Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
August 24, 2004
Feds won't appeal Yucca ruling
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Federal officials say the government will not ask a federal appeals court to revisit last month's ruling on the Yucca Mountain project's radiation standards.
That leaves the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry's lobbying and advocacy group, as the only party in the six lawsuits over the project to file a request for rehearing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The institute filed its request Monday.
On July 9, the court ruled the Environmental Protection Agency did not follow the law when it established a 10,000-year standard for radiation protection at the mountain. Under the EPA rule, the department would have to prove the nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, would not expose people to more than 15 millirem of radiation for 10,000 years.
But the court said the law required the EPA to follow the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences, which proposed a much longer time frame of about 300,000 years. The court threw out the rule and said either Congress would have to change the law or the EPA would have to create a new standard.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the department did not file a request for rehearing and the Environmental Protection Agency will work on formulating a new rule, if Congress does not act first. Davis said the department will follow whatever standard it needs to protect human health and safety.
The Nuclear Energy Institute argues in its request for a rehearing that the agency followed the law "by starting with the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) report, factoring in policy considerations and coming up with a standard," said general counsel Michael Bauser. He also aruges the 10,000-year time frame is "consistent with other waste management practices, dealing with both radioactive and non-radioactive material, and ensures public health and safety by limiting radiation exposure to the public of less than one-20th of natural background levels."
The nuclear institute also wants the court to revisit its argument that a separate radiation limit for groundwater is not required under the law and should not apply.
Under the court rules, the standard will stay in place until the court decides whether to fulfill the institute's request.
But Nevada Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said the state expects the EPA regulation will be invalidated due to the court's decision, despite the institute's request.
Adams said the state won the most important case it could. The state believes the department could not prove the site could follow the protection standard with the longer time frame.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 24, 2004
Candidates duke it out with Yucca ads
By Kirsten Searer
<searer@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
Nevada voters are facing dueling television ads that argue about which presidential candidate the state can trust on the Yucca Mountain issue.
On Monday, the Bush-Cheney campaign launched an ad attacking Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry for supporting the so-called "Screw Nevada" bill of 1987. The bill designated Yucca as the nation's nuclear waste repository.
Kerry also pushed the project through a series of votes and letters of support, the ad states.
"Listening to John Kerry, you'd think he'd been against Yucca Mountain his entire career," the ad says. "But Kerry voted to establish the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Kerry voted seven times to make it easier to dump waste at Yucca and said, 'A repository for nuclear waste could be established there and be made functional by 2015.' "
The Bush ad comes on the heels of an ongoing Moveon.org ad that attacks President Bush for his support of the project.
Local Democrats, who have tried to carve a niche for Kerry as the anti-Yucca candidate, quickly defended him. Former Sen. Richard Bryan called the ads "disingenuous."
"This president is the one whose actions approved Yucca Mountain as a high-level nuclear waste dump site," Bryan said. "You can see that they're concerned about this issue and they're trying to fuzz it up."
Sean Smith, Kerry's Nevada spokesman, called the ad "smear politics."
"Their only hope on this issue is to try and confuse voters," Smith said. "Frankly, it's an insult to the people of Nevada."
Kerry has pledged to stop the waste site but has been attacked by Republicans for his early votes on the issue. Chris Carr, executive director of the Nevada Republican Party, said that Kerry's record "speaks the truth" about his feelings on Yucca Mountain.
When asked if President Bush is better for Nevada on the Yucca Mountain issue than Kerry is, Carr said the state cannot know for sure.
"We don't know because we don't know really where John Kerry stands," Carr said. "I'd rather have someone that I may disagree with but will be honest with me. That's why I'm supporting the president. I believe in his leadership and how he stands up for what he believes in."
While in Nevada in mid-August, Kerry told local media that he voted in 1987 for the "Screw Nevada" bill because he wanted to study the idea of a national repository.
Now that he has more information about the potential problems, Kerry said he is opposed to storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain or anywhere else. He voted against the project in 2000 and 2002.
"And there you go," Kerry told Nevada reporters. "I subsequently voted no, which puts me in a very different position from George Bush, who is pushing to open the damn thing. There's the difference. He wants to open it, I don't. Big difference."
Bush told Las Vegas supporters in an August campaign stop that he has relied on "sound science" when making decisions on the project.
"When I campaigned here, I said I would make a decision based upon science, not politics," he said. "I said I would listen to the scientists, those involved with determining whether or not this project could move forward in a safe manner. And that's exactly what I did."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 24, 2004
U.S. government to sit out challenge of radiation ruling
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The nuclear power industry will be alone in appealing a federal court ruling that struck a blow to the Yucca Mountain Project.
Government officials decided Monday not to join a legal challenge of the nuclear waste project. Instead, the government will seek to rework a 10,000-year radiation protection standard thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals, Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said.
"Our general belief is that the framework the court decision required is a workable deal," Davis said. "Our best way to proceed is not to engage in litigation but to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a regulatory response.
"Whatever standard they come up with, our commitment is to ensure the repository will meet the standard," Davis said.
The Justice Department with attorneys from the Energy Department and the EPA made the choice to go with the court's July 9 decision, Davis said.
Davis said the Energy Department plans to file a repository application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year, but NRC officials have said they are unsure whether it can be docketed without complete safety standards.
The government's decision to sit out appears to give some shape to other paths forward for the embattled Yucca Mountain Project, which seeks to entomb the nation's nuclear waste 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Besides the possibility of reworking repository radiation standards, Yucca Mountain supporters in Congress are considering an attempt to overturn the court's ruling through legislation. That option was encouraged by The New York Times in a Monday editorial.
And while Davis said the government will not seek a rehearing at the appeals court level, he did not rule out asking the Supreme Court to take up the case directly. A deadline to file a Supreme Court petition falls in November.
An EPA official, John Millett, said discussing agency plans to rework the radiation standard would be premature.
Nevada officials had expected a government appeal but welcomed the absence of one.
"For us, it seems to be good news in the sense they are acknowledging we were right on the merits of the EPA standards, and it keeps us from having to pay lawyers more money," said Bob Loux, executive director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.
While the government is staying out of court, attorneys for the Nuclear Energy Institute planned to submit a 15-page petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by a midnight Monday deadline, spokeswoman Melanie Lyons said.
The NEI will request the court reconsider its July ruling, which threw out an EPA standard requiring the nuclear repository shield the public from radiation doses for 10,000 years.
A three-judge panel said the EPA deviated from a National Academy of Sciences study that recommended safeguards be extended thousands of years longer.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 24, 2004
Ad attacks Kerry over Yucca record
Spot makes no mention of Bush's OK of site
By Erin Neff
Review-Journal
The president's re-election campaign unveiled a Nevada-specific television ad Monday questioning Democratic challenger John Kerry's record on Yucca Mountain.
The ad paints the senator as a flip-flopper based on seven specific votes he has made over the course of two decades on the nuclear waste repository issue, one seen as a key political wedge in this battleground state.
"Listening to John Kerry, you'd think he'd been against Yucca Mountain his entire career," a voice states at the start of the 30-second spot, which began running Monday. "But Kerry voted to establish the nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain."
The ad makes no mention of Kerry's 1999 vote against interim storage and his 2002 vote against the repository. No mention is made of Bush's approval of the site as the nation's repository.
In 1987, Kerry supported an appropriations measure into which language singling out Yucca Mountain as the sole site for repository study was included. Nevada politicians who opposed the spending bill called it the "Screw Nevada" bill because it removed two other sites from the list for study and paved the way for the project.
The ad refers to letters Kerry had written in the 1990s in which he pushed for additional study and sought to expedite shipments to Nevada if the interim repository were approved.
Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid, called the ad a desperate move by the Bush-Cheney campaign.
"It's amusing that somebody who is so strongly in support of bringing the nation's nuclear waste to Nevada would even be bringing this issue up," said Sean Smith, Kerry's spokesman in Nevada. "It really is an insult to the voters of Nevada that they think they can pull the wool over their eyes and confuse them to the point that they could somehow forget that George Bush is the one working overtime to bring this to Nevada."
The Bush campaign said the ad serves as a check to what it sees as Kerry's attempt to distort his record and run a "one-issue campaign in Nevada."
"We believe that it is critical that voters understand his real record on Yucca Mountain," said Tracey Schmitt, Western battleground spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney campaign. "Nuclear waste disposal is an important decision, and Nevadans deserve a leader who makes a decision on the facts and the evidence with consistency and clarity, rather than election year politics."
Veteran ad man and political consultant Billy Vassiliadis said he thinks the spot will resonate with voters unless the Kerry campaign responds appropriately.
"Bush hasn't been able to make any more headway here," Vassiliadis said of Nevada, which is polling as a toss-up between the two candidates. "The ceiling he's been bumping up against is the nuclear waste issue."
Vassiliadis, a Democrat, said he thinks the Kerry campaign should launch an ad "right away," explaining what Vassiliadis sees as clear differences between the candidates. He suggested the Kerry campaign use both of Nevada's senators to back Kerry up on his voting record.
Democratic Sen. Harry Reid has been vouching for Kerry on Yucca Mountain, and Republican Sen. John Ensign said in a recent television interview show that Kerry is a better candidate than Bush solely on the issue of Yucca Mountain.
"The campaign should exploit Senator Ensign," Vassiliadis said.
Republican strategist Sig Rogich said the Yucca commercial effectively highlights a theme the national campaign is using: "There's what Kerry says, and then there's what Kerry does."
"I think this is a terrific example of John Kerry saying one thing in one state to try to win votes and saying another in another state," Rogich said.
The ad mentions a letter Kerry wrote to speed shipment of waste from Massachusetts to Nevada.
"You can't run away from your voting record," Rogich said. "John Kerry has voted on more than a half dozen occasions to screw Nevada."
When Kerry was in Las Vegas this month, he repeated that he would stop the project if elected. In an interview, he said his 1987 vote cleared the way for studying a repository at Yucca Mountain and that his subsequent votes against the dump came because he grew skeptical of the science behind the project after studies came back.
When Bush was in Las Vegas earlier this month, he said he lived up to his promise to base the decision on science and said he would stand by decisions made by the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Kerry campaign in Nevada has been focusing efforts to counter the swift boat veterans ad that questions his military service during the Vietnam War.
A response to that independent group's ad, paid for by the Democratic National Committee, starts running today in Nevada. Also today, another of Kerry's swift boat crew mates is scheduled to campaign in Las Vegas on his behalf.
"Frankly, that they would go and play this card so early, still in August, shows they're the ones who are reactive," the Kerry campaign's Smith said. "They're the ones who are defensive. They're the ones who are worried about how this state is going."
While Kerry is not on the air with a Yucca Mountain ad, the political action committee MoveOn.org is running a 30-second spot in Nevada, blaming the repository solely on Bush.
"George Bush misled Nevada," the ad states. "After promising Governor (Kenny) Guinn he would veto legislation making Yucca Mountain a nuclear dump, George Bush personally approved the disposal of radioactive waste in Nevada."
When Bush was a candidate in 2000, he issued a statement promising to base any decision on Yucca Mountain on "sound science, not politics." He made a similar pledge to Guinn in a letter after taking office but never promised he would veto a decision making Yucca Mountain the repository.
The New York Times on Monday pushed for deep geologic burial of nuclear waste and supported the science of Yucca Mountain despite July's decision by a federal appeals court that said the Environmental Protection Agency's radiation protection standard of 10,000 years is insufficient for the burial of waste.
The Times asked Congress to rewrite the standards but closed saying: "Congress will no doubt be reluctant to tackle the issue in an election year, especially since Senator John Kerry and other Democratic leaders, pandering shamelessly for the electoral votes of the battleground state of Nevada, have pledged to block Yucca."
Reid discounted the Times editorial and said the paper has a history of supporting the repository.
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PR Newswire
August 23, 2004
NEI Files Petition for Appellate Court Rehearing on EPA's Yucca Mountain Radiation Standard WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- The Nuclear Energy Institute filed a formal petition for rehearing today with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit seeking review of a recent decision on the Environmental Protection Agency's compliance standard for the planned Yucca Mountain, Nev., used nuclear fuel repository.
NEI's petition for rehearing argues that EPA did, in fact, do what the court last month said was required under the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to comply with the National Academy of Sciences' 1995 recommendation for a radiation standard for the underground disposal facility to be built in the Nevada desert.
The court ruled on July 9th that EPA's standard improperly deviated from the NAS recommendation that the compliance period during which the repository design must be able to limit the presence of radionuclides within several miles of the site should encompass a period beyond 10,000 years. EPA established a radiation protection standard of 15 millirem for Yucca Mountain -- about the same as an X-ray.
"We take issue with the court's July decision because the EPA did what it was supposed to do by starting with the NAS report, factoring in policy considerations and coming up with a standard," said Michael Bauser, NEI associate general counsel. "In its ruling the court also ignored the fact that EPA's 10,000-year compliance standard is consistent with other waste management practices, dealing with both radioactive and non-radioactive material, and ensures public health and safety by limiting radiation exposure to the public of less than one-20th of natural background levels."
The NAS acknowledged in its 1995 recommendation that it looked only at scientific issues in its study and advised that the EPA needed to take policy issues into consideration in developing its standard.
The court's ruling on the length of the compliance period was the one instance in which the court didn't reject the state of Nevada's many legal challenges to the federal government's Yucca Mountain program. Ruling in a group of consolidated cases, the appellate court addressed and rejected 11 of 12 issues raised by Nevada, including a constitutional challenge.
The NEI petition also asks the court to reconsider its decision to allow EPA to include a separate standard to regulate the concentration of radionuclides in groundwater that are in addition to regulations that limit total radiation exposures due to possible releases from the Yucca Mountain repository-a limit that includes exposure due to the groundwater pathway.
"The separate EPA groundwater standard is in violation of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and provides no additional protection as the all-pathways exposure limit in the regulation includes radiation doses from any releases through groundwater," Bauser said.
The state-of-the-art disposal facility planned for Yucca Mountain would isolate used fuel from the commercial nuclear power plants that supply electricity to one of every five U.S. homes and businesses, and high-level radioactive waste from U.S. defense programs. The Department of Energy plans to file a license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the Yucca Mountain repository this December.
Congress endorsed the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site, which the government hopes to open in the year 2010, in 2002.
The Nuclear Energy Institute is the nuclear energy industry's policy organization. This news release and additional information about nuclear energy are available on NEI's Internet site at http://www.nei.org.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 24, 2004
Letters for August 24
Two views of Kerry and Yucca Mountain
On Aug. 11, Republican Sen. Ensign held a press conference in Minden to tell his constituents that presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry could not be trusted in regard to the proposed nationwide nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain. Sen. Ensign appeared before a small group of people and showed a 10-minute video about Kerry´s voting record regarding Yucca Mountain.
Sen. Ensign is playing politics with the one issue that may swing this election to one side or another in this state. In fact, Sen. Kerry has opposed designating Yucca as the final storage facility, both during the Clinton administration and the current Bush administration. I find the timing of the press conference interesting, considering Sen. Kerry was campaigning elsewhere in the state.
Sen. Ensign was quoted as saying, “I disagree with the (Bush) administration´s position on Yucca Mountain, but at least I know where they stand.’
Sen. Ensign, instead of playing partisan politics and badmouthing Sen. Kerry, maybe you should work alongside him on this issue. You may know where the Bush administration stands on the issue. But how about standing with Nevadans?
Aaron Bill, Gardnerville
Sen. Kerry´s absurd election season epiphany that Nevadans should vote to decide the fate of Yucca Mountain is “focus group pandering’ at its worst.
The nuclear repository will store waste from all 50 states. Presumably, no state wants it, unless Mr. Kerry would like to volunteer Massachusetts. Yet, there is a clear and present need to consolidate storage. Therefore the issue must be resolved with the national interest taking priority.
Suggesting Nevadans can unilaterally veto national interest will not make Yucca Mountain go away. Nor will his fuzzy assurances that he may appoint “international experts’ to magically solve the problem with technology in some vague future.
But unless Mr. Kerry is a dunce, he knows all this, which is likely why he made his suggestion, knowing full well it buys votes even though it does not stand a snowball´s chance of becoming reality.
Peter J. McMullen, Reno
I am one Nevadan who will vote for John Kerry in November because he will stop the Yucca Mountain project [“Kerry rallies Democrats,’ Aug. 11].
Sen. John Ensign is wrong to criticize Kerry on Yucca Mountain. Sen. Ensign voted for the miserable Bush energy plan last year. What was in that energy plan? Huge taxpayer subsidies for the same nuclear industry that has paid George Bush to dump nuclear waste in our back yard.
Leif Christianson, Reno
What I am about to say needs to be said even if one chooses to live in Nevada. For Kerry to say that if you vote for me the nuclear waste repository will never come on line is not only unlikely but also irresponsible.
If Kerry were ever elected president, he would be president of the whole United States of America. He would not be president of Nevada.
Any person elected by all the people would look at his options for all U.S. citizens and would make his decisions based on that analysis. He would choose between keeping dangerous waste in several inadequate storage facilities around the country where the dangers would be real to millions of people in close proximity or choose to bury them in the middle of a granite mountain miles from any human beings and safe for thousands of years, encased in capsules that defy penetration.
There is no question which he should choose, and, were this not an election year, even Kerry might show a little reason. Safely storing our waste away from terrorists is by far more important to us all. Yucca Mountain offers the safest and best alternative and there are no other options on the table.
L. Turpen, Reno
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Tri-City Herald
August 24, 2004
Hanford tanks clear of waste
By Annette Cary
Herald staff writer
A major environmental threat to the Columbia River has ended with the removal of the last 3 million gallons of liquid radioactive and chemical waste from Hanford's oldest underground tanks.
That was reason for celebration Monday at a ceremony attended by 450 Hanford workers who did the planning, engineering and work, sometimes under harsh conditions, to empty the tanks.
"Five years ago, we were frightened by the threat posed by the waste as it sat in leaky, deteriorating tanks," said Mike Wilson, manager of the Washington State Department of Ecology's nuclear waste program.
Monday the state had yet to sign off on completion of the $155 million project, but that appeared to be just a formality as workers reminisced, and state and national leaders declared the most immediate threat from the tanks solved.
During World War II, Hanford workers began pumping waste from the production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program into huge underground tanks. They were meant for temporary storage, but decades past the limit of their design life they still were filled with some of the nation's most highly radioactive waste.
As many as 67 of the tanks built through 1964 with a single "shell," or liner of carbon steel, have leaked up to 1 million gallons of waste into the soil. None of the waste is believed to have reached the Columbia River, but it may have contaminated ground water that flows toward it.
Some work was done in the 1970s to empty leaky tanks but not nearly enough, said Attorney General Christine Gregoire at the Monday celebration at Hanford.
"When we negotiated the Tri-Party Agreement (in the late 1980s), the No. 1 goal was to stop the leaking of underground tanks that threatened the Columbia River."
But it took the threat of a suit by the state to get a consent decree with an aggressive set of deadlines approved in 1999 to get the tanks emptied of the remaining 3 million gallons of pumpable liquid waste on a five-year schedule. The final deadline for the project is Sept. 30.
"The pumps that were left were the hardest, so it seemed like a stretch to get it done in five years," said Dave Saueressig, who started work in the tank farms 15 years ago. During the pumping of liquid waste, he was interim stabilization operations manager.
"We had all the tanks that were technically difficult," he said. One had concrete added in the 1950s or 1960s, presumably to stabilize the waste.
"There were a lot of technical challenges," said Mark Hasty, director for closure project facilities. "But the good engineering staff came up with solutions for all of them."
The original pumps initially failed every four to six months initially, but the last pump used lasted more than two years, said Terry Hissong, director for retrieval and closure. Engineers also came up with a system to monitor potentially flammable gas during pumping with no moving parts, which cut down on the number of times pumping had to be halted, he said.
Pumping remained a slow and tedious process, particularly as workers for contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group got down to the final liquids trapped in salt cake at the bottom of the tanks.
The cake somewhat has the consistency of wet sand. And workers sometimes approached it as if they were building a sand castle at the beach -- but with highly radioactive waste and all work done without human contact in closed tanks.
A jet of water was used to dig a hole in the salt cake. Then, just as at the beach, water gradually would flow through the solids to collect in the bottom of the hole. More than a 11Ú2 years was needed to collect and drain the liquid from the waste in some tanks.
Tenacity was the key to finishing the job, said Sallie Ham-Huebner, a nuclear process operator since 1990.
"We know the difficulty, great challenges and danger you sometimes faced," Michael Grainey, director of the Oregon Office of the Department of Energy, told workers. Health protection for workers has been increased this year because of concerns about chemical vapors venting to the air above the underground tanks.
Emptying the tanks of liquid waste is another sign of the real progress being made at Hanford, said U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.
But workers did not take long to celebrate Monday. They were back at work before noon.
"We're not done. We're on a long journey," said Ed Aromi, CH2M Hill president.
Work is under way now to remove solids, including salts and sludge, from the single shell tanks to further reduce environmental risk.
Waste removed from the older tanks is being held in double shell tanks while a $5.7 billion vitrification plant is being built. It will turn tank waste into stable glass logs for permanent disposal at Yucca Mountain and Hanford.
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Middletown Press
August 24, 2004
Town to debate joining nuke suit
BY JOSH MROZINSKI
Middletown Press Staff
HADDAM -- Residents will have their say whether they want to join a Maine town in its action against Maine Yankee Atomic Power Plant, a sister plant of Connecticut Yankee.
The town of Wiscasset, Maine, raised the tax assessment for the power company´s property in April 2003 based on the belief that it was worth more, because nuclear waste was stored on it. It was also the town´s belief that the nuclear waste couldn´t be stored anywhere else.
Maine Yankee disputed the $212 million assessment, saying that the property was valued at $4.3 million, and appealed to the Maine Property Tax Review Board in August.
"The argument is that the portion where fuel casks are stored is worth more than the nuclear company says it is," First Selectmen Tony Bondi said. "We sat and met with all the officials and they informed us what they were doing."
The selectmen and the chairman of the Repower Advisory Committee went to Wiscasset in November to discuss what was going to happen to the plant, which was being decommissioned, and learned that Wiscasset was asking for more taxes. Residents and Connecticut Yankee residents formed a committee in 1999 to work toward having the decommissioned site used for generating electricity with natural gas.
The plant had been decommissioning since 1997, gradually lowering the amount that it paid in taxes to the town each year. Eric Howes, spokesperson at the plant, said the 1997 payment was $12.4 million. In 2002, he said, the plant paid $1 million, which included $700,000 in taxes and the remaining $300,000 settlement balance.
Howes said Wiscasset´s theory is out of line with what state law requires. The law stipulates that value is based on what a person is willing to pay for the property. Value doesn´t derive from spent fuel and waste being stored on the property, he said.
"Clearly they have a different view and that´s where the dispute lies," Howes said. "They´ve assigned a value to the plant that´s far higher than we believe it´s worth."
Over time, Wiscasset officials agreed to come to Haddam to explain their efforts. Bondi said the meeting, which is scheduled for Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. at Haddam-Killingworth High School, is meant to only inform the public of the possibilities. He said the public will determine what will happen next.
Bondi said there are three schools of thought to what the town can do. Some people, he said, think that the money is so critical that the town should join the efforts of Wiscasset right away.
The other argument, he said, is to wait and see what happens while the third school of thought is that the town could be losing a lot of money if it waits while Wiscasset wins.
Steve Wytas, a selectman, thinks the town should ride the coattails of Wiscasset´s actions, but to not get involved.
In 2002, the power plant sued the town on the basis that they were deprived of their rights for not being allowed to build its dry cask storage facility at its current location. The town was maintaining that the company had no right to build a hockey-rink sized storage facility, three-quarters of a mile from where the plant sits, outside of the land that it designated for development in 1962.
The settlement also had Connecticut Yankee make annual payments that decreased by 2.5 percent from 2002 to 2011. The initial payment was $1 million.
Gary Nixon, co-chairman of the Repower Advisory Committee, said if the town didn´t pursue the reassessment, it would lose because property values will increase over time.
He said the use of the land makes it unique in the town and Wiscasett because there is no other place to put the waste. The federal government is scheduled to bring Connecticut Yankee´s and Maine Yankee´s stored waste and spent-fuel to Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
"The question then becomes what the economic value is," Nixon said.
To contact Josh Mrozinski, call (860) 347-3331, ext. 222 or email jmrozinski@middletownpress.com.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 23, 2004
Nuke lobbyists plan to appeal Yucca decision
Radiation standards challenged
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Energy Institute plans to ask a federal appeals court to reconsider the Yucca Mountain legal decision handed down more than a month ago.
The institute, the lobbying arm of the nuclear industry, plans to file papers with the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia this afternoon asking for a rehearing of part of the case.
The motion is expected to question the court's ruling earlier this year, in which the judges told the Environmental Protection Agency to set new radiation standards for Yucca Mountain.
If the motion is filed today, the court's ruling is expected to be stayed and won't be enforced until the motion is considered.
Details about the Nuclear Energy Institute's request will not be available until Tuesday.
The institute, Nevada, any of the environmental groups that brought legal challenges, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Justice Department had until today to ask the court to reconsider any of the legal challenges against the site.
Nevada will not request a rehearing, even though it lost several cases with the court's decision, Nevada Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said. The last day to appeal to the Supreme Court is Oct. 7 and the state is still evaluating what to do next, Adams said. The state's decision will depend on what the court decides to do with the rehearing request, she said.
But, she added, rehearings are rarely granted.
"They are seeking to delay the inevitable," Adams said. "This will go back to the EPA. At some point we have to be practical.
It was not certain Friday what the Justice Department, which represents the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, would do, spokesman Charles Miller said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's legal department could not be reached for comment.
On July 9, the court threw out the 10,000-year radiation standard for the nuclear waste storage site planned at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The court found the EPA did not follow a law that required it to use a recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences when it set the radiation standard. The court said either Congress will have to change the law to allow the 10,000-year standard or the EPA will have to develop a new standard.
But technically the 10,000-year standard is still in place until seven days after the court denies a petition to rehear the case or if none of the parties file for a rehearing, said Mike Bauser, the Nuclear Energy Institute's associate general counsel. He said the Energy Department should continue to work on the license application until the court's decision becomes final.
The department intends to submit the project's license application to the commission in December.
Adams said the federal court issued a separate but "totally standard" ruling with its decision to hold its order.
The request for rehearing will leave the EPA standard in place until the court decides whether or not it will grant the rehearing.
If the court agrees to rehear the case, the standard would remain in place until the case is reconsidered, Bauser said.
If the court does not agree to rehear the case or decides again that the standard needs to be thrown out, it would be void a week later unless the court stays the decision to allow the ruling to be taken to the Supreme Court, Bauser said.
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New York Times
August 23, 2004
Roadblock at Yucca Mountain
A federal appeals court decision has thrown a gigantic roadblock in the way of efforts to create an underground burial site for nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. A three-judge panel in the District of Columbia ruled last month that regulators could not simply require the repository to contain the wastes for 10,000 years, the standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency, but must instead ensure that Yucca could function acceptably for hundreds of thousands of years. That standard is so outlandishly stringent it may not be achievable. Unless Congress steps in to change the ground rules, the court ruling could significantly delay or even derail efforts to move ahead with an underground repository that will be vitally needed in coming decades.
There seems little doubt that the safest way to dispose of used fuel rods from nuclear power plants and highly radioactive wastes from nuclear weapons production is to bury them deep underground in stable geological formations resistant to leaking. Experts in this country and abroad, as well as many environmentalists, agree on that point. Although Yucca Mountain was partly chosen because of a perception that Nevada lacked the political clout to reject it, the site has a lot to recommend it. It sits on federal land where nuclear bombs were tested, in an arid desert where population density is low, well above the water table and atop volcanic rocks that have been there for 12 million to 13 million years. But technical obstacles, litigation, political opposition in Nevada and the sheer difficulty of the undertaking have slowed progress for 17 years and threaten to prolong the agony indefinitely.
The Bush administration, to its credit, has tried to push Yucca toward a resolution. The Energy Department plans to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission late this year for a license to build the repository, which would open in 2010 at the very earliest. The commission must then determine whether the proposed repository can meet health and safety standards established by the E.P.A. Unfortunately, those standards have now been thrown out by the courts.
This turn of events can largely be blamed on Congress, which in a 1992 law told the E.P.A. to set standards for Yucca Mountain "based upon and consistent with" the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, an unusual delegation of authority to a nongovernmental agency. An academy panel concluded that there was no rationale for protecting the public for only 10,000 years given that the peak risk of radiation might be hundreds of thousands of years in the future.
The appeals court ruling that the E.P.A. improperly ignored the academy could make it virtually impossible to approve a burial site at Yucca or perhaps anywhere else in the country. To get out of this mess, Congress needs to change the law and allow the E.P.A. to set the compliance period at 10,000 years, roughly twice as long as recorded human history. That is the period used by the E.P.A. for a separate military nuclear repository and the time frame used by other countries with geological disposal programs. Congress will no doubt be reluctant to tackle the issue in an election year, especially since Senator John Kerry and other Democratic leaders, pandering shamelessly for the electoral votes of the battleground state of Nevada, have pledged to block Yucca.
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KRNV
August 23, 2004
Report: ad is misleading voters about Bush position on Yucca Mountain
A Nevada newspaper is reporting a new ad could be misleading voters about President Bush's position on Yucca Mountain.
A new pro-Perry ad says the president promised Governor Guinn he would veto legislation making Yucca mountain a nuclear dump. But the Las Vegas Sun is reporting that the letter used in the MoveOn.org ad is being misquoted.
The article says Bush never told Guinn he would veto the overall project. In a letter he had promised that he would veto temporary storage of nuclear waste at the site while the scientific details were still being worked out.
Bush promised to make his decision on "sound science."
A spokeswoman for Moveon.org told the Sun they did not know why a distinction was not made in the ad between interim storage and the overall project.
Meanwhile, the Bush Campaign announced that it will begin running its own Yucca ads Monday.
The ad attacks Senator John Kerry along the new Bush Campaign theme "There´s what Kerry says and then there´s what Kerry does…"
The ad claims Kerry voted seven times to make it easier to dump waste at Yucca and that he even attempted to speed shipments of nuclear waste from his home state of Massachusetts to Nevada.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 23, 2004
Bush campaign ad accuses Kerry of flip-flopping on Yucca
By Adam Goldman
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - President Bush - stung by criticism for approving a national nuclear waste repository in Nevada - began airing a television commercial on Monday that accuses Democratic candidate John Kerry of supporting the project.
The commercial indicates the Massachusetts senator - who has vowed to block burying nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas - has favored Yucca Mountain, too.
Bush spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said the 30-second commercial airing in Las Vegas and Reno was intended to deliver a GOP message that Kerry flip-flops on issues.
"We think it's important for voters to understand John Kerry's real record on Yucca Mountain," she said. "There is a rather large divide between his political rhetoric while campaigning in Nevada and his voting record in the U.S Senate."
Jon Summers, communications director for the Nevada State Democratic Party, said it's "outrageous and disingenuous" for Bush to try to make Yucca Mountain an issue after Bush approved the repository as president in 2002.
Nevada has been cast as a battleground state with both campaigns trying to capture its five critical electoral votes.
Democrats are attempting to win the state by making Yucca Mountain a central campaign theme, with Republicans trying to thwart that effort with this latest commercial.
"Listening to John Kerry, you'd think he'd been against Yucca Mountain his entire career," the commercial says.
"But Kerry voted to establish the nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain. Kerry voted seven times to make it easier to dump waste at Yucca."
Bush's ad also takes aim at a 1999 letter Kerry co-wrote to the chairman of the Senate's committee on energy and natural resources. The letter asks for an accelerated waste acceptance schedule, though it does not mention Nevada by name.
The commercial says Kerry "tried to speed shipment of nuclear waste from Massachusetts to Yucca. There's what Kerry says and then there's what Kerry does."
The commercial doesn't tell the whole story.
On simple votes deciding whether to send waste to Yucca Mountain, Kerry has voted against it, including key votes in 2000 and 2002.
The Bush campaign has seized upon Kerry's 1987 vote for a massive budget bill that had a provision favoring a nuclear waste site in Nevada. The vote did not create the repository, and Kerry voted several times to yank the provision from the bill.
Sean Smith, a Kerry campaign spokesman in Nevada, said the commercial was an act of desperation.
"It's an insult quite frankly to the voters of this state," he said.
Last week, Kerry came to Las Vegas and promised to block the repository. It was his third trip to the Silver State this year. Bush arrived shortly thereafter for his second appearance in the state this year and accused Kerry of turning Yucca Mountain into a "political poker chip."
"I said I would make a decision based upon science, not politics," Bush said in defending his decision to approve Yucca Mountain the day after Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended it.
In an effort to counter Democrat Al Gore who opposed Yucca Mountain during the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush sought to assure Nevada voters that the nuclear waste dump was not a foregone conclusion and a decision would be based on "sound science" if he were elected.
Democrats accuse Bush of not keeping his word on the issue.
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Quad City Times
August 23, 2004
Nuclear waste in the Q-C: 100 years down, 9,900 to go
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Imagine our community 10,000 years from now. One hundred centuries. Ten millennium celebrations.
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Nothing we see now will remain. The river will have cut a new path.
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No one plans for outcomes that are 10,000 years away. Yet engineers at the Exelon Corp.´s Quad-Cities nuclear generating station in Cordova are grappling with one.
Site Vice President Tim Tulon is overseeing construction of a new area to hold nuclear waste that will remain dangerous for 10,000 years. The meticulous engineering for the Exelon´s planned dry cask storage area intends to provide a safe, temporary home for radioactive fuel rods until they can be moved to a central repository.
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Of course, no central repository exists.
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Nevada´s Yucca Mountain is caught in the middle of a political and practical dilemma. President Bush says he will proceed with opening the nation´s only permanent nuclear waste dump, regardless of the objections of most Nevadans, their Republican governor, and their three Republican and one Democratic congressmen. John Kerry says he will pull the plug on Yucca Mountain, leaving the 30-year-old dilemma about nuclear waste unresolved. Even if the repository opens, the federal government and states still need to resolve transportation of the waste over U.S. interstates and railroads.
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There is no Plan B for long-term nuclear waste storage.
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So no one can say for sure if Exelon is building a temporary morgue or a permanent graveyard for nuclear waste.
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* * *
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Exelon´s Brian Maze is overseeing excavation of a smooth, flat area just slightly smaller than a football field. It is covered with soft, leveled sand. The sand will be covered by fabric. Over that goes a layer of one-inch crushed rock. Then comes a two-foot layer of concrete and soil, topped by another two feet of solid concrete. When finished, this $1.5 million pad — and possibly three more like it — will be able to support up to 48,960 tons of nuclear waste containers.
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In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the federal government has an “unconditional obligation’ to take the waste off the hands of utilities. In fact, the court ruling said, since the 1950s, the federal government has “owned’ the nation´s nuclear waste.
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This month, the federal government cut an $80 million check to Exelon, the first payment to settle a lawsuit Exelon filed seeking reimbursement for unforeseen waste storage costs. Exelon is in line to receive $300 million to cover their costs for storing nuclear waste. If the federal government doesn´t open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada by 2010, expect more payments.
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* * *
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Nuclear fuel rods emit no dangerous energy until they are inserted in the reactor and become part of the radioactive reaction. The controlled reactions produce heat and steam which drive generators to create electricity. The Cordova reactors provide enough to power about 1 million households, most in the Chicago area.
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Each reactor´s core has 724 rods that are shifted and readjusted to maintain an even dispersal of energy. During refueling every two years, about 280 spent rods are removed and replaced with new ones. The highly radioactive rods glow blue when pulled from the core and placed in an indoor water tank, initially designed as temporary storage.
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No one in 1972 anticipated that nuclear waste disposal would be unresolved 30 years later. Today, more than 6,000 radioactive rods fill the tank.
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Nationally, the waste now totals some 42 metric tons and is located at 131 nuclear plants in 39 states. In addition, untold amounts of nuclear waste are stored in secret at military installations across the nation.
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* * *
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Regardless of the fate of Yucca Mountain, the Cordova plant site next year will begin amassing 17-foot tall concrete cylinders, called casks, that look like corn silos. The casks will be the final resting place for spent nuclear rods packed into impermeable metal cylinders surrounded by two-foot thick concrete. Each cask weighs 180 tons. Each of the four pads to be constructed will hold 68 casks. That will be 272 casks at $1 million each, fully packed and sealed.
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Each cask can withstand a 360 mph wind, equivalent of an F-5 tornado, says Joe Reiss, on-site engineer for Holtec International. The twister that leveled Utica, Ill., was an F-3 tornado.
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Reiss is overseeing implementation of the nuclear waste management system called ISFSI. When the project began, the acronym stood for Interim Spent Fuel Storage Installation. Now, documents refer to it as the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation.
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* * *
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The Homeland Security precautions most of us only read about are evident throughout the Cordova plant, where more than $7 million was spent on security this year, mostly on concrete, rock and wire.
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The casks will be in the open air behind concrete barricades and a double, razor-wire fence with motion detectors and cameras. Eight guard towers go up this year to surround the entire plant. Each will be staffed round-the-clock— holidays, too— by guards armed with automatic weapons.
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For how long? No one knows.
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Tulon expects the NRC will authorize the Cordova plant to continue producing power for another 20 years. After that, he seems certain the plant will shut down. Newer ways of generating power from nuclear energy, or perhaps some other source, will make Cordova´s infrastructure obsolete.
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Tulon seems personally committed to the safe operation of the plant and storage of waste.
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“I don´t want to be the one who leaves this as a legacy,’ he said.
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He estimates the casks can safely store the waste for about 100 years.
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That leaves about 9,900 years of storage still to be figured out.
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Quad City Times
August 23, 2004
Bush and Kerry on Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository
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Bush: Yes
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“I said I would make a decision based upon
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science, not politics. I said I would listen to the scientists … and that´s exactly what I did,’ Bush told supporters in Las Vegas earlier this summer.
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Kerry: No
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“When John Kerry is president, there is going to be no nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Period,’ Kerry said during a campaign appearance earlier this month in Las Vegas.
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London Times
August 22, 2004
American Account
Customers come last on oil nations' political agenda
Irwin Stelzer
SO NOW WE KNOW. If demand for oil rises suddenly and the supply is constrained, the price will rise. Add myriad threats of supply disruption, and a producer cartel, and you get price increases that are sharp and enduring. Anyone who missed that lesson in his elementary economics course will certainly have learnt it from the business press in recent months.
Unfortunately, concentration on daily price movements diverts attention from the more threatening changes that are taking place in oil markets.
Most important, the consuming countries have realised that the political dynamics of their suppliers trump the needs of customers every time. Consider three of the largest producers, sitting on some 40% of the world´s reserves: Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
Vladimir Putin is unconcerned about how the oil price is affected by his assault on Yukos, Russia´s largest and most efficient producer. He feels it imperative to eliminate Yukos´s principal shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, as a political rival, and to transfer Yukos´s main production properties to a company controlled by his former KGB buddies. If that means oil prices rise and abort America´s recovery, too bad for President George Bush.
Not even calls from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to Dmitry Medvedev, Putin´s chief of staff, could persuade the Russian leader to abandon his assault on Yukos and help to bring down the price of crude.
Nor could pressure from his Chinese friends move Russia´s president, who must enjoy being in a position to ignore the pleas of the world´s greatest superpower and its potential challenger for that crown. Putin may no longer be able to send tanks rolling across Europe, but he can certainly make it very expensive for the world´s motorists to roll across their nations´ highways.
The important thing to note is that the world´s largest oil consumer (America) and the world´s fastest-growing importer of oil (China), although competing for supplies, now realise that they have a shared stake in the stability of Middle East producers, and the secure movement of oil on the world´s sea lanes. Politics may make strange bedfellows, but a thirst for black gold makes even stranger ones.
Then there is Saudi Arabia, which is no longer capable of controlling oil prices merely by issuing a press release about its production intentions. One expert on that country´s politics and industry tells me that Saudi promises to step up output are worthless because a significant portion of that country´s “reserves’ are “political barrels’, reported to enhance Saudi prestige but not quickly extractable.
American defence and intelligence officials until recently assigned a 50:50 probability that the Saudi regime would survive for the next 10 years. They are now quietly speaking in terms of a mere five years. This means that there is an even chance that the kingdom´s royal family soon will be calling for help to prevent a takeover by Islamic extremists. China and America will find themselves with no choice but to join forces to protect the Saudi fields from a takeover that could halt production. So don´t look for China to oppose any steps America might feel necessary to keep Saudi oil flowing onto world markets while Russia, untroubled by the disappearance of a big rival supplier, would be likely to oppose Sino-American intervention.
Then there is the effect tight oil supplies are having in America´s backyard, South America. In this region, Venezuela is the key player. That nation´s pro-Castro, anti-American president, Hugo Chávez, is now firmly in charge of the western hemisphere´s largest supply of oil — a supply that is only six days away from America by tanker (Saudi oil is six weeks away). Buoyed by his recent referendum victory, Chávez plans to divert supplies from America to the South American countries he is wooing.
As in Russia and Saudi Arabia, the internal political goals of Venezuela´s leader override any desire to make life easier for America´s oil-fuelled economy. Putin wants to stifle political opposition, the Saudi royal family fears it will be overthrown if it invites American capital into the country, and Chávez wants to foment an anti-American movement in South America.
Meanwhile, as these ominous signs accumulate, politicians fret, strut, and do nothing. Bush has a multi-billion-dollar energy bill before Congress that at most would squeeze a relatively few extra drops of oil from the Arctic, perhaps a decade from now, and gives short shrift to any effort to increase the efficiency with which energy is used in America. Fortunately, Congress has so far refused to pass it, not out of any sudden spurt of parsimony, but because it wants still more goodies placed under this Christmas-tree of a bill.
Democrat John Kerry is proposing to denude American dinner tables of corn by converting the nation´s crop to expensive methanol, somehow force consumers to pay for expensive solar power, and in effect foreclose the nuclear option by opposing a bill he once supported that would create a storage site for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a state with five up-for-grabs electoral votes. How this will help Kerry to achieve his stated goal of “energy independence’ remains a mystery to all serious observers of the energy scene.
Meanwhile, with America´s refineries operating at a stretched 96% of capacity, environmentalists continue to oppose any significant expansion of the nation´s creaking energy infrastructure, local groups continue to fight to prevent the construction of port facilities that would allow the needed increases in imports of liquefied natural gas, and voters remain unenthusiastic about a tax that might encourage them to use less petrol.
In sum, current high prices are the least of America´s energy problems.
Irwin Stelzer is a business adviser and director o
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Las Vegas SUN
August 22, 2004
Letter: Users must fund nuclear disposal
Las Vegas SUN
Weekend Edition
August 21 - 22, 2004
Clarence Lanzrath's letter of Aug. 10, asking where the nuclear waste will go if not here in Nevada, is silly. The people who own and benefit from the production of the waste should deal with it themselves.
Instead they want to ship it through state after state to our back yard. People who had nothing to do with the production of the waste are now told we must accept it -- all because the nuclear lobby wants the federal government to take it off their hands.
If nuclear plants are such a good idea and so safe, let them keep their waste where they produce it. Let them pay for the storage, not the government.
Tamara Thompson
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 21, 2004
Bush, Kerry even in Nevada, poll finds
Anjeanette Damon RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
After nearly six months of intense campaigning in Nevada, no clear front-runner has emerged in the presidential campaign, keeping the Silver State squarely in the cross-hairs of both candidates, a new poll shows.
President Bush and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, are in a statistical dead heat in Nevada, considered a battleground state in the race for the presidency. The election is Nov. 2.
A poll of 600 likely voters conducted statewide Aug. 14-17 showed 44 percent favored Bush, 42 percent favored Kerry and 2 percent favored independent Ralph Nader. The survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, was conducted by Research 2000 for the Reno Gazette-Journal and News 4.
“That state is clearly up for grabs,’ pollster Del Ali said. “It is a true tossup.’
The poll also showed a jump in undecided voters in Northern Nevada, with both candidates losing support compared with an RGJ/News 4 poll conducted in June. The latest poll showed 14 percent of respondents in Northern Nevada were undecided, compared with 7 percent in the June poll.
“There is an anxiety,’ Ali said. “I don´t think people feel things are necessarily on the right track, and they are looking for some change. But the change has to be acceptable. John Kerry has to prove he is acceptable.’
Political analysts agreed neither candidate has much power to swing those numbers, unless a catastrophic event occurs on U.S. soil, events stabilize quickly in Iraq or the economy drops or climbs significantly.
“The next 90-some-odd days are going at be targeted at those 13 percent and what it takes to motivate them to either side,’ said Greg Ferraro, a Reno political consultant who has done some work with the Bush-Cheney campaign. “They´ll have to find innovative ways to capture the attention of these people who are traditionally disengaged.’
That could prove a challenge.
Lisa Maffett, a 25-year-old Sparks mother of two, said she hasn´t had any time to devote to the presidential race.
“I´ll wait until later to make my decision,’ she said. “I´ve just been too busy with kids and all that stuff.’
The poll indicates Nevadans are sticking to the party line, with 84 percent of Republicans supporting Bush and 82 percent of Democrats supporting Kerry. Nevada independents are breaking slightly for Kerry but remain the largest contingent of undecided voters.
A race this close adds value to each vote cast in Nevada, said Brian Fletcher, a political analyst and instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College.
“Theoretically, it should mean that every vote counts, especially in the battleground states,’ Fletcher said. “It should create a premium for you to vote.’
The political climate has inspired some voters to go beyond visiting the ballot box.
Judy Jarvis, a 62-year-old retired letter carrier, was motivated to become politically involved for the first time.
“I´m going down and volunteering for the Democratic Party,’ said Jarvis of Reno. “I´ve never done that before.’
Jarvis said she is convinced Bush can´t be trusted and criticized him for the war in Iraq.
Frenchie Drapeau, of Reno, is just as resolute in his support for Bush.
“I´m retired military,’ he said. “That says it all.’
With the numbers so close, both campaigns are claiming an edge with Nevada voters.
“It shows that voters are responding to our opposition to Yucca Mountain, our support for affordable prescription drugs and our support for making health care more accessible to all Nevadans,’ said Sean Smith, Nevada spokesman for the Kerry campaign. “It shows that still after four years, there´s still a significant number of people who aren´t sold on George Bush.’
Bush-Cheney campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt countered that Kerry has “flip-flopped on nearly every issue important to the state.’
“We´ve always anticipated a close election,’ she said. “We expect the polls to remain close until Election Day. At the end of the day, we believe Nevada will understand President Bush shares their priorities, such as strength on the economy, fighting and winning the war on terror, improving access to health care.’
Ali said the numbers -- particularly the increase in undecided voters -- aren´t good news for the Bush campaign.
“Normally, the undecideds break for the challenger against the incumbent,’ Ali said.
But Brian Fletcher, a political analyst and instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, said that Kerry´s numbers should be higher at this point.
“I don´t know how the Bush campaign is viewing the numbers, but they should feel pretty good,’ Fletcher said. “It is the eighth month of the year, and it looks like Bush is going to be one of the first presidents in 50 years to have a net loss in jobs. Iraq, there´s been quite a bit of turmoil there. We just had the Democratic convention. After all those events, you would think the Kerry camp would be 5, 10, 15 points ahead.’
Reno Republican Ellie Lopez-Bowlan, who was preparing to attend her first national convention, said she would like to see Bush with a bigger lead.
“We´re a state that can make a difference,’ she said.
The Republican National Convention begins Aug. 30 in New York City. Analysts are waiting to see if Bush gets a “bump’ in the polls after weeklong news coverage.
Nader is losing ground in Nevada, with only 2 percent of those polled choosing him. That´s down from 4 percent in a poll conducted at the end of July for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“Nader is a non-factor,’ Ferraro said.
Nader tends to pull votes from Kerry. Statewide, Kerry´s numbers dropped two points when respondents were offered Nader as an option.
“We think that the people who are potentially supporting Ralph Nader are, in the end, people who want to beat George Bush,’ Smith said. “There´s only one candidate who can beat George Bush, and that´s John Kerry. We just need to continue to make that case to them.’
Nader´s campaign spokesman could not be reached for comment.
In a head-to-head matchup between vice presidential candidates, the poll indicates Democrat John Edwards leads Vice President Dick Cheney by four points. But only 32 percent of respondents indicated the vice presidential candidate will play a major role in their vote for president.
And despite strong dislike for Cheney among Democrats -- only 3 percent said they preferred him -- a majority of Nevadans -- 61 percent -- do not think President Bush should replace Cheney on the ticket.
“There is a lot of antipathy toward Dick Cheney from Democrats,’ Fletcher said. “They both love him and hate him. They love the fact that he is on the ticket because they love to attack him. But those attacks demonstrate their dislike of him.’
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Town Hall
August 22, 2004
Wasting a Good Solution
Edwin J. Feulner
Our country has a problem. And we have a solution. But politics is threatening to interfere.
The problem: Tens of thousands of tons of dangerous nuclear waste are stored at more than 125 sites around the nation. The solution: Bury the waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Yucca would become a giant underground repository. It´s designed to contain nuclear waste for 10,000 years -- long enough for it to decay to safe levels. At Yucca, our waste would be stored safely underneath 1,000 feet of solid rock.
Now comes the politics. “One of the biggest environmental and security challenges facing Nevadans is the threat that Yucca Mountain will be turned into the nation´s nuclear waste dump,’ John Kerry warned during a recent campaign stop in the state.
But Kerry and others who want to block Yucca ignore the fact that our nuclear waste has to go somewhere. We can´t simply dump it in the ocean or blast it into space.
And we know Yucca Mountain is ideal, because it´s probably the most-studied location in the world. The federal government started investigating whether the site would be suitable for storing nuclear waste back in 1978.
Located in a quiet area of Nevada, some 100 miles from the outskirts of Las Vegas, Yucca has all the traits necessary for the long-term storage of radioactive waste. The climate is dry. That means little rain, which might erode the canisters that nuclear waste is stored in. The geology is stable, so it´s unlikely an earthquake would disturb the waste. And the water table at Yucca is contained, so if there´s a leak, it won´t contaminate the water supply anywhere else.
Of course, when it comes to storing nuclear waste, most people (understandably) say “not in my backyard.’ But right now, the waste is in our backyard.
All high-level nuclear waste is the responsibility of the federal government. While we´re dithering over Yucca Mountain, this waste is piling up at temporary sites in almost 40 states. Most of these are near water, and many are in urban or suburban areas. Today, an estimated 161 million people reside within 75 miles of temporarily stored nuclear waste, and each storage site is a potential terrorist target.
Contrast that with Yucca Mountain. The federal government owns almost 80 percent of Nevada. Nuclear waste stored there will be far from populated areas. In fact, the site´s nearest neighbor is the Nevada Test Site, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island and is one of the largest restricted-access areas in the United States. That, combined with the fact that Yucca is also surrounded on three sides by Nellis Air Force Base, should help keep the waste safe from potential terrorist attack.
Of course, getting the waste to Nevada will pose a challenge. “Under the Yucca Mountain plan,’ Kerry warned recently, “more than 50,000 shipments of waste would travel just yards away from homes, hospitals, parks and playgrounds in states across this country.’
That´s true, but nuclear waste already is traveling around the country, and the safety record is admirable. In the past 30 years, the government has safely completed more than 2,700 shipments of spent nuclear fuel, and there hasn´t been even a single injury from the release of radioactive materials. With the proper security measures, nuclear waste will be delivered safely to Yucca Mountain.
The price of oil is hovering around record highs, and there´s no doubt our country needs to develop alternate sources of energy. Nuclear power is cheap, safe and generates no greenhouse gasses. However, the United States hasn´t opened a new nuclear plant since 1979, partly because we haven´t had any place to put the radioactive waste.
But we will -- if we can stop playing politics and get Yucca Mountain open.
Dr. Edwin Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation, a Townhall.com member group.
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TechNewsWorld
August 22, 2004
DOE's Basic Research Gets a Boost
By Dee Ann Divis
DOE, through its Office of Science, is the nation's largest supporter of research in the physical sciences such as chemistry and physics. It supports efforts to develop economical fusion power and discover "dark energy" -- the possible key to why the universe is expanding.
In a year when nearly every government program not tied to national security is facing budget cuts, the House Appropriations Committee decided to add money to the Department of Energy's budget to boost the nation's investment in basic research.
The House added $168.2 million to President George W. Bush's request of $3.6 billion for DOE for next year. This might seem small, only a 4.7 percent increase, but White House requests for other science agencies, including NASA and the National Science Foundation, were cut -- in the case of NASA, by a whopping $1.1 billion.
DOE, through its Office of Science, is the nation's largest supporter of research in the physical sciences such as chemistry and physics. It supports efforts to develop economical fusion power and discover "dark energy" -- the possible key to why the universe is expanding.
DOE funds environmental research, work on nanotechnology, protein research and efforts to build ever more powerful supercomputers. It was DOE that first used its extraordinary computing capability to kick-start the mapping of the human genome.
Nature of Matter
DOE research into tools to study the nature of matter laid the groundwork for non-invasive medical diagnostics such as magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography -- the basis for MRI and PET scans.
These are the sorts of discoveries that inspired the House to up the funding.
The committee is aware, a congressional staffer said, "that physical sciences formed the foundation for a lot of breakthroughs in other science areas or engineering. (They understand) this is important research and development and that DoE is the place to fund it. ... They said, 'We've got to be sure we get some increase to science here.'"
The increase is real, said Tobin Smith, senior federal relations officer for the Association of American Universities.
"It starts to make up ground for what has been several years of flat funding. It does beat inflation," Smith said.
The House gave an extra $30 million to support supercomputer research and directed at least $5 million of that be spent on software and applied mathematics. It also added $12 million to fusion research for a total of $276 million. The extra money will ensure that domestic fusion research will not be shortchanged by the United States' decision to contribute to an international fusion research collation.
Cold Fusion?
"This has nothing to do with cold fusion," said Judy Franz, executive officer of the American Physical Society. "This is very, very hot fusion. This is the kind that physicists believe in and that definitely works. ... I think most people think eventually this will a major source of energy. The question is when and how."
Among other "plus ups," Congress added $13 million for nanoscience research and another $13 million-plus for DOE's various laboratories. The labs are a national resource used by agency scientists and non-agency researchers from universities and many other institutions.
The new money is not entirely about the projects, however, the staffer revealed. It also is a signal in a fight between the two halves of Congress over nuclear weapons.
President Bush asked for more money for nuclear weapons, the staffer explained, and not enough for science, in the view of the House Appropriations Committee.
"I think there is sort of a statement here that ... putting the money into science research is more important that putting into nuclear weapons," the staffer said.
Weapons Research
Unfortunately, the spat over weapons research could delay final passage of an appropriations bill. Key to making any compromise on the weapons issue work will be New Mexico's powerful Republican senator Pete Domenici, the chairman of both the Senate subcommittee on energy and water development and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
The two committees allocate DOE's money and then tells the agency how to spend it. It is worth noting that DOE's Los Alamos and Sandia laboratories, both involved in aspects of nuclear weapons research, are located in New Mexico.
Among the other possible, delay-causing factors is a squabble over Yucca Mountain, the nation's planned site for disposal of high-level nuclear waste. Also pending is a Senate debate over restructuring the intelligence community.
The fiscal year ends Sept. 30. With the built-in distraction of an election year it is unlikely Congress will complete its work in time to fund the government by Oct. 1, when FY 2005 begins.
Pros and Cons
There is no reason, however, to fear the government will shut down. All sources agree Congress likely will pass a continuing resolution.
For DOE, that has both pros and cons. On the one hand, a continuing resolution likely will just continue funding at this year's levels. This means DOE's Office of Science will not see the extra 4.7 percent for quite a while.
On the other hand, explained the staffer, any continuing resolution will likely be a simple bill that just allocates the money, with little instruction on how to spend it. This gives the agency much more latitude than it would normally have to tweak how it spends its money.
Correction: In last week's PoliSci column on the rising price of science journals, the title for Pat Thibodeau was incorrect. Thibodeau is the immediate past president of the Medical Library Association and associate dean for Library Services and director of the Duke University Medical Center Library.
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Rocky Mountain News
August 22, 2004
Beware Kerry's energy policy
More supply, lower prices
When it comes to energy, Sen. John Kerry is staking his White House claim as a defender of consumers who can lower prices for families and businesses and make Americans less dependent on oil from the turbulent Middle East. But his publicly announced proposals would have just the opposite effect.
If we've supported President Bush's energy goals in principle, it's because he's at least dealing in realities. His sensible answer to high prices is more supply: promoting greater domestic oil and gas production, and easing regulations, such as those that currently discourage the building of new refineries.
But we've also taken him to task for acquiescing to Congress' worst spending impulses. Specifically, last year's $31 billion energy bill, which died a just death because it was packed with handouts for just about every conceivable industry, from oil and nuclear power to clean coal.
But none of this means Kerry's major policy proposals come close to being the better deal for either energy security or consumers. To begin with, the United States will never achieve the "energy independence" Kerry so vacuously insists is on the horizon, since it guzzles a quarter of the world's oil but sits on only 3 percent of its proven reserves. Indeed, the Kerry campaign's only solution to address short-term price spikes is to put on hold plans to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which Bush quite rightly aims to lift to 700 million barrels from 665 barrels.
Kerry has in fact blocked at every turn the Bush administration's proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - which could produce as much as 16 billion barrels of oil, enough to replace Saudi imports for more than 20 years. Rather, to encourage homegrown alternatives, he is promising to spend more than $30 billion to subsidize carmakers and utilities to convert to cleaner technologies. A plan to impose new fuel-economy standards on cars was softened after the United Auto Workers complained of potential job losses.
A bigger blow to consumers is Kerry's approach to electricity. The federal mandate he wants on utilities to produce 20 percent of their electricity from so-called renewable resources by 2020 would result in significant price increases, since renewables are three to 15 times more costly than conventional fossil-fuel-generated power. Like Bush, he supports nuclear power, though unlike the president he is against storage of waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. That means no new plants could be built on Kerry's watch, since Wall Street won't finance more nuclear production without an option for storing waste.
On many energy proposals, the candidates agree. They both stress the need for clean-burning coal plants, for which Kerry wants an additional $10 billion in subsidies. Both approve incentives for hybrid vehicles and fuel-cell-powered vehicles that use hydrogen, though none of these would lower energy prices in the long run.
While we agree President Bush was far too accepting of last year's pork-laden energy bill, his supply-side solutions are at least the right approach to insulating the U.S. economy from sudden spikes in global energy prices. Kerry's stated agenda on some key issues is increased spending, restricted demand and higher energy prices. The voters can decide for themselves which of these is more consumer friendly.
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Quad City Times
August 22, 2004
Spent fuel rods to move outdoors at Cordova
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Imagine our community 10,000 years from now. One hundred centuries. Ten millennium celebrations.
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Nothing we see now will remain. The river will have cut a new path.
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No one plans for outcomes that are 10,000 years away. Yet engineers at the Exelon Corp.´s Quad-Cities nuclear generating station in Cordova are grappling with one.
Site Vice President Tim Tulon is overseeing construction of a new area to hold nuclear waste that will remain dangerous for 10,000 years. The meticulous engineering for the Exelon´s planned dry cask storage area intends to provide a safe, temporary home for radioactive fuel rods until they can be moved to a central repository.
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Of course, no central repository exists.
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Nevada´s Yucca Mountain is caught in the middle of a political and practical dilemma. President Bush says he will proceed with opening the nation´s only permanent nuclear waste dump, regardless of the objections of most Nevadans, their Republican governor, and their three Republican and one Democratic congressmen. John Kerry says he will pull the plug on Yucca Mountain, leaving the 30-year-old dilemma about nuclear waste unresolved. Even if the repository opens, the federal government and states still need to resolve transportation of the waste over U.S. interstates and railroads.
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There is no Plan B for long-term nuclear waste storage.
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So no one can say for sure if Exelon is building a temporary morgue or a permanent graveyard for nuclear waste.
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* * *
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Exelon´s Brian Maze is overseeing excavation of a smooth, flat area just slightly smaller than a football field. It is covered with soft, leveled sand. The sand will be covered by fabric. Over that goes a layer of one-inch crushed rock. Then comes a two-foot layer of concrete and soil, topped by another two feet of solid concrete. When finished, this $1.5 million pad — and possibly three more like it — will be able to support up to 48,960 tons of nuclear waste containers.
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In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the federal government has an “unconditional obligation’ to take the waste off the hands of utilities. In fact, the court ruling said, since the 1950s, the federal government has “owned’ the nation´s nuclear waste.
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This month, the federal government cut an $80 million check to Exelon, the first payment to settle a lawsuit Exelon filed seeking reimbursement for unforeseen waste storage costs. Exelon is in line to receive $300 million to cover their costs for storing nuclear waste. If the federal government doesn´t open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada by 2010, expect more payments.
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* * *
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Nuclear fuel rods emit no dangerous energy until they are inserted in the reactor and become part of the radioactive reaction. The controlled reactions produce heat and steam which drive generators to create electricity. The Cordova reactors provide enough to power about 1 million households, most in the Chicago area.
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Each reactor´s core has 724 rods that are shifted and readjusted to maintain an even dispersal of energy. During refueling every two years, about 280 spent rods are removed and replaced with new ones. The highly radioactive rods glow blue when pulled from the core and placed in an indoor water tank, initially designed as temporary storage.
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No one in 1972 anticipated that nuclear waste disposal would be unresolved 30 years later. Today, more than 6,000 radioactive rods fill the tank.
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Nationally, the waste now totals some 42 metric tons and is located at 131 nuclear plants in 39 states. In addition, untold amounts of nuclear waste are stored in secret at military installations across the nation.
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* * *
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Regardless of the fate of Yucca Mountain, the Cordova plant site next year will begin amassing 17-foot tall concrete cylinders, called casks, that look like corn silos. The casks will be the final resting place for spent nuclear rods packed into impermeable metal cylinders surrounded by two-foot thick concrete. Each cask weighs 180 tons. Each of the four pads to be constructed will hold 68 casks. That will be 272 casks at $1 million each, fully packed and sealed.
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Each cask can withstand a 360 mph wind, equivalent of an F-5 tornado, says Joe Reiss, on-site engineer for Holtec International. The twister that leveled Utica, Ill., was an F-3 tornado.
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Reiss is overseeing implementation of the nuclear waste management system called ISFSI. When the project began, the acronym stood for Interim Spent Fuel Storage Installation. Now, documents refer to it as the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation.
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* * *
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The Homeland Security precautions most of us only read about are evident throughout the Cordova plant, where more than $7 million was spent on security this year, mostly on concrete, rock and wire.
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The casks will be in the open air behind concrete barricades and a double, razor-wire fence with motion detectors and cameras. Eight guard towers go up this year to surround the entire plant. Each will be staffed round-the-clock— holidays, too— by guards armed with automatic weapons.
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For how long? No one knows.
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Tulon expects the NRC will authorize the Cordova plant to continue producing power for another 20 years. After that, he seems certain the plant will shut down. Newer ways of generating power from nuclear energy, or perhaps some other source, will make Cordova´s infrastructure obsolete.
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Tulon seems personally committed to the safe operation of the plant and storage of waste.
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“I don´t want to be the one who leaves this as a legacy,’ he said.
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He estimates the casks can safely store the waste for about 100 years.
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That leaves about 9,900 years of storage still to be figured out.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 20, 2004
DOE says most Yucca 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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Staunton News Leader
August 21, 2004
Senator gets an earful from residents
By Jonathan D. Jones
staff
STAUNTON -- Why does Woodrow Wilson's Pierce Arrow limousine bear the AAA symbol on its grill? Sen. George Allen wants to know.
"The reason for the triple A is because he was the first president to be a member," Richard Robertson explains. "So we keep it on there."
Sen. Allen learned this after he was given a quick tour of Staunton sitting in the very seat in which Wilson used to ride during his presidency. It was the senator's final public stop on his swing through Waynesboro and Staunton on Friday. But Allen still had several places to visit before his "Listening Tour," which has been traveling the state this week, wrapped up for the day.
The listening tours give Allen a chance to get out of Washington, connect with voters and get direct feedback, he said.
"It's a pleasure to be out of Washington and to be with common-sense people," Allen said. "It's also good to let people tell you what they think, to your face."
Along the tour, which has consisted of a stops at civic group meetings, industrial sites, historical sites, the Rockingham County Fair and luncheons, Allen has had the opportunity to meet with many of those "common-sense" folks.
Invariably they want to talk about taxes, the armed forces, energy costs, education and health care, Allen said. During stops at Invista, the P. Buckley Moss Museum, the Woodrow Wilson Birthplace and the Greater Augusta Chamber of Commerce, those same issues came up.
In the morning, Allen spoke to teachers at the Moss museum who were finishing up an in-service training program. He told them that he thinks the Standards of Learning program the state implemented when he was governor is working and that the federal rules under No Child Left Behind are hurting local schools. The subgroups, such as special education or limited-English proficiency students, that can cause an entire school to fail under the law are not an accurate measure of the institution, Allen said.
"By next year, if this thing isn't changed administratively," Allen told the teachers, "I think we're going to have to do it legislatively."
For the teachers, it was good to hear that someone in Washington is listening, said Linda Parslow, a teacher at Craigsville Elementary School.
"I agreed with him about No Child Left Behind," Parslow said. "It's unfair we're gauged on the subgroups."
"He really seemed in tune with the issue," said Pamela Alexander, a music teacher at North River Elementary School. Having a senator at the training program was a bit of a surprise, Alexander said. Both teachers signed up in May, but only found out a few days ago that Allen would be coming by to make a presentation.
At the chamber of commerce luncheon, he turned the talk into a town hall-style forum while answer questions from the audience that ranged from the viability of nuclear energy to his thoughts on the draft. Allen said he was opposed to conscription but thinks the active-duty military needs to be expanded in order to relieve pressure on the reserves. As far as nuclear power, the first step in expanding its use domestically is the finishing of a spent-fuel repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., Allen said.
The trips are also a chance to learn about what's going on in Virginia, from bits of history that Robertson explained to him to new technology, such as a pilot broadband program in Salem that delivers high-speed Internet along power lines and using wireless transmitters near homes. Allen said he thinks the Salem model could help bring high-speed Internet to rural areas where it is often cost-prohibitive for companies to provide the service.
After leaving the Wilson museum, where he got a sneak peak at the plans for the presidential library that are to be unveiled next week, Allen made a personal visit and then attended the dedication of a memorial at Crosskeys and the Rockingham County Fair.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 20, 2004
Yucca ads may be misleading about Bush
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The facts cited in a new ad running in the state saying President Bush misled Nevadans on his position on the Yucca Mountain project may actually be misleading viewers.
An ad sponsored by political action group Moveon.org, designed to help Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, pushes his position to stop the nuclear waste storage project at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and accuses Bush of breaking a promise to Gov. Kenny Guinn.
A new Moveon.org ad says:
"It's coming to Nevada. Radioactive waste, headed for Yucca Mountain. Why? Because in 2000, George Bush misled Nevada. That's right. After promising Governor Guinn he would veto legislation making Yucca Mountain a nuclear dump. George Bush personally approved the disposal of radioactive waste in Nevada. John Kerry's fighting to stop Yucca Mountain."
Bush never told Guinn he would veto the overall project. In a letter he had promised that he would veto temporary storage of nuclear waste at the site while the scientific details were still being worked out.
Bush promised to make his decision on "sound science."
Yucca Mountain has become a campaign issue in Nevada because Bush approved Yucca Mountain in 2002. Democrats have accused him of breaking that promise.
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said he would stop the project if he's elected.
In a Sept. 28, 2000, letter sent in response to a letter from Gov. Kenny Guinn, Bush said "I would veto legislation that would provide for the temporary storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain."
Bush also told Guinn, "As president, I would not sign legislation that would send nuclear waste to any proposed site -- either on a permanent or temporary basis -- unless it has been deemed scientifically safe."
In the Moveon.org fact sheet backing up their ad, the group lists a Sept. 29, 2000, Las Vegas Sun article as a reference point on Bush's stance, but the story's headline is "Bush says he'd veto Yucca as interim site," and the fact sheet includes the quote from Bush saying he would veto interim storage.
A spokeswoman for Moveon.org did not know why a distinction was not made in the ad between interim storage and the overall project, but said she would check with the ad agency. Calls seeking comment were not returned.
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Maryland Gazette Newspapers
August 20, 2004
Going nuclear
by Steve Monroe
Staff Writer
Ricardo Martinez's multimillion-dollar business cleans up dangerous waste
In these days of terrorist alerts and threats, Ricardo Martinez and his company, Project Enhancement Corp. of Germantown, are working to protect some of America's most potentially lethal targets: its nuclear facilities.
"Some of PEC's work involves the protection of nuclear materials and nuclear facilities," said Martinez, who has a top secret clearance.
"We have conducted analyses to determine the vulnerability to terrorist attack on a number of [Department of Energy] facilities. We are currently working with the National Nuclear Safety Administration to develop a next-generation, computerized three-dimensional vulnerability analysis and training tool."
All in a day's work for Martinez, whose company, which focuses on cleaning up radioactive facilities, has grossed about $35 million in its five-year history, including about $9.5 million in 2003. PEC is listed at No. 372 among the nation's top 500 Hispanic-owned businesses for 2004 by Hispanic Business magazine, up from No. 419 in 2003.
And Martinez is looking forward to even better days, as Project Enhancement partners with large and small companies in the multibillion-dollar nuclear waste and cleanup industry. Business Gazette Editor Steve Monroe talked to Martinez recently about his plans to grow his business, his experiences with the U.S. Small Business Administration and the challenges he faces as a Hispanic businessman.
Most of your work is for the Department of Energy?
Yes, prior to starting my business I was in the Department of Energy, doing, essentially, this type of work, and so I decided to start my own business after a short stint with another company. So we're primarily a DOE contractor, and most of our work is within the area of cleanup, and we provide some specialty services to the DOE, like project management, engineering, design work, radiological calculations.
A lot of the work we're involved in deals with the dismantling and cleanup of nuclear buildings that present a risk to the public, and to workers, and because they present a risk, they wind up costing the government millions of dollars, just sitting there doing nothing. And so what we've made a business of is going in, helping the DOE and bigger contractors figure out ways to safely take the facilities down.
And stuff that could get into the air?
Could get into the air or somebody could just walk off with stuff.
Because there's residue and things in these buildings you have to take care of, you either package them up and send them to a storage facility, because there's still some value, some strategic value from the standpoint of the United States, or they're so hazardous and toxic that they have to be packaged in big packaging systems and sent to places like a waste isolation plant, or Yucca Mountain [in Nevada], places that are very remote, away from the public.
When you say nuclear buildings, do you mean where nuclear experiments are done or nuclear weapons were made?
All of the above. You have laboratories where experiments were made. You have processing facilities that took the raw materials, and made material that could then be sent to other facilities to make components. The facilities that we have been involved in cleaning up have been wartime materials facilities.
What are some other projects you are doing right now?
Right now we still support the client that gave me my first contract, Fluor Corp. [of Aliso Viejo, Calif.], one of the largest architectural engineering firms in the world. Fluor has been and continues to be PEC's largest client. PEC's very first contract, for $25,000, was with Fluor. We're supporting a number of projects for them in Washington state. Over the past five years, PEC has done close to around $10 million with Fluor.
What types of projects?
The first facility that I was involved in the cleanup of there was called Purex. We helped to shut that facility down, and in that facility the material that went in the first atomic bomb was made. And since then a lot of atomic bombs have been made from the material that was purified in that facility.
Now that facility, where while it was operating used to cost $100 million a year, it now costs about $700,000 a year because we helped to shut that down. It's called the Hanford site, one of the DOE's bigger sites.
There are about a dozen sites around the country. The facilities we work at are for the most part in places like Richland , Wash.; Aiken, S.C.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Denver, Colo.
When you say shut them down, what do you mean? Taking out spent rods or something?
What we do is the planning that it takes to safely shut down a facility. It means taking out material, safely shutting down processing systems.
In the DOE they have a term, deactivation, which means anything that's making the facility unsafe, make it safe. We call it cheap to keep while it's asleep ... so that at a later date you can demolish it when you have enough money to do that, but you've taken the hazard and the risk down, so you don't have to have an army of guards to protect it.
The next step would be to help the DOE figure out how to demolish it. You can't just go in there with bulldozers, because even though you've cleaned it up and it's at a lower risk, you still wind up with materials in there that if they got into the environment would be a real problem. So figuring out safe ways to remove asbestos, residual plutonium, other kinds of materials, is a real big job.
Has the SBA 8(a) program [which helps socially and economically disadvantaged businesses] been beneficial for you? If so, how?
Although we just recently received our first 8(a) award about two weeks ago after having been in the program for more than four years, it has benefited us in a number of ways.
Because 8(a) companies can be awarded up to $3 million noncompetitively per contract, it is usually easier for a client to justify giving us work noncompetitively than for non-8(a)s, even if the award is not an 8(a).
Roughly 60 percent of our work is won outside of the competitive realm ... this is true for most small businesses in our industry ... so the easier it is for a client to get to you the more likely it is you will get work.
Nevertheless, I have never been awarded a contract simply because of my 8(a) status. One still has to earn the work.
Another big advantage in the 8(a) program is the ability to team with a large business in the mentor/protégé program.
This relationship can be quite beneficial to a small company in that the experience and resources of the mentor can be accessed to help gain advantage on competitive contracts outside the technical and financial reach of the protégé. The large company can benefit by gaining access to small business and 8(a) set-aside contracts.
Recently these set-asides have become quite large, some approaching $100 million per year.
You said you and Fluor are submitting an application to the SBA for a mentor/protégé agreement. What will that do for you and Fluor?
The mentor/protege program is designed to assist 8(a) companies in essentially graduating from the program.
A lot of 8(a) companies rely on that work [8a contracts]. We haven't done that, but the business that we are trying to branch into, it would be challenging to get in, to say the least. Right now we're 45 people; a lot of the businesses we're going up against are 3,400 people.
So what we anticipate with Fluor, in teaming with them, they do a lot of this type of work, and they're looking for a small business to come in and do planning work, demolition work. So what I expect out of it is the ability to do work for Fluor, but also to team with Fluor.
Once complete, PEC and Fluor will be able to team and joint venture on a number of large projects currently being contemplated by the DOE.
In the meantime, we are growing our business at Hanford, where Fluor is the site prime contractor. Most of the work this team will pursue is in the DOE cleanup program, but we are also talking about opportunities outside of the DOE.
What contracts have you won recently?
Of significance is the work we won last month to provide technical services to the Office of Corporate Assessment in DOE's Office of Environmental Health and Safety. We teamed with a very well known and high-caliber company named Parallax, and were awarded a $7.5 million contract. Parallax [of Germantown], which is a black woman-owned, and 8(a) graduate company, is a leader In the area of DOE environmental health and safety and nuclear facility operations with more than 200 employees.
In the last three months, PEC has also won contracts with the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and additional contracts with Fluor Hanford Co. All in all, I expect our company to grow about 20 percent this year.
What's the most challenging type of project you do?
I think the most challenging thing, the biggest thing we've had in terms of doing the work, is going out and getting qualified individuals. You don't just hire anyone -- you have to have some history and a performance history.
[For example], in the company we probably have 15 people who have top clearances. I remember a job we had out at Hanford, a job for 20 people, to do safety and health oversight. The government client came to us and said, "Okay, you just won the contract and we want you to start next week, but we want you to be staffed up." And there were 20 people that in one week we had to go out, interview, and place on the job. We were able to do that but it was very, very hard to do.
How did you get to the DOE here in the first place? Where are you from originally?
I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. My dad is a retired sergeant major.
The first six years of my life I lived in Puerto Rico, and I didn't become bilingual until I was 8 -- I learned English from going to class on Army bases. It was kind of tough; it took me a while because my mom insisted we speak Spanish at home.
I lived at Army bases in Kentucky, the Canal Zone, Germany, New York and then Virginia. I finished high school in Northern Virginia [where his parents were living] and went to Virginia Tech. I got an engineering degree, and when I got out of school I worked for a power company in North Carolina, working with industrial-type customers, showing them how to reduce energy consumption. I did that for three years and got a little homesick.
We had our first child, and we wanted to be closer to the family [in the Washington, D.C., area] so they could see her grow up. So I got a job with the government in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare, designing heating and cooling suits for soldiers in that environment. I did that a couple of years, working at Fort Belvoir.
Then I did quite a bit of explosives development ... I was basically a lab rat.
Then I heard about the DOE starting a new organization called environmental management here in Maryland, in Germantown, and came here to work for the DOE. When I started the company, PEC was originally envisioned to be a small consulting company providing services to the DOE. The DOE headquarters in Germantown and Washington, D.C., we felt that the most advantageous location was next to DOE headquarters. From here we can know what is happening across the United States.
As a Hispanic businessman, were there special challenges going into business for yourself, and as a result any special strategies you had to develop?
I have to say I was very fortunate to be raised in the United States. I guess I can imagine an individual that wasn't raised in the United States and didn't understand the differences in the culture and ways of doing business.
For example, I can explain my business to my mother and my father, and they understand it, but I can tell that there are things that culturally they're not connecting with. It's not a matter of being more educated or smarter or anything -- it's just the way you think of things.
From my standpoint what was very helpful was having worked with the DOE. And I chose the DOE as my market: I know how the people think and operate, and I know the government procurement system, too.
Nevertheless, I think minority businesses in general, particularly in a business that's very highly technical, there are very few minorities in the nuclear industry. So when they hear your name or they see you or they know about you, you do have an obstacle to overcome and you have something to prove basically, so you have to prove it all the time.
People don't take it for granted that you can achieve something -- you have to actually do it and demonstrate it.
And you have started to help other businesses as well?
In the last two years I've tried to reach out to help other small businesses.
Right now I have a small company here that shares office space with us and they're trying to break into the government way of doing business. So as a point of trying to give back to the community, we've been helping them. And it turns out that they are so good, that they end up helping us, too.
It's one of those things where, you almost have to, I believe that for small businesses, especially minority businesses to succeed, there's got to be more teaming, more looking out for each other along the way, because there's more stacked up against you.
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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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