Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, September 16, 2004
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Senator Harry Reid
September 16, 2004
For Immediate Release
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Contacts:
Tessa Hafen (Reid) 202 224-3542
Jack Finn (Ensign) 202 224-6244
Amy Spanbauer (Gibbons) 202 225-6155
David Cherry (Berkley) 202 226-7578
Adam Mayberry (Porter) 202 226-7437
NV Congressional Delegation Calls for Restoration of Funds Critical to Local Yucca Oversight
Counties Abruptly Denied Funding to Study Impact of Nuke Waste Transport, Licensing
Washington, D.C. -- The five members of Nevada´s Congressional Delegation today called on Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham to restore federal funding guaranteed to counties in Nevada for oversight activities relating to Yucca Mountain.
In a joint letter to Abraham, U.S. Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and John Ensign (R-NV) and U.S. Representatives Jim Gibbons (R-NV), Shelley Berkley (D-NV) and Jon Porter (D-NV), also questioned the recent determination by the Department of Energy (DOE) that federal funds cannot be used by Nevada counties to study environmental impacts of a rail line to Yucca Mountain, or to prepare materials relating to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Licensing Support Network (LSN), an electronic database required for licensing the proposed nuclear waste dump.
The letter asks Abraham to justify the denial of funding that has been made available for years to Affected Units of Local Government in Nevada as part of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA). The 1982 law provides that county and city governments be given funding for oversight of dump related activities that may have public health, economic, social or environmental impacts.
“These activities have been considered legitimate areas of study under the NWPA since 1982, and nothing in the letter or intent of the law has changed in this regard,’ the delegation letter states.
In addition to seeking information on the DOE´s decision making, the letter also requests that funding be restored.
“With this in mind, the Nevada Delegation requests a justification for OCRWM's recent changes to oversight funding guidelines. Additionally, we request that the Department reconsider its funding guidance and continue to provide local governments with the necessary oversight resources.’
The full text of the letter is as follows:
Dear Secretary Abraham:
We are writing to express our concern regarding recent actions by the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM). OCRWM has recently determined that affected units of local government (AULGs) can no longer use oversight funds for "transportation planning" or other transportation activities, including the preparation of scoping comments for the proposed Caliente Rail Route Environmental Impact Statement. The Department has also established that oversight funds may no longer be used for preparation of documents for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Licensing Support Network (LSN).
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) requires the Secretary to make grants to any AULG to review the Department's activities "for the purpose of determining any potential economic, social, public health and safety, and environmental impacts of the repository." Transportation activities have been recognized by the Department as meeting this criterion for more than twenty years.
Furthermore, for almost fifteen years, LSN-related activities have also met aforementioned criterion for oversight funding. The Department's new guidelines restrict the ability of the affected counties in Nevada to include pertinent research on the LSN.
In the past, neither transportation nor LSN expenditures have been disallowed by the DOE Inspector General in audits of county programs. These activities have been considered legitimate areas of study under the NWPA since 1982, and nothing in the letter or intent of the law has changed in this regard.
With this in mind, the Nevada Delegation requests a justification for OCRWM's recent changes to oversight funding guidelines. Additionally, we request that the Department reconsider its funding guidance and continue to provide local governments with the necessary oversight resources.
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Las Vegas SUN
September 16, 2004
NEI to take appeal on Yucca standards to Supreme Court
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Energy Institute will ask the Supreme Court to evaluate a federal appeals court decision affecting the Yucca Mountain project.
In the meantime, NEI has asked a federal appeals court to allow the 10,000-year radiation standard on the Yucca Mountain project to remain in place until the Supreme Court decides whether to take up the case.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled on July 9 that the Environmental Protection Agency did not follow the law when it established a 10,000-year standard, largely because it did not accept the National Academy of Sciences recommendation of a far higher standard, perhaps 300,000 years.
NEI asked the appeals court to rehear the case but the court said it would not. The standard was supposed to be thrown out a week after the court's decision to rehear the case, but NEI asked the court earlier this month to keep the standard in place until the Supreme Court makes a decision.
NEI spokesman Mitch Singer said the group plans to appeal to the Supreme Court but nothing has been filed there yet.
Under the standard, the Energy Department would have to prove it could store nuclear waste safely inside Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for 10,000 years. But the court said either Congress must change the law that guides the project or the EPA must come up with a new standard, either outcome would delay the project.
The EPA has said the federal government will not appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
Nevada has claimed victory since the July 9 ruling, saying the project is in trouble. Joe Egan, an attorney hired by the state to handle Yucca issues, said he didn't think NEI's attempt to appeal would go far.
"We regard this as a 'Hail Mary' pass with a watermelon," Egan said. "There is virtually no chance at all the watermelon is going to reach the end zone."
Egan said the state will file a response Friday to NEI's request. If the appeal court does not grant NEI's request, the court's ruling to throw out the radiation standard would finally become official. Only the Supreme Court could overturn the decision, he said.
Egan said it is unlikely it would because the federal government has decided not to go forward with appeals on the decision.
Nevada claims that the project could not meet a higher radiation standard, so setting a new one could delay or ultimately stop the project.
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Las Vegas SUN
September 16, 2004
Editorial: No longer ignored
Las Vegas SUN
Within the span of three days in Nevada this week, we have had the unprecedented sight of the major parties' presidential tickets visiting our state. Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards was in Reno for a rally on Monday and Republican President Bush visited Las Vegas on Wednesday, followed today by a stop in Las Vegas from Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and a visit to Reno from Republican Vice President Dick Cheney. Both Bush and Kerry were in Las Vegas to address the National Guard Association's convention, so the two were speaking to a national audience more than they were directly to Nevadans. Nonetheless, they have made so many trips to our state that you'd think that tiny Nevada was a behemoth like next-door neighbor California -- and in a way it is.
In the Electoral College sweepstakes, with a winner-take-all system of allocating each state's votes for president, Nevada is one of the states in this year's race for the White House that is still up for grabs. Neither candidate is putting much money or time in uncontested states, such as California, that clearly will vote Democratic, or Texas, which obviously will vote Republican. Nevada traditionally has leaned conservative and voted Republican in presidential elections, but nevertheless Democrat Bill Clinton carried the state twice in the '90s. It's also one of the beauties of the way we elect our president that even sparsely populated states such as Nevada -- and the issues they care dearly about, such as this state's opposition to Bush's plan to build a nuclear waste dump here -- still matter. Indeed, Kerry's opposition to the Yucca Mountain project could be just the defining issue that enables him to beat Bush in Nevada -- and put him in the White House.
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Las Vegas SUN
September 16, 2004
Letter: GOP hopes for Yucca amnesia
The Nevada Republican party did not mention Yucca Mountain by name in its platform and now the Republicans have neglected to mention it in their "contract with Nevada." That is some oversight, given that a majority of Nevadans know that science has taken a back seat to politics in the project.
Come to think of it, the National Republican Party did not mention Yucca Mountain either. Maybe the Republicans think we'll have amnesia until after the election.
Perhaps Yucca Mountain could be added in the contract with Nevada. It could be worded: "The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository has not met scientific standards today and in the past. The federal government should consider abandoning the project."
In Nevada, we need open debate -- not silence -- about Yucca Mountain before the election.
Frank Perna
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Las Vegas SUN
September 16, 2004
Letter: Feds, not plants, own nuke waste
This is in response to the Aug. 22 letter from Tamara Thompson, headlined "Users must fund nuclear disposal."
Ms. Thompson erred in saying nuclear waste is owned by the "nuclear plants." The federal government owns the nuclear waste. This ownership agreement has been in place since the 1950s and was reinforced by law in the Waste Policy Act of 1982. Additionally, regarding who pays for storage of the waste, the $23 billion to $25 billion in surcharges (depending on the source of the figure) paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund by the commercial nuclear power industry was for the development of the Yucca Mountain Repository.
These monies were set aside strictly for the development of the repository and should be made available without further meddling by Congress -- Congress has spent $9 billion to $10 billion of this money on other items and uses the remainder to offset the budget.
For the good of this country, nuclear waste will come here. If Nevadans are smart, they will take every opportunity to reap the benefits of locating the repository here.
Jim Raleigh
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 16, 2004
Yucca Mountain Project: U.S. Supreme Court intervention sought
Nuclear industry group wants ruling reversal
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Energy Institute has served notice it intends to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a ruling that threw the Yucca Mountain Project into turmoil when it was issued in July.
Lawyers for the nuclear industry association say in court documents the effort to build a repository for the nation's radioactive spent fuel is important enough to merit the attention of the highest court.
The NEI filed a motion Sept. 8 asking a federal appeals court in Washington to delay finalizing a July 9 ruling that struck a blow against the repository until the justices are asked to intervene.
Officials with the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have indicated they do not plan to join a Supreme Court appeal.
But the nuclear industry group said the case "involves a matter of great national importance: the creation of a national repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste."
The deadline for filing a petition for writ of certiorari asking the Supreme Court to accept the case is Nov. 30, NEI attorneys said.
The NEI is attempting to focus the justices on a July 9 ruling by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The judges voided a 10,000-year radiation safety guideline the Environmental Protection Agency had written for the repository. They said EPA disregarded the views of a National Academy of Sciences study that recommended radiation protections for thousands of years longer.
The ruling has thrown the Yucca project into uncertainty as the EPA, the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission weigh its impact only months before the DOE planned to submit repository licensing paperwork for review.
Of 8,883 petitions for writ of certiorari received during their 2003-04 term, Supreme Court justices accepted only 91 for argument, according to Ed Turner, deputy public information officer.
Bret Birdsong, a professor at the Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said odds are long the justices will accept the Yucca case. But it may intrigue them.
"They will sometimes grant `cert' in cases that pose issues of national importance and this could be regarded as that because waste will be shipped from places all around the country," said Birdsong, who was an attorney in the Justice Department's environmental division from 1994 to 2000.
But Birdsong said the legal questions the NEI plans to advance may not rise to a compelling level to interest the justices. And the industry's case may be diminished in the eyes of the Supreme Court if the government chooses not to join the appeal.
"If the Solicitor General has decided not to pursue it, in some sense that sends a message to the court it may not be worth their time," he said.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 16, 2004
Yucca ruling appealed by DOE
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is appealing a ruling that Yucca Mountain Project managers violated rules for an online database created to store millions of documents about the nuclear waste repository.
DOE attorneys said a review board at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission misapplied federal law and NRC regulations when it weighed the case.
A 16-page DOE appeal was filed on Sept. 10 with the three commissioners who oversee the nuclear regulatory agency.
A three-judge review board said on Aug. 31 that DOE failed to follow regulations when it posted 1.2 million documents related to the nuclear waste repository on an Energy Department Web site this summer.
The judges said the documents needed to be placed on "licensing support network" database at the NRC to be considered official.
The violation was one of several found against the Energy Department related to the online database. DOE was told to correct the problems, which could set back its bid to meet a year-end deadline to complete a Yucca license application.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 16, 2004
No comparison
To the editor:
I fully expected the Review-Journal to endorse President Bush for re-election. What I did not expect is for you to mislead the people of Nevada on a critical issue.
In Sunday's endorsement, the Review-Journal wrote that "Yucca Mountain has been on track for 20 years ... under Democratic and Republican presidents. Are we to pin our future on the hope that one politician can (or even wants to) change all that based on a last-minute election-year conversion?"
It is just not true that "one politician" (the president) is just like another. It was President Bush who recommended Yucca Mountain for a nuclear waste dump and it is his secretary of energy who is fighting in court and at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to make sure that the dump will be built.
Neither candidate is exhibiting "a last-minute election-year conversion." President Bush and those surrounding him have always been in favor of the Yucca Mountain Project. Sen. Kerry has been an opponent since at least 1987, according to the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center, and as The Associated Press has reported, "Each time (Sen.) Kerry has faced the simple choice of voting whether or not to send waste to Yucca Mountain, he has voted against it."
Your comparison of the candidates' positions on Yucca Mountain was wrong and misleading. These two presidential contenders have totally opposite views and plans on Yucca Mountain and energy policy. President Bush strongly supports Yucca Mountain and he is aggressively campaigning for new nuclear power plants. Sen. Kerry promises that if he is elected Yucca Mountain will not become a waste dump and he pledges to support new sources of renewable energy. That is the information the voters should have when they consider their choice.
Judy Treichel
Las Vegas
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 16, 2004
Nevada Supreme Court Ruling: Nader's name to stay on ballot
Judges toss aside Democratic Party's claims of tainted petitions
By Brian Haynes
Review-Journal
Presidential hopeful Ralph Nader will remain on the November ballot, the result of a Wednesday ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court.
In its ruling, the state's high court affirmed a previous decision by District Judge William Maddox, despite Nevada Democratic Party claims that Nader's petitions were wrought with forgeries, misrepresentations and improper affidavits.
"That's the right decision," Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said. "The Democratic harassment didn't succeed, and now Nevada voters have a choice."
Nader's candidacy faces legal challenges in 18 other states.
Democratic Party leaders planned to discuss their next move, but their options will be limited because the secretary of state office's deadline for printing general election ballots is Friday, party lawyer Paul Larsen said.
"Obviously, we're disappointed in the judge's decision," Democratic Party spokesman Jon Summers said. "Our focus now is making sure people know about John Kerry and his vision for Nevada."
The party filed a lawsuit last month contending that Nader, who is running as an independent candidate, should be yanked from the ballot because the signature-gathering process used to qualify him was tainted.
The lawsuit alleged that petition circulators improperly listed hotel and commercial addresses on affidavits instead of home addresses, that many signatures were obtained through misrepresentations or forgeries and that many signatures came from people who weren't registered to vote.
After a three-day hearing that ended Sept. 1, Maddox threw out 3,348 suspect signatures. However, the Nader campaign still had far more than the 5,015 he needed to qualify for the ballot.
The Supreme Court said there was little evidence to show the process was tainted and ruled that state election laws tilt toward upholding the people's will.
"Here, a significant number of registered voters signed the petition to place Ralph Nader on the November ballot, and their interest in having the choice to vote for him should not be negated," the court wrote.
The court also found that language regulating the address issue was ambiguous.
"They know Ralph Nader is not going to win this election, so people who are Nader supporters who want to see their goals of a cleaner environment, affordable health care and no Yucca Mountain need to vote for John Kerry," Summers said.
Nader won 2 percent of the vote in Nevada in 2000. A recent poll showed President Bush with 44 percent of the Nevada vote, Kerry with 42 percent and Nader with 2 percent.
In Florida on Wednesday, Nader was allowed to stay on the ballot, at least until the end of the week when the state Supreme Court will make a final decision on his attempt to run for president as the Reform Party nominee.
The high court's temporary decision Wednesday came about an hour after Circuit Judge Kevin Davey in Tallahassee ordered that Nader be removed from the November ballot because the Reform Party isn't a legitimate party under state law. The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments on the issue Friday and said it would settle the controversy before a Saturday deadline for mailing absentee ballots overseas.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Pahrump Valley Times
September 15, 2004
Nevada files another Yucca project lawsuit
By Steve Tetreault
PVT Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Attorneys for Nevada opened a new front against the Yucca Mountain Project on Sept. 8, suing the Energy Department over its plans to ship nuclear waste on a railroad to be built through rural Nevada.
DOE failed to perform adequate environmental studies before identifying a preferred 319-mile railroad corridor from Caliente to the Yucca site in Nye County, the state charged in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Additionally, the state contended DOE unlawfully designated itself as the lead federal agency to develop the railroad when such powers reside with another agency, the Surface Transportation Board.
That decision shut out independent regulators, the lawsuit said.
A third issue in the 19-page filing says the department revived a backup strategy of loading railroad cars with nuclear waste casks designed to be carried by trucks, after initially rejecting the idea as being impractical and the most expensive, and "having the highest estimates of occupational health and public health and safety impacts."
"It's uncanny how DOE manages to do precisely the wrong thing," Attorney General Brian Sandoval said. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the state is exposing the Caliente rail line as a "billion dollar boondoggle."
An Energy Department spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit, which contains complaints that Nevada officials have raised since DOE began unveiling its Yucca transportation strategy last December.
Answering the previous criticism, DOE officials have said their actions are legal and proper.
The legal challenge to DOE's transportation plan is the eighth lawsuit the state has pressed against the proposed nuclear repository since the project began taking its current shape in 2001.
Six of the cases were consolidated and heard by the court in January. In July, judges issued opinions on those cases, with the government prevailing on most but losing a key ruling against a radiation benchmark that is causing DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency to re-evaluate repository safety standards.
A Nevada lawsuit filed in March over federal aid for the state to continue monitoring the Yucca program is scheduled to be heard in January.
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Pulse of the Twin Cities
15 September, 2004
XCel Energy seeks to extend license of state's three reactors
by Carey L. Biron
Minnesota´s three nuclear plants, the source of three decades of bitter political fights between Xcel Energy and grass-roots coalitions, will keep on running 20 years past their expiration dates if the company gets its way.
The nuclear facility in Monticello and the two at Red Wing´s Prairie Island have been operating for more than three decades, and are nearing the end of their federally-licensed life spans—currently scheduled for 2010, 2013 and 2014. For the conservation and Native American groups who despise the use of nuclear power and the local storage of radioactive waste, those dates were the light at the end of the tunnel.
Then, on the first of this month, the plants´ owner, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, announced it will seek approval to keep on running the plants for 20 more years.
To keep the plants going, Xcel needs two things: federal approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and somewhere to put all the waste. The first is not expected to be much trouble for the company, as the NRC has never rejected a re-licensing application. The second requirement might also have become easier for the company since last year, when the legislature gave away its power to the governor-appointed Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
“The people of Minnesota have a lesser ability to influence PUC´s decisions,’ than the decisions of elected officials, warned Scott Elkins, the Sierra Club´s state director. “So the public will get less of an opportunity to be heard both in the relicensing process, as well as in the nuclear waste storage process than they did in the past.’
The author of last year´s bill putting the PUC in charge of regulating Xcel was Sen. Steve Murphy (DFL-Red Wing)—a paid employee of Xcel Energy at the same time he was writing a legislative bill to help the company.
In 1994—the first time the energy company came to the state with a storage request, to stockpile high-level nuclear waste in temporary casks at the Prairie Island facility—there were political fireworks. Although Xcel has more lobbyists than any company in the state, grassroots groups were able to force a compromise; the company could store some waste if it invested in alternative energy.
“Now it appears that they´ve totally thrown in the towel on making that sort of transition,’ suggested Elkins.
Current projections by the Minnesota Department of Commerce estimate that Minnesota´s energy consumption needs will increase by 2,700 megawatts in the upcoming decade —assuming that the current nuclear plants continue operating. Xcel´s Jim Alders, manager of regulator projects, says that this extraordinary increase in need is where the conversation for renewable resources needs to begin.
“Nuclear power plants are part of our baseload facilities; they operate around the clock,’ he said. “We´re going to have to add hundreds and hundreds of megawatts of new power plants, just to keep up with the demand for electricity. That´s where there should be a vigorous debate about how much of that should be in renewables. You don´t increase the potential for renewable resources by doing away with nuclear power plants. What you do instead is make the cost of electricity more expensive.’
For the people of Monticello, any misgivings about the plant and stored waste seem to have been snowed under long ago. Monticello City Administrator Rick Wolfsteller recently told the Monticello Times that Xcel will pay just under half of the city´s taxes this year. Back when the plant first opened, that figure was closer to 75 percent.
Next door to the Prairie Island plants, the Mdewakantonwan community—paid $1 million per year as long as the plants continue operating—“has been a reluctant neighbor of the plant and storage,’ said Jake Reint, a spokesman for the community. Reint says that, while the tribal council is not surprised by the news, “the council does still believe that there needs to be a permanent storage solution before we get too far down the line of operating the plant indefinitely.’
That appears to be significantly easier said than done. Although the federal government did finally name Nevada´s Yucca Mountain as the only option for long-term waste storage, it has encountered legal and logistical problems.
“We found that radiation release standards wouldn´t protect the health of future generations,’ said the Public Citizen´s Michelle Boyd. “They arbitrarily gerrymandered the site boundary so that radiation release standards would go 18 kilometers to a control area,’ Boyd argued. “According to their own standards, for 10,000 years no one´s supposed to drink the water or grow food on that land. However, there are already wells on that land and there is farming just south of there.
Boyd says that this 10,000-year period doesn´t even get to the waste material´s most dangerous period. “It´s ludicrous: according to the National Academy of Sciences, the maximum doses are likely to occur at 30,000 years or more,’ she said.
Even if Yucca Mountain were to open today, the Sierra Club´s Scott Elkins says that it wouldn´t even be big enough to handle all of the waste material. “So there´s the concern on the part of a lot of folks that these storage sites on the flood plain of the Mississippi River will in essence become permanent nuclear waste storage facilities,’ he said.
Not only is Xcel shirking its legal mandates by not investing in more renewable energy sources, says George Crocker of the North American Water Office, but doing so would be significantly easier and more economical than the public is usually told.
“Minnesota exports about $10 billion to import its energy; about a third of that is for electricity,’ he said. “In other words, the money train leaves each year with about $3 billion … There are so many ways that we could channel that money—that we are spending on energy anyway—and use it instead for local economic development with locally available community based renewable energy. That´s exactly what Xcel is trying hard not to do.’
The state´s reactors account for about 20 percent of Xcel´s overall capacity, Crocker emphasizes. “We could easily have a system in which 20 percent was wind and still not be in the way of reliability of the system. So that means that wind, all by itself, could displace the energy and the capacity that these reactors produce.’
Since the 1994 agreement, Crocker says that progress made in Minnesota´s energy infrastructure has been backsliding. He says that he´s not surprised by Xcel´s decision to renew their nuclear licenses, but he is saddened.
“The reason we´re not doing [renewables] and instead are doing nuclear is because that´s the way that the people running Xcel make their money,’ he said. “It has everything to do with privilege and the sunk investment that´s already made into these obsolete and terribly, increasingly dangerous nuclear technologies. What´s probably even more disturbing, though, is that there are so many people in this state that are functionally illiterate about how their utility services are delivered that Xcel could even dream of trying to do such an irresponsible development.’
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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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