Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
July 21, 2004

NRC may delay its evaluation of Yucca

Licensing process up in air as radiation standard sorted out

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

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission may have to delay its evaluation of the Yucca Mountain project license application, Commissioner Edward McGaffigan said today.

McGaffigan said a delay may be necessary until an official decision is made on the radiation protection standards, which a federal appeals court earlier this month threw out.

Commission Chairman Nils Diaz said the agency's general counsel is still trying to determine the commission's responsibilities for evaluating the license in light of the recent court decision, but McGaffigan said a delay is possible.

The Energy Department has pledged to file its license application to build the Yucca Mountain project, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, by the end of the year and wants to open the proposed nuclear repository by 2010.

If the licensing request is delayed, it could push the timetable for Yucca Mountain back by several years.

The license application is based on a radiation protection standard. If the court ruling holds up, the department would have to wait until a new standard was set and would then have to defend its design against that standard.

The NRC is waiting for advice from its attorneys.

"We have asked the general counsel to consider the possibility that the application will be submitted and what are our options," Diaz said. "Those options have not been sorted out. ... We are waiting for a clear legal opinion."

Earlier this month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out the standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency that said the project needed to hold radiation for 10,000 years.

Now either an appeals court decision, legislative action by Congress or a new rule by the Environmental Protection Agency will have to be in place before the commission can fully review the application, McGaffigan said.

An outcome may not be reached until at least 2007, he estimated, which would throw the project off track for its 2010 opening date.

Energy Department officials have said they still plan to submit the application this year. Energy Department officials were immediately unavailable to comment today.

McGaffigan said it is the department's call on what is wants to do with the license application.

McGaffigan doubted Congress would be able to pass any language changing the court's ruling this year, and added that the legal and rulemaking processes also take time.

The commission may take the license if the department sends it in December, but "the issue our staff will have to face is how much work to do on that once it is submitted," he said.

Some work could be done on chapters that do not involve the 10,000-year standard in question but time and cost related to evaluating the document will be an issue. Under federal law the commission had three years to evaluate the application with an optional additional year with Congress's approval.

McGaffigan said the commission may not start the clock until a final decision on the radiation standards is in place.

McGaffigan said the 2010 opening date for the Yucca Mountain project was not viable even before the federal court of appeals threw out a key environmental standard for the project. He said that date was based on an estimate from the first Bush administration on a 2000 submittal of the license application.

"From the date at which clarity emerges legally and statutorily, from that point it's 10 years (to open the site)," McGaffigan said. He said the 2012 to 2015 time frame is a conservative estimate to open the site.

Beyond the initial license to construct the repository and the related hearing, the department also needs a second license to accept waste, which will have a short hearing phase, McGaffigan said.

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Tri-City Herald
July 21, 2004

Yucca Mountain debate needs dose of reality

What's missing from the latest debate over Yucca Mountain is reality.

Opponents of the plan to build a nuclear waste repository in Nevada are demanding an all-or-nothing answer.

That is, they either will accept a perfect plan or no plan.

That might be an appropriate approach if Yucca were a referendum on whether the United States should be producing nuclear waste.

But it is not. That choice was made long ago, during the frenzy of trying to win World War II. Now the nation has nuclear waste scattered across 39 states, where it sits in relatively vulnerable conditions -- such as single-shell tanks at Hanford -- waiting for a safer place to go.

That place is Yucca. It is the government's best attempt to plan for safe storage.

Notice that says "best." Not "perfect."

The difference between the two is apparent in the disagreement over establishing radiation protection standards for the site.

An appeals court ruled this month that a 10,000-year prediction of safety is too short.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the feds must follow the lead of the National Academy of Sciences. That's a direction that could push the radiation protection standard as high as a million years.

It's true that some of the waste will be reaching its most dangerous state after 10,000 years. But consider, for a moment, just how long 10,000 years is. That's the recorded history of man with an extra 4,000 years thrown in for good measure.

Predicting even out that far seems a questionable feat, given the number of unknowns. The chance that scientists would de-velop new technology for treating or using nuclear waste before then is as likely as anything else.

Extending that look to as many as a million years is a fool's errand. But opponents are insisting on the longer window, which could effectively kill the project.

In typical full-speed-ahead Department of Energy fashion, Deputy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow told Congress last week that Yucca won't be slowed by the court ruling.

He said there is no reason why the department cannot file the project application with the 10,000-year standard now, then update it later if the Environmental Protection Agency re-quires the million-year standard.

Still, there is the little matter of the law cited by the court that requires EPA to follow the recommendations of the National Academy. Barring a reversal of the court's decision, Congress will need to change the law to keep the project on track.

There is no perfect solution to storing nuclear waste. But there is a good one, and that's Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Lawmakers cannot allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.

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MoveOn PAC
July 21, 2004

Unity Against Yucca

After the recent US Court of Appeals ruling, we have a chance to stop the Yucca Mountain Project. Renewed opposition to the Project from the Nevada Republican Party will strengthen our Congressional delegation´s fight against Yucca. Please sign up below – we´ll immediately forward your comments to the Earlene Forsythe, Chairwoman of the Republican Party – and then ask your friends and colleagues to sign.

We need unity in our fight against Yucca and we want the Nevada Republican Party back on our side. We urge the Nevada Republican Party:

" Join with Nevadans across the political spectrum by once again opposing President Bush´s plan to make our state a nuclear waste dump."

http://www.moveonpac.org/yucca/

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Desert Sun
July 21, 2004

Hispanic leverage huge in battleground states

USA TODAY

President Bush wants to lift his share of the U.S. Hispanic vote from 35 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2004. Democrats want to turn out more of their own Hispanic supporters.

In the prime battlegrounds such as Arizona and Nevada, Hispanic leverage "is going to be huge," says Joe Velasquez, a Democratic campaign consultant. "If you get 10,000 to 30,000 new voters to the polls who are Hispanic, that´s going to have a tremendous impact." These states´ electoral votes could swing the election, analysts say.

Arizona

In 1996, President Clinton became the first Democrat since Harry Truman in 1948 to carry Arizona. Democrat Janet Napolitano was elected governor in 2002, buoying party hopes of turning this "red" state blue again.

Only 25 percent of Arizona Hispanics are foreign-born and naturalized, so "there´s not that much of a swing vote" open to the GOP, pollster Sergio Bendixen says. U.S. Reps. Ed Pastor in Phoenix and Raul Grijalva in Tucson are lending their organizations to Kerry. Napolitano´s organization "helps tremendously," Grijalva says.

Democrats face an uphill battle. In a statewide poll of 670 voters released Thursday, Bush led Kerry, 48 percent to 36 percent. The Behavior Research Center Poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Arizona´s strong economy is a plus for Bush.

Lisa Garcia Bedolla, a political science professor at the University of California-Irvine, says Hispanic growth has been matched by Anglo growth. This tends to be Republican, so growth "may be a wash" for the two parties, she says. The influx of young professionals for high-tech work isn´t all good news for Republicans, says John Sanchez, director of the Bush campaign in five Western states.

For Democrats, "it´s going to take a real effort," Richardson says. "I think Arizona is very doable with ground efforts targeted to Native Americans and Hispanics."

Nevada

Low turnout at the polls may limit impact.

Nevada was the fastest-growing state in the 1990s. Population rose 66 percent. Hispanics increased 200 percent, drawn to Las Vegas casino-hotel jobs. But Hispanic power has yet to stir at the polls. In 2002 elections, 42 percent of registered Hispanics voted in Las Vegas, compared with 57 percent turnout overall. "Latino turnout is not as high as we would like it to be, but it is growing," says Attorney General Brian Sandoval, the Bush campaign´s Nevada co-chair.

Many local politicos say the Hispanic potential is exaggerated and that it will be 10 years before a critical mass of newcomers attains the levels of homeownership, education and income that trigger voting.

It´s a wide-open Hispanic electorate, mostly foreign-born. Hotel workers are unionized but "can be pushed in one direction or the other," pollster Sergio Bendixen says. Groups ranging from the Culinary Workers Union to Republican volunteers have been pushing since September to register and turn out Hispanics.

The early start is "phenomenal," says Andres Ramirez, a Democratic campaign consultant.

A robust economy aids Bush. But polls show that, like other Nevadans, many Hispanics are sour on Bush for approving a national repository for dangerous nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas. Even Sandoval has told the White House "we respectfully disagree."

Analysis by Paul Overberg, USA TODAY. Reporting by Martin Kasindorf, USA TODAY. Desert Sun staff writer Jose Paul Corona contributed to this report. Sources: Census Bureau, Univision, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials and Pew Hispanic Center.

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Columbus Dispatch
July 20, 2004

Nuclear-waste games

Setback for Nevada´s NIMBYism is progress for rest of America

This nation desperately needs safe ways to dispose of radioactive waste, so any development that brings containment of such material one day closer is worth cheering.

A recent court decision removing most of the hurdles to building a repository in Nevada drew applause from opponents as well as supporters, which would be amusing if the subject weren´t so serious. The two key groups fighting to stop the federal government from building a nuclearwaste vault within Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, won one small battle of the many they waged.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of appeals for the District of Columbia on July 9 rejected virtually all the arguments brought against the Yucca project. Significantly, the judges turned away Nevada´s not-in-my-backyard claims that the government can´t put something in a state that doesn´t want it. Clearly, the right and duty of Congress and the president to ensure national security and protect public health must override parochial interests. The court also refused even to consider Nevada´s gripe that the process for selecting the site was illegal.

But Nevada and its partners in the lawsuit, environmental groups intent on shutting down the nation´s nuclearenergy industry, scored a single point when the court agreed that container designers, in planning to protect Americans from radiation for 10,000 years, did not follow the guidance of a report from the National Academy of Sciences. It said any design should ensure residents would be protected when the waste could be most dangerous, and that could occur much later than 10,000 years out.

This ruling is disappointing, but the court also ordered that the safety matter remain on hold until seven days after any appeal is decided. Thus, Energy Department officials said the ruling would not stall the project.

Either side in the case can ask for a review of all the circuit court´s judges and can appeal to the Supreme Court.

The sciences academy´s opinion is critical only because Congress mandated that the Environmental Protection Agency base its radiation standards on the academy´s recommendations.

The scientists, however, can provide no specific plan for ensuring safety of nuclear debris beyond 10,000 years. And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, charged with the ridiculous task of coming up with such standards in a country only slightly older than 200 years, correctly points out that no computer models or other tools can project reliability of containers and other factors beyond 10,000 years.

Considering the poor record of so many other projections government agencies make, Americans also might wonder at the accuracy of a 10,000-year forecast, but that´s not the issue.

As attorneys work on appeals, the EPA may try to devise a means of meeting a stricter standard; that would be an exercise in futility.

If the 10,000-year rule doesn´t win on appeal, Congress can solve the problem easily by passing a law declaring that 10,000 or whatever number of years is adequate for safety. If civilization continues to prosper, technology is on track to deal with any nuclear-containment problems that might crop up down the pike.

The Yucca Mountain repository already is six years behind its planned opening date. For every day of delay, high-level radioactive waste piles up in temporary storage at 131 power plants and government sites in 39 states. This situation presents potential health and security hazards.

As the litigation crawls on, each court victory for the government is a welcome affirmation of federal agencies´ responsibility to act in the public´s best interests.

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Charleston Post Courier
July 20, 2004

Time running out at SRS

Governmental steps delayed in cleanup of high-level radioactive waste

By Brian Hicks
Of The Post and Courier Staff

AIKEN--The single biggest threat to South Carolina's environment is buried in a few dozen aging, cracked steel tanks beneath the grounds of the Savannah River Site, a state official said Monday.

Because of delays in the courts and Congress, time is running out to clean up the more than 35 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste.

Officials say there is barely three years worth of storage space at SRS, mainly due to new waste generated by ongoing cleanup at the site. More pressing may be the condition of the facility's older tanks, some dating back to the 1950s. A recent report found leaks or cracks in 15 of 51 of the storage tanks, which range in size from 750,000 gallons to 1.3 million gallons.

"We've got to get that out of those tanks," said David Wilson, with the state Department of Health and Environmental Control's land and waste management office.

Already, there are limits on how high some of the tanks can be filled because of cracks high on their steel walls.

The Department of Energy and officials with Westinghouse Savannah River Co., which runs the Cold War-era weapons facility, have plans for processing the waste and storing some of the least potent material in concrete vaults buried on-site. Those plans have been muddled by a recent court decision that had the effect of barring DOE from having oversight on classifying radioactive levels of waste.

The U.S. Senate approved a bill that would allow the department more latitude and also allow some lower-level radioactive waste to be stored in concrete vaults at the site with state approval. That measure, pushed by U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is pending in the House.

Meanwhile, officials at SRS find themselves hamstrung, trying to meet a cleanup deadline while fighting public opinion on plans to bury some waste in concrete grout in a double-lined vault on site.

The waste is the byproduct of irradiating material to make various forms of plutonium and uranium, most of which was made for weapons and fuel sources, such as the NASA probe currently orbiting Saturn and its moon.

After scientists took what they needed, the rest went to these storage tanks, where it has sat for years.

Scientists and engineers plan to process the radioactive muck by distilling the most harmful waste of plutonium and uranium, which could kill a person, and combining it with molten glass. That volatile cocktail will be poured into storage canisters and shipped out of state.

Some of the less radioactive material forms a salt-like material. Officials at SRS want to mix that salt with a concrete grout and bury it in double-lined vaults that they say will last for more than 2,000 years. EPA guidelines call for storage facilities to last 500 years.

That salt, which makes up the greatest volume of the waste, also contains the least amount of radioactive material. Officials says only about .15 percent of the radioactive elements would remain on site under their plan.

If something isn't done soon, however, the state could be stuck with all of the waste for several years.

"If this legislation fails, we're going to have to shut down our cleanup," Lee Otis, an attorney for the DOE said Monday. "We need to get the salt out of those tanks. We'll be out of space in 2008."

DOE officials have taken the public relations offensive, touting the endorsement of their plans by scientists and even the EPA. They say the waste that would remain in South Carolina would be less harmful to a person than having an X-ray taken. The most deadly radioactive material would go to a waste storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev.

Some have cried foul over attempts to store waste in South Carolina, but Wilson said this has been in the cards for the state. He says state officials don't have a problem with it -- generally.

"There had always been the proposal to put the most benign material in concrete vaults here," Wilson said. "We approved that in the early 1990s."

There is a sticking point, of course. DOE officials say they will clean the old storage tanks to the point of removing 99 percent of the radioactive waste in them. Already, they have cleaned out four of the 51 tanks, two of which have been filled and sealed.

Wilson said the state is not going to rubber-stamp any particular percentage. In some cases, 1 percent can be too much, he said.

"We want to take this on a tank-by-tank basis," he said. "To us, this is the right way to do it. But we want to monitor it closely. That's why we want this federal legislation to pass. It gives the state oversight, something we haven't had before."

For the time being, all the sludge and salt continues to sit in the old steel tanks that were not designed as a long-term solution. In 2001, a recent report says, workers found five gallons of radioactive waste that had leaked out of a previously undetected crack.

If something isn't done soon, there could be more where that came from.

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Energy Pulse
July 20, 2004

The Business Electric: Those Fightin' Attorneys General

Arthur O'Donnell, Editorial Director, Newsletters, Energy Central

In case you hadn't noticed, we are experiencing an historic jurisdictional battle between states and the federal government. Energy policy is just one of the fronts in conflict.

Personal and financial privacy laws, same-sex marriages, medical marijuana laws, the purchase of Canadian pharmaceuticals, even the limited right to physician-assisted euthanasia in Oregon, are all issues of contention between state or local governmental bodies and the law-enforcement/regulatory agencies of the United States.

Those matters—and the strange politics of the present day that witness a highly conservative administration actively encroaching on presumed states´ rights in so many areas, while some state politicians decry the lack of sufficient federal involvement in others—are well beyond the purview of this column. So, I´ll stick to the topics of energy, environment and corporate accountability, focusing on actions by particular representatives of state government: Offices of the Attorneys General.

By now, just about every sentient business and energy professional knows the names of Elliot Spitzer, Bill Lockyer and Richard Blumenthal. For anyone who doesn´t, they are, respectively, the attorneys general of New York, California and Connecticut, who have been redefining the cutting edges of state/federal jurisdiction for several years. It was Spitzer who successfully squeezed the Wall Street financial community while goading the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission into enacting financial reforms and multi-billions of dollars in settlements. Lockyer seems to schedule at least one news conference per week castigating the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for some aspect of the California market meltdown of 2000/01. Blumenthal has recently shifted his battle plans from the Cross Sound Cable uncivil war with Long Island, New York, to take on generators and power sellers in the federally sanctioned wholesale markets run by the New England Independent System Operator.

They are not the only “Top Cops’ of various states who are actively engaged in legal territorial disputes. Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval has been confronting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy for years over the siting of a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. The New Jersey AG recently announced a $500,000 fine against NUI Corporation´s Energy Brokers, Inc., unit for overcharging local utilities for natural gas sales in what might be argued as interstate commerce. Attorneys general from the Northwestern states of Washington, Oregon and Montana pursue their own grievances against FERC, Enron and others for various acts of omission and/or commission during the Western power crisis.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott inherited an Enron Task Force from his predecessor John Cornyn and has tried to keep pressure on the federal bankruptcy case to limit professional fee payments (see TBE 07/06/04). In the words of deputy attorney general Joe Boyd, “The State of Texas is ultimately paying these fees since each dollar spent on fees takes one dollar away from the funds available to pay the creditors.’

Besides being the chief law-enforcement agency at the state level, the attorneys general in many cases also are the top consumer advocates, as well as overseers of corporations and non-profit groups chartered in their jurisdictions. As such, they intervene in state utility rate proceedings and the more novel class of cases that sometimes involve federal issues. For instance, the Rhode Island attorney general´s office practices a traditional kind of oversight by helping negotiate a distribution rate settlement with Narragansett Electric. But the Virginia AG´s Division of Consumer Council is treading entirely new territory when it openly questions whether utility AEP should be allowed to join the PJM Interconnection for regional transmission services, even though FERC claims jurisdiction over PJM.

State litigators have also joined forces on several occasions to pursue environmental actions that cut across state borders. Among the most protracted cases have been actions filed by East Coast states against utilities that operate coal-fired power plants in Ohio, with multiple jurisdictions seeking redress under the terms of the 1970 Clean Air Act against such utilities as Ohio Edison/FirstEnergy, AEP and Cinergy.

The basis for these states´ complaints is that they sit downwind from pollution emitting power plants, and that while the plaintiff attorneys general cannot pursue local actions across state lines, they can take advantage of “citizen suit’ provisions of the Clean Air Act.

One of these suits, which pitted New York, New Jersey and Connecticut—along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—against Ohio Edison, last August resulted in a federal court finding that the utility skirted “new source review’ (NSR) regulations when it performed upgrades on seven power stations. This precedent-setting outcome is being used as leverage in similar cases against AEP and Cinergy. Meanwhile, the remedy phase of the Ohio Edison case has been postponed from this month to early next year while “meaningful settlement negotiations’ are being conducted, said a source from the plaintiffs side this week. A global settlement of the issue with multiple states and utilities is not out of the realm of possibility.

Of particular interest in these types of cases is that suits filed during the Clinton Administration were cooperatively pursued by states and federal EPA. Now, the states find themselves taking on the cases without federal support, and frequently in direct opposition to the Bush Administration´s environmental policies. In May, New Jersey joined New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania in a suit against Allegheny Energy´s coal-fired plants in West Virginia—sans U.S. EPA participation.

Last December, a federal judge issued a stay of EPA´s latest interpretation of NSR rules at the behest of several of these Eastern states. The pressure, from states as well as from environmental groups, is forcing EPA to conduct a 180-day comment period and review of how it distinguishes “routine maintenance’ from more sweeping refurbishments that would trigger a new permit process.

Meanwhile, a broader coalition of Northeastern attorneys general challenges everything from how EPA quantifies power plant emissions to its lack of enforcement of such pollutants as carbon and mercury. In late June, for example, eleven states, ranging from Maine and Massachusetts to New Mexico and California, joined in opposition to the EPA´s proposed standards allowing power plants to purchase mercury offset credits rather than limiting pollution.

“It is deeply disturbing that in order to protect our air quality and the health of our citizens, state attorneys general must file suit against the EPA, the very agency that should be leading the fight against air pollution,’ says Peter C. Harvey, the New Jersey Attorney General. “EPA has proposed rules that would create huge loopholes for industry, and it has abdicated its enforcement responsibility in this area. We will continue to fight EPA's rule changes and to aggressively pursue suits against companies that have broken the law and polluted our air.’

It should be obvious that state attorneys general do not always prevail in various cases, especially when they take federal/state jurisdictional issues head on. A most recent example is the dismissal this month of California AG Lockyer´s state-action complaints against a half-dozen power generation companies, ostensibly for double-dealing their reserve capacity during the power crisis. Federal regulatory pre-emption trumped state actions in this case.

Though just the latest frustration for California politicians, the court´s determination at least helps clarify the bright line between FERC´s authority over wholesale power markets and state policing of intrastate commerce. This established a boundary distinct from that in another California/FERC case that was concluded in June, in which FERC was roundly chastised by the U.S. Court of Appeals for trying to assert too much control over the governing board of the California ISO.

Together with other actions—environmental, financial and medical—these state/federal conflicts are redefining jurisdictional boundaries and the electricity business in ways never before contemplated.

Despite the emphasis on energy litigation and the associated rhetoric, attorneys general are frequently more effective in reaching settlements than in collecting court precedents. While Lockyer has been singularly unsuccessful seeking redress against “market manipulators’ in the courtroom, this past week´s $208 million settlement with Duke Energy netted far more than what Duke was expected to pay in the FERC´s California refund proceeding (Duke will drop about $123 million in claims for non-payment of energy deliveries and pay about $85 million in cash to California and neighboring states). Similarly, the biggest scores made by Lockyer over the past two years have been by participating in global settlements with Williams ($1.4 billion) and El Paso ($1.7 billion).

The Bottom Line: Remember, New York AG Elliot Spitzer caught flak from critics for settling with Merrill Lynch for $100 million rather than taking the company all the way through court. But it was that deal that led to across-the-board settlements between the financial community and the SEC, proving that attorneys general can effectively push the federal/state line without breaking it.

Arthur O´Donnell is Energy Central´s Editorial Director—Newsletters. The Business Electric is found exclusively on Energy Central.

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Hilton Head Island Packet
July 20th, 2004

Nuclear cleanup depends on Yucca Mountain site

Congress must assess risk to the entire nation

America needs a dose of reality to cope with nuclear waste disposal. The nation needs the Yucca Mountain waste repository, and it must find a practical way to address concerns raised in a recent court ruling.

The U.S. Court of Appeals seems to want guarantees from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that radiation in groundwater would not exceed drinking water standards at the site's boundary for300,000 years. EPA has used a 10,000-year standard.

The federal government has spent $9 billion to prepare the interior of a mountain in remotely populated Nevada to be the permanent repository for waste from around the nation. It already is about a decade behind in providing that storage area, and the risk to other areas around the county is much greater than the risk contemplated by the appeals court.

The Savannah River Site, which is some 90 miles upstream from Hilton Head Island, is one of many areas around the nation that need Yucca Mountain to open.

SRS is home to 37 million gallons of highly radioactive nuclear waste generated for the defense of the nation over the past half century. It is stored in 49 tanks.

It was recently reported there are cracks in 15 of the tanks.

Other defense installations, including some around major population centers, also must be cleaned up, and Yucca Mountain in the missing ingredient.

It is impractical to demand perfection at the Yucca Mountain repository before it can provide a service to the nation that is grossly needed.

Who is worried about what could happen around SRS in 300,000 years? That is an unrealistic standard that is not being used uniformly.

Sites, such as SRS, were clearly not designed for the long-term storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

If it is wrong to open Yucca Mountain because of remote chances of potential side effects 300,000 years hence, it has to be considered much worse to leave radioactive waste in areas where a much greater health and security risk already exists.

Congress must intervene to ensure that someone sees the big picture and that waste cleanup at SRS and elsewhere can get back on track.

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Berkshire Eagle
July 18, 2004

Courting disaster

The next president of the United States, George W. Bush or John Kerry, will likely appoint two or more Supreme Court justices and dozens of federal district and appellate-court judges, shaping the law in the United States for decades to come. The frightening prospect that Mr. Bush could well be the man to select those judges was underlined earlier this month when the Senate confirmed, 51 to 46, Bush nominee J. Leon Holmes to a federal district judgeship in Arkansas. Mr. Holmes is the man who wrote in 1997 -- not 1697 -- that in marriage "the woman is to place herself under the authority of the man." He said the Bible told him so.

Mr. Holmes -- now Judge Holmes -- has also declared abortion the moral equivalent of the Holocaust. He has inveighed against federally enforced school desegregation and campaigned for school prayer. Something over 20 years ago, he opined that rape victims become pregnant "as often as it snows in Miami." Mr. Holmes' Senate supporters argued that there ought to be a statute of limitations on dumb, offensive remarks, and said anyway Mr. Holmes later had second thoughts about that one. Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, leading the fruitless fight to stop the Holmes nomination, pointed out that 20,000 rape victims become pregnant each year, and none of the Holmes enthusiasts challenged the figure.

Judicial decisions make huge differences in the lives of millions of people. The right of reproductive freedom in American hangs by a thread. The basic right of access to the courts by war-on-terror "detainees" was upheld this year 6 to 3 by the Supreme Court. Age and illness may lead two of those six justices to retire soon. Campaign-finance reform was upheld by the court this year 5 to 4. Another 5 to 4 ruling on Internet pornography barely struck down a federal law that would have inhibited the distribution of all manner of non-pornographic material.

Federal courts have halted some of the most atrocious anti-environmental moves by the Bush administration. Just this month, a federal court in West Virginia, voided a bizarre Army Corps of Engineers rule that gives "pre-clearance" -- i.e., do it now, ask permission later -- for Appalachian coal-mining companies to dynamite the tops off mountains and shove some of the refuse into local streams. On July 9, the District of Columbia Federal Appeals Court ordered the Energy Department to halt work on a nuclear-waste depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, because under the administration's plan the public would be protected from radiation leaks for just 10,000 years, not the 300,000 years recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. Luckily for posterity, the courts are looking ahead -- although the Republican Congress may now re-write the law that made this farsightedness possible.

What's most chilling of all is the openness with which Bush officials and supporters declare their eagerness to trash 75 years of jurisprudence on civil rights and liberties, reproductive rights, free speech, separation of church and state, and environmental regulations. Should they succeed, the United States of America will be a very different country, one that most Americans will barely recognize when the full effect of what has happened begins to hit them.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 19, 2004

Editorial: Double-talk on Yucca

For years this newspaper has advocated that nuclear power plants continue to store their highly radioactive waste on site, where it's safe, as an alternative to the dangerous plan of transporting it across the country to Yucca Mountain. The argument from the industry and federal government has been that on-site storage is not safe and that it is vulnerable to terrorism.

We thought of that argument when reading a New York Times article last week about plans by a nuclear power plant near Peekskill, N.Y., to increase its on-site storage capacity. Local residents, fearing for their safety, turned out in force to protest the expanded storage plan. Who was there to defend on-site storage? Why, the federal government and industry officials.

The plan was to transfer spent fuel rods from storage pools, where they have been cooling for years, into steel cylinders that would be stored in silos made of concrete and steel -- a process known as dry cask storage. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission was on hand to "placate" the residents' fears, the newspaper reported. And an industry spokesman was quoted as saying, "The casks, we believe, will withstand a commercial airline crashing into them."

So we once again ask: Why is Yucca Mountain such an urgent national priority?

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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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