occasion and as one able to easily defend himself against the type of brutal criticism seen on the presidential campaign trail.

As a senator, on issues relating to jobs, Edwards supported unions, job training programs, federally assisted child care, an increase in the minimum wage and affirmative action. On the environment, he supported a federal law requiring greater fuel efficiency, he opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and he supported the United States taking a leadership role on global warming. He supports the Second Amendment, but also has supported background checks and was opposed to unrestricted sales at gun shows. On health care he supported stem cell research and a plan for vastly increased coverage for children and adults. He supported Family Planning and a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion. On immigration he supported a legalization program for undocumented immigrants who had proven themselves to be hard-working and honest.

With respect to foreign policy, he opposed giving aid to countries with records of human-rights abuses. He called for working with our allies to pressure North Korea into ending its nuclear program. He supported more funding to fight AIDs in Africa. He called for reforms to the United Nations, to make it a more effective peacekeeping body (he opposed any U.N. command of U.S. troops). On these and other issues, with the exception of Yucca Mountain, we believe Edwards was a thoughtful senator and presidential candidate.

Regarding Yucca Mountain, Edwards in 2002 voted in support of President Bush's plan to open the Southern Nevada site as a dump for high-level nuclear waste. He was concerned about nuclear waste piling up in his own state, which has nuclear power plants. Even though he vowed to work on a safe plan for transporting the waste, his vote was wrong and we were concerned when he was campaigning for the presidency during the Democratic primaries. Our concern has abated, however, now that he has joined with Kerry, who has long sided with Nevada in the fight against this ill-conceived project. Edwards told Sen. Harry Reid on Tuesday that as Kerry's running mate, he is "fully committed" to stopping Yucca Mountain. We welcome him to the fight.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 07, 2004

$100 million in bonds to help bypass

State money for Hoover Dam alternate will eventually be repaid with federal funds

By Ed Koch
<koch@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN

While Congress and the White House fight over what to allocate for projects in the federal transportation spending bill, the Hoover Dam bypass project will get $100 million in bonds to continue construction, project officials said.

The state money, which is expected to be repaid with eventual federal money that the $234 million bypass project will receive in the transportation bill, is designed to prevent delays in the 3.5-mile project that is scheduled for completion by 2008, officials said.

The $100 million debt will be split evenly between Nevada and Arizona as construction on the Arizona approach portion of the project is 85 percent complete and the Nevada approach section is 30 percent complete, officials said.

"The bonds are a terrific boost of energy to the project," said Dave Zanetell, the Federal Highway Administration's project manager for the bypass.

"They will enable us to get the approaches in place to provide access to the site, create a staging area and minimize public impact. The bonding demonstrates the collaborative team effort of the project -- a joint state and federal commitment."

The new bridge for U.S. 93 across the Colorado River will be located a quarter of a mile south of Hoover Dam.

According to the project's Web site, hooverdambypass.org., the Nevada approach costs $30.1 million.

Among those improvements are more than two miles of four-lane roadway, six bridges, a traffic interchange at U.S. 93 near the Hacienda Casino, retaining walls, wildlife crossings, trail extensions and parking.

The Arizona approach costs $21.5 millione. It, too, includes nearly two miles of four-lane roadway, as well as a 900-foot bridge on the east side of Sugarloaf Mountain, a traffic interchange at U.S. 93 and Kingman Wash Road, wildlife crossings and trail access parking.

The Nevada approach, which began in October 2003, is expected to be completed next spring. The Arizona approach is expected to be complete in the fall, the Web site said.

The project will alleviate traffic that now crosses at the dam. However, federal officials have said they have no plans to close traffic to visitors to the popular tourist attraction once the bypass is built.

The bypass also will move commercial vehicle traffic that currently is being rerouted south to Laughlin because of safety measures initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 07, 2004

Yucca database held up again

DOE seeks to withdraw more documents

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy is seeking to withdraw more documents from a Yucca Mountain electronic network, a request that could delay public access to the database for two more weeks or longer, officials said.

The disclosure attracted more criticism to the Licensing Support Network, the required depository for more than 1 million pieces of technical data, reports and studies related to the planned nuclear waste repository.

The Energy Department certified June 30 that it was contributing 1.2 million documents totalling 5.6 million pages to the network, but none of the material has been made available at www.lsnnet.gov.

Officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which maintains the depository, said they had received less than half the certified materials and were awaiting the remaining 700,000 documents=.

Also, Energy Department officials had requested to withdraw about 150,000 documents, contending they dealt with privileged topics such as homeland security.

The department has identified more documents that might need to be pulled back because they include Social Security numbers and could be exempt from public disclosure, the network administrator said in a memo Tuesday.

An Energy Department spokesman did not respond to a query. It was unclear how many documents might be affected.

Network administrator Daniel Graser told NRC commissioners in a memo Tuesday that a number of questions have arisen.

Graser said Energy Department problems with its own Web site have affected the flow of documents.

Besides material tagged for deletion because of privacy concerns, Graser said, the Energy Department expects to identify even more documents over the next two weeks for possible deletion.

Joe Egan, Nevada's lead attorney in fighting the Yucca Mountain Project, said he expects NRC leaders will appoint a hearing officer soon to sort out database problems.

The state contends DOE mismanaged its certification and will urge the administrative official to delay the repository until glitches are fixed.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 07, 2004

Yucca Mountain may tip scale in close Nevada vote

By Erin Neff
Review-Journal

John Kerry's choice Tuesday of U.S. Sen. John Edwards as his running mate was designed to balance the Democratic presidential ticket.

But in Nevada, the state's key issue -- the Yucca Mountain Project -- could tip the scales in a close election in a crucial battleground state.

Republicans said the North Carolina senator's vote supporting the nuclear waste repository softens Kerry's criticism of the Bush administration, which advocated the Yucca Mountain site. But Democrats quickly lined up behind Edwards after receiving a pledge he would defer to Kerry on the issue.

"Unlike with the Bush administration, the vice president's not in charge in a Kerry administration," said state Sen. Dina Titus, the state's Democratic National Committeewoman.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., spoke with Edwards and Kerry shortly after the announcement and said he received assurances that Edwards would defer to Kerry's Yucca stance. Kerry has pledged that the mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas will not hold a repository if he is elected president.

"I've spoken to both of them today," Reid said. "John Edwards is totally on board on nuclear waste. He is committed to having no nuclear waste dump in Nevada."

In 2000, Edwards voted against a bill for temporary storage of waste at Yucca. That bill passed and then President Bill Clinton vetoed it. Edwards then voted to override Clinton's veto. In 2002, he voted for the permanent repository.

"Remember, he voted with us and this was a big issue in North Carolina," Reid said, referring to the Tar Heel state's nuclear power plants. "He said to me on the floor (for the 2000 override), 'If you need me, I'll be with you,' and I said, 'Well, we've got enough votes now.' ''

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said he considers Edwards to be one of the most liberal senators and one who voted against the state on Yucca.

"I think they're trying to have it both ways by saying they're both united, even though he voted for the dump," Ensign said.

Edwards also was crossways with Nevada in 2001 when he voted in support of a bill by Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona to ban betting on college sports.

GOP consultant Mike Slanker dubbed the Kerry-Edwards ticket as "liberal and liberaler" and said Edwards' Yucca vote hurts the Democrats.

"It certainly in Nevada has ruined any kind of nuclear purity John Kerry had," Slanker said.

State Democratic Party Chairwoman Adriana Martinez said Kerry's consistent votes against the repository are in sharp contrast to George W. Bush's actions as president.

As a candidate in 2000, Bush issued a statement pledging to base any decision on "sound science, not politics." Early on, his administration recommended Yucca as the nation's waste repository, and Bush supported that decision over the objections of Nevada's Republican governor and entire congressional delegation. Congress overrode Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the site in 2002.

"I haven't heard anything but pure excitement about the choice," Martinez said of Edwards.

State Republican Chairwoman Earlene Forsythe criticized the ticket as being too liberal for a conservative state.

"They've pushed toward being anti-growth and anti-business," Forsythe said, citing votes the senators took against repealing certain taxes.

Forsythe said the vote by both earlier this year against emergency funding for the war in Iraq and the troops in Afghanistan "shows they don't support the troops."

Nevada is considered one of 17 battleground states nationally. Bush won the state by 3.5 percentage points in 2000 after it twice went for Bill Clinton.

Democratic political consultant Dan Hart said he thinks Edwards "helps the entire Democratic ticket and party."

"He brings a vitality, energy and enthusiasm that is very contagious," Hart said.

In a heads-up comparison with Vice President Dick Cheney, Hart said Edwards, a successful trial attorney, will win the scheduled debate and will be a better campaigner.

"Dick Cheney is a little imperious and detached when it comes to campaigning," Hart said.

Democrats who gathered Tuesday in Sunset Park for an event lauded the selection of Edwards, even if they had supported different candidates during the primaries.

"I am 110 percent union, and right now our president has lied to myself about labor issues and to other residents of Nevada about what he was going to do on Yucca Mountain," said Ray Vercillo, a retired electrical worker. "Dick Gephardt would have been 110 percent union, but John Edwards is just fine."

Campaigns in Nevada reacted to the Edwards selection in expected fashion.

Tracey Schmitt, Bush-Cheney spokeswoman for Nevada, said the two senators are "out of touch" on issues like national security and the economy.

"Their anti-growth agenda won't resonate in a state that has 57,000 more payroll jobs than it did a year ago," she said.

Local Democratic party spokesman Jon Summers said a Kerry-Edwards ticket "means the middle class will have a voice, and our families are going to get a team that's on their side."

A rally in support of the Kerry-Edwards ticket is planned for 5 p.m. Thursday at the International Association of Fire Fighters hall on West Charleston Boulevard.

Reid said Kerry-Edwards "will be a good-looking ticket."

"I think not only visually are they so much better, but they are men of substance," Reid said. "It's great substance."

Edwards' trial attorney background and the significant financial support he gets from the industry also drew Republican criticism.

"One of the biggest problems we have in this state is the medical liability crisis; and we're saying here you are, have the leader of the personal injury lawyers," Ensign said. "We know what happens if a Kerry-Edwards ticket gets elected. National medical liability reform would be dead."

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said she thinks Edwards' past "standing up for people who have been injured" will play well in Nevada.

"Medical liability reform doesn't have to be a partisan issue," Buckley said. "In Nevada, we passed a fair medical liability reform measure 63-0, and it probably is constitutional."

Buckley said Edwards will play well to swing voters, in part because of his background. He was raised poor, the son of a mill worker. He later made millions representing the families of injured children.

"Here's someone who came from a family who didn't have very much and ended up living the American dream," Buckley said. "To me, that's what the promise of America is all about."

Stephens Washington bureau chief Steve Tetreault contributed to this report.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 07, 2004

Editorial: Kerry chooses Edwards

Choice of 'safe' liberal brings geographic balance, shows Democratic confidence

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the Democratic presidential nominee-apparent, has removed what little suspense might have remained from his party's upcoming convention by announcing his choice for running mate: North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Sen. Edwards made his millions as a trial lawyer, suing big corporations. He has yet to complete his first term in the Senate -- and in fact was absent for many votes in the past year as he waged his own, unsuccessful campaign for his party's nomination, winning only the South Carolina primary and his own state's less formal caucuses.

But while Americans like to make jokes about lawyers, lawyerhood did not keep Bill Clinton out of office. And Sen. Edwards -- a rousing if boyish populist speaker -- has been largely successful in casting his primary career as that of "champion of the little guys."

There were many reports the Kerry camp was concerned Sen. Edwards lacked the necessary gravitas -- and especially foreign-policy expertise -- to be placed only one heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

("Clearly, Edwards doesn't have the longest resume on national security," admits Michael O'Hanlon, a defense adviser at the prestigious Brookings Institution and a staunch Kerry supporter.)

Sen. Edwards was not even Sen. Kerry's first choice. It appears Sen. Kerry was prepared to offer the slot to Republican John McCain in a private meeting, but was turned down flat. And many in the party would have preferred Hillary Clinton -- though the New York senator's own plans apparently focus on 2008 or 2012.

But so what? Historically, the vice presidential selection seems to generate more excitement among political insiders than among the general populace. The notion that the presidential fortunes of Harry Truman, Richard Nixon or even the current president's father were much affected by their choices of Alben Barkley, Spiro Agnew or the tongue-tied Dan Quayle as their running mates seems a bit of a stretch.

The greatest significance of the Edwards choice is probably the extent to which it indicates the high comfort level of the Kerry team with the way the race is going.

Sen. Edwards is a relatively safe and predictable choice. He brings some geographic "balance" to the ticket and has been vetted through the primary process -- placing a safe second in a number of state races.

He's also popular with the party's more extreme, pro-big-government, left wing.

The junior senator voted for the Yucca Mountain waste dump. He opposed highly qualified judicial nominees such as Miguel Estrada -- a Horatio Alger story of immigrant success in American who was nonetheless demonized by far-left Democrats such as Ted Kennedy as some kind of "right-wing extremist." Why? Apparently because of Mr. Estrada's principled support of property rights, and the fact his law firm successfully represented George Bush in the successful Republican effort to call off Al Gore's endless attempts to revise Florida's 2000 popular vote by counting "dimpled chads" as Democratic votes.

Sen. Edwards has been a reliable vote in every Democratic attempt to roll back the Bush tax cuts. He even opposes phasing out the double taxation of dividend income.

Just as a sports coach who sees his team behind at halftime may "open up the game" by trying some high-risk plays, so a Democratic campaign team that saw itself losing to George Bush at this stage might have been expected to "reach outside the box" for a less traditional nominee.

Conversely, the choice of Edwards means the Democratic leadership today feels comfortable. They assume the race is currently even, that things will only get worse for George Bush on the economic front or in Iraq or both, and that all they need do is play it safe, make no mistakes, and wait for the electorate to go to the polls in four months and vote for "Anybody but Bush."

Of course, this may also explain why their standard-bearer, John Kerry, is himself barely visible on the national stage, except for his carefully nuanced call to "let the U.N. do more" in Iraq.

The bulk of the Democratic presidential campaign this summer, it appears, will consist of the Michael Moore movie "Fahrenheit 9/11." The Democrats are content to allow Nov. 2 to be a referendum on George Bush, a British style "vote of confidence," up or down.

Whether it will work, time will tell. What's interesting is that the Democratic strategy turns out to be so -- we don't mean to resort to name-calling, here -- "conservative."

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Reno Gazette-Journal
July 07, 2004

Edwards now opposes Yucca Mountain

Doug Abrahms

WASHINGTON - Democratic vice presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John Edwards switched positions and now opposes building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid said.

Reid, D-Nev., said Edwards told him in a Tuesday conversation that he will work to stop the controversial nuclear waste project from being built.

“John Edwards supports (Democratic presidential candidate) John Kerry on all issues important to the people of Nevada, including Senator Kerry´s pledge to stop nuclear waste coming to Nevada,’ Reid said in a statement.

Edwards, D-N.C., voted to build Yucca Mountain in 2002 to help North Carolina´s nuclear power plants, which wanted to get rid of their spent nuclear fuel stored on-site. Edwards´ support was not crucial in the July 2002 vote in which 60 senators voted to move forward with the project.

Before Nevada´s Democratic caucus in February, Edwards and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean supported building Yucca Mountain, while Kerry, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark and U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., opposed it.

A spokesman for Edwards had no comment on Yucca Mountain.

Nevada, with five electoral votes, is one of 19 battleground states where the battle between President Bush and Kerry is expected to be close in November. Democrats want to make Bush´s decision to move forward on Yucca Mountain a campaign issue, while Republicans say the economy and homeland security are of more vital concern to Nevadans.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
July 07, 2004

State lawmakers criticize Yucca Mountain data

Ken Ritter
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS — The completeness and complexity of data the Energy Department posted to a Web site to support plans for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain came under question Tuesday by Nevada´s congressional delegation.

Officials can´t tell whether the Web site answers key safety, security, and health questions about the repository, according to U.S. Reps. Jim Gibbons, Shelley Berkley and Jon Porter and U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign.

“We have strong concerns regarding the disorganized and complex manner in which DOE has posted the portions of the data that are available,’ the bipartisan delegation said in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

The Nevada lawmakers asserted the information doesn´t meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements.

Energy Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The criticism comes after Nevada state officials complained last week they couldn´t tell whether the Energy Department met legal requirements with its June 30 certification that it posted 20 years´ of scientific studies on the repository to a Web site for Nuclear Regulatory Commission and public review.

Like the state, the congressional delegation acknowledged it has to wait for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to appoint a presiding officer for the Yucca Mountain license application before lodging an official complaint. An appointment is expected by July 15.

The Energy Department has said it posted 1.2 million documents totaling 5.6 million pages onto the Web site, with more documents to come.

However, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the NRC only received about 500,000 of the electronic documents — and that many remained unavailable pending resolution of privacy questions and Web site technical problems.

Gagner said the “prelicensing application presiding officer’ will determine whether the database is complete and resolve Energy Department data privacy concerns.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission computer system can index about 150,000 documents a week, so it will take several weeks to post documents that have yet to be submitted, Gagner said .

The Energy Department is required by law to certify that all Yucca Mountain documents are publicly available six months before applying to the NRC for a license to build the repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The department plans to submit an application by a self-imposed December 2004 deadline. It expects NRC approval in time to begin entombing 77,000 tons of the nation´s most radioactive waste from power plants and military storage at the repository in 2010.

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Reuters
July 07, 2004

NRC to meet on N.Y. Indian Pt nuke fuel storage

NEW YORK, July 7 (Reuters) - The staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will meet with the public on July 15 to discuss a dry cask storage facility for the spent fuel at Entergy Corp. (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) s Indian Point nuclear power station in New York.

Entergy notified the NRC late last year of its intention to build a dry cask storage facility at Indian Point because the stations current storage facility is almost full.

During the meeting, which will be held on July 15 near the plant site in Peekskill, New York, NRC staff members will provide details of the agencys oversight role in reviewing dry cask storage of spent nuclear fuel, the agency said in a statement late Tuesday.

The Indian Point station is located in Buchanan, New York, about 35 miles north of New York City.

Spent nuclear fuel consists of long, thin rods * they can be 12 feet or more in length and have a diameter about the size of a pencil * holding enriched uranium pellets. The rods are grouped into assemblies or bundles containing as many as 256 rods each. Once the assemblies have been used in a reactor, they are placed in interim storage facilities, such as a circulating-water spent fuel pool or a dry cask storage system.

With the dry cask storage option, fuel is removed from the pool after a sufficient period of cooling time has elapsed and placed inside stainless-steel casks. Those casks are then sealed, filled with an inert gas and placed inside cylindrical vaults made of steel-reinforced concrete capable of resisting floods, tornadoes, projectiles and other unusual scenarios.

The amount of heat given off by spent fuel assemblies loaded into a cask would typically be less than that generated by an average home heating system.

Dry cask storage was supposed to be a temporary solution pending construction of a permanent U.S. repository for high-level radioactive waste now held in hundreds of locations across the United States. But, delays in the construction of the repository, has forced some energy companies to seek short-term alternatives, like dry cask storage.

There are currently about 30 dry cask storage facilities at other nuclear plants across the nation. Other plants are pursuing or considering such facilities.

The Department of Energy, which hopes to open a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is expected to apply to the NRC later this year for a license to begin construction of that facility.

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New York Times
July 07, 2004

Kerry Chooses Edwards, Citing Former Rival's 'Political Skill'

By David M. Halbfinger

PITTSBURGH, July 6 — Senator John Kerry named John Edwards as his running mate on Tuesday, turning to a youthful North Carolina senator whose nimble campaign skills, engaging personality and evident appeal across different regions of the country had made him the top choice of many Democratic leaders.

"I have chosen a man who understands and defends the values of America," Mr. Kerry told a roaring crowd at a morning rally at Market Square here, minutes after an announcement of his choice had been e-mailed to hundreds of thousands of supporters.

"A man who has shown courage and conviction as a champion for middle-class Americans and for those struggling to reach the middle class," Senator Kerry added, citing the themes that Mr. Edwards had made his own in the Democratic primaries. "A man who has shown guts and determination and political skill in his own race for the presidency of the United States."

In the 51-year-old Mr. Edwards, Senator Kerry, who is 60, chose a relative newcomer to American politics, and a man who was his longest-lasting major rival in the Democratic nominating contests.

After a surprisingly strong second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses — some Kerry aides say they believe Mr. Edwards would have won had the caucuses occurred two days later — Mr. Edwards held on until the first week of March as others once thought to have more star power, like Howard Dean and Gen. Wesley K. Clark, fell behind.

"I was humbled by his offer and thrilled to accept it," Mr. Edwards said in a statement before his wife and children joined him to fly to Pittsburgh to spend the evening with the Kerry family at Teresa Heinz Kerry's estate near here.

The Kerry campaign orchestrated the selection for maximum exposure, managing to keep it a secret across the holiday weekend, making both a traditional rally announcement as well as one by e-mail and delaying the ticket's first joint appearance until Wednesday. The two men and their wives are to embark Wednesday on a four-day tour through the swing states of Ohio, Florida, West Virginia and New Mexico before ending the week with a rally in North Carolina on Saturday.

Democrats who hailed the selection on Tuesday said Mr. Edwards's buoyant personality and drawling, sunny speaking style would bring a needed jolt of energy to Mr. Kerry's ticket. They said he would provide a striking contrast to Vice President Dick Cheney, though Republicans countered that a debate between the two would be a face-off between sizzle and substance, particularly over the Iraq war, when Mr. Edwards's relative lack of foreign policy experience would be an issue.

Several Democrats also said that Mr. Edwards's selection would put to rest questions that Mr. Kerry, of Massachusetts, was writing off the South. Rather, they said, the addition of Mr. Edwards — and his support from blacks, among other mainstay Democratic constituencies — would put North Carolina into play and bolster Mr. Kerry's bid in other Southern states, improving his chances of outdoing the abysmal performance in the South of Al Gore, a native Tennessean, four years ago.

The choice of Mr. Edwards is also likely to have a powerful effect on the future of the party, giving a platform to a younger Democrat and setting up a potential leadership clash between Mr. Edwards, as Mr. Kerry's presumptive heir, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has ridden her husband's legacy to the Senate and is widely thought to have designs on the White House herself.

Mr. Edwards's background as a trial lawyer is certain to help Mr. Kerry and the Democratic Party raise money heading into the fall campaign, but Republicans and industry officials said it also would propel business executives, manufacturers and other proponents of curbs on civil litigation and jury awards to increase contributions to President Bush.

More immediately, the choice of Mr. Edwards forced aides to Mr. Kerry to try to reconcile his dismissal of Mr. Edwards as unready for the presidency when the two men were vying in the Democratic primaries.

"In the Senate four years — and that is the full extent of public life — no international experience, no military experience," Mr. Kerry said in Iowa in January. "When I came back from Vietnam in 1969, I don't know if John Edwards was out of diapers."

And in February, Mr. Kerry warned of Mr Edwards, "This is not the time for on-the-job training in the White House on national security issues."

Republicans immediately played up Mr. Kerry's past remarks. "This is the person he now considers qualified to be president of the United States?" said Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, as Republicans circulated a 23-page, 16,000-word dossier on Tuesday that depicted Mr. Edwards as an unaccomplished, inexperienced, disingenuous liberal.

The Bush campaign also began airing a television advertisement featuring what it described as "John Kerry's first choice for a vice presidential running mate," Senator John McCain of Arizona. Mr. McCain, a Republican with an appeal to independents, had deflected several approaches by Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Edwards, the son of a millworker who became a wealthy plaintiff's lawyer, has said he was driven to enter politics after his eldest son Wade's death as a teenager in a car accident in 1996. Two years later, in his first race, he unseated Senator Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina, then began running for the presidency before his first term was over.

Mr. Kerry left questions to his aides on Tuesday afternoon as he flew from here to Indianapolis to speak to a convention of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, acknowledged that political strategy played a part in choosing Mr. Edwards but said that Mr. Kerry was more concerned that his running mate "be in a position to succeed him."

When asked when and how Mr. Kerry had satisfied himself of Mr. Edwards's readiness to assume the presidency, Ms. Cahill cited Mr. Edwards's "tireless" campaigning for Mr. Kerry since withdrawing from the race.

"When you're competing in the primaries, you are thinking about getting through the primaries," she said. "When you look at who is a good running mate, a good partner, that is a different calculus. And when he went through that, it was clear to him that Senator Edwards would be a great partner to win the presidency in November."

In his announcement, Mr. Kerry provided clues to how his estimation of Mr. Edwards had risen. "I've seen John Edwards think, argue, advocate, legislate and lead for six years now," he said. "I know his skill, I know his passion, I know his strength, I know his conscience, I know his faith."

"John Edwards is ready for this job," Mr. Kerry said. "John Edwards is ready for this job," he repeated, adding, "I am determined that we reach out across party lines, that we speak the heart of America, that we speak of hope and optimism, and John Edwards will join me in doing that."

For all their friction in the primaries, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards had two influential Democrats in common as advisers: Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who took Mr. Edwards under his wing in the Senate and took an increasingly large role in Mr. Kerry's campaign in the primaries; and Bob Shrum, the speechwriter and media consultant who worked for both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards until both men's entry into the primary race led him to drop Mr. Edwards as a client last year.

They have voted alike on every important issue likely to arise during the presidential campaign, starting with the Iraq war. Both voted to authorize Mr. Bush to deploy troops in Iraq. They have voted in favor of abortion rights, gun control, changes in campaign finance laws, stronger environmental standards and the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act. They also voted against impeaching President Bill Clinton and against the Bush tax cuts.

In Congressional Quarterly's 10 to 15 "key votes" of the year, since 1999, when Mr. Edwards entered the Senate, he and Mr. Kerry have been on opposite sides of these issues only twice, on whether a nuclear waste disposal site should be built on Yucca Mountain in Nevada (Mr. Edwards in favor, Mr. Kerry against) and on whether Mr. Bush's plan for closing military bases should be adopted (Mr. Kerry in favor, Mr. Edwards against).

Mr. Edwards was not in the Senate in 1993 when Congress approved the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Kerry supported. This year, Mr. Edwards said he would have voted against the measure. But in the Senate, their records on trade matters have differed only slightly.

The announcement on Tuesday concluded an extraordinarily secret vetting and decision-making process, one in which Mr. Kerry concealed his intentions from even his closest aides until late Monday night. The first person other than Mr. Kerry's wife to learn of Mr. Edwards's selection was a contractor hired to redecorate the fuselage of his jet with both men's names, aides said. Mr. Kerry personally called the contractor about 6 p.m. Monday so he could have the plane ready by Tuesday morning. He did not tell his campaign manager and other senior aides until about 10:30 p.m., they said.

In keeping his own counsel, Mr. Kerry drew on his displeasure at having learned from television reports of his rejection in 2000, when both he and Mr. Edwards were considered and ultimately passed over by Al Gore. Aides said Mr. Kerry called Mr. Edwards about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, about the time that news organizations were first reporting his decision and minutes before the mass e-mail message was sent. Mr. Edwards learned the news from Mr. Kerry, judging from their telephone conversation, Ms. Cahill said.

The two men spoke for about 15 minutes, and Mr. Kerry then began notifying others who had been candidates for the job before heading to the rally in downtown Pittsburgh, she said.

Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who had made known his plans to retire from politics if Mr. Kerry did not choose him, called the Kerry-Edwards pairing "a ticket that can excite, motivate and most importantly defeat George Bush and Dick Cheney in November."

Mr. Gephardt said he would continue to campaign with and for Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards, as did Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, the little-known Midwesterner whose close ties with Mr. Kerry and leadership of a crucial swing state helped vault him into close contention for the job.

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Senator Harry Reid
July 06, 2004

Reid Gets Edwards Commitment To Stop Yucca Mountain

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a conversation earlier this morning, Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards told Sen. Harry Reid that he is fully committed to stopping the Yucca Mountain project. Edwards joins John Kerry´s fierce opposition to a nuclear waste dump opening in Nevada.

Sen. Harry Reid released the following statement:

"John Edwards supports John Kerry on all issues important to the people of Nevada , including Sen. Kerry´s pledge to stop nuclear waste coming to Nevada.

"As a presidential candidate, we saw John Edwards´ intellect, optimism and ability to connect with people from all walks of life. He is a self-made man whose success comes from hard work, perseverance and belief in the American dream. He has worked to strengthen the middle class by fighting for better health care, education and jobs.

"He brings these qualities with him to the ticket, and I look forward to an exciting few months and an ultimate Kerry/Edwards victory this November."

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Las Vegas SUN
July 06, 2004

Nevada congressional delegation criticizes Yucca Mountain data

By Ken Ritter
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The completeness and complexity of data the Energy Department posted to a Web site to support plans for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain came under question Tuesday by Nevada's congressional delegation.

Officials can't tell whether the Web site answers key safety, security, and health questions about the repository, according to Reps. Jim Gibbons, Shelley Berkley and Jon Porter and Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign.

"We have strong concerns regarding the disorganized and complex manner in which DOE has posted the portions of the data that are available," the bipartisan delegation said in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

The Nevada lawmakers asserted the information doesn't meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements.

Energy Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The criticism comes after Nevada state officials complained last week they couldn't tell whether the Energy Department met legal requirements with its June 30 certification that it posted 20 years' of scientific studies on the repository to a Web site for Nuclear Regulatory Commission and public review.

The Energy Department has said it posted 1.2 million documents totaling 5.6 million pages onto the Web site, with more documents to come.

However, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the NRC only received about 500,000 of the electronic documents - and that many remained unavailable pending resolution of privacy questions and Web site technical problems.

Gagner said the "prelicensing application presiding officer" will determine whether the database is complete and resolve Energy Department data privacy concerns.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission computer system can index about 150,000 documents a week, so it will take several weeks to post documents that have yet to be submitted, Gagner said .

The department plans to submit an application by a self-imposed December 2004 deadline. It expects NRC approval in time to begin entombing 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste from power plants and military storage at the repository in 2010.

---

On the Net:

Energy Department Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Licensing Support Network: http://www.lsnnet.gov

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Las Vegas SUN
July 06, 2004

Nevada Dems like Kerry's choice of Edwards

By Brendan Riley
Associated Press

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - More than half of Nevada's Democratic National Convention delegates wanted Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to pick former rival John Edwards as his running mate - and those who were undecided quickly signaled their support Tuesday.

A survey by The Associated Press of the 32 DNC delegates from Nevada in advance of Kerry's selection Tuesday showed 18 wanted Edwards while three liked Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, three favored New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, two backed Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, one wanted retired Gen. Wesley Clark and five were undecided.

"It's going to create a whole new dynamic at the national convention," said Pam duPre of Reno, one of the undecided delegates until Tuesday. "John Edwards just exudes a level of energy and enthusiasm and optimism that has widespread appeal."

"John Edwards can appeal to the working- and middle-class voters, and Dick Cheney doesn't even know we exist," she added.

Delegate Emma Rubalcava-Micelli of Las Vegas, had expressed early support for Edwards, noting his experience as a U.S. senator, his opposition to corporate takeovers - and adding that he ran second behind Kerry in the Democratic caucuses and primaries earlier this year.

Superdelegate Yvonne Atkinson-Gates of Las Vegas, who also expressed early support for the North Carolina senator as Kerry's pick, said the move will "probably help us out in the South quite a bit. He has that Southern constituency that will hopefully help us win the presidency back."

Delegate Chris Wicker of Reno, another early Edwards supporter, described him as "very knowledgeable on the issues - and he's somebody you can envision as being president if Kerry serves four or eight years and then Edwards can come into his own after that."

Delegate Jeanne Maust of Las Vegas was one of the three delegates who wanted Kerry to pick McCain even after McCain had rejected Kerry's overtures to be No. 2 on the Democratic ticket. "It would bring us support from people we don't have now," she said.

Delegates who liked Richardson included Brian Hutchinson of Reno, who described Richardson as a moderate who would appeal to the Hispanic community as well as to potential swing voters.

Delegates who favored Gephardt included former Rep. Jim Bilbray of Las Vegas, who said he had served with Gephardt in Congress, knew him well and saw him as an "outstanding" vice president.

Randy Soltero of Las Vegas was the only delegate to favor Clark as vice president. "Given the situation in Iraq, we should go with the general.," he said. "As vice president he could take care of the war and President Kerry could run this country and get us back to where we need to be."

The Kerry-Edwards ticket will be nominated at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, which begins July 26.

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GovExec
July 6, 2004

GOP leaders face multiple hurdles on spending bills

By Peter Cohn
CongressDaily

Republican leaders face several issues with party-splitting potential as the fiscal 2005 appropriations process and the November elections approach, putting them in the difficult position of fending off Democratic attacks and internecine warfare simultaneously.

Across the spectrum of appropriations fights -- from drug reimportation to government outsourcing and Yucca Mountain -- the fiscal 2005 cycle presents few easy choices for GOP leaders, particularly in the Senate, where floor time on spending bills has averaged 45 days over the past seven years.

The Defense and Homeland Security bills are the only measures approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee -- the Defense measure was approved before the July Fourth recess and the Homeland Security measure is likely to reach the floor this month.

With the number of legislative days dwindling, the Homeland Security bill could be among the last attempts by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to move individual spending measures across the Senate floor if debate drags, sources said.

Leaders in both chambers have expressed a firm desire to wrap up the Defense bill conference this month, and the Homeland Security bill could also be completed separately from a fiscal 2005 omnibus spending bill.

Among the most intractable issues could be veterans' health care funding, with veterans' groups looking to hold lawmakers voting against their positions accountable at the polls. On the $92.9 billion VA-HUD measure, appropriators in both chambers are expected to increase spending for veterans' health care by at least $1.2 billion over the president's request of $29.8 billion, and $2.5 billion over last year's enacted level.

Republican leaders argue they have greatly increased veterans' spending in recent years. But veterans' advocates, including Republicans such as House Veterans Affairs Chairman Christopher Smith, R-N.J., are insisting on at least $2.5 billion more than the president's request. They argue that is the minimum necessary to prevent cuts in services.

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up its version July 22. VA-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman James Walsh, R-N.Y., said he expects a tough fight even in committee.

Democrats such as Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, ranking member on the House Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee, will try to convince enough Republicans to oppose the rule for floor debate, to force a vote on increasing the health care funds.

"If I were the House Republican leadership, when faced with a decision to cut veterans' services in a time of war, I'd probably want that vote to be after the elections," Edwards said. Having the vote prior to November "is probably not the way to get Republican incumbents back to Washington," added Scott Lilly, former Democratic staff director for the House Appropriations Committee.

The VA-HUD and Transportation-Treasury bills will be the last to move through the committee process, and are unlikely to see House floor time until September. Senate subcommittee markups of the Transportation-Treasury, VA-HUD, Labor-HHS and the District of Columbia bills have been put off at least until next week, while House panels will work on the D.C. and Labor-HHS measures this week.

On the Labor-HHS measure, annual fights loom over education, children's health care and low-income energy funding, to name a few. And the issue of overtime compensation rules promulgated by Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, which held up completion of the fiscal 2004 omnibus, is back again. "Labor-H will be a very ugly bill," Lilly said.

An amendment by Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to block the overtime rules -- which would, among other things, increase the salary threshold to qualify for overtime -- was attached to the corporate tax bill in the Senate. GOP leaders are expected to try to strip it in conference.

But if the $142.5 billion Labor-HHS bill comes to the House floor in July, a labor official said there could be another battle to attach language blocking the rules, one which House GOP leaders narrowly won last year.

While the measure would not be enacted in time to head off the Aug. 23 rule implementation, "a strong vote could send a message" to the Labor Department to delay or revise the rules, the official said.

Pro-labor House Republicans oppose the administration's overtime policy. Fifteen of them wrote to Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., last month, asking him to schedule a floor vote on the matter. Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is also opposed. Specter relied on labor's support to defeat Rep. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., in the April primary, and is hoping for union help against Democratic challenger Rep. Joseph Hoeffel, D-Pa., in November.

The Transportation-Treasury spending bill also faces an array of funding issues. At $25.4 billion in discretionary budget authority, the allocation is $3 billion shy of last year's enacted level, although that measure contained about $1.5 billion in one-time funds to update voting systems standards.

Fights on the Transportation-Treasury bill include how to keep the Amtrak passenger rail service afloat and how to reconcile competing House-Senate GOP demands for highway and transit spending -- currently the subject of much haggling with the White House over the six-year surface transportation reauthorization bill. The bill also faces another fight over the administration's "competitive sourcing" program aimed at putting some government services up for competitive bidding with the private sector.

Several other controversial issues, including Yucca Mountain and prescription drug reimportation, could emerge as stumbling blocks this week.

House and Senate appropriators are tying to find a way to keep the proposed nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain on schedule despite parochial and budgetary concerns.

Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., could unveil his plan to raise almost $450 million through a one-year surcharge on nuclear utilities, although it is likely to run into opposition from Minority Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., as well as fiscal conservatives in that chamber.

"It's a tax increase, proposed by a Republican in an election year," one aide said, arguing that the higher fees would be passed onto consumers through higher electric bills. But Yucca Mountain is a top priority of the Bush administration and the nuclear power industry, which traditionally favors Republicans, and aides said the issue is likely to remain unresolved until after the elections.

On prescription drugs, the House Agriculture measure includes a provision blocking the Food and Drug Administration from banning the import of prescription drugs from Canada -- a move opposed by the White House but with support on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and others may seek to add similar language to the Senate version, which is up for subcommittee consideration this week.

Also on the Agriculture measure, backers of country-of-origin labeling for meat products are looking to hold Stevens to his promise to remove a two-year delay in the program. That promise was made last year to Western Republicans such as Wyoming Sens. Craig Thomas and Michael Enzi, in exchange for their support of the fiscal 2004 omnibus.

Adding to the troubles for appropriators are the inevitable last-minute riders members will seek to attach to spending bills. That process began before the recess as GOP leaders sought to attach language paving the way for a must-pass increase in the statutory debt limit in conference on the Defense bill.

"Most of the problems we have are not appropriations issues," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., who argued against including the debt-ceiling provision.

The sticking points have led GOP leaders and appropriators to conclude that an omnibus is inevitable, with Young planning in September to bundle any bills the Senate has not approved.

There has even been talk of attaching a continuing resolution to the fast-moving Defense bill, with the expectation that lawmakers will be back after the elections. But Young said those decisions should wait until September at the earliest. "I don't want to do a CR yet," Young said.

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Waste News
July 06, 2004

GeoMelt solidifies its presence

By Tracy Hayhurst

A heap of radioactive or other hazardous waste can be reduced to a harmless, shiny glass lump with blasts from patented technologies, according to GeoMelt, the firm that owns the process.

GeoMelt technologies are the patented property of the Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus, Ohio. AMEC Earth & Environmental in Richland, Wash., has an exclusive agreement to develop and market the processes.

AMEC, the British parent firm of the environmental group, took over the license for the vitrification technology from GeoSafe Corp. in 2000. Battelle created GeoSafe to take the technology commercial, said Leo Thompson, division manager for GeoMelt.

The vitrification process uses an electric current, delivered via graphite electrodes inserted into the contaminated waste, to heat the material to between 2,552ºF and 3,632ºF. This can be done in the ground in what is known as in situ vitrification, or it can be done in a container that then acts as the shipping and disposal box.

As the molten zone grows, it incorporates hazardous inorganic elements in it, while the high temperature destroys organics through pyrolysis and catalytic reactions, the company said.

The process can be skid- or trailer-mounted and transported by truck to a work site. Separate units that capture off-gasses with scrubbers and filters are part of the setup, Thompson said, and sometimes contaminated clothes or other materials used during the process can be melted with a subsequent batch.

Each melt is different, but with in-ground vitrification, GeoMelt can handle up to 1,000 tons of material per batch. The waste, dirt and refractory materials are heated over the course of a week or two, with the molten mass being monitored and then allowed to cool, Thompson said. In-container melts, which are more common, take less time.

Compared to other thermal treatments, such as plasma or rotary kilns, GeoMelt does not require additives. It also has the largest available scale and processing rate, and lower capital costs because it doesn´t use a complex melter vessel, the company said.

At the U.S. Department of Energy´s Hanford site in southeastern Washington state, the government is building a large vitrification plant, with completion planned for 2011, to handle that site´s high-level radioactive waste. Supplemental treatment technologies, including GeoMelt, are being considered to handle the low-level waste, Hanford spokesman Erik Olds said.

"It´s amazing, it´s quite simple," he said of the GeoMelt process. The material treated by GeoMelt would be disposed of somewhere on the Hanford site, while the high-level radioactive material eventually will be shipped to a national repository, perhaps Yucca Mountain in Nevada, Olds said.

In western Texas, GeoMelt and a waste company are running two demonstration projects and building a plant to treat DOE waste from Rocky Flats, Colo., and Oak Ridge, Tenn., which is being stored at the disposal site, Thompson said.

In March, the DOE scrapped plans to use GeoMelt to clean nuclear waste at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, over cost concerns. The government instead plans to use concrete to stabilize trenches filled with nuclear waste.

For more information, contact GeoMelt at (509) 942-1292 or visit www.geomelt.com.

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Hartford Courant
July 04, 2004

In Tight Election, Nevada Could Be Key

By David Lightman
Washington Bureau Chief

CALIENTE, Nevada -- Slice through the milk chocolate colored mountains that frame I-93 and an oasis of about 1,000 people suddenly appears. Look closely behind the dusty storefronts and there's an unlikely sight: The sign of politics.

"Do We Oppose Nuclear Waste in Nevada? You Bet!!" screams the red and white placard on Kathleen Kline's chain-link fence. "Our Families are Not Expendable."

Should the outrage over this one issue spread like a drought-fueled brushfire, it could help decide whether President Bush or likely Democratic nominee John Kerry wins Nevada this year. And Nevada could very well decide who wins the White House.

The issue is Yucca Mountain, which is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Kerry is against dumping nuclear waste there. Bush in 2002 signed legislation approving the Yucca site, after saying during the 2000 campaign he would veto any bill designating Yucca as a temporary site.

There are other places in America where single-issue voting can make this kind of a difference. Such issues have potential to be even more important than usual this election year, because polls have consistently found that roughly 45 percent of the country is voting for Bush and 45 percent of the country is voting for Kerry.

That doesn't leave many undecideds, and what could make up their minds is the oldest rule of politics - that it's all local. That means this election could turn on feelings about steel imports in Ohio, salmon fishing in Washington or immigration policy in Arizona or New Mexico.

The most pivotal of all the local issues is probably Yucca Mountain, where the Bush-Kerry schism is at its most stark. So high are the stakes that, since May, Nevada has seen visits from Kerry, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and former President Clinton, and a parade of surrogates, including Cabinet secretaries, U.S. senators and others.

"If we win here, we'll probably win the election," Clinton said on a swing through Las Vegas last week.

He methodically explained why: Start with New Hampshire. Kerry is far ahead of Bush there, meaning the Democrat should win the state's four electoral votes. If Kerry also wins every state Al Gore won in 2000, "he'll need one other place," Clinton said, because he'd still be short.

Nevada, with its five electoral votes, seems like a strong possibility. Bush won in 2000 by 4 percentage points, but it's a state with a rapidly expanding population and, because of Yucca, the presidential election can be easily boiled down to black and white local terms.

Even with Yucca stoking controversy, Nevada is still a state that has not shown a desire for political engagement, so for all the road signs and ads and organizers, getting people to rise up and vote their interests is proving daunting.

The Challenge

The road to a Kerry victory starts in Clark County, home of Las Vegas and its fast-growing suburbs. It's estimated that 2,000 people a day move into this area, and beyond the Strip and its cluster of mammoth hotels, the residential areas have the nondescript look and feel of any just-built American suburb.

Drive down Rampart Boulevard, and there are the Shops at Boca Park, a well-scrubbed mass of single-story stores vying for middle-class money. There's a Target and a Linens 'n Things and a Pottery Barn, and you can eat at the Cheesecake Factory and stay at the J.W. Marriott Hotel.

People here come from everywhere lured by the seemingly endless possibilities of jobs, jobs, jobs, fast money and temperatures that hardly ever go below freezing. Politics is not much on their minds.

"There's an apathy here that doesn't exist in Detroit," says Tara Smith, who came from Michigan to help organize for the Sierra Club. The environmentalists have set up shop in back of a suite of offices on Charleston Boulevard and are trying hard to convince voters they have a chance to stop Yucca Mountain once and for all.

They pass out slick brochures about "The Bush administration's broken promise" and send out newsletters with an "outrage of the week." But their two big events so far have drawn only about 75 people each, and when Cheney came to the majestic Bellagio Hotel - site of the Brad Pitt/Julia Roberts glamfest "Ocean's Eleven" - for a fund-raiser, the club's alternative event at a nearby restaurant, at a cost of $2.50 per person, drew 50.

The Sierra Club's goal is to turn out 20,000 environmental voters. "That would turn the election," said community organizer Matt Stafford. Bush won Nevada last time by about 21,000 votes.

Getting those votes will be hard. Across town at Democratic headquarters, volunteers methodically run down lists of potential supporters, politely calling each one and explaining, among other things, why the nuclear issue is such a big deal.

"Sometimes if you say you're calling from the party, people just hang up on you," said Natanya DeWeese.

So many activists go back to the same theme: So many people are new here; they don't understand the Yucca problem. But it is still early in the election year, and the parties see chunks of voters there for the wooing.

The Voters

Who both sides want are voters in Ann Castro's neighborhood.

Visitors enter the American West complex by punching in a code at the gate. Despite the prison feel from all the security warnings plastered on that gate, inside is a pleasant collection of cul-de-sacs, all tastefully lined with little lawns and cream-colored homes that have recently doubled in value to about $250,000 each.

Castro and her family came here about 24 years ago. She's from upstate New York, near Buffalo, and her husband, Oscar, a Cuban immigrant, came from Florida.

He's a pest-control technician, she's a freelance writer and a Democrat-turned-Republican. Castro's political odyssey is not uncommon here; unlike New York or Florida, there are no strong political clubs to remind you why it's important to support the party, no neighbors running for office who have taken care of your needs for generations.

What matters in this land of second chances are images and perceptions; this is a place where people feel free of the shackles of tradition, free to reinvent themselves.

"I was anti-Vietnam, a flower child," Castro laughs. "I wanted everyone to have rights and freedom."

She voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 and Al Gore in 2000. And although she warns she has not made a complete political whirl to the right, she has become a convert to Bush.

"When 9/11 hit, I was glad Bush was in the White House," she says. "With Gore, or Kerry, there would have been a lot of discussion. Bush was unafraid to act."

Terrorism, Castro says, is a far greater threat than Yucca Mountain. As her son, Jason Martin, puts it, "We're right on the list" of terrorist targets. He calls the Yucca issue "very minor. I have confidence that the people building it will have good sense."

Darrell Fagg, a structural iron worker, agrees. He's a Democrat, but says "as long as they're not bringing it through my neighborhood, I don't care."

There are plenty of people who worry about the issue and are convinced a vote for Kerry is important. "It's huge," said lawyer Dean Hardy. "I hope my family will live here a long time, and I don't want a lot of waste in this state."

But even seasoned political pros concede gaining any momentum for this view is a tough task. Democratic officials here were asked repeatedly to identify independents or Republicans who were switching because of Yucca, but were hard-pressed to come up with anyone.

Too often, voters said, the matter seems like a done deal, and there are other issues, such as economics and terrorism, to consider.

"I feel if we're going to have Yucca Mountain, and we are, let's try to make it safe," said hotel front desk supervisor Erin Hendriks. She has not made up her mind yet between Bush and Kerry, but has decided whether Yucca Mountain will make a difference when she chooses.

"No," Hendriks said, emphatically.

The Pitch

The Democrats' task is crystallized in Caliente, 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas, where the Energy Department wants to route most of the waste on its way into Yucca Mountain.

This is Republican country, part of Lincoln County, which Bush carried last time with 70 percent of the vote. This is where Democrats need to pick up support, and they're counting on people like Kathleen Kline.

The prospect of Yucca scares her to death. She oozes small-town America. Her house at the corner of Main and Market Streets has a well-lived-in comfort. There's a portable phone on the rail, a cooler on the step and a beach chair on the porch. Kline leans gently on the rail and looks squarely at the railroad tracks about a block and a half away.

"We like it here," she says. "It's quiet and there's so much to do. The kids can go in the creek and get snakes and frogs, or we can take our dirt bikes up the trail."

But she can't get her mind off those tracks. "Something can spill or fall over. It can do anything," she said. Yeah, the government says there will be protection, but they said that 50 years ago when they tested nuclear devices just up the road.

"People would shake the powder out of the trees," Kline said. "My mother-in-law died of breast cancer."

On the other side of these tracks, people saw things from a different point of view. There's a little strip of stores that make up Caliente's downtown, and Mayor Kevin Phillips, who runs the hardware store, sensed opportunity, not danger.

"I understand that the community would prefer this did not happen," he says. "But they're not stupid. The county needs Yucca Mountain. What brought people here was the mines and the railroad, and every mine today is closed."

Yucca, Phillips said, could mean hundreds of rail and fleet maintenance jobs.

That view seems widely shared. "What are you going to do? It's already here," said bartender Patty Jewell. "We have to have growth," adds Tina Osborn, owner of the One Stop Depot, a local store.

Kline and her friends have hope. They have Kerry, a candidate who's unequivocal in his opposition.

This is the Democrats' task, and they're going to spend the next five months relentlessly pushing the Yucca message.

"If you elect them," said Clinton of Bush and his allies, "you reward them. They'll think you did not care. They will think you're voting to green-light this. ... This state can make the difference."

The day after Clinton pounded the podium and made that case to about 500 Democrats gathered at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Harriet Weinstein manned a phone bank at the Kerry headquarters a few blocks away.

The results were not encouraging. "It was frustrating. It was like I was a telemarketing," the Democratic volunteer said. "I don't know if they understand the magnitude of the Yucca Mountain issue.

"Of course, if they did," she said, "they probably wouldn't have moved here in the first place."

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 03, 2004

Yucca Web site criticized

Environmentalists call data incomplete

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Seventeen environmental organizations on Friday called on the Energy Department to withdraw its certification of a Yucca Mountain licensing database, claiming the material is incomplete and inaccessible to the public.

Segments of the Internet site (www.lsnnet.gov) that are to contain Energy Department documents related to the proposed nuclear waste repository remained dark on Friday.

A spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which maintains the site, said those portions might become active today. Administrators were harmonizing computer coding after removing 150,000 documents that DOE claimed contained homeland security and other privileged information.

Even when it becomes functional, the database, known as the Licensing Support Network, will not contain all the technical reports, letters, science studies and e-mails the Energy Department certified this week as part of its Yucca Mountain license bid.

NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the NRC has received less than half the Energy Department's collection, and it will take five or six more weeks to index about 700,000 documents that are outstanding.

The groups, which included the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, the Nevada Desert Experience and Las Vegas-based Citizen Alert, challenged the Energy Department's certification of its materials in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

"We request you withdraw your certification until DOE's submission of documentary material is actually completed, and the submitted materials are thoroughly indexed and posted, and entirely readable and accessible on the Licensing Support Network Website," their letter stated.

DOE officials had no immediate comment on Friday.

The DOE certification was issued on the last day of June, keeping chances alive for the department to submit a repository license application by the end of the year, as it has promised Congress. Federal rules say a license bid cannot be filed until six months after DOE certifies it has made its documents available.

Attorneys for Nevada are preparing to challenge the certification. They will argue the DOE's licensing bid should be put on hold until six months after all questions about the database are resolved.

Federal rules call on the NRC to appoint a pre-license hearing officer within 15 days after certification to judge issues associated with the license network.

The licensing support network is drawing attention because it is expected to serve as the official depository for all the parties that will be involved in NRC legal proceedings to license a Yucca Mountain nuclear site.

Energy Department officials have said they have met legal requirements. Although the Licensing Support Network website is not ready, DOE said its collection of 1.2 million Yucca Mountain documents has been made available on a department Web site (www.ocrwm.doe.gov)

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Las Vegas SUN
July 03, 2004

Scandal Emerges Over Japan's Nuke Program

By Kenji Hall
Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) -

It was supposed to help revive Japan's troubled nuclear program - and curb the country's heavy reliance on energy imports. But as Tokyo considers long-term plans to switch to an experimental, recycled nuclear fuel, it is also facing new allegations that officials misled the public in the past about less pricey alternatives.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry acknowledged Saturday that a study it conducted in 1994 showed that reprocessing radioactive waste into a plutonium-uranium fuel would cost twice as much as burying it at a disposal site.

The study wasn't publicly released until after reports about it surfaced Saturday in the national Asahi and Mainichi newspapers.

"It was originally for internal decision-making purposes only," ministry official Tadao Yanase told The Associated Press.

Yanase said the ministry wasn't even considering directly disposing of nuclear waste from commercial reactors a decade ago.

The allegations that policy-makers concealed data about reprocessing fuel costs marked the latest setback for the nation's nuclear program, which has been plagued by recent safety violations, reactor malfunctions and accidents.

They come as the Atomic Energy Commission, which draws up energy policy, prepares to meet in coming weeks to discuss scaling back plans to use reprocessed fuel - known as mixed oxide, or MOX - for reactors in the face of opposition from local residents and criticism from nuclear experts.

Japan's 52 nuclear plants account for nearly 35 percent of its energy supply.

Officials say future expansion of the nuclear grid is crucial: It would lower resource-poor Japan's dependence on oil, natural gas and coal imports, they say.

A policy blueprint calls for building 11 new plants and raising electricity output to nearly 40 percent of the national supply by 2010. As many as 18 electricity-generating reactors would use MOX as a transition to more advanced fast-breeder reactors, which run on plutonium and can also generate extra plutonium fuel.

"MOX is more efficient than current technology. We could recycle spent uranium fuel, not just burn through it once like we do now," said Osamu Goto, a Cabinet Office energy policy official.

Experts say the MOX program would solve another problem: a shortage of nuclear waste-storage space.

With no permanent nuclear waste disposal site in Japan, domestic nuclear plants are forced to hold onto spent fuel rods, said Tatsujiro Suzuki, a nuclear researcher at the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry.

Media reports say those waste-storage pools will be full within a decade.

"If nuclear plants can't send their waste to a repository, they will have to shut down once their pools are filled," Suzuki said.

But a string of safety problems since the country's worst nuclear accident in 1999 has left the program in a shambles and undermined public faith in nuclear energy.

Japan's only plant designed to run on MOX, the Fugen reactor, has been permanently shuttered since March 2003 due to high operating costs.

The country's first experimental fast-breeder reactor, Monju, also has been off-line since 1995, when more than a ton of volatile liquid sodium leaked from its cooling system. A bungled cover-up of the damage led Japanese courts to order the facility permanently closed.

Currently, the fate of Tokyo's MOX program rests on a major fuel reprocessing plant being built in northern Aomori prefecture (state).

Already years behind schedule following a radioactive water leak in late 2002 and protests from local officials, the Rokkasho village plant won't be operational until 2006, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. officials say.

It's not clear if Saturday's revelation about the 1994 study will influence the Atomic Energy Commission's discussions about whether to revise policy. Commission officials weren't available for comment.

"The assumptions of the study are far different from the actual situation now," Yanase, the ministry official, said.

But Steve Fetter, a University of Maryland professor who advised the commission against reprocessing in a presentation in Tokyo last month, said it would be expensive to operate the Rokkasho plant, and that Japanese consumers would see higher electricity bills.

He also warned about the security concerns of stockpiling so much plutonium, which could be diverted and used to make nuclear weapons.

"Instead of reprocessing fuel, it would be wise for Japan to establish an interim storage space for spent fuel," like the U.S.-proposed site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, Fetter said.

---

On the Net:

Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan: http://www.japannuclear.com/

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Pahrump Valley Times
July 2, 2004

Hopes for Yucca funding fading

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The House on Friday approved a $28 billion measure financing energy and water programs that provides far less than President Bush proposed for building a nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada.

The bill, approved by a 370-16 vote, provides $131 million for continued preparations for the nuclear waste storage site to be built at Yucca Mountain, in Nye County 50 miles north of Pahrump and 20 miles north and east of Amargosa Valley and Beatty, respectively.

Bush proposed $880 million for the project, which the government hopes to complete by 2010. The bill ignored Bush's request to finance $749 million of the sum by taking it from a special nuclear waste fund, which comes from fees electric utilities charge their customers.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved legislation on June 24 requiring that at least $750 million be taken annually from that fund for work on the Yucca facility. That bill's prospects are uncertain, especially in the Senate, where Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the chamber's No. 2 Democratic leader, opposes the Yucca plan.

Nevada's three House members voted against the bill.

"The $131 million in funding for Yucca Mountain included in this bill is a small fraction of what the White House had requested, but we are still not entirely out of the woods," Berkley said in a statement. "Those who wish to see nuclear waste buried in Nevada are already vowing to use upcoming negotiations between the House and Senate to restore any shortfall in the President's record $880 million request."

"We're not happy unless it's zero," said Gibbons spokeswoman Amy Spanbauer. "But we were pleased to see that the House did not entertain the idea of taking the Yucca Mountain project off-budget and removing congressional authority."

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Pahrump Valley Times
July 2, 2004

BLM stumbles over the tough questions

By Heidi J. Bertolino
Special to The PVT

TONOPAH - Local rancher Joe Fallini nearly cleared the room at a June 20 meeting sponsored by the Bureau of Land Management. Fallini had everybody's attention with his comments regarding the Department of Energy's proposed land withdrawal for the Caliente corridor needed for the alignment, construction and operation of a railroad to ship high-level nuclear waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. He tried to get answers from BLM representatives, and Nye County Commissioners Joni Eastley and Midge Carver, but nobody was able to alleviate his worries regarding grazing and water rights on his ranch east of Tonopah. Approximately 10 BLM representatives, two commissioners, and a couple of Department of Energy personnel were in attendance at the opening of the afternoon meeting, but about halfway through only five or so representatives were circulating the room and talking with the public.

The BLM was hosting two meetings in Tonopah on June 20 and two meetings in Pioche June 21 regarding the preferred Yucca Mountain corridor but only 25 members of the public signed in. The meetings were scheduled to collect comments and answer questions regarding the preferred rail and 318-mile section of land.

Fallini and family attended the afternoon meeting in Tonopah and talked with several representatives. Bob Halstead from the governor's office attended the evening meeting in Tonopah.

The BLM representatives were able to answer simple questions regarding the land, showing their map to those with questions and pointing out the one- to four-mile-wide strip of land that could host a railroad from Caliente. The strip of land travels through several valleys and mountain ranges, outside the Tonopah Test Range and south to the planned Yucca Mountain Repository near Amargosa Valley. They were able to answer questions regarding the environmental impact statement and the steps involved in preparing it for the preferred rail corridor.

Fallini, however, was well educated on the strip of land through his rangelands and the federal government process; he wanted to know why the Department of Energy chose the route. He wanted to know why he had not been informed. The Bureau of Land Management reps told him 21 meetings had been held to collect public comments regarding the proposed routes and the DOE had selected the Caliente corridor. Fallini asked when and where the meetings were - and why he was never contacted to participate since he is an affected landowner.

He said the first and only notice he has received from the Energy Department was last week, indicating they would be in the area to survey the route.

When Fallini asked why the Department of Energy had chosen the route over the Nevada Test Site route, the representatives said they did not know why. Fallini said the Caliente route was by far the most expensive to build because of the geologic lay of the land. He also said it had the most adverse potential impacts. He said wilderness study areas; water lines, wells and archeological sites were all within the boundaries of the withdrawn land he currently operates his open range ranch on.

"Do you know how many pipe lines and archeological sites are out there?" he asked one representative. When the man admitted he did not know what potential effects the railroad could have on the public lands used by Fallini, he said, "I do, it's my bread and butter."

Sue Fallini said that top-level Department of Energy liaisons had told her the reason the route was selected was to avoid the metropolitan areas. "That's just smoke and mirrors. You can't tell me that the waste coming all the way from New Jersey, by truck, will not go through a single metropolitan area. It will go through 100's (of metropolitan areas) before it even reaches Nevada." Nobody argued her point. Sue Fallini said it was ridiculous to ship the waste all the way across the country on trucks and then load it onto a train in Caliente and ship it down a railroad that will cost a fortune to build.

Sue Fallini also told the representatives from the Tonopah and state BLM offices that she did not believe the withdrawn land would be narrowed down once the railroad was aligned.

She said it would be similar to what occurs when the state sets a right-of-way for a highway where twice as much land is withdrawn - so that in the future the highway can be expanded. "Once they get the land or the water rights they never give it back," she said.

The Fallinis said it was suspicious the corridor as proposed impacts the business of every rancher that had ever been in a dispute with the Bureau of Land Management. Deputy State Director Meg Jensen said it might look suspicious, but the BLM had not been involved in the selection of the corridor.

When asked if the Fallinis would be able to graze their cattle on land they have been grazing for almost a century and was recently withdrawn, the representatives said it was too early in the process to know. When asked if the railroad would be fenced, restricting the movement of Fallini's cows, the BLM representatives repeated it was too early to tell.

"How are you going to protect my grazing rights?" asked Fallini.

"We encourage you to stay involved in the process," said a BLM representative.

"They do not answer any questions. The DOE didn't answer any questions in Goldfield and now these guys don't know anything either. It is typical. The federal government goes in and takes whatever it wants and then includes the public after the fact," Fallini said after the meeting.

The Energy Department hosted scoping meetings to collect public comment regarding the proposed railroad in Goldfield, Amargosa Valley, Caliente, Las Vegas and Reno in May.

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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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