Yucca Mountain News Clips - Monday, July 19, 2004

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, July 19, 2004
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Washington Post
July 19, 2004

What the Court Intended

The July 10 editorial "Yucca Mountain" missed the key holding of the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The court ruled that the government had "unabashedly rejected" the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences in setting the primary radiation protection standard for Yucca, adopting instead a far more lenient standard that "the academy had expressly rejected."

In affirming a congressional design that deferred to science and human health, the court brought our radiation standard to the level of every other repository program in the world. While Yucca's porous geology may cause it not to meet that standard, many sites in America can. The world's only operating repository in New Mexico, for example, easily meets it.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act provides that if "at any time" the energy secretary determines Yucca to be unsuitable, he should report to Congress with suggested alternatives. It was in this context that the court invited a possible congressional resolution, not so that Congress could force-feed Yucca to the scientists.

Joseph R. Egan
McLean

The writer is the lead attorney for the state of Nevada in litigation contesting the Yucca Mountain project.

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Charleston Post Courier
July 19, 2004

Editorials

Practical action needed on waste

A recent court decision on the planned radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., presumes that the government should be able to provide something approaching perfection in its long-term plans for the project. Congress should provide a practical response to the ruling that will ensure safety for the foreseeable future while allowing the storage site to be used in the near term.

Indeed, the government anticipates no safety problems at Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years, based on the standard used to plan the site. The federal appeals court concluded that a longer period is required under the law that authorized the central storage site, but acknowledged that Congress could change the law and mandate that 10,000-year standard.

The ruling is the latest hurdle for the central site, now more than a decade behind schedule. The appeals court did reject numerous other objections in the lawsuit by Nevada and environmental groups, including a challenge to the constitutionality of the federal decision to locate the site there.

Existing problems in waste storage have been caused, in part, by the federal government's inability to meet a timetable for the central repository. The government is being sued by electrical utilities, including SCANA and Santee Cooper, that are having to provide costly on-site nuclear waste storage.

The federal government already has spent $9 billion to provide for the waste storage site in the interior of the mountain, located in a sparsely populated area of Nevada. It would accommodate waste from commercial reactors now stored at dozens of sites across the nation, and for highly radioactive defense waste, such as the liquid waste stored in vast quantities at the Savannah River Site.

While the decision may hearten those who oppose nuclear power and weaponry in all manifestations, it will set back efforts to manage existing waste with the assurance of safety and security.

Defense waste at SRS, for example, includes 37 million gallons of highly radioactive waste in 49 tanks, some of which are a half-century old. A recent report found cracks in 15 of the massive tanks, and Congress is considering a controversial cleanup plan for that material. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has endorsed a proposal to remove 99 percent of that waste for stabilization and eventual shipment to the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain.

That plan, too, is opposed for its lack of perfection. In cleanup of two tanks on site, virtually all the liquid waste was successfully removed. When attempts to remove the residue of radioactive sludge from two tanks on site weren't successful, the Department of Energy pumped concrete grout in and around the nearly empty tanks, diluting the remaining waste and sealing off the storage tanks. Practically speaking, the waste management effort achieved its goal.

Yucca Mountain also will achieve its goal of safe storage for the foreseeable future, but can't be expected to meet a standard of perfection until the end of time. It should be safe to say, however, that the government will deal with hazardous contingencies as they arise. Certainly, the state of Nevada will insist that DOE or any successor agency provides close attention in the years to come.

Potential problems in the far distant future can't be allowed to sidetrack the storage site, needed now. A central location is required for the safe and secure storage of nuclear waste, to supplant the numerous existing sites designed for interim storage.

Certainly the storage tanks at SRS would fall somewhat below the standard envisioned by the appeals court for long-term nuclear waste storage, considering that a recent review found that leaks already have occurred. That very real nuclear waste problem, and others, deserve a practical response.

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Brattleboro Reformer
July 19, 2004

VY waste questions take on urgency

By David Gram
Associated Press

MONTPELIER -- A recent court decision on plans to bury tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste under Nevada's Yucca Mountain has lent new urgency to questions about the waste being generated at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

Those questions are expected to be front-and-center before lawmakers next winter as Vermont Yankee seeks to install a new type of spent fuel storage on its Vernon site. They also may be an issue in this year's gubernatorial campaign.

In a ruling earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the Department of Energy's promise that the waste could be stored safely at Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years wasn't good enough; it implied that the standard would have to be several hundred thousand years.

Meeting the new standard, if it is possible and if Congress can muster the votes to try, could require extensive redesign and retrofitting at the Yucca Mountain facility. The opening date for that project, originally expected to be 1998, more recently had been pegged at 2010.

Energy Department officials say they believe they can push ahead and meet the 2010 deadline. Yucca critics scoff at that idea. "My comment is 'good luck.' I don't think this is going to fly in anyone's book," said Bob Loux, chief of Nevada's state Agency for Reactor Projects.

Robert Williams, spokesman for Vermont Yankee owner Entergy Nuclear, said his company is betting with the Energy Department. "We do not expect a delay in DOE being able to receive commercially generated spent fuel," he said.

Like other reactors, Vermont Yankee has a spent fuel pool, which was designed to hold highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies in 40 feet of water -- temporarily -- until they could be shipped off to a permanent disposal site. That temporary arrangement has been in place now for 32 years -- the life of the reactor.

In an interview last week, David O'Brien, the commissioner of Vermont's Department of Public Service, noted that the spent fuel pool at Vermont Yankee, if it continues filling up at its current rate, will be out of room before the plant's license expires in 2012.

Estimates vary as to exactly when the pool will be at capacity. But on one point Entergy Nuclear and its critics agree: If the plant is allowed to boost its power output by 20 percent -- a request recently given conditional approval by the Public Service Board and now before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- the plant will consume more fuel and the pool will be filled up sooner.

Entergy already has made known its plans to ask permission to use "dry casks" to store spent fuel on a concrete pad outdoors at the plant site. The opening salvos in that debate were fired this past spring, when Entergy sought -- and the Legislature declined to grant -- an exemption from the state law that says lawmakers must approve any new nuclear waste storage facility in Vermont.

Allowing dry cask storage at Vermont Yankee would solve three problems for Entergy. One is the nearly depleted room in the pool if the plant continues running as it is now. A second is the more quickly depleted pool space if the plant is allowed to boost its power.

The third problem is what to do with the waste that would be generated if Entergy gets its longer term wish to continue operating Vermont Yankee past the currently scheduled expiration of the plant's 40-year license in 2012.

Williams called it his company's "responsibility to move forward with dry cask storage permitting so that we can begin to ship as soon as DOE is ready to receive it."

O'Brien said, "Whether the plant is uprated or not, there is a finite life of the spent fuel pool," O'Brien said. "It (the pool's life) terminates before the licensed life terminates. The fuel will have to be dealt with. Absent a national repository, some sort of dry cask storage will be possibly in play."

Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle, a Democrat who has said he hopes to highlight energy issues in his campaign for governor this year, said he believes it has been a mistake to consider the plant's request for the power boost separately from the dry-cask storage question.

"It seems that before we can have any serious discussion about expanding the capacity of that plant -- or certainly extending the license -- we ought to have a plan for the storage of the nuclear waste," Clavelle said in an interview.

State Auditor Elizabeth Ready, a former chairwoman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee who participated in debates over the disposal of low-level radioactive waste in the early 1990s, was emphatic that some solution to the waste issue is needed before the plant is allowed to increase its output.

She noted that a 1991 study by an engineering consultant recommended against disposing of low-level radioactive waste at the Vermont Yankee site because of the high water table and likelihood that the material could seep into the adjacent Connecticut River.

Williams sought in an interview in May to distinguish between permanent low-level waste storage -- as was proposed in the 1990s -- and temporary storage of high-level waste.

But Ready and others argued that, as with the spent fuel pool, the definition of temporary storage could stretch.

Ready said the recent federal court decision "means there will be no federal site. If Entergy is allowed to dispose of its high level waste on the banks of the river, it will be there forever. I can think of no greater risk to the state of Vermont.

"If the court found that waste cannot be safely stored at a dry desert site," Ready added, "how in the world can we even consider a wetland in Vernon?"

She predicted that when lawmakers return next winter, "dry cask storage will be one of the biggest issues we've seen in a long time."

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Las Vegas SUN
July 16, 2004

Where I Stand -- Columnist Brian Greenspun: Change can happen

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

Weekend Edition

July 17 - 18, 2004

So much for inevitability.

I have to admit that I was one of the many Nevadans who held out little hope that the court system would right the wrongs that have been perpetrated upon the state of Nevada. First by the Congress in the 1980s when it singled out our state as the only place in the country in which high-level radioactive waste would be buried and, secondly, by President George W. Bush when he acted against his own word and chose Nevada, against the weight of scientific evidence, to be the last resting place for "nucular" waste.

I was wrong. At least, so far.

The federal appeals court in Washington gave us a way out of this mess when it ruled that the Department of Energy failed to follow the mandate of the Congress when it ignored the advice of the National Academy of Sciences, which provided its findings to the Environmental Protection Agency, about the appropriate length of time needed to keep the waste safe from humans and other living things.

The NAS said that high-level nuclear waste had to be contained for the half-life of the most potent of poisons that would be buried at Yucca Mountain. That could be hundreds of thousands of years or, perhaps, a couple of million years. Instead, the DOE and the EPA, knowing that it would be folly to computer model anything that far into the future, arbitrarily chose 10,000 years as the goal. And, even though the federal government has trouble prognosticating or protecting anyone or anything much more than a few years out, it set about to "manage" the 10,000-year process and, according to many scientists, it has failed miserably.

That brings us to today and the question is, "What does Nevada do to make sure that the 'inevitability' that the pro-nuke dump forces in this state would have us surrender to does not happen?" We have just witnessed the impossible, which is an independent judiciary actually acting independently enough to tell the federal government that it went too far. Unfortunately, the court also gave the DOE and its nuclear waste producing bosses a road map leading straight to Yucca Mountain.

And don't believe for a second that the Bush administration isn't already plotting a path around the court's decision so that it can truck and track that stuff right to our door. Because that is exactly what they are doing. They can't help themselves because they are so committed to their friends in the nuclear power industry that they cannot see the other side, which is the side of Nevada families who just don't want in our state, near our kids, over our water and under our skies that which no other state in the union wants either!

The good news, though, is that our congressional delegation, led by Sen. Harry Reid, and our state officials, from Gov. Kenny Guinn on down, have been right when they have told us that this thing is not inevitable and that, together, we can do something to derail this train heading on the wrong track toward Nevada.

So here's the hard part, at least for some. George Bush has to go and Harry Reid has to stay. There is no other way to say what has to happen for Nevada to avoid having to be the nation's radioactive burial ground. If you believe that it is wrong for those who make nuclear waste to send it to Nevada for burial rather than dealing with their own mess. If you believe that each state's health and safety is as important as every other state's and that Nevada, just because we are politically weak, should not be singled out for thousands of years of ill health and inevitable deaths. If you believe that a tourist economy, which rises and falls on today's headlines, can ill afford the kind of international story that says "radioactive spill near Las Vegas Strip." If you believe that every man, woman and child should have the same right to health and happiness as e very other citizen in every other state and that no president, no Congress and no court should be able to abridge that righ! t. If you believe all that, and if you believe that as citizens we have the power to stop the "inevitable," then our course is clear.

With Sen. Harry Reid returned to the Senate as either the second or fourth most-powerful member of that body, he will have the ability to block almost any attempt by the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency or the White House to change the rules and dash any hopes we might have today of avoiding our nuclear nightmare.

Unlike the last go around when every parliamentary maneuver usually available to a man like Harry Reid was made unavailable decades earlier, this time they will play on Harry's court with the rules that Harry Reid knows well. Whether it is stripping tens and hundreds of millions of dollars from Yucca Mountain budgets or putting holds on legislation that would hasten Yucca Mountain's reality, our senior senator knows the ropes. And, whether it is his ability to trade with his colleagues or champion causes in return for an "open mind," Harry is a master. That is the reason why we must return Harry Reid to the Senate. It is just one reason, to be sure, but a very big one to everyone who cares about his family, his health and his livelihood.

As for President George W. Bush, I know many Nevadans like him because he has lowered their taxes and chased Saddam Hussein from power. I like him for that, too. But we cannot be confused when it comes to a few dollars, more or less, in our pockets today, and a feeling that all is well when all probably isn't well and won't be for a long time.

For if the worst happens, there will be no jobs and no economy to derive the incomes on which we want to pay fewer taxes. And no terrorist dictator can do as much damage to Nevada families as a high-level nuclear waste spill can do on Interstate 15. And, as far as I can tell, it was President Bush who made the decision to send the waste to Yucca Mountain. In fact, he was the only president who could make that decision because the law required the decision to be made in 2001.

Now, he could have made a different decision. He could have said no. Or he could have said, "I need better science. I am not ready to make a decision. Ask me again when I know more about the dangers inherent in this high-level stuff."

He could have -- but he didn't. Instead, he did what most of us knew he would do and that was whatever his monied friends in the power industry wanted him to do. And, he will do it again if we give him the chance. It will be his EPA, his DOE and his appointees on the Supreme Court who could overrule the decision just handed down and send that stuff rolling toward us. And don't think he won't encourage them to do just that. After all, it is his nature to help his wealthy power company friends at the expense of the politically helpless out here in Nevada. If you don't believe me, just remember. He already did it to us once before. Should we let him do it again? I don't think so.

If you are as concerned as I am about high-level nuclear waste rolling through our city, leaking into our water table, fouling the air we breathe, shutting down our tourist economy and, God forbid, killing us a few hundred at a time, then your course of action is clear. You have it within your power to make sure that the certainty of inevitability does not come to pass. Nevada's electoral votes could swing this election to President Bush, just like we did in 2000.

Or, we can go the other way. That's the way that does not include Yucca Mountain. Think about your future. Think about promises broken. Think about 77,000 tons of radioactive waste in our back yard. Now think about all of that going away. Think!

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 18, 2004

Letters: Through the looking glass on Yucca

Democrats yearn to make repository a partisan issue

To the editor:

At times like this, I sometimes wish (kind of, sort of) that Al Gore would have successfully managed to steal the 2000 presidential election in Florida. Then he rightfully would be the one on the receiving end of the never-ending flurry of criticism on issues such as the Clinton/Gore recession, the net loss of jobs, the failure to prevent 9-11, and, most recently, the July 9 federal court decision on Yucca Mountain, reigniting the state's most fiery political issue and prompting both Republicans and Democrats to agree on one thing: It will affect the presidential election in this key battleground state ("Science versus politics: Yucca ruling seen as bad for Bush," July 11 Review-Journal).

But those Nevadans who have lived here long enough are no strangers to the fact that it was a Democratic-controlled Congress, in the mid 1980s, that paved the legislation marking Yucca Mountain as the one and only destination to be surveyed as the national repository for nuclear waste. Once passed, this bill was signed into law by a Republican president. In its genesis, this vital piece of legislation -- fondly known to us Nevadans as the "Screw Nevada Bill" -- was not only a bipartisan effort, but also made this issue a done deal. Democrats who herald the court ruling as a blow to Mr. Bush, and Republicans who concur, totally baffle me and others who know better. As I recall, George W. Bush wasn't even governor of Texas when all this went down.

Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas is quoted in the story as saying, "We need a new administration because if this comes up again, we can't have the same people who hurt us before making the decision." If she's correct, then the people of Nevada should elect neither Bush nor Kerry this November. But since Ms. Titus and her ilk are implying Yucca Mountain is a partisan push by Republicans, then I ask her, as I've asked Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Shelley Berkley in the past: If your Democratic colleagues in Washington are such friends to Nevada, what the hell was done in the first two years of the Clinton administration, that ran concurrent with a Democratic-controlled Senate and House?

The reason I can't get a straight answer is because not only was nothing done to stop Yucca Mountain, but the party in power -- the Democrats -- had more important, pressing issues to deal with, such as ramming the largest tax increase in history down our throats and then attempting to pass their socialist health care scheme.

Given these facts, is it any wonder the Democrats lost power in both houses in 1994? Now all of a sudden, in this election year, with polls showing Bush and Kerry in a dead heat, Democrats want to be friends to Nevada. Give me a break.

When Sen. Reid, Rep. Berkley and Ms. Titus try to make Yucca Mountain the issue, I want you to visualize a medical ER team pulling a long dead body out of the morgue and attempting to resuscitate life into this corpse. No amount of aid can resurrect the dead any more than what a Bush or Gore administration could've ever done to prevent a waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

When Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, regales us with words such as, "This fight's not over. We won, but this doesn't mean the project is dead," I liken this bravado to Baghdad Bob assuring the Iraqi people that the Americans are not even close to Baghdad, as U.S. troops and tanks pass him in the background.

It's time for the people of Nevada to get through the looking glass on Yucca Mountain. If that is the only issue to justify removing this current administration, as local and state Democrats seem to argue, then voters will be casting their ballots oblivious to real key issues: tax cuts, tax reform, tort reform, Social Security reform, the war on terrorism, etc.

I submit that under a Kerry administration these issues, like Yucca Mountain, will never be dealt with -- or will be handled in a manner devastating to our reviving economy and national security.

Let's get smart, my fellow Nevadans. Join me this November and flush the "johns."

Mark E. Wilson
Henderson

To the editor:

Your editorial writers seem to have performed incredible feats of contortion to avoid naming the biggest culprit in the continuing Yucca Mountain saga: George W. Bush.

Your July 10 editorial refers to "federal officials," "federal bureaucrats" and the "federal government" as the bad guys. But most Nevadans will make the obvious connection between the feds and their leader, President Bush.

After all, it was candidate Bush who promised in 2000 that "sound science" would be the determining factor for the repository. But once ensconced in the White House, President Bush pushed full-force for Yucca Mountain and continues to do so to this very day.

While it's clear that Nevada's Republican leaders are running away from the truth on this issue, one would hope Nevada's largest newspaper would call it the right way. It's easy to do: George W. Bush brought us Yucca Mountain, plain and simple. You should give discredit when discredit is due.

Terence Tolbert
Las Vegas

The writer is Nevada state director of America Coming Together, a liberal activist group.

To the editor:

On July 9, a federal court told the EPA to fix its justification for a 10,000-year compliance period for Yucca Mountain. The EPA made its mistake by disagreeing with the National Academy of Sciences and saying that we cannot adequately predict how Yucca Mountain will perform beyond 10,000 years. In fact, the Department of Energy has already shown that in the next million years the maximum exposure to any people using groundwater would be less than their natural radiation exposure. If the compliance period is changed, the DOE can do more work and calculate how much less.

What the academy also said was that a 10,000-year compliance time could be acceptable -- but that the EPA must show that 10,000 years is "consistent with its management of risks from long-lived hazardous non-radioactive materials."

At its legal capacity limit, Yucca replaces electricity equivalent to mining and burning 5 billion tons of coal -- a full six years of total U.S. coal consumption. If Yucca were used only for residual waste from spent-fuel transmutation, this number could be multiplied by 50. We currently cannot predict what the effects of mining and burning 5 billion tons of coal would be in 100 years, much less 10,000. This does not mean that we believe these effects can't be large and negative, but simply that our scientific capability to model global warming, acid drainage from mines and mercury transport in the environment is inadequate to predict health and environmental impacts over long time periods.

If future generations decide that Yucca was a mistake, they can fix it simply by moving the waste. But they will have no similar simple way to fix problems from the wastes from our current use of fossil fuel. Thus when the EPA revises its standard, it should provide a frank comparison between nuclear and fossil fuel wastes.

Per Peterson
Berkeley, Calif.

The writer is a 1982 graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno, and chairman of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

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San Francisco Chronicle
July 18, 2004

Editorial

Yucca Mountain's troubled history

When a Federal appeals court tossed the future of Yucca Mountain into doubt last week, it seemed a logical, fitting step for the proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada. After all, haggling, political posturing and legal maneuvering have been as much a part of the site's tortuous history as its actual construction and design.

Although the sprawling site is located deep in the Nevada desert, Yucca Mountain would be better described as a bureaucratic swamp. Despite being approved by Congress and pushed along by both the Clinton and Bush administrations, the project has been effectively buried by partisan politics while the price tag continues to soar, now nearing estimates of $60 billion.

While the need to bury up to 70,000 metric tons of the nation's nuclear waste remains a top priority of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the Yucca Mountain project was not fully funded in the president's budget this year because the administration apparently believed that Congress would pass legislation making other funds available. Yet that hasn't happened -- and there are no signs of urgency that the House and the Senate will pursue another course of action.

A decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit made the Yucca Mountain mess considerably more complicated when it ruled that the federal government must devise a new construction plan to protect the public against radiation releases beyond the next 10,000 years. Exactly how long remains a question, though the National Academy of Sciences has suggested consideration of a period of up to a million years. Such a staggering change, if upheld by a higher court, would effectively require a complete redesign of the site, which is why the head of Nevada's state nuclear project said that Yucca Mountain, for all intents and purposes, is "dead.''

But the environmental damage posed by not adequately burying the country's nuclear waste is so great that Congress needs to find a Lazarus-like solution. The failure to open Yucca Mountain would leave highly radioactive spent-nuclear-fuel rods in 68 locations around the country, facilities that were not designed for long-term storage and could pose public-health problems from accident-related releases.

While a large percentage of Nevada voters may not embrace the idea of a nuclear-waste repository in their backyard and the state's legislators have worked to defeat it, Congress has spent nearly two decades debating the issue and still hasn't come up with a better alternative. At this point, the best option isn't finding another site but funding and properly designing the one long ago agreed upon. Yucca Mountain needs to be built and the issue certainly shouldn't be decided against the backdrop of election-year politics. The country simply can't afford it -- the Energy Department has already spent $9 billion on the repository.

Although the court certainly has muddled the picture, it did at least dismiss most of the legal objections for building it, including whether the site at Yucca is unconstitutional. Congress should take the court's ruling as a chance to shore up the facility's design shortcomings and address the scientific community's concerns about its long-term safety. If those critical questions aren't sufficiently addressed, it could be decades before another solution is found for storing the nation's nuclear waste.

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PetroleumWorld
July 18, 2004

CFR Policy after 9/11: Energy Policy

By The Council on Foreign Relations

Why does the United States use so much oil?

The United States depends on energy to drive and grow its economy—the world´s largest—and for now, oil is the cheapest source of that energy.

Moreover, the existing infrastructure of pipelines and refineries makes it more convenient to keep using oil than to transfer to other energy sources. But many experts and ordinary Americans question U.S. dependency on oil—some out of environmental concerns (finite oil reserves, air pollution, global warming, and so on), others because of worries about the consequences of depending on Middle Eastern countries as Saudi Arabia for oil. Some experts have proposed exploring alternate energy sources or reducing energy consumption to lessen America´s need for foreign oil.

What do Americans use oil for?

65 percent of U.S. consumption goes to transportation, fueling cars, airplanes, and ships that keep people and goods moving around the world. Oil is also used to generate electricity and run residential and commercial heating systems.

Does the United States want to reduce its dependency on foreign oil?

No. The low oil tax reflects the lack of political will to cut oil consumption. For decades, political events such as the 1973 Arab oil embargo and environmental concerns about scarce natural resources, pollution, and global warming have triggered discussions about developing alternative energy sources. Polls say Americans overwhelmingly prefer moving toward alternative energy sources rather than increasing the supply of oil. But U.S. energy policy remains focused on increasing oil production, with occasional attention to more energy efficiency and the environment. In March 2001, the Bush administration pulled out of the Kyoto agreement on global warming, which committed the United States to reducing the rate of increase of greenhouse emissions. Some states, such as California, have pushed for stricter automotive emissions standards, but little has been done nationally to encourage drivers to consume less gasoline.

What sources of energy are there other than oil?

The leading alternatives are nuclear power and natural gas. Other options include coal and renewable energy sources such as solar, hydroelectric, and wind power. However, not all of these sources are as versatile as oil. For instance, nuclear power can generate electricity, but cannot be used to fuel cars and other modes of transportation.

Is natural gas a viable alternative to oil?

Perhaps. Natural gas is the fastest-growing form of energy today. Natural-gas-fired plants can be built inexpensively, and natural gas is twice as efficient as other fossil fuels. But experts say the price of natural gas tends to fluctuate unpredictably, especially during extreme weather conditions. Moreover, natural gas isn´t necessarily an easier political choice, as countries of the former Soviet Union and the Middle East have the largest remaining gas resources. In addition, natural-gas-fired plants emit environmentally harmful toxic emissions and nitrogen oxide, albeit far less than oil and coal plants.

Is nuclear power a viable alternative to oil?

In some ways. The 103 U.S. nuclear power plants produce 20 percent of America´s electricity. Nuclear energy has several advantages over oil and natural gas:

It´s expensive to construct new nuclear power plants—the last one to go online in the United States, in 1996, cost more than $7 billion to complete—but the uranium that fuels them is abundant. That keeps operating costs stable and low (between 2 and 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour) compared to power plants fueled by natural gas (3.5 to 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour) or oil (4 cents per kilowatt-hour).

Nuclear power plants can operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and can increase capacity to accommodate the spikes in electricity demand that accompany extreme weather conditions. Plants fueled by oil or natural gas tend to only operate at 30 percent of capacity; nuclear power plants can run at 90 percent of capacity.

Nuclear fission is emission-free, so nuclear power plants do not produce air pollutants, unlike plants powered by oil and coal.

What are the downsides to nuclear power?

While nuclear power plants do not pollute the air, the radioactive materials involved in producing nuclear energy represent a long-term environmental hazard. Nuclear accidents such as the Soviet Union´s 1986 Chernobyl disaster can cause casualties, increase cancer risks for those exposed to radiation, and contaminate huge tracts of land.

Nuclear plants could also prove vulnerable to attack. A September 11-style jumbo-jet crash might rupture a reactor´s container and create a leak of nuclear material, and conventional explosives detonated in the pools where spent fuel rods are stored could scatter nuclear material. Some critics say nuclear power plants should be moved underground; others say they should be abolished.

Nuclear materials remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years after being used in a power plant. Radioactive material could be used in “dirty bombs.’ The Bush administration has designated Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the first geological repository in the country for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

Moreover, nuclear power cannot today fulfill all of America´s energy needs. There hasn´t been a nuclear power plant ordered in the United States since 1978, and nuclear power is unlikely to be able to fuel American cars, ships, and airplanes anytime soon.

Could America use more coal instead of oil?

Technically, it´s possible; there´s enough coal in the United States to power America´s electrical plants for another 250 years. But burning coal releases greenhouse gases that cause global warming, experts say. Power plants that burn coal more cleanly, with comparable emissions to natural gas plants, are markedly more expensive to construct and maintain than other power plants.

Are renewable energy sources a viable alternative to oil?

Not yet, experts say. Renewable fuels such as solar, hydroelectric, and wind power and pure-hydrogen fuel cells can produce clean energy, but they remain too costly to be implemented widely in the foreseeable future. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Americans pay 20 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour for solar-generated electricity compared to 6 to 7 cents for traditional generating methods.

How can American consumers conserve energy?

By using energy-efficient appliances and fluorescent lights, avoiding sport utility vehicles and other gas-guzzling cars, carpooling, using public transportation, and adding insulation to homes. Government can also encourage conservation by requiring car manufacturers to make more energy-efficient engines and by taxing gasoline. Historically, the United States has had lower gasoline taxes than other Western countries; the average price at U.S. pumps can be one-third or one-quarter the prices in Britain or France.

Can cars be more energy-efficient?

Yes. Automobiles today use about 60 percent less gasoline per mile that they did in 1972, and state and federal laws regulate both mileage rates and emissions levels. However, SUVs are classified as trucks and therefore fall outside of current mileage regulations, and Congress has decided not to pass laws to force manufactures to make SUVs more energy-efficient. Experts are also interested in “hybrid’ vehicles that have both gasoline engines and electric-powered motors that take over when the car is idle or moving slowly. Other options include natural-gas engines, which are being tested in taxis in New York City, Atlanta, and Long Beach, California, and fuel-cell powered cars, which convert hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and heat, with water as the only byproduct.

The Bush administration says it is in favor of developing fuel cell technology, but the U.S. auto industry, while it is conducting research, may not be as keen. Car companies say they don´t invest in developing more efficient engines because of high initial production costs and international competition. Only when costs are reduced or demand is increased will these alternatives come into common use, experts say, and such a change could be 30 to 50 years away.

Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, national membership organization and a nonpartisan center for scholars dedicated to producing and disseminating ideas so that individual and corporate members, as well as policymakers, journalists, students, and interested citizens in the United States and other countries, can better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments. Its views are not necessarily those of PETROLEUMWORLD.

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Odessa American
July 18, 2004

Andrews nuke site may take other states´ waste

By Ruth Friedberg Campbell
Odessa American

ANDREWS COUNTY — If Waste Control Specialists´ bid to establish a low-level radioactive waste disposal site is approved, Andrews County could become home to not only waste from Texas, but other states as well.

Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns asked Texas Gov. Rick Perry in April if Texas would take waste from Nebraska. Nebraska is part of the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact, which includes Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Boyd County in northeastern Nebraska was selected as the site, but the state backed out of having it built there.

The rest of the compact sued Nebraska and a federal judge ordered the state to pay $151 million, according to the Omaha World-Herald.

Kathy Walt, Perry´s press secretary, said Perry wouldn´t respond until he knows more about Nebraska´s proposal. “To say that there are talks or negotiations is far overstating the situation at this time,’ Walt said. “Texas is still probably a decade away from having a facility.’

Waste Control Specialists operates a low-level radioactive storage facility in western Andrews County and wants to operate a disposal facility as well.

Texas lawmakers passed legislation in 2003 enabling a private entity to get a license to dispose of low-level radioactive waste.

Waste Control General Manager Tom W. Jones III said if the state gives its approval for the disposal site in 2007, it would be ready to receive waste sometime in 2008.

Proposals are due the last three weeks of July and the deadline is Aug. 6. “We´re in the process of putting the license application together. We intend to submit it the last part of July or the first part of August,’ Jones said.

He added that Waste Control is the only company he knows of that has applied for a license from TCEQ. Many technical issues have to be addressed in the application — about 4 feet of binders. Jones said the sate typically assigns a team of people — experts in nuclear safety, geology, hydrology and air emissions — to review the application.

Waste Control has some in-house expertise, but has also hired outside help.

Waste Control is applying for one permit for two landfills that would operate side by side. One site would be for material from the U.S. Department of Energy and the other would be for material from Texas, Vermont and Maine under the interstate Waste Compact. Jones said Maine may drop out, however.

Waste Compact material would be mostly medical waste such as boots, rubber gloves and suits. Some of the waste would come from nuclear plants. Federal waste would be dirt.

Low-level radioactive waste can be transported by dump truck (with a covering) or by railroad.

Waste Control plans to dig an initial concrete-lined hole 1,500 feet square and 75 feet deep.

Right below the surface is 800 feet of clay.

There are also monitor wells around the site and sump pumps that pump the water into a holding well when it rains.

The pit would hold 6 million cubic yards of waste. Only 600,000 cubic yards of waste will have high levels of radioactivity.

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Bay City Times
July 18, 2004

Nuclear reaction

By Jeff Kart
Times Writer

Twenty years after the abandonment of the Midland Nuclear Plant project, nuclear power is poised for a comeback.

Construction on the Midland Nuclear Plant was halted 20 years ago this month, on July 16, 1984. The price tag for the twin-reactor plant had swelled to more than $4 billion after years of cost overruns, construction problems and protests by environmentalists.

Today, the since-converted plant runs on natural gas as the Midland Cogeneration Venture, but energy executives and other experts say nuclear power is still the answer to the world's growing energy needs.

Consumers Energy, which headed up the Midland Nuclear Plant project, has no plans to build new nuclear plants or add reactors at its Palisades site near South Haven in southwest Michigan, company officials said.

But the resurgence of nuclear power in the United States is an inevitability, with increasing energy demands in Michigan, the rest of the country, and the world, said Dave Joos, president and chief operating officer for CMS Energy in Jackson, which owns 49 percent of the Midland Cogeneration Venture, along with El Paso Merchant Energy (44 percent) and Dow Chemical (7 percent).

World energy consumption is projected to increase by 54 percent by 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Joos is a nuclear engineer by trade and was involved in the conversion of the Midland Nuclear Plant to natural gas.

"Ultimately, you're going to have to have a resurgence of nuclear power," Joos said, "because we're heavily reliant on fossil fuels right now and they're not making any more of those," Joos said.

Fossil fuels are being used faster than they are formed in the Earth, but the world's uranium reserves, used in producing nuclear energy, are abundant and the United States has large reserves, scientists say.

An imperfect solution

There are 103 operating nuclear reactors in the United States, including four in Michigan, said Mitch Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C., the trade association that represents the U.S. commercial nuclear industry.

A new nuke plant hasn't been sited in the United States since 1978 in Illinois, and the last nuke plant opened in 1996 in Tennessee.

But it's likely that new nuclear plants or reactors will be built in the United States in the next 20 years, or sooner, Singer said.

Three energy companies already are exploring plans to add nuclear reactors in Virginia, Illinois and Mississippi, and construction of numerous new nuclear plants is under way across the world, Singer said. The Bush administration's energy plan calls for an expansion of nuclear energy, as well.

"Eventually, whether it's in the next 20 years or the next century, we are going to have to take advantage of some of the other energy resources we have and nuclear power is one of them," Joos said.

"Frankly, it's a very clean, environmentally sensitive way of producing power, although I know that that's a controversial statement."

The Lone Tree Council, a Bay City area environmental group that formed to fight the Midland Nuclear Plant in 1978, is still active today, and still opposed to nuclear power as unsafe and harmful to the environment, said Chairman Terry Miller of Monitor Township.

"It was a potential disaster sitting in the back yard of the Tri-Cities," Miller recalled of the Midland Nuclear Plant.

But experts like Jerry Peterson, a physics professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said nuclear power has come a long way in recent decades.

Nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s essentially ended nuclear power expansion in the United States.

But safety measures and the industry's safety record have shown great improvements since then, and nuclear power has become a more desirable option to reduce carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions from power plants, according to the Department of Energy. Power plants that burn fossil fuels like coal and natural gas contribute to global warming. Nuclear plants don't emit greenhouse gases.

Peterson said nuclear power has to make a comeback "or it's going to get dark."

"We're not going to have enough electricity to meet national needs," said Peterson, a researcher on a Department of Energy project investigating nuclear reactions at the Fermi lab near Chicago.

If none of the current nuclear plant licenses are renewed in coming years, nuclear energy in the United States will disappear by 2030, Peterson said. Nuclear power accounts for 20 percent of the nation's electrical production, and 23.8 percent of the energy generated in Michigan.

There are several hurdles to a resurgence, including construction costs and waste disposal.

But those are being worked on, Peterson said. The Department of Energy has a national plan for the rebirth of nuclear energy called the Generation IV Initiative, where researchers are developing a new generation of less costly, safer nuclear energy systems for use by 2030, in time to replace reactors built in the U.S. in the 1970s and '80s. Standardized designs for some new nuke plants have already been approved, Singer said.

One problem that can't be eliminated is radioactive waste from nuke plants, although recycling technologies allow for waste reductions, Peterson said. President Bush also signed legislation in 2002 to create a national repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, rather than storing it in the back yards of nuclear power plants.

"My argument is 'Live with it,"' Peterson said of radioactive waste, "because grownups have to live with imperfect solutions."

That's not a good enough argument for Miller, who said the Midland Nuclear Plant would have regularly released 42 different radioactive isotopes into the air and the Tittabawassee River, which empties into the Saginaw Bay.

Government regulations allow U.S. nuclear plants to release small amounts of radiation to the air, water and soil as part of routine operations, and every exposure to radiation increases the risk of cancer and other health effects in humans, according to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an energy watchdog group in Washington, D.C.

Miller points to deaths and contamination from Chernobyl as evidence of the grave risks of nuclear power.

Two workers were killed when a reactor at Chernobyl exploded, and the accident has been linked to thousands of cancer cases in children and other health effects, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"People die with nuclear power," Miller said. "Water and food sources are contaminated for thousands of years. It's too large a risk."

Peterson, from Colorado, said radioactive isotopes regularly released from nuclear plants are virtually harmless.

"Some of the radioactive isotopes from fission are gases and they have very short half lives," he said. "You can release it up a stack, but by the time it gets down to Earth it's no longer radioactive."

Still paying for Midland

Consumers Energy, a subsidiary of CMS, had completed 85 percent of the Midland plant when the nuclear project was canceled, and spent $4.2 billion on construction and nuclear fuel purchases, according to Joos and Times files. The plant began in 1967 as an eight-year, $267 million project.

The Midland Nuclear Plant became the most costly project ever abandoned in the United States, and almost drove Consumers Energy into bankruptcy.

When the plant was later converted to natural gas and fired up in March 1990, it became the world's first successful conversion of an idled nuclear plant to natural gas and the largest plant of its kind in the world.

Officials from the Midland Cogeneration Venture declined to grant an interview or give a tour to The Times.

But Joos said the MCV has had some successes.

"From an operating perspective and from serving customers, it's worked out extremely well," Joos said. "We were building the Midland Nuclear Plant because we were anticipating increased demand for electricity over time, and that certainly turned out to be the case."

He said the plant has averaged close to 100 percent availability, and is 45 percent energy efficient, compared to the industry norm of 30-35 percent.

MCV uses 12 gas-fired turbines and two steam turbines, and can produce up to 1,500 megawatts of electricity and up to 1.35 million pounds per hour of process steam for industrial use. Major customers include Consumers Energy and Dow Chemical for electricity, and Dow and Dow Corning for steam.

The plant is called a cogeneration venture because it uses natural gas to boil water, turn turbines and generate electricity, then excess steam from that process is piped to Dow Chemical for use in chemical processing.

Consumers was able to recover 20-25 percent of the $4.2 billion spent on the nuclear project, or $840 million, Joos said, by converting the facility and billing customers for a number of years, Joos said.

The cancellation of the project was tied up in litigation for years, but those issues have since been sorted out, he said.

Consumers was able to write off about $1.5 billion of the nuclear project as a loss, said Gary Kitts, chief administrative officer for the Michigan Public Service Commission in Lansing, who worked for the state agency while the Midland Nuclear Plant project was under construction.

Kitts said the plant is continuing to recover the "avoided cost" for the nuclear plant by billing rate payers 6 cents per kilowatt hour. Those charges will continue until 2025, Kitts said.

Miller said the United States needs to do a better job of exploring and promoting energy alternatives such as wind, solar and biomass energy from wood, garbage and agricultural waste before it moves toward expanded nuclear power.

In the meantime, coal-fired plants should operate in more environmentally sound ways by installing scrubbers, Miller said. The U.S. government also should raise the efficiency requirements for appliances and promote alternative power sources by offering incentives for installing solar panels on a home, for instance.

"Becoming independent, exploring sustainable energy and attacking the growing problems of global warming at home is more patriotic than our reliance on oil," Miller said.

- Jeff Kart covers the environment and politics for The Times. He can be reached at 894-9639.

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WCAX
July 18, 2004

Yucca woes raise new questions about Yankee waste

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- A recent court decision on plans to bury tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste under Nevada's Yucca Mountain has lent new urgency to questions about the waste being generated at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

Energy Department officials say they believe they can push ahead and meet the 2010 deadline. Yucca critics scoff at that idea. "My comment is `good luck.' I don't think this is going to fly in anyone's book," said Bob Loux, chief of Nevada's state Agency for Reactor Projects.

Like other reactors, Vermont Yankee has a spent fuel pool, which was designed to hold highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies in 40 feet of water _ temporarily _ until they could be shipped off to a permanent disposal site. That temporary arrangement has been in place now for 32 years _ the life of the reactor.

Estimates vary as to exactly when the pool will be at capacity. But on one point Entergy Nuclear and its critics agree: If the plant is allowed to boost its power output by 20 percent _ a request recently given conditional approval by the Public Service Board and now before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission _ the plant will consume more fuel and the pool will be filled up sooner.

Entergy already has made known its plans to ask permission to use "dry casks" to store spent fuel on a concrete pad outdoors at the plant site. The opening salvos in that debate were fired this past spring, when Entergy sought _ and the Legislature declined to grant _ an exemption from the state law that says lawmakers must approve any new nuclear waste storage facility in Vermont.

Williams called it his company's "responsibility to move forward with dry cask storage permitting so that we can begin to ship as soon as DOE is ready to receive it."

"It seems that before we can have any serious discussion about expanding the capacity of that plant _ or certainly extending the license _ we ought to have a plan for the storage of the nuclear waste," Clavelle said in an interview.

Williams sought in an interview in May to distinguish between permanent low-level waste storage _ as was proposed in the 1990s _ and temporary storage of high-level waste.

But Ready and others argued that, as with the spent fuel pool, the definition of temporary storage could stretch.

"If the court found that waste cannot be safely stored at a dry desert site," Ready added, "how in the world can we even consider a wetland in Vernon?"

She predicted that when lawmakers return next winter, "dry cask storage will be one of the biggest issues we've seen in a long time."

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 17, 2004

Letter: Yucca folly

To the editor:

The Yucca Mountain debate has now gone from the ridiculous to the idiotic to the asinine. "Sound Science" can never predict what is going to happen in 10,000 years, let alone 300,000 or 1 million years. Twelve-thousand years ago, Sandy Valley was at the edge of a huge lake called Lake Lahontan (Pyramid and Walker lakes are remnants of Lake Lahontan). Animals called mammoths roamed the shores of Lake Lahontan.

No civilization on Earth has ever lasted even 2,000 years, let alone 10,000 years. The great pyramids in Egypt are only about 4,500 years old. It is the height of hubris (and human arrogance) to think that Las Vegas and the United States will still exist 2,000 years from now.

The big concern about Yucca Mountain is that the waste containers will corrode and leak radioactivity into the ground water. It is much more likely that Las Vegas will have pumped the aquifers in the Oasis and Amargosa valleys completely dry within 100 years. (In which case who cares if the containers leak?)

If global warming persists, science predicts that the western half of the United States will become even drier than it is today. In that case, Las Vegas won't even exist 200 years from now. There are far more real and imminent concerns that the politicians (local and national) should be worrying about than the leakage of radioactivity from Yucca Mountain. For example, the continued unchecked development in the Las Vegas Valley putting ever increasing demands on Colorado River water that simply is not there.

Walter F. Wegst
Las Vegas

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 17, 2004

Nebraska fights ruling on nuclear waste dump

The Associated Press

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Nebraska asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to overturn a $151 million judgment against the state for refusing to host a nuclear waste dump.

Attorney General Jon Bruning was not optimistic that the high court will agree to hear the case, let alone rule in Nebraska's favor.

"Look at the track record in this litigation, we haven't won anything yet," Bruning said. "That's not to say we have no chance. But let's be realistic: It's a long shot."

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf of Lincoln ruled in 2002 that former Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson, now a U.S. senator, engaged in a politically motivated plot to keep the regional dump from being built in Nebraska. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in February.

Nebraska officials argued they refused to license the dump for low-level waste because of concerns about pollution and a high water table at the proposed site in the northeast part of the state.

The dump was to take waste from the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact, which consists of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Nebraska doesn't have the money to pay the judgment because of an ongoing budget crunch and has been trying to negotiate a settlement.

The Associated Press reported last week that Gov. Mike Johanns had approached Texas Gov. Rick Perry about storing nuclear waste there. Nebraska has offered to pay Texas a flat fee of $25 million to take the waste from the group of five states.

Such a deal would not release Nebraska from the court judgment unless the five-state group agreed.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 16, 2004

Porter accepts donations from Yucca supporters

By Kirsten Searer
<searer@lasvegassun.com> and Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., has just over $1.1 million on hand for his re-election campaign and has accepted donations from people leading the effort to put the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada.

Porter raised about $530,000 this quarter for his effort to keep his Third District seat in Congress. And according to Federal Election Commission records filed Thursday, he has received $5,000 from the Texas Freedom Fund, a political fund-raising group controlled by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and $1,500 from former Nevada Gov. Bob List, who now lobbies for the nuclear industry in favor of Yucca Mountain.

Barton heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee and has been leading the effort in the House this year to change the funding rules for the Yucca Mountain project.

The Energy Department wants the rule changes so it can funnel $750 million a year into the nuclear waste storage project at the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, without affecting other federal programs.

Porter has said he has been fighting the project for 20 years and his campaign says the money will not diminish his fight.

Politicians who support Yucca Mountain and gave Porter money know that Porter will continue fighting the project, Porter campaign consultant Mike Slanker said.

"If you go down the list of energy companies, legislators, PACs and lobbyists, you'll find pro-Yucca people in one way shape or form on just about every financial list for every federal elected official in Nevada," Slanker said. "The bottom line is they know we're going to fight them. We've fought them from Day One."

While Porter and Barton disagree on Yucca Mountain, Barton helped Porter push through grants to the Clark County School District, Slanker said. They also worked together on issues such as tax cuts and employment bills, he said.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who isn't up for re-election until 2006, raised $70,025 this quarter, bringing his total amount of cash on hand to $513,019, a sizeable amount for someone whose re-election campaign isn't due for two years.

"It probably ranks him in the top three or four or five who aren't up," said Slanker, who also is working on the Ensign campaign. "If you plan to run for re-election, no matter what office you hold, raising money is full time."

Meanwhile, the campaign team for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced on Thursday that it "couldn't be in a better position" with $4.8 million in cash on hand for the upcoming election, including $766,165 Reid raised this quarter.

The quarterly fund-raising report for Reid's Republican opponent, Richard Ziser, has not yet been posted on the Federal Elections Commission Web site. Ziser's campaign did not return phone calls seeking comment this morning.

Other incumbent congressional members from the state also have been raising money quickly. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., has $662,669 in cash on hand. He raised $207,148 this quarter.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., raised $190,365 this quarter, giving her almost $1.1 million in cash on hand.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
July 16, 2004

Nuclear panel sets hearing on Yucca documents flap

LAS VEGAS — A Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel has scheduled oral arguments later this month on Nevada´s complaint that Energy Department documents supporting a national nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain are incomplete.

NRC spokesman Dave McIntyre said Thursday the commission´s three-judge Pre-License Application Board is scheduled to hear oral arguments July 27 in Rockville, Md.

Nevada officials filed a challenge Monday of the Energy Department´s June 30 declaration that it made public the information needed to support its Yucca Mountain plan six months before applying for an operating license from the NRC.

The Energy Department said it satisfied the law by putting the documents on its Web site while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission processes the documents.

Nevada officials argue the law requires the documents to be fully accessible at NRC´s online database, the Licensing Support Network.

If the judges declare the database insufficient to meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements, it could delay the Yucca Mountain licensing process, said Joe Egan, a lawyer representing Nevada on Yucca Mountain.

That could delay the department´s plan to submit a Yucca Mountain license application to the commission in December, and might stall the department´s plan to open the repository in 2010.

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Nevada Appeal
July 16, 2004

Yucca offers Hollywood ending

by J.L. Smith

I'm thinking of writing a story.

It's about a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere way out in Nevada.

The story begins a quarter century ago with a plan to create the hole. Officially, the hole would be used as a place to store radioactive waste collected from around the country. In reality, the hole was a metaphor for the blind power and limitless greed of the men who became wealthy beyond our dreams but in the process created a waste so deadly it was capable of killing our children's children thousands of years into the future. Those powerful men decided to make billions first and fret the consequences later.

When the future arrives, they use their vast political contacts to force the hole upon politically puny Nevada, a state which possesses an outlaw reputation, initially has only three representatives in Congress, and hasn't enough juice to light a 20-watt bulb.

The state is targeted from the outset. Conventional wisdom, which is seldom wise, makes the hole's destiny a foregone conclusion. In short, it's all over but the shouting, the digging, and the paperwork.

The people of Nevada don't want the hole, but their voices are drowned out by the sound of digging. Not just the physical kind, but the political kind as well.

In an effort to soothe the fears of the citizens, expensive advertising campaigns are produced to wear them down. Lobbyists are hired to soften up politicians.

Those digging the hole invite skeptics, the curious, and the media to visit it, don hard hats, and decide for themselves whether it's safe. Forget for a moment that common citizens, and especially reporters, aren't competent judges of such scientific questions. Remember, this isn't about science.

Just when Nevadans had all but given up hope, a twist ending: Federal judges sitting 3,000 miles from the hole hear that the science of the project is flawed, and agree. For the first time in a quarter century, science trumps politics. The court ruling promises the project will be delayed for many years, so many in fact that work on the hole will cease.

It is Bobby Thomson's home run, Michael Jordan's jump shot, and Rocky Balboa's comeback all rolled into one. Nevada, the underdog's underdog, the flyweight among sumo wrestlers, prevails.

The hole only looks empty.

In reality, it is crowded with many things.

First, there's money. Through the years, the government spends billions of dollars studying the hole, preparing to dig it. This money comes from taxpayers and electric power consumers. Billions that could have been frittered away on poor children, ailing veterans, health care for the elderly, or even wider interstates, are poured into the hole.

Then, there's the paperwork. By the government's own count, it has created 5.6 million pages of documents about the hole, far more than has been written about the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis combined. Those pages also flow into the hole.

It remains far from filled. There's still enough room in the hole for a sitting president, who conned Nevadans into believing he was sincere when he promised that science, and not politics, would rule the process. Those who had followed the story believed that politics would always rule the process.

He would be joined by some members of his party, including a former Nevada governor, who were only too eager to sell out for shekels in the name of the "inevitability" of the project. In the end, billions are spent. Political careers rise and fall. Columnists make fools of themselves misreading the landscape.

The hole in the ground goes down as one of the greatest boondoggles in the history of a nation whose politicians pride themselves on their fiscal foolishness.

As the credits roll in the movie version, the project is silent. Tumbleweeds roll past the hole. A curious coyote sniffs at the entrance, cocks his head at the incomprehensible waste, and trots off into a golden Nevada sunset.

Yes, I'm thinking of writing a story about a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere way out in Nevada. But who would believe it?

John L. Smith's column appears Fridays in the Nevada Appeal. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295.

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Pahrump Valley Times
July 16, 2004

Survey Says ...

Surveyors begin Caliente rail corridor groundwork

By Phillip Gomez
PVT

Government surveyors have been in the field in northern Nye County measuring grades, mapping terrain and marking landforms in an effort to lay the engineering groundwork for the railroad to build from Caliente, near the Utah state line. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the natives are getting restless.

Pahute Mesa. Cactus Flat. Stone Cabin Valley. It all sounds like the trappings of a script for a Western movie. But instead of Indians, outlaws or a greedy banker as the villain, in this updated version it's the distant federal government that wears the black hat.

The high desert terrain, with its evocative heritage of pioneer and Indian place names comes straight out of yesteryear's newspapers chronicling the advance of the nation's Manifest Destiny to spread the blessings of civilization across the continent.

But the current action stems from the scientific research of the Department of Energy to provide for the permanent disposal at Yucca Mountain of the nation's nuclear waste, both commercial and defense related. As steward of the nation's future energy needs and of its past nuclear defense infrastructure, the department's primary mission is the promotion of a diverse supply of affordable and environmentally sound energy. Thus the congressional mandate to develop a reliable solution to nuclear waste disposal.

Five "scoping" meetings with affected stakeholders have been held on the proposed Caliente corridor route for the special railroad, proposed as the best means to deliver high-level radioactive nuclear waste to the still uncertain Yucca Mountain Repository on the Nevada Test Site.

The railroad's price tag is $880 million. The squirrelly and circuitous route proposed zigzags across 300 plus miles to avoid traversing the Nevada Test and Training Range. Instead, it will cross at least three mountain ranges in Lincoln County, while managing to skirt around all but the Kawich Range in Nye County. Final alignments have not yet been settled upon, but at its widest the right-of-way will be 200 feet; at its narrowest, 60 feet.

That's the briefing presented by the DOE's Robin Sweeny to the Nye County Commission last week in Tonopah.

Aerial mapping, cut-and- fill, bridge and culvert planning, grade gauging, archeology and hydrology analyses, drilling for 63 temporary wells to supply construction crews with water and - oh yes, political concerns about mining and Nevada's No. one agricultural industry, cattle. These and other humble tasks the surveyors are now beginning in the drive to push the railroad westward, Sweeny said.

"Opinion right now is that this is an attempt to make a water grab and then send it to Las Vegas," said Commissioner Joni Eastley, whose district takes in the lower reaches of the would-be railroad. After talking to constituents in the past few weeks, Eastley said the main concern of ranchers and other stakeholders was rights of way - how to get across the railroad grade to access private property.

Commissioner Midge Carver had much the same concern from a segment of her constituency in northern Nye County. "The issues are access and water rights," Carver said. With a 36-inch high gravel bed, she said, "A cow is going to stand there and say, 'What did you do to my water?'"

Other traditional economic land uses, such as mining, would likewise be affected, she said. Some 900 patented and non-patented mining claims exist along the proposed route, which would prevent them from being developed, she said. Round Mountain Gold Corp. has plans to expand its operations into Gold Mountain in the Smokey Valley. The rail route would affect those plans, said Carver, as well as Nye County insofar as the opportunity for greater revenue is concerned.

One third-generation rancher Carver knows has over $1 million invested in water pipeline improvements. In the modern rendition of Manifest Destiny, the railroad plans to build over the improvements. Bureau of Land Management grazing allotments are water-based, not land-based, she added, implying a more basic economic tie to locale than that of the federal rail route.

Carver also objects to the proposed route as the longest and the most costly of the ones considered. It's also the route impacting the greatest number of people, she said. It's only 81 miles from Caliente direct to Yucca Mountain, across the grounds of the Air Force's Training Range, she said. Other routes have not been given adequate consideration, she added.

---------------------------

Pahrump Valley Times
July 16, 2004

Kerry, Edwards against Yucca repository

By Christina Almeida
The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS - Democrats took a strong position Saturday against a planned Southern Nevada nuclear waste repository, approving a plank in the national platform that says the Yucca Mountain project is unsafe.

During a meeting in Hollywood, Fla., the party's platform committee approved the plank proposed by member Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

"It sends a very strong message that the Democratic Party is solidly behind the state of Nevada in its fight against Yucca Mountain," Berkley said in a telephone interview. "It draws a line in the sand and a distinction between the two parties' positions when it comes to the safety of Nevada families."

The platform, which will be presented to delegates later this month at the national convention in Boston, includes party principles on social and economic issues and closely resembles Sen. John Kerry's campaign agenda.

Kerry, the presumptive presidential nominee, voted against the federal government's plan in 2002 and has said, "Yucca Mountain will not be a repository" if he wins in November.

"It will take a Democratic president to stop this process dead in its tracks, and John Kerry has already promised to do that," Berkley said.

Yucca Mountain has become a key election-year issue in Nevada, with Democrats pushing Kerry's longtime opposition and citing President Bush's approval of the plan.

Republicans have been somewhat divided. During their state convention, several rural county delegates called for a plank urging negotiations for federal dollars and other benefits in exchange for accepting the dump - an unpopular idea among the state's top Republican leaders.

The Democratic position was somewhat clouded with Kerry's selection of Sen. John Edwards as his running mate. Edwards had voted for the Yucca Mountain project in 2002.

But Edwards has assured state party leaders that he backs Kerry's opposition to the plan - something Republicans say is indicative of the political complexities of the issue.

"The Democrats hardly agree on this issue as evidenced by the last vote when 15 senators and 102 members of Congress voted for this project, including Senator Edwards," said Yier Shi, spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "The president has always said that the decision on Yucca Mountain would be based on sound science, and we have invested 20 years researching this topic."

The plank reads: "We will protect Nevada and its communities from the high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain which has not been proven to be safe by sound science."

In announcing the plank, Berkley cited last week's appellate court decision saying radiation standards for the site were inadequate and would have to be strengthened. But the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was not a complete victory for Nevada. The court upheld the government's decision to single out the state as the designated site.

Officials with the Energy Department expressed confidence the radiation issue would be resolved and the plan would move forward.

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Pahrump Valley Times
July 16, 2004

Commissioners want reader input
PVT

Since taking office 19 months ago Nye County Commissioners Patricia Cox and Candice Trummell have held regular workshops with the public in advance of county commission meetings. The gatherings are used to help the commissioners gauge where residents stand on issues.

Cox and Trummell would like to expand their outreach efforts through the Pahrump Valley Times. Every two weeks the officials will take questions from readers and answer them in this publication.

In order to avoid conflicts and ensure there are no perceptions of impropriety, only commissioners Cox, Trummell and Joni Eastley will participate. Neither Cox nor Trummell is up for re-election this year, and Eastley runs unopposed.

Here's how it works: Send an email or place a call to Cox at pcox@nytecounty.net, 209-4390; to Trummell at ctrummell@nyecounty.net, 209-3824; or to Eastley at jeastley@nyecounty.net, 775 482-4533. Express your concerns or pose a question and look in the PVT for your answers.

The issues the commissioners feel are critical to readers include zoning, water quality and quantity, the proposed Yucca Mountain project, billboards, roads, air quality, taxes and budgets.

Also, Cox and Trummell encourage constituents to provide them with their individual visions for the valley's future.

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NY Journal News
July 16, 2004

NRC official: Nuclear storage system is safe

Michael Risinit

PEEKSKILL — A planned storage system for radioactive waste at the Indian Point nuclear power plants can survive a terrorist attack and prevent contamination of the environment, federal nuclear authorities explained last night.

"Our primary objective is to tell you why we believe (the system) results in a safe and secure storage of spent fuel," said Larry Camper, a deputy director for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Spent Fuel Project Office.

Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the owner of the plants in Buchanan, wants to transfer about 1,300 tons of used radioactive fuel from water-filled pools to "dry casks." The concrete and steel silos — 30 inches thick and each weighing up to 180 tons when loaded — would free up space in the pools for additional spent fuel. The facility, an essentially preapproved system subject to inspection and certification by the NRC, would sit on the north end of the plants' property.

Entergy plans to rest the casks on a concrete pad about the size of a football field, which would be fenced in and guarded. But in a world viewed through the events of Sept., 11, 2001, organizations calling for the plant's shutdown want stricter protective measures employed — both over the pools containing the spent fuel and around the casks.

Residents, activists and local officials in the conference room at the Crystal Bay restaurant questioned the casks' strength and whether allegations about possible manufacturing flaws were valid. NRC representatives and Entergy dismissed the contentions and calls for stricter measures.

"We presently exceed the safety requirements," Entergy spokesman Jim Steets said. "The casks have been very stringently tested and scrutinized. They meet all the federal requirements, including those that have been added since 9/11."

The environmental group Riverkeeper and the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition want soil berms, above-ground bunkers and containment buildings surrounding the casks, and fortified structures, capable of repelling terrorist attacks, built over the pools.

Troops are not clustered in a war zone, and the president and vice president are separated during a national threat, said Mark Jacobs, a coalition spokesman. Likewise, he said, the spent fuel should be dispersed to make it an unattractive target for terrorists.

"(Such methods) don't add costs, and they would absolutely increase the safety margin," Jacobs said.

Shutting down the two reactors and ending the production of spent fuel, however, remains the best way to minimize the risk of radiation from the used fuel, critics maintain. Mayor Robert Elliott III of Croton-on-Hudson said the plants need to be decommissioned to "prevent the generation of additional waste."

Last night's forum came about a week after a federal court deemed inadequate the U.S. government's plan to store nuclear waste in a desert repository in Nevada.

The ruling last Friday by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the Yucca Mountain repository, where some of Indian Point's spent fuel will be shipped when the facility opens, must be constructed to protect the public against radiation releases for more than 10,000 years. The federal storage facility isn't expected to open until at least 2010.

"Even if Yucca Mountain were to open in 2010, (Entergy) would still have to proceed with this," NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said.

The casks can store the spent fuel for up to 100 years, according to the NRC. Ron Bellamy, a regional NRC chief, said the agency would spend close to 700 hours on site at Indian Point inspecting the casks before radioactive waste was placed in them.

"Our focus here is we're going to make sure the storage system can be used safely at this site," Bellamy said.

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New York Daily News
July 16, 2004

Groups blast nuke plants' storage plan

By Jim Fitzgerald
The Associated Press

A coalition of organizations seeking the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear power plants is charging that a new plan for storing radioactive waste on the site creates "another bull's-eye on the Hudson River."

"They're just adding to the risk" of contamination from an accident or attack at the plants, said Kyle Rabin, a policy analyst for Riverkeeper, one of the organizations in the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition. "They say they're doing what we're asking, but they're not."

A spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, owner of the plants in Buchanan, defended the plan.

Entergy plans to move some of the 12-foot rods of spent fuel that are now kept in pools and embed them in stainless steel and concrete containers. These "dry casks" would then be held on a concrete platform about the size of a football field.

Though opponents have said in the past that dry casks are safer than the pools, they pointed out at a news conference on Wednesday that the casks at Indian Point would not replace the pools but supplement them, allowing Entergy to put more spent fuel into the pools, now crowded with more than 1,400 tons of waste.

They also criticized the brand of cask being used, saying questions had been raised about its durability, and they criticized the absence of earthen berms that could protect the casks.

They said that although the NRC calls the casking a "temporary storage solution," a court decision last Friday raised doubts about when permanent storage - inside Yucca Mountain in Nevada - would be available.

They said the best way to minimize the risk of radiation from spent fuel was to close down the two reactors, thereby ending the production of spent fuel.

"There's no good way to deal with something that's so toxic for so long," said Marilyn Elie of the Westchester Citizens Awareness Network.

Entergy spokesman Jim Steets acknowledged that "the point is not to reduce the volume in the pools, but to make room so we can add new fuel."

But he said the casks "will provide safe and secure storage regardless of when Yucca Mountain can begin to receive spent fuel."

He defended the safety and reliability of dry cask storage, saying it "meets all the NRC requirements and addresses all the issues associated with safety and security, including those concerns raised post-9/11."

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KRNV
July 15, 2004

NRC panel schedules hearing on Yucca Mountain documents dispute

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel has scheduled oral arguments later this month on Nevada's complaint that Energy Department documents supporting the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project are incomplete.

The NRC's three-judge Pre-License Application Board will hear oral arguments July 27th in Rockville, Maryland.

Nevada officials filed a challenge Monday of the Energy Department's June 30th declaration that it made public the information needed to support its Yucca Mountain plan, six months before applying for an operating license from the NRC.

The Energy Department says it satisfied the law by putting the documents on its own Internet Web site.

Nevada officials argue that the law requires the documents to be fully accessible on an NRC Web site called the Licensing Support Network.

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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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