Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, August 20, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
August 20, 2004
DOE says 281 of 293 key Yucca Mountain questions addressed
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Energy Department has responses for 281 of 293 key technical questions posed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada, department managers said.
Officials told NRC managers Thursday in Rockville, Md., that they remain on track to submit a license application in December to open and operate the Yucca Mountain repository.
Nevada and its lawyers say the license application process should stop until the Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency set a new radiation standard for the repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
They point to a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling July 9 that a 10,000-year EPA standard violated the law, since the National Academy of Sciences called for a much longer time frame.
Margaret Chu, chief of the Yucca Mountain project, told the NRC it was crucial to move forward with licensing to meet the goal of opening the repository in 2010.
Joseph Ziegler, director of the office of license application and strategy, said that as of Aug. 11, project scientists had addressed all but 12 key questions posed by the NRC.
Energy Department officials say the 10,000-year EPA standard is not officially invalid until appeals end. Parties to the case have until Monday to seek a rehearing, and Congress or other court actions could also leave the standard in place.
Budget questions, a pending decision from an NRC administrative court and the possibility of further action on a recent federal appellate court case also could affect the project.
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On the Net:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
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Las Vegas SUN
August 20, 2004
DOE says it's 79 percent set for application
Officials: On track to submit Yucca paperwork to NRC
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The Energy Department has completed 79 percent of its work on the Yucca Mountain project's license application and is on track to submit the document in December, department officials told Nuclear Regulatory Commission managers Thursday.
Lingering budget questions, a pending decision from the agency's administrative court and further action from the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit all could affect the project, but the department insists it is moving ahead.
Margaret Chu, the head of the Yucca Mountain project, emphasized that the U.S. Court of Appeals' July 9 decision did not reject any of the project's science or the administration's recommendation that the federal nuclear waste repository should be placed at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The court said the 10,000-year radiation standard established by the Environmental Protection Agency violated the law since the National Academy of Sciences called for a much longer time frame.
Chu said it is "crucial to fulfill the intent of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and continue to move forward in the licensing phase." She said the department remains committed to protecting public health and safety and that it will make sure the repository meets the appropriate standards.
Nevada attorneys and other critics of the program believe the license application process should not move forward because of the court's decision, but the rule is not officially thrown out until the appeals process ends. Parties to the case have until Monday to file a request for a rehearing, but other court actions or decisions could leave the standard in place, as could an act of Congress.
Margaret Federline, deputy director of the commission's Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Security said the commission is still preparing to review an application and it is up to the Energy Department to decide "whether and when to submit a license application." She said the commission will review the document objectively. The agency is developing review teams that will take up different aspects of the project.
The department is also waiting to hear from the commission's administrative court, which will determine if the millions of documents it made public in June satisfy the license rules.
If the court sides with Nevada, the project could be delayed, the state's lawyers say, because the department would have to make more documents available and it will throw the project off schedule.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 20, 2004
Nuke watchdog questions Congress on NRC's resolve
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Nevada wants Congress to step in to make the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Energy Department give the Yucca Mountain project a thorough review before any license application is submitted.
Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects, sent a letter to Senate Energy and Natural Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., Tuesday questioning the commission's commitment to "hold DOE's feet to the fire."
The department told the commission late last month that it would finish giving the staff all of the information it has on the remaining scientific and technical questions on the nuclear waste storage project planned at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, by the end of the month.
Any additional information would be contained in the license application set to be delivered to the commission in December, the department said.
This bothers Nevada officials, who contend the commission's policy says all 293 remaining questions need to be closed before the department can submit a license application.
"NRC, on whose independent expert review so much depends, has so far given no sign that it will enforce its agreement with DOE," Loux wrote. "I write to you because I don't believe it will do so without some expression of congressional concern." Loux said that while Congress debated the Yucca Mountain resolution in 2002, the commission said they "will hold DOE's feet to the fire" on answering the key technical issues, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the work "must be done" before finishing the application.
"By shortcutting necessary and agreed-upon pre-licensing steps, DOE and NRC are pressing a greater burden on the NRC staff safety reviewers, who will have a limited time under the law to review DOE's application," Loux wrote.
Yucca Mountain project spokesman Allen Benson said the department will address all of the remaining questions before submitting the license application to the commission.
"If the NRC has any questions or requires further information, we will respond," Benson said.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 20, 2004
Letter: Fight against nuclear dump is top priority
Letter writer Francy Johnson may not care about Yucca Mountain ("Yucca hardly state's top issue," Aug. 12), but a majority of Nevadans do. She said that she would rather see high-level nuclear waste stored at Yucca Mountain, "in the middle of nowhere," rather than San Diego, the Great Lakes or New York City.
These locations were never considered. Why weren't Washington and Texas considered? They were politically eliminated prior to the 1987 legislation that singled out Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
Johnson said, "The people who work at Yucca Mountain are not worried about the effects of nuclear waste ..." Well, why should they be? There is no nuclear waste there yet and they get paid very well.
She doubts that John Kerry will keep his word about stopping Yucca Mountain if he gets elected president. I don't know if Kerry would keep his word, but I do know that President Bush didn't keep his.
Finally, she said, "When all is said and done, the waste will be here anyhow" so let's focus on more important issues. This is the same defeatist bilge Nevadans have heard for years. But it's far from being certain. A federal appeals court has agreed that the radiation standard being used by the Energy Department (which states that Yucca Mountain must be built to safely contain the waste for 10,000 years) is woefully insufficient. The court ruled a much longer standard is required, and this may be impossible to achieve.
Yes, there are other issues. But fighting Yucca Mountain should remain a top priority.
Frank Perna
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 20, 2004
Yucca Mountain license application remains on track
Despite recent ruling on safety requirements, DOE to submit application by December
By Tony Batt
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Despite uncertainty about whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can even accept a license application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Energy Department officials on Thursday said they still plan to submit the application by December.
NRC officials have asked lawyers to research whether the agency can accept the application in the wake of last month's ruling by a federal appeals court that Yucca Mountain's safety requirements should extend well beyond 10,000 years.
If the Energy Department follows through with a license application in December, the NRC will have 90 days to decide if it should docket, or begin reviewing, the application.
"It's DOE's decision to make about when to submit the license application," said Bill Reamer, NRC's director of the division of high level waste repository safety. "When the license application is submitted we'll make our docketing decision."
During a joint meeting Thursday with Energy Department officials, Reamer and other NRC staffers did not ask questions about the effect of the court ruling on the license application.
On July 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the federal government's designation of Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for the permanent storage of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste.
But the court also struck down the EPA safety standard of 10,000 years for Yucca Mountain, saying it disregarded recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences.
Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, acknowledged that any change in health standards by the Environmental Protection Agency would require adjustments to the license application.
But, Chu said, the license application is still on schedule.
"The progress we are making in license application preparation, waste acceptance planning and transportation supports our long-standing goal of beginning repository operation and waste acceptance in 2010," Chu said.
Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said Nevada is prepared to go to court to block the NRC from accepting the license application.
"The absurdity of this situation is that the Department of Energy plans to submit a license application predicated on a standard of 10,000 years, which we know is invalid," Loux said.
"We don't know what the standard will be in the future, but it won't be 10,000 years."
As of Aug. 11, the department had completed 281 of 293 responses to the NRC regarding key technical issues in the license application, said Joseph Ziegler, director of the office of license application and strategy.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 20, 2004
Corrections
An article in Thursday's edition of the Review-Journal about a Treasures topless club dancer charged with solicitation of prostitution should have reported that Las Vegas Municipal Judge Cedric Kerns presided over the trial.
A news brief in Tuesday's Review-Journal misidentified the committee to which President Bush plans to nominate six members and appoint John Garrick as chairman. It is the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
The Review-Journal corrects mistakes. Errors should be brought to the newspaper's attention by calling 383-0264.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 19, 2004
View from the Hill: August vignettes
Ryan McGinness
Fallon Star Press
Writing about politics and life in Washington during August is a particularly vexing endeavor. Traditionally, politics moves out to the states for the sprint to November; therefore, I´m ignoring my charge to bring forward singular topics of salient interest, especially considering the week brought us a few worthy stories.
In Nevada, the Bush v. Kerry debate heated up over Yucca Mountain. While both sides are vying for Silver State supremacy on the issue, it doesn´t seem that either side has it. It will be next to impossible for Bush to woo back Nevadans on that issue, although that didn´t stop him from trying last week. On the left side of the spectrum, Kerry vowed to kill Yucca Mountain if elected president, with Democrats citing his shining record in opposition to the facility. That would work if he actually had a shining record; Kerry voted for the original “Screw Nevada Bill’ in 1987.
On the other side of the nation, Democratic Governor McGreevy of New Jersey shocked the normally cynical press corps by admitting he´s gay, had an adulterous affair, and is stepping down. That´s not the whole story, though – while the two admissions could be grounds for divorce, they´re not sufficient grounds for an elected official to step down. The real reasons for his 90-days-hence resignation weren´t mentioned at the press conference, leaving the traditional media to run all-too-simplistic headlines last Friday proclaiming, “McGreevy: I´m gay and I quit.’ That may have been enough to oust a governor in 1984, but (thankfully) in 2004, it takes a little more.
What McGreevy didn´t say is that his two years in office – for which he ironically ran on a “no more corruption’ platform – has been plagued with corruption. Among the potential grounds for malfeasance: a McGreevy aide who solicited a prostitute for his brother-in-law to gain the upper hand in a federal campaign-finance investigation; the appointment of the governor´s alleged boyfriend to the state post of Homeland Security Director – a post for which he had no qualifications, not to mention security clearance; and finally, the pending sexual harassment suit from the same alleged boyfriend, who is now publicly proclaiming his staunch heterosexuality while fleeing home to his native Israel.
Back in blissfully quiet Washington, the dust has yet to settle on Congressman Rodney Alexander´s surprise switch to the Republican Party. This time, however, it´s the Democrats´ turn to act shady. Following the en masse resignation of the Congressman´s six D.C. staffers, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has taken the lads and ladies under her wing; to repay them for their loyalty to the Party, she has put all of them on her payroll until such time as they find a new job. While it´s certainly every Congressperson´s prerogative to spend their allotted federal budget how they think best serves their district, it´s also well within the prerogative of the American taxpayer to ask just why, exactly, these staffers are being paid to look for work. One can only hope they have time to do something for the congresswoman on the side.
Finally, on a much more productive note, Congress took a break from its break this week to hold multiple hearings on the 9/11 Commission´s recommendations, hoping to have the beginnings of a bill to address the nation´s intelligence failings by the time Congress as a whole reconvenes on September 7th. While it´s odd for Congress to do so, it´s not completely unheard of – especially for an issue that is as vitally important as national security, and especially since that vitally important issue is the centerpiece of electoral politics this year. Both parties are putting on a full-court press on the issue, meaning it´s quite likely that neither will emerge as the soul savior of America, but in the end, it is politics that drives Congress, and the conflicting opinions that produce ultimate results. As long as logical heads – not political heads – prevail in the end, the partisan means will be justifiable.
Washington´s otherwise central role in national politics is oftentimes usurped during elections by the importance of the people´s role in selecting their leaders for the next two, four and six years. For the sake of sanity in a usually crazy town, though, Washingtonians will be enjoying the final quiet weeks of August.
Ryan McGinness can be reached at rmcginness@yahoo.com.
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Grist Magazine
August 19, 2004
If at First You Don't Succeed, Go Negative
Bush campaign tries to trash Kerry's environmental record
by Amanda Griscom
Over the past few weeks of Presidential WrestleMania MMIV, the Bush campaign has fired off more than a dozen press releases about John Kerry's policies on energy, nuclear-waste storage, forest and water protections, and other environmental issues -- a hodgepodge of smears, exaggerations, and obfuscations intended to besmirch Kerry's pro-environment reputation.
Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, says the Bush campaign is responding to polls indicating that voters are taking the environment seriously in key battleground states. "The polling in Nevada is showing that people are voting on the Yucca Mountain issue. The polling out of Arizona says voters are very concerned about forests and water; Wisconsin polls have shown that the mercury issue could hurt [the GOP]," he told Muckraker.
Hence the Bush campaign's efforts to neutralize the environment as an election issue: "They know they can't persuade voters that Bush is good on the environment, so they're trying to create enough confusion about Kerry's record that people decide it can't be the issue that decides their vote," said Pope.
Kerry strategists agree: "The Bush campaign has got Kerry written all over it," said Roger Ballentine, a senior environmental strategist for the Kerry campaign. "From Day 1, the goal of the Bush campaign has not been to get voters to like their candidate and respect his record, but to get people to dislike John Kerry even though on this issue Kerry is widely thought to be the greenest candidate America has ever seen. They want people to go into the voter booth, hold their nose, and pick the lesser of two evils."
Bush campaign spokespeople failed to return Muckraker's repeated calls, but a quick glance at the George W. Bush campaign website confirms that Bush's strategy is Kerry-centric. The homepage is a montage of derisive cartoons and photographs of the opponent: Here's Kerry playing the "Flip-Flop Olympics," there's a "Kerry Gas Tax Calculator," which claims to compute how much a 50-cent-per-gallon gas tax would cost individuals (a tax, mind you, that Kerry has repeatedly said he has no intention of imposing). Not a single image of the president himself graces the page.
The Kerry website looks remarkably similar -- photos of Kerry abound, only the depictions are more flattering. It has only a low-placed and somewhat defensive nod to Bush, saying, "The Bush-Cheney campaign is running one of the most negative and misleading campaigns ever."
Full Court Press Release
A comparison of the two campaigns' press releases is even more telling. Thus far in the month of August, the Bush campaign has churned out 18 releases dealing with energy and the environment, nearly all of them roasting Kerry, with titles along the lines of "THE RAW DEAL: John Kerry: 'Brought to You by Special Interests.'" The Kerry campaign, meanwhile, has put out a total of six releases on energy and the environment. While they all slam Bush's rollbacks, at least half of each is devoted to the Democratic candidate and his campaign promises. One representative headline: "Kerry Pledges to Make Decisions Based on Sound Science and Put Public Health and Safety First."
Most of the Bush team's environment-related releases rely on one of two tired claims -- that Kerry is a flip-flopper, or that creating jobs and protecting the environment are incompatible goals. An Aug. 6 release charged that Kerry's plan to raise corporate average fuel-economy (CAFE) standards "will eliminate 104,000 jobs." It derided Kerry for supporting the McCain-Lieberman bill on global warming, asserting, "Climate Stewardship Act Is a Job Killer." And it accused the Democratic candidate of having "killed American jobs" because he didn't vote for the Bush energy plan.
These charges have, to put it delicately, little basis in fact. The 104,000 figure, for instance, was plucked from a brief and informal analysis commissioned by General Motors and drafted single-handedly and without peer review by a professor from Pennsylvania State University. Team Bush ignores the fact that higher CAFE standards have won support even from many members of the United Auto Workers union, who agree with more authoritative studies showing that tightening fuel-economy standards would in fact create jobs.
Last week, a release criticized Kerry for past votes that favored designation of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a repository for high-level nuclear waste. While Kerry has voted in favor of a few bills that included procedural measures on Yucca, his opposition to the project has been consistent, and he has repeatedly pledged that there would be no dumping at Yucca during his presidency. "Kerry Voted for 'Screw Nevada' Bill," the release proclaimed -- rather bizarrely, as Bush staunchly supports the Yucca Mountain dump, which most Nevadans oppose.
Another baffling release mocked Kerry's position on forest protections (which enviros insist has been strong and consistent): "Where does John Kerry stand on forest policy? No one really knows, because he's taken every side of every important forest issue," read the statement by Bush campaign spokesperson Danny Diaz. It hinges on a comment Kerry made to The Wall Street Journal that he "like[d] a lot of parts" of Bush's Healthy Forests bill, though he didn't in the end support it (as if any astute politician should OK a bill chockful of objectionable provisions simply because a few parts are agreeable).
The few Bush campaign press releases that do tout the president's environmental initiatives, such as this one on his national park policy, use angry and defensive language even as they try to make a positive point: "John Kerry and his extremist allies have issued a torrent of false charges and distortions about the president's record on parks."
Double Negative
The Kerry campaign insists that it has no interest in joining in the mud-slinging. "To our minds, these preposterous screeds work to our advantage," Ballentine told Muckraker. "Quite obviously, the Bush campaign is shooting itself in the foot with this nonsense. Their anti-environment record is too long, too strong, and too wrong at this point for greenwashing."
Mark Longabaugh, senior vice president for political affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, concurred: "It's so desperate, so rhetorically over the top, that if any voter actually ever read one of these things, they'd think, 'These folks need a sedative.'"
But there's a good reason the Bush campaign has resorted to negativity. In mid-July, when it tried to tout Bush's environmental record in a "fact sheet" of "Key Bush Environmental Accomplishments," the press ignored the list and a number of major environmental organizations issued scathing, point-by-point rebuttals.
Strategically speaking, the negative screeds really aren't about the environment anyway, according to Kevin Curtis, a vice president at National Environmental Trust: "They are not attacking Kerry on the environment, they are attacking him on this predetermined theme of 'flip-flop.' They know voters' eyes will just glaze over the details and take one message from the attacks: Kerry waffles," Curtis said. "It's ruthless, but it's effective. These guys have message discipline like nobody's business."
Only time will tell whether voters are tiring of such tactics or whether the Bush campaign will, in the end, succeed in muddying the waters around what environmentalists say is a clear choice between a friend of the environment and a foe. After all, enviros argue, Bush never flip-flops on the environment: His support for industry at the expense of natural resources and public health has been numbingly consistent.
Muck it up: We welcome rumors, whistleblowing, classified documents, or other useful tips on environmental policies, Beltway shenanigans, and the people behind them. Please send 'em to muckraker@gristmagazine.com.
Grist columnist Amanda Griscom writes Muckraker and Powers That Be. Her articles on energy, technology, and the environment have appeared in publications ranging from Rolling Stone to The New York Times Magazine.
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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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