Yucca Mountain News Clips, Thursday, August 5, 2004

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, August 5, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
August 05, 2004

DOE failed to alert workers to disease risk

Feds knew of silica dangers in Yucca tunnels for years

By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
(c) 2004 Las Vegas SUN

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department was warned of the dangers of silica at Yucca Mountain years before it told workers of the threat, department documents show.

Memos and e-mails sent over several years show that key managers were told there was silica dust, which can lead to the fatal lung disease silicosis, in the mountain's tunnels during and after the main tunnel of the proposed nuclear waste repository was dug.

The documents, which are public and part of the department's material supporting its license application to build the repository, show that the department failed to follow up on plans to protect workers.

And, the documents show, the department waited almost three years to notify workers after being warned that it needed to do so.

"The Department of Energy sent their workers into that mountain knowing full well of the presence of silica and knowing full well that exposure to silica can cause death," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. " DOE also knew that exposure is 100 percent preventable, but did nothing that would have protected these workers."

Reid held a Senate subcommittee field hearing in Las Vegas earlier this year. Workers now ill from their time in the mountain talked about their experiences.

"The fact that the DOE withheld this information from the workers at the Yucca Mountain site is completely irresponsible and further proves the reckless fashion in which this project is being handled," Reid said.

The Energy Department did not respond to several requests for comment.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., called the attitude shown in the document "the height of arrogance."

"Rather than just a case of negligence or carelessness, these documents indicate that DOE knew its actions were wrong and that workers should have been told years earlier about the dangers created by tunneling work without proper protection," she said.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said the Energy Department chose to "ignore the danger and put their employees at risk in order to keep the Yucca Mountain Project on schedule."

"If the Department of Energy has such blatant disregard for the life, health and safety of their own employees, how can we trust they will protect the health and safety of the American public by storing 77,000 tons of high level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain?" he said.

Several Energy Department contractors are facing a class-action lawsuit filed in District Court earlier this year. The lawsuit is led by former Yucca Mountain employee Gene Griego, who worked at Yucca Mountain from 1993 to 2002, during the research phase, and was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease last year.

The department said it created its screening program after employees, like Griego, raised concerns about their exposure in September 2003. It acknowledged worker protections were not strongly enforced during times workers could be exposed, and documents show it knew of the potential health risk to the workers but still did not notify them until this year.

An April 2001 memo shows the department knew the severity of keeping the exposure a secret as well as the importance of getting workers tests for disease.

"An issue concerning silica exposures will become more visible as time goes by," according to an April 4, 2001, memo labeled "sensitive" from department Industrial Hygienist Phillip Boehme to Suzanne Mellington, assistant manager of the office of project execution. "Workers in the early days of Yucca Mountain were exposed to silica without respiratory protection. It is advisable to medically monitor them through the rest of their lives."

He recommended that "all exposed employees from the early years must be identified" and contacted, even if they no longer work for the department.

Boehme even said the program "may become newsworthy" and "illnesses may become subject of lawsuits, even class action."

"We should begin a coordinated effort," he wrote. "Lawsuits, public affairs and medical surveillance will be shared problems."

Three different memos, two from 2001 and one from 2002, from Wilbert Townsend, an engineering specialist, show raised silica levels long after the drilling stopped and that the limits the department was using were outdated or lab reports were wrong.

On Feb. 13, 2002, Townsend monitored levels inside the mountain and found that people working in certain areas at that time would be overexposed in about four hours without appropriate protection.

"This is still dangerous," said attorney Joe Egan. "This is years after the digging."

After examining the documents, Egan, of Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsch and Cynkar, one of the law firms representing Griego and the other plaintiffs in the class-action suit, said he has found similar ones showing the department delayed getting the message to workers.

"These show they anticipated it, yet still did not have the courtesy to tell these people they should be going to the doctor," Egan said. "DOE (the Energy Department) actually set up procedures and requirements but the contractors said no."

Egan also represents the state in its battle against the Yucca project, but the state is not a party to the silicosis case.

The documents essentially paint a chronology of the Energy Department's knowledge of the problems with silica and show that the department was slow to act despite warnings.

Glenn Milligan, manager of the Safety and Health Complication Department, sent a letter to project manager Carl Gertz outlining a silica sampling plan for the project in July 1992, four months before the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health issued a nationwide alert about silicosis to any workers involved in rock drilling.

However, an evaluation of training and tunnel operations from July 18, 1994, to Aug. 12, 1994, found there was no safety training for supervisors who specifically worked with the tunnel boring machine.

The project also had problems equipping workers with safety equipment to protect against silicosis.

In August 1994 Wendy Dixon, the project's assistant manager for environment, safety and health, wrote Daniel Koss, the technical project officer for the site characterization office, that those working in the tunnel "must use appropriate respiratory protection" and the appropriate sampling should occur to monitor the exposure.

Margaret Chu, the project's current director, told Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in February that dust masks were available but more advanced respiratory protection was not available -- or their use enforced -- until 1996.

In March 1996 Dixon told L. Dale Foust, technical project officer for the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office, that disposable respirators did not satisfy the required protection needed, so a better plan and stronger respirators were needed.

The documents also show a pattern of warnings, concerns and issues with silica:

• On April 15, 1996, four Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors were denied access to the site after a complaint.

• In May 1996, Dixon's name appears on an "informal memorandum" sent from Russell Baumeister, a safety and occupational health specialist on the project, saying certain activities like tunnel drilling and mining, labeled "dust producers," should be shut down for at least two hours prior to a visit by members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.

"Visitors exposed to these operations may exceed the exposure levels for silica," Baumeister wrote. "Visitors should have the capability to don respirators during their visit."

• A May 1996 memo from Robert Hull, a health and safety coordinator, said that silica levels in at least six of the 10 researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory who visited the site that month exceeded the enforcement levels. Hull recommended the employees be given respiratory protection and said the lab should perform its own monitoring.

• A Sept. 5, 1996, "informal memorandum" from Dr. Fred Kissell of the department's Pittsburgh Research Center wrote that it was "not feasible to clean up the entire tunnel."

"There are too many sources of dust, the cost is unreasonable and the implementation time it too long," Kissell wrote. "It has been suggested that new ventilation lines be established to remove dusty air from the alcoves. This many help a little but suffers from cost and implementation time problems."

• J. Davitt McAteer, assistant secretary for mine safety and health, wrote the department in October 1996 after an assessment had been done in April 1996.

"If (the Mine Safety and Health Administration) had inspected the Yucca Mountain project as a regular mine, the 10 Compliance Assistance Visit notices given to the Department of Energy representatives would have been citations and a time limit for abatement would have been set," McAteer wrote.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 05, 2004

Nevadans worry NRC biased about repository

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials are troubled by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission attorney who spoke in defense of the Energy Department at a hearing last week on the Yucca Mountain Project.

NRC lawyers and staff members are required to act in an impartial manner as they prepare to weigh a license application to build a nuclear waste repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

But NRC staff attorney Mitzi Young crossed the line in favor of the Energy Department, said Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Loux sent a letter Tuesday to NRC General Counsel Karen Cyr, asking her to investigate whether agency staffers are being pressured to tilt in favor of the project.

"Any small hope the state of Nevada had that the NRC staff would be an independent evaluator of the DOE's license application in the Yucca Mountain proceeding vanished" Loux said, when Young made her presentation to a three-judge panel hearing the agency's first repository dispute July 27.

Young told the administrative judges that, in the view of NRC staff, Nevada failed to make a case when it charged the department violated requirements for an online database of Yucca Mountain technical documents. Young said the Energy Department's efforts to build the database were satisfactory and met "good faith" standards.

Young's comments appeared to take the judges by surprise. Judge Thomas Moore said it appeared contrary to her view last year. Moore and Judges Alan Rosenthal and Alex Karlin indicated Nevada had a legitimate complaint. A decision is pending.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 04, 2004

Nevada asks nuclear regulators whether Yucca dump getting preferred handling

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada is accusing Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff of favoring the Energy Department in a dispute about whether the department followed commission policy in submitting documents about a national nuclear waste repository.

The state´s top anti-Yucca Mountain administrator cites a commission lawyer´s comment at a July 27 hearing that NRC staff was making a “hard sell’ on behalf of the Energy Department.

In a Tuesday letter, Bob Loux, chief of the state´s Agency for Nuclear Projects, asks Karen Cyr, Nuclear Regulatory Commission general counsel, to investigate whether NRC staff had been instructed or lobbied by higher-ups “to advocate in favor of the Yucca Mountain applicant.’

NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said Wednesday the commission was taking the request under advisement.

Loux insisted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should have a neutral role judging the Energy Department´s plan to entomb the nation´s most radioactive waste beneath a desert ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The commission will be asked to issue an operating license for the Energy Department to store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Congress approved the Yucca site in 2002.

The Energy Department plans to seek a repository operating license from the NRC by the end of the year. Licensing is expected to take several years, and the government wants to begin accepting spent nuclear fuel from 39 states in 2010.

The dispute that prompted the July 27 hearing stems from Nevada´s claim the Energy Department did not meet a June 30 deadline for making public millions of pages of documents underpinning its application.

The Energy Department certified that it met the deadline.

If the state´s contention is upheld, it could delay the project.

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State of Nevada
August 3, 2004

Ms. Karen Cyr, Esq.
Office of the General Counsel
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington DC 20555

RE: NRC Staff's Role in the Yucca Mountain Licensing Proceeding

Dear Ms. Cyr:

Any small hope the State of Nevada had that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) staff would be an independent evaluator of the Department of Energy's (DOE) license application in the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding vanished last week when NRC Staff Attorney Mitzi A. Young, in an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board hearing July 27, confessed to the Hearing Board (the Board) that staff was making a "hard sell" for the Energy Department's litigation position in the very first matter to reach NRC on the Yucca Mountain docket. That matter was Nevada's challenge to the legal validity and completeness of DOE's initial certification of compliance with NRC's Licensing Support Network ("LSN") regulations in 10 C.F.R. Part 2, Subpart J.

Though staff stated in oral argument and in its pleadings that it was not taking a position on the substantive dispute between DOE and Nevada, staff's pleadings and Ms. Young's oral argument strongly indicated otherwise. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Ms. Young advocated to the Board that Nevada had not met its burden to show that DOE had failed to comply with the regulations. Moreover, staff adopted DOE's litigation position that, notwithstanding 15 years of development by NRC of the LSN, DOE did not even need to make its Yucca Mountain documents available on the LSN to satisfy NRC's LSN regulations. This position, articulated by Ms. Young in oral argument, contradicted her own statements made only several days earlier on an official transcript that was read into the record by Hearing Judge Thomas A. Moore, Chair of the Board.

When the Board asked Ms. Young how she could profess that staff was remaining neutral while she was standing before the Board advocating DOE's position -- a position the Board thought was wrong under the law -- she answered, "I know it's a hard sell."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff's role is to independently evaluate DOE's license application and related issues and perform its evaluations in accordance with NRC's regulations. It should be advocating only for compliance with the law by the applicant. It should not be taking positions on whether a challenger has satisfied its burden to prove otherwise. And more important, it should not be making a "hard sell" for any applicant's position.

We respectfully request that you investigate whether NRC staff has been instructed or lobbied by the Commission or by Executive Management to advocate for the Yucca Mountain applicant, or to take other measures or positions that would compromise the separation of functions requirements in NRC's regulations or undermine staff's legally defined and traditional neutral role in a license proceeding.

Sincerely,
Robert R. Loux
Executive Director

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Las Vegas SUN
August 04, 2004

Nevada wants 'hard sell' probe

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

WASHINGTON -- Nevada is accusing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's staff of being partial to the Energy Department in an argument over whether or not the department followed the commission policy.

State officials want the NRC to investigate whether the commissioners or the agency's senior staff members have instructed employees to advocate for the Yucca Mountain project.

The commission will ultimately decide whether the Energy Department can store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The commission is supposed to be an independent evaluator of the project. The Energy Department has to prove the project is safe to get a license from the commission.

But Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects said "any small hope" the state had that the commission would make an independent evaluation "vanished" when NRC Staff Attorney Mitzi Young argued before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board last week.

Nevada officials claim the Energy Department did not follow the rules for posting a document database to support its application to build Yucca Mountain when it made millions of project documents public last month.

If the argument is upheld, it would delay the project. The department believes it did satisfy the rules and wants to move forward.

At the administrative hearing, before three judges, Nevada argued its point with the NRC attorney arguing against Nevada. A decision is pending. One judge questioned the NRC attorney about an apparent change of position.

Young said during the hearing that Nevada could not prove the department did not make all its documents available "as a result of good faith efforts" to the database. She said making the documents available would satisfy the rule.

But Judge Thomas Moore said Young took a different position at a June advisory review panel meeting where she said loading all of he documents into one central database would not happen overnight.

She said at the earlier meeting "I don't know how you substantially comply with the requirement if you wait until one minute before midnight to load a substantial number of documents in terms of making them available to the NRC and to the public."

Moore pointed out that this position contradicts what Young said during an earlier meeting on the database status, saying her comments at the hearing were "180 degrees from what you are saying today."

The state wants to know what led to the change and if anyone inside the commission is pushing for the project to go through.

In a two-page letter sent to NRC General Counsel Karen Cyr, Loux explained that Young told the hearing board that commission staff members were making a "hard sell" for the Energy Department's position on Nevada's challenge to the project's document database.

"When the board asked Ms. Young how she could profess that staff was remaining neutral while she was standing before the board advocating DOE's position -- a position the board thought was wrong under the law -- she answered, 'I know it's a hard sell.'¢th° "

Loux said the commission staff should be "advocating only for compliance with the law by the applicant."

NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the commission will take Loux's request under advisement but could not offer any other details yet on what the next steps would be.

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Las Vegas SUN
August 04, 2004

Editorial: Yucca takes a back seat

We understand the urgency associated with the war on terrorism. Even still, there are other issues that must remain a priority. That's why we were taken aback Monday as Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., explained why he and fellow Nevada Republicans, Gov. Kenny Guinn and Rep. Jim Gibbons, haven't aggressively confronted President Bush with their opposition to Yucca Mountain.

On the Las Vegas Sun's televised news show, "Face to Face With Jon Ralston," Ensign said, "(Yucca Mountain) is a major issue, but there is a global war on terrorism, there is the economy, there are many other issues." Other issues? In Nevada, whose future for the rest of time is threatened by this proposed nuclear waste dump, there is no issue more important.

Ensign did concede, in a backhanded sort of way, that John Kerry is better for Nevada than President Bush when it comes to Yucca Mountain. "On this one issue (Yucca Mountain)," Ensign told Ralston, "he's (Kerry's) been better than George Bush, but that's on one issue."

And we would add: The one issue that means the most to Nevada.

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Las Vegas SUN
August 04, 2004

Reid: Bush's "character" key in Nev.; broke word on Yucca

By Scott Sonner
Associated Press

RENO, Nev. (AP) - President Bush's "character" is a bigger issue in Nevada than national security or the state's rebounding economy after he broke his pledge to use sound science in deciding whether to bury nuclear waste here, Sen. Harry Reid said.

And after attacking Democrat John Kerry's record on the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain last week, Republican Sen. John Ensign is acknowledging Kerry has "been better than George Bush" on "this one issue."

Reid, D-Nev., raised Bush's character as an issue in the presidential race in this battleground state during an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.

"The man doesn't appear to be a person of his word," said Reid, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate.

Bush and Kerry are locked in a "very close" race in Nevada - which Bush narrowly carried in 2000 after Democrat Bill Clinton had won it twice - partly because it's the only state to register a net increase in manufacturing jobs under Bush, Reid said.

"The economy is such a big issue in other states. But in Nevada, it's not as big of issue. The economy in Nevada has done well," he said during a wide-ranging interview at the AP bureau in Reno.

The biggest issue in Nevada is nuclear waste, Reid said.

"And the issue is more important than (just) nuclear waste because it deals with George Bush's character," the senator said.

Republicans "welcome a battle of character" between Bush and Kerry, Ensign's spokesman Jack Finn said Wednesday.

"If this presidential race comes down to a question of character, President Bush will win in a landslide over a man whose career is marked by the most extreme liberalism and blatant flip-flops on just about every major issue," Finn said.

Kerry has "flip-flopped on funding the troops in Iraq, the Patriot Act, the death penalty for terrorists" and the North American Free Trade Agreement, said Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

"John Kerry is not a candidate of conviction," she said.

Reid said Bush broke his word to Nevadans when he prematurely authorized the Yucca Mountain site while hundreds of studies were still pending in 2002 despite saying during his presidential campaign that he would use "sound science" to evaluate the project.

Kerry, D-Mass., voted against the project in 2000 and 2002 but Republicans accused him last week of being disingenuous about his voting record on the matter because he's also voted for Yucca Mountain.

Ensign issued a list of seven "pro-Yucca" votes that he said Kerry has taken since 1987, including one on a bill with the infamous "Screw Nevada" provision limiting studies for a potential dump site to Yucca Mountain. The provision was part of a $17.6 billion budget package.

"The people of Nevada have been led to believe that John Kerry is some sort of savior in our battle against the Yucca Mountain project," Ensign said last week. "Kerry's voting record shows just the opposite."

Ensign altered his criticism on Monday, saying Yucca Mountain is "one issue" in an election with many important issues, including the economy and the global war on terrorism.

"John Kerry is a left-wing Massachusetts liberal that does not reflect the values of Nevadans. On this one issue he's been better than George Bush, but that's on one issue," he told political commentator Jon Ralston on "Face to Face" carried on a Las Vegas cable channel.

Reid said Kerry's votes on Yucca Mountain were on omnibus spending bills he had to support because they included "tons of stuff" for Massachusetts.

"Every time we've needed him on nuclear waste, he's been there for us," Reid said.

Ensign said he has had many conversations with the president about Yucca Mountain.

"His advisers are telling him it is based on sound science. Obviously ... I personally disagree with that science. The National Academy of Sciences disagrees with the science," Ensign said on "Face to Face," which is carried on Las Vegas 1, jointly owned by KLAS-TV, The Las Vegas Sun and Cox Communications.

Finn said Wednesday that Ensign believes federal courts will determine if Yucca Mountain will be built "regardless of who is the president."

"John Kerry says `If I'm president, there will be no repository.' He can't make that statement. Nevadans should not believe him," Finn said.

"In terms of Yucca Mountain, this is a man (Kerry) who outright lied to the people of Nevada about his record. We were told he had a consistent record, a pure record, and that is an absolute falsehood," he said.

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Las Vegas SUN
August 04, 2004

Nevada asks NRC whether Yucca Mountain getting preferred handling

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada is accusing Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff of favoring the Energy Department in a dispute about whether the department followed commission policy in submitting documents about a national nuclear waste repository.

The state's top anti-Yucca Mountain administrator cites a commission lawyer's comment at a July 27 hearing that NRC staff was making a "hard sell" on behalf of the Energy Department.

In a Tuesday letter, Bob Loux, chief of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects, asks Karen Cyr, Nuclear Regulatory Commission general counsel, to investigate whether NRC staff had been instructed or lobbied by higher-ups "to advocate in favor of the Yucca Mountain applicant."

NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said Wednesday the commission was taking the request under advisement.

Loux insisted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should have a neutral role judging the Energy Department's plan to entomb the nation's most radioactive waste beneath a desert ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The commission will be asked to issue an operating license for the Energy Department to store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Congress approved the Yucca site in 2002.

The dispute that prompted the July 27 hearing stems from Nevada's claim the Energy Department did not meet a June 30 deadline for making public millions of pages of documents underpinning its application.

The Energy Department certified that it met the deadline.

If the state's contention is upheld, it could delay the project.

---

On the Net:

Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov

Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov

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Pahrump Valley Times
August 4, 2004

Yucca Mountain contractor qualifies for $11 million payment

By Steve Tetreault
Pvt Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - The management contractor for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository qualified for an $11 million incentive fee after handing over a draft license application last week, an Energy Department spokesman said.

Examiners must verify 5,000 pages of material submitted by Bechtel- SAIC Co., LLC before payment can be certified, said Allen Benson, spokesman for the Office of Repository Development.

The company qualified for an $11,043,476 fee by meeting a July 26 target, Benson said. Incentives were negotiated within the firm's $1.88 billion contract to manage the department's repository program.

In preparing its licensing draft, Bechtel-SAIC assumed a 10,000-year radiation health protections for the repository even though that standard was thrown out by a federal circuit court on July 9.

Benson said the Energy Department considers the standard still applicable until the court's mandate is finalized following an appeal period.

DOE officials say they want to file an application at the end of the year and retain the 10,000-year standard at least during initial license reviews by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, although the NRC has not decided whether that will be allowed.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, criticized the Energy Department for authorizing a big contractor payout when the Yucca Mountain Project faces such uncertainties.

Loux, who coordinates the state's opposition to the repository, said the Yucca program is being driven by the promise of financial bonuses rather than by science.

"I think they shouldn't have gotten the money," Loux said of Bechtel-SAIC. "It's clear these folks will do anything for money. The idea they would hand in a draft with a standard they know will not stand just says it all."

A number of incentives were written into the Bechtel-SAIC contract, including a $15.3 million fee for finalizing a repository application by Nov. 30 and a $22 million payment if the NRC accepts the licensing package for formal review within 91 days after submittal.

Loux asked the Energy Department inspector general in May to examine the Yucca management contract for possible legal or ethical violations. A spokeswoman for inspector general Gregory Friedman, contacted late Wednesday, said she could not immediately get information about the status of the request.

The draft licensing package contains the results of studies and technical analyses to detail the Energy Department's claim that 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste can be secured within the mountain in close proximity to Pahrump, Amargosa Valley and Beatty.

Benson said the package will be reviewed to ensure it conforms to licensing guidelines set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before the payment is authorized.

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Pahrump Valley Times
August 4, 2004

Waffling Scientists

Experts reverse cask opinion

Fear of Corrosion at Yucca Site No Longer an Issue

By The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS - Prominent scientists have shifted their stance on a key element of a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada, saying they no longer fear one type of corrosion would quickly weaken casks designed to contain radioactivity.

The new position by members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board boosts plans for the Yucca Mountain repository while the Energy Department prepares to seek a crucial operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Board executive William Barnard attributed the shift to the evolution of understanding about the first-of-its-kind repository.

"It's a learning process for DOE," he said, "and a learning process for the board." Opponents downplayed the effect the finding would have on state efforts to block the federal government from burying the nation's most radioactive waste approximately 50 miles northeast of Pahrump.

Steve Frishman, a state consultant on Yucca Mountain, said that while it appeared the Energy Department had solved one corrosion problem, Yucca engineers had not addressed questions about other minerals that could create problems.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., insisted Friday that "overwhelming scientific evidence shows that Yucca Mountain is not safe."

"Deciding which type of corrosion is most dangerous will not change that underlying fact," he said.

The Energy Department maintains the Yucca project will be safe.

The board outlined its position in a four-page letter last week to Margaret Chu, director of Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which directs the Yucca project. Chu did not plan to comment, a spokesman said.

Technical Review Board staff members said that while some concerns had been allayed, more needed to be known before scientists can be confident the Yucca Mountain repository would work the way the Energy Department expects.

Congress in 2002 picked Yucca Mountain as the site to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from commercial nuclear reactors and military and industrial sites in 39 states.

The Energy Department wants to open the repository in 2010 and spend 24 years entombing the waste in casks made of nickel 22 metal alloy in tunnels 1,000 feet below ground.

The Technical Review Board threw a wrench into the plan last October, with a report based on Energy Department research that calcium chloride, a mineral compound, could react with moisture in the tunnels and form a brine that could corrode casks within 1,000 years. Such a finding would make it difficult for the repository to win an operating license.

The review board, created by Congress to evaluate Yucca science, convened a two-day seminar in May at which the Energy Department and other organizations presented updated analyses.

Based on those presentations, the board told Chu in its letter that the calcium chloride corrosion scenario "appears unlikely."

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Pahrump Valley Times
August 4, 2004

Precious Resource

A history of Nye County's water

By Les Bradshaw
Special to The PVT

Water is the foundation on which economic prosperity in the West is built, especially in Nevada, one of the driest states. When Nevada was admitted as a state in 1864 there were only a few thousand residents. Statehood was granted during the Civil War because of the wealth being derived from the Comstock Lode, a fantastically rich mining area in the Virginia Hills south of what was later to become Reno. Dozens of mining camps were scattered across the northern part of the state such as Eureka, Hamilton, Austin, Ione, Unionville, Reveille, Aurora, and Bodie.

Southern Nevada was very sparsely inhabited. American Indians were gathering and hunting. A few farming pioneers were trying to tame the Muddy and Virgin rivers in the Moapa Valley area. The springs in the Las Vegas, Pahrump and Amargosa valleys were watering places on the Old Spanish Trail heading to California. Southern Nevada would not become important in the state's economy for another 75 years.

With statehood came federal control of most of Nevada's land. Federal land management agencies still control over 80 percent of the land in Nevada. Groundwater, however, did not fall under federal control. To this day groundwater remains largely subject to state, not federal, control. The state engineer regulates water use in the many basins in Nevada.

Nevada sits squarely in a huge geologic feature referred to as the Great Basin that stretches from the Wasatch Front in central Utah to the Sierra Nevada Range at Reno and from southern Oregon and Idaho to southern Nevada. The only part of Nevada that is not part of the Great Basin is portions of Clark and Lincoln counties that drain into the Colorado River system. Within the Great Basin no rivers escape to ultimately connect to the sea. The Truckee, Humboldt, and Walker are examples of such "captive" rivers. Pyramid Lake, Walker Lake and the Humboldt Sink are examples of endpoints of these rivers.

Most of the water in the Great Basin is in the form of groundwater that accumulates in the numerous intermontane basins from runoff from winter snows in the high country (hence the name Nevada) and spring and fall rains. There are about 200 of these hydrographic basins in Nevada, about 43 of which are in, or partly in, Nye County. Various geologic features such as mountain ranges, faults, and stratigraphy define the boundaries of these hydrographic basins.

In a few cases, politics determines boundaries. Within a basin the state engineer issues permits for use of the water. Users drill their wells and pump the water to the surface for use in agriculture, homes, industry and government.

On an annual basis, so much water flows into a basin, and so much water gets used. The "annual recharge" of a basin is the average amount flowing in. Annual recharge is a subjective determination made by the state engineer based on precipitation, temperature, soil and rock types, vegetation, and solaration.

The amount of groundwater in a basin is measured in "acre feet." An acre-foot is the amount of water necessary to cover one acre of land one foot deep. An average household uses about one acre-foot of water in a year.

Across the Great Basin some hydrographic basins have a lot of annual recharge and some have very little. As examples, the annual recharge of the Pahrump basin is 22,000 acre feet, the Big Smoky Valley basin is 65,000 acre feet, and the Mercury Valley basin is 250 acre feet.

The "safe yield" of a basin is the amount of ground water that can be safely withdrawn annually without any adverse effects from water level declines such as springs drying up, cracks forming at the land surface due to ground subsidence, or the water table dropping. Generally the safe yield in a basin about equals the annual recharge.

In some basins the water rights issued by the state engineer exceed the safe yield. The Las Vegas Valley is the most glaring example. People in the Las Vegas Valley have decided to live with the effects of over pumping. Springs are dry, streets have cracked, houses have cracked and become uninhabitable and the water table is significantly down from prior levels.

Some basins in Nye County are over allocated, notably the Pahrump and Amargosa basins. In the Pahrump Valley the safe yield has been reached. There are incipient signs of ground subsidence. A few wells are being deepened. But the effects are not significant valley-wide. And, like Las Vegas residents Pahrump might just want to learn to live with the effects.

Historically in Nevada there has not been much inter-basin transfer of groundwater. However, beginning in the late 1980s the voracious thirst in the Las Vegas Valley prompted the Las Vegas Valley Water District to file applications for water rights in a number of basins in Lincoln, White Pine and Nye counties with the idea of piping the water southward. Conceptually the project is similar to the Los Angeles Water and Power Co.'s pipeline and aqueduct project that brings water hundreds of miles southward from the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevadas. That project has left the Owens River Valley pretty much dried out. Las Vegas' plan is to pump and pipe southward all unallocated water in the basins.

In response to the Las Vegas water filings Nye County mounted a defense. It formed a working group in the 1990s with Lincoln and White Pine counties and made preparations to participate in the hearings. The working group hired its own water experts and prepared evidence for the hearings countering claims that exporting the water to Las Vegas would be harmless.

A good deal of animosity developed between the rural counties and the Las Vegas Valley Water District over this issue. The three impacted rural counties spent a considerable amount of scarce tax dollars defending themselves. However, in the mid-1990s the Water District began looking to the Colorado River for a more immediate source of additional water and in the late '90s put the rural basins project on hold. The District signed an accord with the three counties that left the District filings intact but the District promised to work with the counties to ensure that economic development projects would not be stymied because of the filings.

At the time no one realized that the Colorado River was on the front end of a drought that continues to this day. The Las Vegas Valley Water District's plans to solve near-term water supply issues from Lake Mead have evaporated because of the drought. The District has re-commenced its plans to pipe water from the rural counties to Las Vegas. Earlier this year the state engineer began hearings on Las Vegas Valley Water District applications in basins in Lincoln and White Pine counties. Nye County has geared itself up to prepare for the hearings on the basins in Nye County when they come up. Most recently, the District filed more applications on basins just east of the Nye County line along Highway 95 near Mercury.

In 2000 Nye County filed for unallocated water rights in several basins just north of Amargosa Valley, along the south boundary of the Nevada Test Site. Then, a few weeks ago, Nye County filed for any other unallocated water rights left in the County.

The Nye County Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities has recently completed a series of public workshops throughout the county on a proposed Nye County Water Resources Plan. The draft Water Resources Plan will soon come before the Nye County Board of Commissioners for adoption as a part of the Nye County Comprehensive Plan. There will be additional public hearings as the board considers the plan. Look for Board of Commissioner agendas for times and places. Copies of the plan may be obtained by calling 727-7727, ext. 0, or stop by my office at 1210 E Basin, Pahrump.

Adoption of the draft Water Resources Plan will set Nye County along a path of actively dealing with water resource issues in the county. The draft compiles and collates the basic facts about water resources in the county, presents population and water use growth projections and sets forth a number of actions the county could take in regard to water resources issues. By adopting the Water Resources Plan, Nye County will become a significant player in Southern Nevada water issues. The county will have a water strategies framework against which the Las Vegas Valley Water District and the myriad federal agencies busy in Nye County can gauge their resource management plans and water management strategies. By having the plan in place, and by being in control of water resources that others may envy and desire to acquire and export, Nye is best positioned to plan use of water resources to best benefit the citizens of Nye County.

The county continues to be a leader in regional efforts to define groundwater resources and flow patterns in southern Nye County. One of the key issues at the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain radioactive waste disposal project is defining the groundwater flow patterns under Yucca Mountain and southward through Amargosa Valley. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires DOE to have a good handle on these issues as part of its license application and subsequent repository performance confirmation.

Nye County is, and has been since the late 1990s, conducting drilling and geologic research programs aimed at defining the geologic parameters of groundwater flow in Amargosa Valley. Nye's work, funded by the DOE, has led to a better understanding of structural, geophysical, geochemical and stratigraphic elements of the geology south of Yucca Mountain.

The county's independent work, carried out in collaboration with the DOE, is helping to refine the modeling of how the repository will perform and how groundwater in the Amargosa basin might be impacted. Nye County's work, added to DOE's, is aimed at assuring that the repository performs as advertised.

Nye County has long advocated for a permanent "place at the table" in regard to regional groundwater research.

Bradshaw is the director of the Nye County Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities. He can be contacted via email at lbradshaw@nyecounty.net.

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Pahrump Valley Times
August 4, 2004

Kerry's Yucca voting record sparks debate

By Christina Almeida
The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS - As Democrats signaled strong opposition to a plan to bury the nation's nuclear waste in Southern Nevada, the state's Republicans criticized Sen. John Kerry last week as being disingenuous about his voting record on Yucca Mountain.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., issued a list of seven "pro-Yucca" votes that he said Kerry has taken since 1987, including one on a bill that included an infamous "Screw Nevada'' provision limiting studies for a potential dumpsite to Nye County's Yucca Mountain. The provision was part of a massive $17.6 billion budget package.

"The people of Nevada have been led to believe that John Kerry is some sort of savior in our battle against the Yucca Mountain project," Ensign said. "Kerry's voting record shows just the opposite."

Besides the so-called "Screw Nevada" amendment, Kerry voted in 1997 to table an amendment that would have required gubernatorial approval before any nuclear waste could be transported through a state, Ensign said.

"John Kerry is trying to take the moral high ground, and he cannot occupy that moral high ground because of his record," Ensign said.

Democrats in the state, including Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Shelley Berkley, have cited the Massachusetts senator's record of voting against the plan to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at a site in close proximity to three Nye County communities, including the fast-growing Pahrump.

Last week the party adopted a national platform that included a plank opposing Yucca Mountain, the strongest statement made by either party against the project. Kerry, who was nominated as his party's presidential candidate last week, also visited Nevada earlier this year and pledged Yucca Mountain will not be a repository if he wins in November.

Sean Smith, spokesman for the Kerry campaign in Nevada, said Republicans were "grasping at straws" and dismissed the votes as procedural.

"They are very afraid that this issue is going to cost them the state of Nevada and quite possibly the presidency, that they would resort to cherry-picking through a 16-year record of opposition," Smith said.

Yucca Mountain has been a central political issue in Nevada, one of 17 battleground states identified by both parties as being crucial to winning the presidential election.

Democrats have trumpeted Kerry's votes against the project in 2000 and 2002, while pointing out that President Bush authorized the plan despite saying during his presidential campaign that he would use "sound science" to evaluate the project.

"They're dead wrong on this issue. They need to attack their own president and get him to change his position," Berkley said by telephone from the Democratic convention in Boston. "They have no standing to attack Kerry when their president has deliberately misled the people of Nevada just to get our vote in 2000."

Reid, who sponsored many of the amendments cited by Ensign, said they were crafted by him and then-Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., to focus attention on Yucca Mountain.

"With rare exception (Bryan) and I were the only ones who voted for the amendments," Reid said, adding the one concerning gubernatorial approval was unconstitutional.

"On the issues relating to Yucca Mountain that mattered, when we needed John Kerry, he was with us without reservation," Reid said.

But Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said it was important for Nevadans to hear about Kerry's voting record.

"He didn't come clean. He didn't tell us the truth," Porter said. "People are going to look at consistency and leadership, and this is one more example where John Kerry is flip-flopping. His only consistency is his inconsistency."

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Vacaville Reporter
August 04, 2004

Nuclear waste transport is very safe

Reporter Editor:

In a recent letter, a high school freshman from Vacaville gave his opinion about transporting nuclear waste ("Transporting nuclear waste makes no sense for anyone," Forum, The Reporter, Aug. 1).

Actually, while it may be true that the public at large may not feel comfortable with the proposition, they and the letter writer may know little about the facts that nuclear waste shipments are highly regulated for strict adherence to safety and that such shipments have been successfully conducted in the United States and in other countries for more than 35 years.

If we were to base our public policy choices on what we see on "60 Minutes," we arguably would have a different world. But a review of the story aired in May on this topic would suggest that the letter writer took away the points raised by opponents of nuclear waste disposal in Nevada and seems to have discarded the facts presented by the federal government that conducts or regulates such transportation. No one familiar with the facts of radiological health would agree with the letter writer's conclusion that "only a little would have to leak out" and be lethal to an entire city.

As to the danger that the letter writer says our leaders and people need to know about before proceeding with the proposed waste disposal, he may not realize that the Congress considered such waste policy - underground disposal in one or two suitable sites with transportation to the sites from present temporary sites - at least three times: In 1983, when it chose the disposal method, in 1987 when it chose to study Yucca Mountain, and in 2002 when the president recommended proceeding with Yucca Mountain and Congress approved that plan.

The transportation of nuclear waste does make sense to the people who actually do it and are more at risk than the general public. And it makes sense to the various federal, state and local public safety officials who regulate such transportation to ensure that the excellent safety record is sustained.

Brian O'Connell, Washington, D.C.

The author is the director of the Nuclear Waste Program Office of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in Washington, D.C. - Editor.

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Las Vegas SUN
August 03, 2004

Ensign concedes Kerry better for state on Yucca

By Mary Manning
<manning@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said Monday that when it comes to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is better for Nevada than President Bush.

Last week Ensign attacked Kerry's Senate voting record on Yucca Mountain, citing the Massachusetts senator's favorable vote for the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments, known in the state as the "Screw Nevada Bill," although it was tucked into budget legislation.

Under a barrage of questions by Jon Ralston on "Face to Face With Jon Ralston," aired on Cox Cable channels 1 and 19, Ensign said Monday that "on this one issue he's been better than George Bush, but that's on one issue."

Ralston pressed the senator on the issue, noting that Bush said he based his decision on sound science.

"Obviously, it's something that I personally disagree with, that science," Ensign said. "The National Academy of Sciences disagrees with the science."

The National Academy of Sciences told the Energy Department that there was no scientific basis for a 10,000-year limit on radioactive ground water contamination and that the threat of contaminating the ground water would extend for thousands of years.

Ralston asked Ensign why the senator, Gov. Kenny Guinn and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., didn't go to Bush on the nuclear waste repository.

"It is a major issue, but there is a global war on terrorism, there is the economy, there are many other issues," Ensign said. "John Kerry is a left-wing Massachusetts liberal that does not reflect the values of Nevadans. On this one issue he's been better than George Bush, but that's on one issue."

Ensign, who said he has been to many Senate intelligence briefings in recent months, said the Bush administration is listening to increasingly alarming information on terrorism, especially in the past month.

"There is no question they (Bush administration) are afraid something is going to happen before the election," Ensign said.

Although financial institutions in New York City, Newark, N.J., and Washington, D.C., were named as terrorist targets on Sunday, Ensign said there is still no specific time or threat.

"We're better prepared, but we still have a long way to go," Ensign said of coordinating 15 intelligence agencies at the domestic and international levels.

Las Vegas has been mentioned as among the top cities targeted by Al-Quaida for future terrorist activities. Sheriff Bill Young has said that he would instinctively put Las Vegas in the top six target cities.

"His gut and my gut say the same thing," Ensign said.

When Ralston asked Ensign if the terror alert change could be politically motivated, Ensign said of the Bush administration, "They're trying to be honest and make us safer. It's impossible, in my opinion, to say that what they're doing is political."

When the GOP convenes its national convention in New York City at the end of the month, Ensign said he'll attend events at the main convention hall, but will avoid parties outside the security belt.

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Detroit Free Press
August 2, 2004

A roundup of editorial opinion from Michigan newspapers

While Congress stalls, nuclear waste piles up in 'temporary' sites nationwide

The ongoing federal stalemate over permanent disposal of nuclear waste would be comic if the results were not so dangerous and costly for the American public. Certainly there will be nothing funny if terrorists strike one of the scores of decades-old "temporary" storage sites around the country or if the government must refund billions of dollars collected from utilities to build a permanent storage dump.

West Michigan sorely needs progress on this issue. Along Lake Michigan, in Michigan and Illinois, more than 2,000 tons of waste from nuclear power plants are stored in temporary casks. Although the concrete/steel containers aren't known to have leaked, the mere potential should be enough to alarm Michigan's members of Congress. That especially applies to Sens. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, and Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing. The Senate far more than the House has become a barrier to building a national nuclear waste site.

Resolution of this issue already has waited 22 years. In 1982, Congress ordered that a burial place for nuclear waste be built. Five years later, lawmakers agreed that the site would be Nevada's Yucca Mountain and set a 1998 deadline for opening cells to receive waste. Six years later, not a single pound of nuclear material has gone there, leaving the waste to sit in some 130 temporary sites in 39 states. The national need has been no match for the obstructionism of Nevada politicians in Congress and anti-nuclear groups.

Two years ago, President Bush announced plans to begin construction. The House and Senate agreed, only to see opponents turn to lawsuits. Nevada's Sen. Harry Reid, a Senate Democratic leader, succeeded in cutting off the necessary funding.

Meanwhile, utilities' mandatory payments into a Nuclear Waste Fund -- created in 1982 to pay for the dump -- have added up to $15 billion. This year, utilities have begun suing the government over the failure to use that money. The Indiana Michigan Power Co. -- owner of the Cook nuclear plant near Bridgman -- is one of the claimants, seeking $107 million in damages. In all, utilities have filed 65 lawsuits, with a potential cost to the government of $56 billion.

The latest hitch is a U.S. court ruling in Washington, D.C., that the federal assurance of safety at Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years isn't good enough. The court said engineering for up to a million years will be necessary. Now Congress either will have to legislate around the ruling or redesign the project to satisfy the court, perhaps an impossible task.

Time is not on the nation's side. The temporary storage sites on Lake Michigan and around the nation, many near cities, were designed to be just that -- temporary. Some already are said to be unsafe. The solution is to bury all the material in a single suitable spot. The desert mountain in Nevada qualifies. Yucca Mountain's geologic character and storage capability have been researched for 20 years.

Two years ago, all of west Michigan's House members approved the Yucca Mountain plan. In the Senate, so did Sen. Levin. Sen. Stabenow flip-flopped, finally voting no. Mr. Levin now should show leadership, doing what he can to elbow aside Mr. Reid and free up the project. Ms. Stabenow should rethink her opposition and respond to a national and west Michigan need. The country requires nuclear power and safe storage of waste. It also must have responsible representation in Congress. THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS, July 16. ------

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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 01, 2004

Letter: Despite everything, feds move forward in Yucca

An RGJ editorial [July 12] rightly cautions that the fight over Yucca Mountain is not over. Meanwhile, premature claims of its death, as stated by Bob Loux, are blatantly misleading. Attorney Joe Egan compounds irrationality by stating that the EPA “cannot meet’ the 10,000-year radiation safety rule “because the radiation will leak like a sieve.’

How does Egan know? Will he best Methuselah by verifying this? Worse, why does the media allow these men to pass these statements off as fact?

Recent news sources like CNN, Fox, and NBC, all declare that Nevada lost the recent court skirmishes. In fact, DOE has for many years exhibited responsible, documented scientific quality control in respect to storage of spent rods. Further, DOE should be able to surmount the 10,000 year burden by asking Congress to change the law, work with the EPA to rewrite the standard, or in the courts.

Finally, in due time, the spent fuel rods might actually be utilized through new technology. Despite Loux and Egan, the Nuclear Energy Institute and DOE are still moving ahead with the license application for the repository.

Stanley W. Paher
Reno

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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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