Yucca Mountain News Clips - Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
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Congresswoman Shelley Berkley
July 9, 2004

Berkley Says Court Ruling Could Bury Nuclear Waste Storage at Yucca Mountain

(July 9, 2004 – Washington, D.C.) U.S. Representative Shelley Berkley today declared that a ruling by a U.S. federal appeals court may spell the end of efforts to bury high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. In its ruling, the court found that a radiation standard established by EPA for the Yucca dump did not meet legal requirements for protecting public health and safety.

In response to the ruling, Berkley issued the following statement:

"The people of Nevada should throw up their arms and cheer at this court ruling. By tossing out the EPA's radiation standard, the court has said that the Bush Administration's plan for Yucca Mountain will not protect the health and safety of Nevada residents. I have no doubt that the White House and the nuclear power industry are going to fight the court's action, but this should serve as a warning to both, that science, not politics, must guide this process.

“It is long past time that we pull the plug on funding for Yucca Mountain and invest in the safe storage of nuclear waste at the sites where it was produced. This solution is good for a century and is already in use around the nation.

“The days of burying our heads in the sand by attempting to bury nuclear waste in Nevada are over. Technology ultimately holds the answer to the nation's nuclear waste problem, and we should be investing more in research. We have already wasted billions of dollars on a hole in the Nevada desert, and today's court ruling only proves that the Yucca Mountain is unsafe, unwise and unworkable."

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Las Vegas SUN
July 13, 2004

Utilities' case on nuclear waste storage in court

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

WASHINGTON -- A federal court on Monday began hearing the case of a group of utilities suing the federal government over the failure to open Yucca Mountain.

The government was supposed to take commercial nuclear waste from the reactors in 1998, but six years later the utility companies still store their own waste. The utilities also pay for additional onsite storage and put billions into the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for the Yucca Mountain federal nuclear waste repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"Congress locked itself into a policy that was unreachable," said David Cherry, spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

A case involving three utilities that own the Yankee group of reactors in Maine, Vermont and Connecticut, went to trial Monday before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The trial is expected to last seven weeks.

The case before Judge James Merow is limited to used reactor fuel that is being stored at the Maine Yankee, Vermont Yankee and Yankee Rowe (Connecticut) nuclear plant sites. The issue is especially important to the New England utilities because the reactors have been shut down and keeping the waste is expensive and may affect site cleanup.

"If this litigation is successful, it will provide some financial relief to the electric customers who bear the increasing costs to store fuel at these sites as a result of the DOE's failure to met its legal obligations," said Bruce Kenyon, chairman of Yankee Atomic Electric Co.

The company is asking for $548 million.

The utilities are among the 65 that filed lawsuits against the department for missing the 1998 deadline to open the nuclear waste repository.

Indiana Michigan Power Co. previously sued, asking for $107.7 million in damages in a case heard earlier this year. In a May 27 ruling, the court decided the department breached the contract but the utility should not receive payment yet because it has not been hurt by the missed deadline, according to court documents. Other trials are expected.

The lawsuits and possible $56 billion in damages the government may have to pay, by the industry's estimate, are what those watching the project say push Yucca forward.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee, which creates the Yucca budget, has concerns about cost to taxpayers posed by the looming lawsuits.

Hobson's been working to fully fund the program, although so far this year he was only able to approve $131 million in Yucca funding, a sharp cut from the department's $880 million request.

The funding problems on top of the recent federal court decision criticizing the project's radiation standard could slow down the project beyond the new 2010 deadline, causing even a longer delay.

Prices for storing nuclear waste onsite vary, but the containers can cost at least $1 million, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham estimates it will cost the government at least $500 million a year for each year of delay just for the government's nuclear waste sites. For each year beyond 2010, the department estimates the nuclear industry will pay $500 million a year to store spent fuel at utility sites.

"A delay in opening the repository could substantially increase the Department's liability," Abraham wrote.

He did not answer Hobson's question earlier this year about how much it would cost the federal government if the delay in opening Yucca lasts much longer.

Cherry said the government brought the problem on itself by leaving no other option to study but Yucca Mountain. As the 1998 deadline came and went, Congress --by federal law--could not study any other site but Yucca, leaving no option but to study a site it knew was flawed, Cherry said.

"The American taxpayer will be on the hook for this," Cherry said. "They (the nuclear industry) argue the ratepayers are getting hurt since there is not a central storage location, but they always look to the taxpayers for the bailout."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 13, 2004

Nevada nuclear dump continues pending appeal of court rulings

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A one-paragraph court order issued as Nevada officials celebrated a federal appeals court ruling on the Yucca Mountain project will let work continue on the nuclear waste repository, at least for the time being, attorneys said.

The three-judge panel that issued Friday's decision in Washington, D.C., also ordered its ruling on a key health regulation be withheld until seven days after any appeal is decided.

Attorneys and nuclear industry officials said Monday that could delay the court's mandate for up to a year. A Nevada state official said any delay would be shorter.

Some industry officials said the order represented a reprieve for the Energy Department, because it lets work continue toward licensing the repository in the Nevada desert while project supporters seek a favorable ruling or a rescue by allies in Congress.

"Everything is the same, nothing is different," said Steve Kraft, a director of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobbying group. "It's hard for us to imagine how this project does not keep going forward until the process keeps playing out."

Marta Adams, a Nevada deputy attorney general, characterized the court order as a "holding action."

"That does mitigate the immediate vacating of the rule," she said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a 10,000-year radiation standard for the repository, saying it defied a National Academy of Sciences recommendation for a longer period.

The standard, which aimed to shield residents from harmful exposures to radioactivity, was devised by the Environmental Protection Agency and incorporated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Neither agency has commented on the ruling.

The decision said the EPA must either revise the standard consistent with academy findings or get Congress to let it deviate from the recommendations.

Parties have 45 days to request a rehearing or seek a review by all the judges in the circuit, attorneys said.

In another section of the ruling, the judges said the state can contest environmental issues about the repository during a licensing process.

The Energy Department noted the judges upheld most other elements of the project, and rejected the state's contention that the selection of the Yucca site was a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

That ruling could be appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Adams said lawyers were continuing to digest the 100-page decision, and said Nevada could file motions urging the judges to remove the hold.

Joe Egan, Nevada's lead nuclear waste lawyer, said the circuit court ruling didn't leave the Energy Department much room for appeal.

Egan said he didn't think the Energy Department can "appropriately" proceed toward applying for a repository operating license by the end of the year, but said he expected the agency would try.

The plan to entomb 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, also has problems away from the courthouse.

It faces a budget crisis in Congress and challenges to its management of millions of pages of backup documents for an online database supporting the license application.

Attorneys for the state asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday to declare invalid the Energy Department's certification that the database was complete.

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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 13, 2004

Yucca project work to proceed

Ruling on health standards on hold as appeals play out

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A one-paragraph court order issued as Nevadans were celebrating a federal appeals court ruling on the Yucca Mountain Project will allow work to continue on the nuclear waste repository, at least for the time being, attorneys said.

While Nevada officials were hailing Friday's decision as a potentially fatal blow to the project, the three-judge panel ordered its ruling on a key health regulation be withheld until seven days after the outcome of any appeal.

Attorneys and nuclear industry officials said this could delay the court's mandate for months or a year. A Nevada state official said delays, if any, would be much shorter.

In the view of some industry officials, the overlooked court order means a reprieve for the Energy Department. It allows work to continue toward licensing a Nevada repository while Yucca supporters angle for a more favorable ruling on appeal, or a rescue by allies in Congress.

"Everything is the same, nothing is different," said Steve Kraft, a Nuclear Energy Institute director. "It's hard for us to imagine how this project does not keep going forward until the process keeps playing out."

Marta Adams, a Nevada deputy attorney general, examined the order on Monday and said it appeared the judges had issued a "holding action" on their ruling.

"That does mitigate the immediate vacating of the rule," Adams said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a 10,000-year radiation standard for the repository, saying it was put in place in defiance of a National Academy of Sciences recommendation for a longer protective period.

The standard, which aimed to shield residents from harmful exposures to radioactive materials, was devised by the Environmental Protection Agency and incorporated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Neither agency has commented on the ruling.

The decision said the EPA must either issue a revised standard consistent with the NAS findings or get Congress to give it authority to deviate from the recommendations.

Parties to the lawsuit have 45 days to request a rehearing, or to ask the court for an en banc review by all the judges in the circuit, attorneys said. Another option is for an appeal straight to the U.S. Supreme Court, although it was not clear how the order would come into play in that circumstance.

Adams said Nevada could file motions urging the judges to remove the hold on their ruling. She said any appeals by the government or the nuclear industry likely would be quickly dismissed.

"I don't think this has a whole lot of significance," Adams said. "Rehearings are rarely granted."

Adams added attorneys are continuing to digest the 100-page outcome of the complex litigation. Joe Egan, the state's lead nuclear waste lawyer, said Yucca supporters who are projecting a quick rebound in the courts or in Congress were engaged in "wishful thinking."

"I don't think the court left them much to appeal. There is no basis for a stay here, none at all," Egan said. "I don't think the licensing proceeding can appropriately proceed but I don't doubt DOE's facility to try to do that."

Beyond the legal issues, Egan said he doubted there will be much appetite in Congress to overturn a court ruling that invalidates health and safety science behind the government's effort to bury nuclear waste at a site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Yucca project also has problems away from the courthouse. The program is facing a budget crisis in Congress and challenges to its management of millions of pages of backup documents for an online database. Attorneys for the state on Monday filed a motion with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to have DOE's database certification declared invalid.

But an attorney not involved in the lawsuits said his reading suggested DOE could continue its work while appeals are in progress.

"They can probably proceed under the current ground rules until the current ground rules are invalidated. If there are appeals, that will keep the decision from going into effect," said the attorney, who spoke on the condition he not be identified because he is a party in other DOE litigation.

That was the same message that nuclear industry executives delivered Monday during a meeting on Capitol Hill with several lawmakers, staffers and Energy Department officials according to a Senate aide who received a report afterward.

NEI executive vice president Angelina Howard said the gathering was a get-together of the organization's executive board and Yucca Mountain was among several issues discussed.

Aides said the meeting was authorized by Senate Energy Committee chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., although it was not clear if he attended. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., and Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, the chairman of the House energy and air quality subcommittee, attended parts of the meeting.

The Senate aide said the officials appeared less worried about the court ruling than about a Domenici proposal to increase industry fees to make up a shortfall in next year's Yucca Mountain budget.

Nevada claimed a victory when the circuit court judges invalidated the 10,000-year radiation standard. In another section, the judges confirmed the state will be allowed to contest a wide variety of environmental issues during repository licensing.

But in what is being described overall as a mixed ruling, the Energy Department noted the judges upheld most other segments of the project, and dismissed the state's contention that the selection of the Yucca site was a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Energy Department had been anticipating an unfavorable ruling on the radiation standard and already was at work forming a response, a top manager told Yucca Mountain employees in an e-mail on Friday.

"We have been preparing to address this issue in the event that the court ruling upheld the challenge to the standard," said Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "We are already consulting with the other appropriate agencies and we will be discussing options in the coming days."

Chu reported the court "ruled in our favor on all issues except one," and said the decision "is a reaffirmation of the very hard work done by all participants in the program."

DOE spokesman Allen Benson said he had no comment on the e-mail. He said Yucca employees were continuing work toward completing a license application to be filed later this year.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 13, 2004

Damage Claims: Nuclear waste trials starting

Three utilities seek money from government for its failure to build central storage site

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The government's failure to open a dump site for commercial nuclear waste could expose taxpayers to tens of billions of dollars in damages.

One of the first in an expected string of trials to determine exactly how much began Monday in a courtroom across the street from the White House.

Owners of three reactors in New England claim they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars building storage facilities and maintaining spent nuclear fuel that the government under a contract had promised to pick up six years ago. In all, more than 60 claims have been filed seeking damages from the government.

More than two decades ago, the government signed a contract with utilities promising to take charge of the highly radioactive used reactor fuel at commercial power plants beginning in 1998. But the government has yet to come up with a central storage site.

A number of court cases have ruled that the Department of Energy is liable for the cost of keeping the waste because of a breach of contract. How much is at stake is anyone's guess, but the industry has put the number as high as $56 billion.

Three utilities that own the Yankee group of reactors in Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut, went to trial Monday before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The trial is expected to last seven weeks.

Jerry Stouck, an attorney representing the utilities, outlined a case that was expected to focus on expenses utilities had to pay because of the government's repeated failures, dating back to 1983, to get approval for a central waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain and its refusal in the interim to accept the waste at some other facility.

"They built these facilities for one reason only -- because of DOE's default," Stouck said of the utilities.

A Justice Department attorney countered that the damage claims were "speculation" and wrongly assumed that if the government had met the 1998 deadline, the New England reactors' waste would have been taken within a few years.

In fact, the companies would have had to build storage facilities and maintain fuel for years as they awaited their turn for shipping waste to a central repository, the government argued.

"Even though there was a delay, the (utilities) cannot prove there was incremental damage," argued Harold Lester, the government's lead attorney, representing the Energy Department.

The courts already have ruled the government violated its contract with the nation's utilities to take charge of the waste. Now the utilities are seeking damages, with a total of 65 claims having been filed, including a rush of them at the beginning of the year, just before the six-year statute of limitation for lawsuits expired.

"Damages. Damages. It's all about damages. How much money are we entitled to," Stouck said during a break in the proceedings.

"If this litigation is successful, it will provide some financial relief to the electric customers who bear the increasing costs to store fuel at these sites as a result of the DOE's failure to meet its legal obligations," said Bruce Kenyon, chairman of Yankee Atomic Electric Co.

Stouck said the cost of keeping the waste on site, initially underestimated, has grown because today's terror threats require increased security.

But the money sought in this trial is only a fraction of what the government may have to pay, given that these are only three of 65 claims filed by owners of the country's 102 reactors at 72 power plants.

The bill could grow if the Yucca Mountain waste site does not open in 2010 as planned.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 13, 2004

Steve Sebelius: Lonely at the top

In America, we tend to think of our government as all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful.

Maybe it's the influence of Tom Clancy, whose novels portray Republican politicians as America-loving he-men bent on doing the right thing for their nation; CIA officers as canny college grads doing a noble service; and military officers as always capable, always faithful.

Clancy, in fact, is the Ian Fleming of his day (minus Fleming's obvious talent, of course). Both were adept at propaganda that made their respective governments look more adroit than they really were.

In reality, our government agencies on a couple of recent occasions more closely resemble another character from literature, or at least television literature: Cosmo Kramer.

That's why you've got to pity poor President Bush, elected to the highest office in the land, overseeing a vast network of intelligence, military, and civilian government resources, all at his disposal to discharge his duties as the most powerful man on Earth.

And yet they treat him like a mushroom, keeping him in the dark and feeding him loads of ... well, you get the idea.

Take Yucca Mountain, for example. Bush must have studied the issue for hours, mindful of a solemn promise he'd made on the campaign trail to let sound science decide the issue once and for all. The Environmental Protection Agency must have mustered experts to tell the president that repackaging nuclear waste at scores of sites around the nation, sending it by truck and train to the Nevada desert, and burying it forever in a geologically questionable hill was perfectly safe.

And the president believed his advisers, and signed off on Yucca Mountain .0000002 seconds after the papers hit his desk.

But the trouble was, "sound science" had a huge, 290,000-year hole in it, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found last week. Since the material being dumped into Yucca Mountain will be radioactive for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years, the puny 10,000-year safety standard just doesn't hold up.

Or, in the more somber words of the court: "It would have been one thing had EPA taken the the (National) Academy (of Sciences) recommendations into account and then tailored a standard that accommodated the agency's policy concerns. But that is not what EPA did. Instead, it unabashedly rejected NAS' findings, and then went on to promulgate a dramatically different standard, one that the Academy had expressly rejected."

Sound science? Maybe when winged monkeys fly out of Yucca Mountain. (And given the mutating effects of radiation, it could happen.)

That wasn't the only place poor President Bush was misled. After Sept. 11, 2001, he was asking all his intelligence and national security team to investigate what role Iraq had played in the attacks. Instead of telling the president the bad news -- Iraq didn't have a damn thing to do with Sept. 11, 2001 -- our intel services went into full Tom Clancy mode, spinning ever wilder tales about "connections," and "links" and even "relationships." Why, there was a shadowy first-chapter meeting in Prague between an Al Qaida hijacker, Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi intelligence official!

So Bush went to war, invading a country that we were told was quite literally on the verge of nuking civilization.

Whoops. No Al Qaida connection on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. No weapons of mass destruction. No mighty army, ready to spill over the borders at a moment's notice. No nuclear bombs, with ticking timers. Not even a deadly "laser."

Or, in the more somber words of U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, who led one of the two investigations that have largely discredited the administration's rationale for war: "In the end, what the president and the Congress used to send the country to war was information provided by the intelligence community, and that information was flawed."

Flawed. What some people call, "dead wrong."

What's a president to do? Wait, hold on a second.

Before he signed off on Yucca Mountain, Bush was visited by Gov. Kenny Guinn and others, who pitched the "sound science" case. He even took notes, according to one participant in the meeting. So he had to know something was up with the science.

And journalist Bob Woodward reports that when now-departed CIA Director George Tenet came to the same Oval Office and told him the case against Iraq was a "slam dunk," even Bush had his doubts, saying the average Joe wouldn't buy it. So he had to know something was up with the intel, too.

But he eventually signed off on Yucca, and on war in Iraq, and stands behind both decisions even today.

Could it be that President Bush heard what he wanted to hear in those dry science briefings and classified intelligence talks? Could it be that he decided to go ahead -- perhaps even believing what he was doing was the right thing -- based not so much on his advice as on his gut?

Sure it could. But that won't help the commander-in-chief much when the buck finally comes to stop on that Resolute desk in the lonely Oval Office.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.

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Reuters
July 13, 2004

US to Proceed on Nevada Waste Site Despite Ruling

By Chris Baltimore

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration will proceed with a plan to build a nuclear waste site in Nevada this year despite a court decision ordering it to prevent radiation leaks for more than 10,000 years, a senior Energy Department official said on Tuesday.

Critics of the project, including Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid of Nevada, say this recent federal court ruling could permanently derail a plan to build a massive underground storage depot beneath Yucca Mountain about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The administration said, however, that it does not intend to slow down.

"We are still on track toward submitting a license application in December of this year, and opening the repository and beginning waste acceptance in 2010," Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow told a Senate Energy Committee hearing on nuclear energy.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last week rejected Nevada's attempt to block the plan to store 77,000 tons (70,000 metric tons) of waste on constitutional grounds.

However, the court also said the administration wrongly ignored a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences to ensure safety from leaks for well beyond 10,000 years.

Radioactive releases could peak in 300,000 years and the administration must assure safeguards on that scale, the court found.

Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, a long-time nuclear industry proponent, said assuring safety over that timeframe is "impossible," and that the industry will "stand or fall" on how the court's objection is addressed.

Spent fuel from the nation's nuclear plants is piling up -- there are over 50,000 tons (45,500 tonnes) of it stored at over 100 interim locations in 39 states within 75 miles of 161 million people.

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Provo Daily Herald
July 13, 2004

Tour lets residents ride in WWII plane

Justin Hill
Daily Herald

This was no commercial flight.

The roar of the engines of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator filled the World War II-era plane, nearly making the human voice inaudible. Shouting was the most effective form of oral communication.

Passengers could watch the ground rush below their feet through slits at the bottom of the bomb bay. Or they could stare outside the plane through openings on either side during the flight from Heber City to Provo.

It was truly a piece of flying history.

"That was definitely the experience of a lifetime," said John Garfield, general manager of the Provo Marriott. "I'm glad they're willing to take it around and let others experience it."

Residents can experience the B-24 -- as well as a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress -- for the next two days. The aircraft will be on display at the Provo Municipal Airport from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Wednesday. Then the aircraft are off to Colorado Springs, Colo.

The historic planes -- crew members with the aircraft said the B-24 is the only one of its kind still flying -- came courtesy of The Collings Foundation's Wings of Freedom Tour. The Stow, Mass.-based nonprofit organization, which restored the planes to 1944 condition, takes the planes around the nation to honor veterans and promote awareness of World War II history.

The foundation requests an $8 donation for adults and $4 for children to tour both aircraft. Flights in the planes are available for a tax-deductible donation of $400 per person. The donations help support the maintenance of the planes, which can run nearly $3,100 per flight hour per plane.

There's nothing quite like "touching and seeing the inside of the plane to know what it's like," said Dave Wall, the Provo stop coordinator for the Wings of Freedom Tour. Wall said it was the first time the tour came to Provo.

Orem resident Roy Carlson didn't need to touch or see the inside of the aircraft to know what it was like. He logged 400 hours in a B-24 Liberator as a bombardier, navigator and "unofficial copilot" during World War II. Carlson was supposed to go overseas, but the war ended first.

He stood at the Provo airport as the B-24 bounced back to terra firma.

"It brought back good memories," Carlson said, wearing a shirt with a picture of a B-24. "I enjoyed flying it so much, I stayed in the Reserve."

The Collings Foundation's B-24 was given to Great Britain under the lend and lease program. The British used the aircraft in the South Pacific performing clandestine missions and bombing runs. It was abandoned in India after the war, and India flew the aircraft.

The Collings Foundation bought it in 1985 -- the same year the organization bought its B-17.

The latter aircraft never saw action in the war. But, it was part of the Air/Sea 1st Rescue Squadron and later the Military Air Transport Service.

It also was used for nuclear bomb testing in Yucca, Mountain, Nev., and was subjected to three nuclear blasts. The plane also was used as a firebomber.

The Wings of Freedom Tour visits more than 120 cities across the nation during a 10-month tour season.

Justin Hill can be reached at 344-2548 or jhill@heraldextra.com.

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Seattle Post-Intelligencer
July 13, 2004

Report criticizes accelerated cleanup plan at Hanford

The Associated Press

RICHLAND, Wash. -- An accelerated plan by the Energy Department to clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation is incompatible with controlling costs and schedules for highly complex construction projects, according to a new report.

The report from the General Accounting Office specifically criticized the department's fast-track approach to building a vitrification plant to convert radioactive waste into glass logs for permanent disposal.

Construction was required to begin by July 2001. Under pressure to meet that deadline, the department set its contract price for the project at the end of 2000 with the design less than 15 percent complete.

Construction is continuing even as design and technology development work continue.

That lack of planning will lead to problems ranging from delays to increased operating expenses later, the report said Friday.

Plant construction was estimated at $4.35 billion before the contract was awarded in 2000. The current estimate is close to $5.7 billion, an increase of more than 30 percent.

The department said it could reduce the time needed to treat Hanford tank waste by 20 years under an accelerated cleanup plan and reduce the total $56 billion cost to clean up Hanford by $20 billion.

But the $20 billion cost savings was overstated, and the savings likely will be closer to $12 billion, the report said.

Another uncertainty about the cleanup stems from a lawsuit, now on appeal, that could require the department to dispose of most of its tank waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The report concluded the agency has not adequately defined the potential effects of the legal challenge on its overall plan for high-level waste disposal.

"Unless effectively managed, an adverse legal outcome could increase project costs by tens of billions of dollars," the report said.

GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, recommended that the department avoid fast-track cleanup approaches with concurrent design on complex projects.

The report also asked the agency to provide Congress with a plan for treating and disposing of waste if the Energy Department loses the current lawsuit.

Jessie Roberson, assistant energy secretary for environmental management, wrote in a letter to GAO that the agency considered it premature to prepare a revised plan for Congress while the matter is pending in court.

However, giving Congress a better sense of the magnitude of changes that might be needed is appropriate, wrote Roberson, who is resigning her post effective Thursday.

For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035.

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Middletown Press
July 13, 2004

Yucca Mountain delays could result in higher charges for CY customers

Josh Mrozinski

HADDAM -- The decision by the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., which has been interpreted starkly by those for and against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository, could increase costs to Connecticut Yankee customers.

Any more delays in the mountain´s opening could add millions more to the costs that the power company customers are already shouldering.

If the Connecticut Yankee continues to store the spent fuel through 2020, the power company could see a charge of $65 million, according to CY spokeswoman Kelley Smith. That charge would filter down to customers.

Yankee Atomic Electric Company, Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company and Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company are now in court trying to reclaim costs associated with past delays in taking the waste and spent fuel from their sites.

"There is a potential for a delay but there is also a potential for the parties to resolve it," Smith said. "Regardless, the department of energy has an obligation to remove the fuel."

The court ruled last week, in a case brought by Nevada and environmental agencies, that the 10,000-year standard of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the public against radiation leaks at the repository is too short.

The government has to adopt new standards through Congress or the agency because of the ruling.

The three-judge panel didn´t suggest how long of a standard is needed but cited a National Academy of Sciences report that said the flows from a repository could be predicted up to a million years.

Smith said there are other facilities across the country that could be used to dispose of spent-fuel.

"Yucca Mountain was not the only option," Smith said. "We don´t see Yucca Mountain as the only option."

She said these sites, such as the one in South Carolina, could store the plant´s spent-fuel rods. She said the capability for these sites to store the spent-fuel is there because it is already storing spent-fuel from other countries through nonproliferation agreements.

"They are doing it for foreign countries and that´s why we´ve asserted they can take the small amount of fuel to these facilities," Smith said. "We´ve had discussions with regard to it but no resolution."

She said the court ruling, though, doesn´t have any impact on the plant´s plan to have the spent-fuel stored in dry casks at its Haddam Neck property by the first half of 2005.

Attorney Nancy Burton and Frank Warmsley, Sr., have claimed the site as the property of Venture Smith, a 18th century and descendant of Warmsley.

The 43 containers of waste and spent-fuel are being transferred to the site as the plant´s decommissioning, which began in 1998. The plant shut down in 1996 and the fuel could be out of Haddam Neck by 2023.

The power company is now in court to try to reclaim $197 million for its customers from the Department of Energy for its delay in taking the spent-fuel and waste from the site. The delay has made the power company spend more money on security.

Sue Gagner, spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said there are many sites around the country at where spent fuel is stored but they aren´t permanent. Yucca Mountain is the only permanent disposal site, she said.

The NRC conducts the license process to evaluate potential repositories such as Yucca Mountain, using regulation that reflects Environmental Protection Agency regulation.

"We are evaluating the implications of this decision," Gagner said.

Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear energy industry´s policy organization, thinks the problems with the regulation will be solved and won´t delay the project.

He thinks there is plenty of time before the construction license is issued in 2007 or 2008 for the parties to decide how they are going to proceed. He said the energy department will still file its application as it originally scheduled.

"They will put in the application," Kerekes said. "Right now they are on track to do that in September."

He thinks the decision last week also proved that the repository is on solid scientific footing, because the court rejected the argument that it was unconstitutional for Congress to force the project on a state that doesn´t want it.

Michelle Boyd, spokeswoman of Public Citizen, a consumer nonprofit group formed in 1971 by Ralph Nader, said the court decision was a huge blow to the Yucca Mountain project.

"It´s a serious blow to the project and the project should be moth-balled at this point," Boyd said. "It says the Department of Energy has to ensure the site´s drinking water would meet drinking water standard for several thousand of years and their research says it´s not possible."

She said the only way to protect the public is to stop making nuclear waste. She said a study needs to be completed to find alternatives.

"It´s certainly not going to solve our problem, it´s going to make it worse," Boyd said.

To contact Josh Mrozinski, call (860) 347-3331, ext. 222.

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Guardian
July 12, 2004

Trial Begins on U.S. Nuclear Waste Costs

H. Josef Hebert

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government's failure to open a dump site for commercial nuclear waste could expose taxpayers to tens of billions of dollars in damages. The first in an expected string of trials to determine exactly how much began Monday in a courtroom across the street from the White House.

The first case, involving three utilities that own the Yankee group of reactors in Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut, went to trial Monday before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The trial is expected to last seven weeks.

Jerry Stouck, an attorney representing the utilities, outlined a case that was expected to focus on expenses utilities had to pay because of the government's repeated failures - dating back to 1983 - to get approval for a central waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and its refusal in the interim to accept the waste at some other facility.

``They built these facilities for one reason only - because of DOE's default,'' Stouck said of the utilities.

A Justice Department attorney countered that the damage claims were ``speculation'' and wrongly assumed that if the government had met the 1998 deadline, the New England reactors' waste would have been taken within a few years. In fact, the companies would have had to build storage facilities and maintain fuel for years as they awaited their turn for shipping waste to a central repository, the government argued.

``Even though there was a delay, the (utilities) cannot prove there was incremental damage,'' argued Harold Lester, the government's lead attorney, representing the Energy Department.

The courts already have ruled the government violated its contract with the nation's utilities to take charge of the waste. Now the utilities are seeking damages, with a total of 65 claims having been filed including a rush of them at the beginning of the year, just before the six-year statute of limitation for lawsuits expired.

``Damages. Damages. It's all about damages. How much money are we entitled to,'' Stouck said during a break in the proceedings.

The case before Judge James Merow of the claims court is limited to used reactor fuel that is being stored at the Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee and Yankee Rowe (in Massachusetts) nuclear plant sites. The issue is of special importance to the utilities because the reactors have been shut down and keeping the waste is more expensive and may affect site cleanup.

```If this litigation is successful, it will provide some financial relief to the electric customers who bear the increasing costs to store fuel at these sites as a result of the DOE's failure to met its legal obligations,'' said Bruce Kenyon, chairman of Yankee Atomic Electric Co.

The utilities together are asking for $548 million in damages for costs incurred to keep the spent reactor fuel in dry-cask storage until 2010, the year the proposed Yucca Mountain waste site is expected to be opened. The amount is nearly double the $268 million cited in 1999 when the New England utilities began litigation. Stouck said the cost of keeping the waste on site, initially underestimated, has grown because today's terror threats require increased security.

The bill could grow if the Yucca Mountain waste site does not open in 2010 as planned. A federal appeals court raised new questions about the Energy Department's ability to keep its timetable Friday as it rejected DOE's proposed radiation protection standard for that site.

In a recent letter to Congress, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham estimated that utilities will incur $500 million a year in costs for every year the Yucca Mountain dump is delayed past 2010. ``Some portion of (that cost) ... the department will be liable for,'' he wrote.

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On the Net:

Energy Department: www.doe.gov

Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ymp/index.shtml

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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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