Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, October 11, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
October 11, 2004
White House won't appeal Yucca ruling
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration will not ask the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling on Yucca Mountain after all.
Legal documents filed Friday put to rest speculation that White House officials were still mulling an appeal to a lower court ruling. The July 9 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dealt a setback to the nuclear waste dump project.
The documents also appeared to settle questions about whether White House officials were in conflict with their own federal agencies.
Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency officials had said they intended not to appeal to the nation's highest court.
But the Department of Justice's Office of Solicitor General on Sept. 23 filed court documents in the Yucca case asserting its right to file one.
"We are now in a position to report" there will be no appeal, Solicitor General attorneys said in court documents filed Friday.
Election-year politics may be at play as Bush and challenger John Kerry vie for Nevada's five electoral votes in Nevada, where a majority of voters are opposed to the plan to construct a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
Nevada Democrats criticized Bush for indicating that he would respect the federal appeals court ruling, while at the same time reserving the right to appeal it. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., had said she fully expected Bush to appeal -- after the election.
The July 9 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals said the EPA unlawfully deviated from National Academy of Sciences recommendations when the EPA set a 10,000-year radiation standard for Yucca. The academy recommended that the nuclear waste repository should be held to a stricter standard -- that it be required to contain high doses of radiation for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
The Energy Department has said all along that the appeals court decision was "workable," department spokesman Joe Davis said again Friday. The department position has been that the department would work with the EPA to develop a "regulatory response" to the court decision -- not to appeal to the Supreme Court, Davis said.
EPA officials have held the same position.
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval said the solicitor general's decision Friday not to appeal demonstrates the strength of Nevada's legal argument on the radiation issue.
"The D.C. Circuit left little upon which to base an appeal, and this proves it," Sandoval said.
One appeal is planned, however. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power industry's top lobby group, has signalled it will ask the Supreme Court to review the radiation standard issue.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 11, 2004
Editorial: Yucca should concern the state's voters
Las Vegas SUN
The results of a statewide poll last week showed that a majority of Nevada residents who are very likely to vote oppose the federal plan to permanently bury the nation's high-level waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The poll, commissioned by the Las Vegas Sun, Channel 8 Eyewitness News and KNPR Nevada Public Radio, also revealed, however, that 57 percent of those who are very likely to vote say Yucca Mountain will not be important in affecting who they support for president.
We share the opposition to Yucca Mountain that a majority of voting Nevadans expressed. In hundreds of stories researched by our reporters over the past decade, we have pointed out its multiple safety hazards. The geologic features of the mountain are not sufficient to protect the underlying ground water and surrounding air and soils from radioactive contamination. And neither are the man-made casks in which the waste would be sealed before being entombed. So if Yucca Mountain opens, we'll have two barriers, the mountain and the casks, both unable to safely protect against contamination. Adding to the risk of Yucca Mountain is the need to transport the waste there from all over the country.
We do not, though, share the view of so many Nevadans who see no correlation between the presidential race and Yucca Mountain. President Bush has done everything in his power to expedite the mountain's opening, despite promising Nevada during his 2000 campaign that he would support the project only if "sound science" proved it would be safe. There never has been such proof and there never will be. In a second term, he would continue using all of his power to squelch Nevada's opposition. John Kerry, on the other hand, has a record of voting against Yucca Mountain and of speaking strongly against it on the campaign trail. "I'll guarantee you, if I'm elected president, Yucca Mountain is not going to happen. Nevada can take that to the bank," Kerry said last week in Reno.
Compare that to Bush's remark in Las Vegas during an August campaign stop, and his administration's follow-up. He said he would "stand by the decision of the courts" regarding Nevada's legal challenge to the project. This sounded good, because in July a federal appeals court had ruled that the design of Yucca Mountain was based on containing radiation for only 10,000 years, when a much longer, and likely unattainable, period was needed. But in September, Bush's Justice Department filed notice that it was reserving the right to challenge that ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court. Then late Friday afternoon, the Justice Department flip-flopped, announcing it wouldn't challenge the appeals court decision after all. Was it just coincidence the announcement came on the eve of another Bush visit to Las Vegas, and after polls have shown the president's race with Kerr y tightening?
In our view, the issue of Yucca Mountain should be extremely important to Nevadans as they decide on their choice for president.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 11, 2004
Letter: Kerry will fight against Yucca
No single act by Nevadans could have more impact against Yucca Mountain than a vote for John Kerry.
He is fighting for us!
Sarah Hamby
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 11, 2004
Editorial: Yucca vote
Listen to some politicos talk, and you'd think Yucca Mountain is the burning issue for most Nevada voters, that a candidate's position on the proposed nuclear waste repository is the driving factor when a Silver State resident decides for whom to cast a ballot.
Turns out that's simply not the case.
In a Review-Journal poll conducted last month, only 3 percent of respondents named Yucca Mountain as the most important issue in deciding their presidential vote. A poll released last week by a smaller local media outlet registered a similar result -- and also found a whopping 57 percent don't consider Yucca Mountain important at all.
In fact, Nevada voters are like those everywhere: Their primary concerns are homeland security, the war in Iraq and the economy. Yucca Mountain barely registers.
But you wouldn't know that listening to pandering politicians and their echoes in the media.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 11, 2004
Letter: Stop the fight
To the editor:
It's a shame the way our Nevada politicians are wasting tax dollars fighting the inevitable storage of nuclear waste inside Yucca Mountain. It's long past the time for politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, to stop using the Yucca Mountain Project as a "straw man" issue to advance their political ambitions.
Nevada is spending huge amounts of money to fight something that is a fait accompli -- something that is irreversible. The lawyers are getting rich. Let's use these tax dollars for pragmatic projects.
It is now time for the people to speak up (via an honest poll) and express their views on this subject. The state of Nevada should start negotiating with the nuclear power companies, through the federal government, to charge fees for the storage of nuclear waste.
I think the politicians should be honest for a change and should find some other issues to persuade citizens to vote them into office.
Tony Stephen
Las Vegas
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Reno Gazette Journal
October 11, 2004
As goes Nevada, so goes the rest of the country
Nevada has winning presidential record
David Jacobs
The old slogan in politics used to be “As goes Maine, so goes the nation.’
But folks are starting to look west to Nevada as a presidential bellwether.
One of the best presidential election track records belongs to the Silver State. Nevada has voted for the winner in all but one presidential election since 1912 -- in 1976 when voters narrowly favored incumbent Republican Gerald Ford over Democrat Jimmy Carter.
“We´ve been a working-class state,’ said Guy Rocha, state archivist. “But Nevada has always been essentially a conservative state — conservative Republicans and even conservative Democrats.’
“Essentially, there is only one consistently Democratic county in the state, and that is Clark County. Hypothetically, you could win statewide in 16 of the 17 jurisdictions and lose Clark County and lose the election,’ Rocha said.
In 1992 and 1996, Democrat Bill Clinton won only two Nevada counties in each election but won both times, carrying Clark by sizable margins.
Nevada has winning record
A look at numerous state records, historical accounts, documents and interviews reveals that Nevada´s history is rich, diverse and politically evenhanded when it comes to presidential elections.
Since President Abraham Lincoln declared Nevada a state -- just eight days before being re-elected in 1864 -- Nevada has a 25-10 record in voting for presidential candidates.
Nevadans have rejected an incumbent president only five times: Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1888, Republican William McKinley in 1900, Republican Herbert Hoover in 1932, Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Republican George H.W. Bush (father of the current president) in 1992.
And the Republican presidential nominee has won nine of 12 presidential elections in Nevada when the state has had a GOP governor, currently the case with Gov. Kenny Guinn. Hoover is the last incumbent Republican president to lose Nevada with a Republican in the governor´s office -- 72 years ago during the height of the Great Depression.
Three candidates— Republicans Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George W. Bush in 2000 — carried Nevada, lost the popular vote nationally, but won the presidency by taking the Electoral College.
Overall, voters in the Silver State have chosen 19 Republicans, 15 Democrats, and one People´s Party candidate — James B. Weaver in 1892 — who also was endorsed by the Silver Party in Nevada.
“The key was (Weaver) supported the silver standard for money and got the support of both mining corporations and the miners´ unions in Nevada,’ Rocha said. “They wanted the price of silver sustained.’
“The use of silver as part of the monetary coinage for the United States kept the mines open and provided employment for the workers,’ Rocha added. “Essentially in 1892, Nevada had one major industry, and that was mining, principally silver.’
Nevada full of election history
Before John Kerry this year, the last Democratic presidential nominee to call Massachusetts home — Michael Dukakis in 1988 — took less than 38 percent of the Nevada vote.
Dukakis lost all 16 counties and Carson City to the elder Bush, who matched recent statewide sweeps by fellow Republicans Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984.
Republicans hold the longest presidential election winning streak for one party in Nevada history— six between 1968-1988 — when Republicans Nixon, Ford, Reagan and the elder Bush carried the state. The longest Democratic streak is five — 1932-1948 — when Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman won Nevada.
Roosevelt (who did not face term limits) holds the record with four presidential election wins in Nevada, edging out fellow Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who carried the state three times -- 1896, 1900 and 1908 -- but lost the national election each time.
“Nevada was a silver mining state,’ Rocha said. “Nevada supported William Jennings Bryan because he promised the silver standard — for money. … This had to do with the nature of our industry (silver mining) at that time.
“In 1908, when he (Bryan) ran for a third time, Nevada again supported him,’ Rocha added. “Even though the silver issue wasn´t playing quite the same way, he was kind of like the favorite son. We had been there for him.’
A century passed from Weaver´s win in Nevada before another third party candidate made such an impact.
In 1992, Ross Perot of the Reform Party collected more than 26 percent of the Nevada vote, paving the way for Clinton to defeat the elder Bush by less than 3 percent of the state´s vote.
Perot finished third behind Clinton and Bush but carried Storey County, lost Esmeralda County to Bush by just one vote, and finished second (ahead of Clinton) in six other counties.
White Pine nearly right on
As for bellwether Nevada counties, White Pine, Clark and Mineral counties have backed the winning presidential candidate all but once since 1972.
Until 2000, Clark County voters had supported the winner in seven straight presidential elections. But White Pine comes the closest to a perfect record, losing it in 1996 when it gave the nod to Republican Bob Dole over Clinton by just two votes.
“I don´t think we have ESP,’ said Donna Bath, registrar of voters in White Pine County, home of the only first lady from Nevada — Patricia Nixon of Ely.
“Our voters are very intent on knowing the candidates and what they stand for,’ Bath said. “Most vote for the person, rather than the party. Our voters are always (seeking) to be informed.’
As for consistency, Douglas County has supported every Republican presidential nominee since Alfred Landon 1936. Roosevelt in 1940 is the last Democrat to carry Lyon County while a Democrat has not carried Washoe County since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
What does it take to win statewide?
Former Nevada Gov. Robert List agrees that history shows campaigning for governor and president carry “the same fundamental principles.’
“Personal campaigning is extremely important in Nevada,’ said List, a Republican who won three of four statewide races. “I know it´s important in the rural counties. People want to look you in the eye.’
That helps explain campaign stops in smaller Nevada communities this year by candidates such as Vice President Dick Cheney, who visited Elko, said List, who ran twice for attorney general and twice for governor.
“If you buy a 30-second spot in Las Vegas, you are still going to gain the same (broadcast) coverage that you had 20 years ago,’ said List, 68, a government consultant for Republicans and Democrats.
“But that doesn´t mean you still don´t have to go to Elko,’ List added. “A vote out of Elko is equal to a vote out of Las Vegas. I´ve always felt that all of Nevada plays together. You need to seek support wherever you can find it.’
2004 a significant chapter
For presidential history buffs in Nevada, 2004 is one for the record books with the state taking on “battleground’ status. Democrat Al Gore lost Nevada and its four electoral votes in 2000 by just more than 3.5 percent out of 613,360 ballots cast.
Now with its population growing by more than 75,000 a year, Nevada has five electoral votes — enough to put Kerry or Bush over the top if everything falls into place.
“I think we are getting a good grounding in presidential history with Nevada being a state the parties are fighting over,’ said Robin Holabird, a nonpartisan voter from the Reno area and a state film office executive.
Her campaign memorabilia collection features items dating back to Lincoln, who carried about 60 percent of Nevada´s vote in the state´s first presidential election 140 years ago.
“Presidential history is full of surprises,’ Holabird said. “You rarely can predict what will happen.’
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The Oregonian
October 11, 2004
Erik Sten and Carl Pope: Where Bush and Kerry stand on nuclear waste
Erik Sten and Carl Pope
Here in the Northwest, we have a nuclear waste problem brewing in our back yard. Unfortunately, neither this issue nor the controversial plans to make it worse have received ample attention from the media.
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, located in southeastern Washington State less than 250 miles from Portland, is known as one of the most contaminated sites in the Western Hemisphere. What started in 1943 as a plutonium and tritium production facility became a place to handle the radioactive wastes generated by this nuclear weapons arsenal. According to the watchdog group Heart of America Northwest, in its first 30 years of operation, "multitudes more radiation was released into the air, soil, and water than Soviet officials say escaped at Chernobyl, the site of the worst nuclear accident in history."
Today the site suffers from serious clean-up concerns as well as leaking underground storage tanks that threaten the Columbia River watershed, upon which more than 1.5 million people rely for clean drinking water, fishing and recreation. Cleaning up the dangerous Hanford site is currently estimated to take 50 years and cost billions of taxpayer dollars.
Yet George W. Bush recently announced plans to ship 17,000 truckloads of additional radioactive waste through Oregon and Washington -- including a route along Interstate 5 directly through Portland -- to the Hanford site. Once there, the waste will be buried in the ground near the Columbia River, further complicating efforts to protect this clean water resource.
John Kerry has voted consistently to not only improve the safety of nuclear regulatory programs but also to prevent the unnecessary shipment of hazardous waste across the nation's highways and rails. Acknowledging the potential threats to our communities, Kerry voted repeatedly against efforts to send additional toxic waste to sites like Hanford, insisting instead on a more thorough scientific analysis.
The route to Hanford poses immediate risks to communities across the Northwest. For instance, weight restrictions on many interstate bridges would force the trucks onto secondary roads where they and their nuclear waste would pass by schools and neighborhoods, idling next to cars at the stoplight, winding along the same narrow routes. Unlike the transport of waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada a controversial plan in its own right these nuclear shipments would be transported in trucks that are far less protected against accidents.
Bush's decision to crisscross Washington and Oregon roads with truckloads of highly radioactive waste is reckless and poses serious threats to Northwest communities and to Portland residents specifically. John Kerry voted repeatedly against measures that would allow the shipment of nuclear waste to sites like Hanford prior to the completion of proper scientific analysis.
It's time to look at the facts and consider the costs involved in the careless plan to ship radioactive waste through Portland and other Northwest communities. With so much at stake, it's time to check out the candidates' records and make an informed decision on Nov. 2.
Erik Sten is a Portland city commissioner. Carl Pope is the Sierra Club's executive director.
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Sierra Club
October 11, 2004
Nevada Is Not a Wasteland
President Bush plans to store the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. He says he believes it would be perfectly safe. We in Nevada – along with overwhelming scientific evidence – happen to disagree. Happily, there is a solution . . .
Send the waste to President Bush's Crawford Ranch!
With nearly 1600 acres of space, it's surely big enough. And since its owner thinks storing nuclear waste is perfectly safe – why would he have a problem with it? More importantly, President Bush should not ask Nevadans to do something that he's not prepared to do himself.
Please, sign our petition to the President. Ask him to move the waste to his ranch. Let him know you'll even help clear the brush to make the space. And let him know that Nevada is not a wasteland.
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KSL
October 11, 2004
Enviromentalists Protest Nuclear Storage
A group of environmental activists went to the Skull Valley Indian reservation to protest a plan to store tons of spent nuclear fuel there.
(Skull Valley-AP) -- A group of environmental activists went to the Skull Valley Indian reservation to protest a plan to store tons of spent nuclear fuel there.
They vowed to fight in court if federal regulators let the tiny reservation enrich itself by storing 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods. Utilities in other parts of the country would keep the waste there until a permanent storage site is opened at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
Activists yesterday warned the waste might never be moved.
Goshute member Margene Bullcreek says she's betting the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will turn down the proposal anyway.
Bullcreek was among 35 environmental activists at the wind swept desert valley 45 miles west of Salt Lake City.
Outgoing Utah Governor Olene Walker, who was invited to attend, instead sent a letter of support.
Walker says high level nuclear waste should not be dumped on the reservation or anywhere in Utah.
Both major party candidates for governor, Republican Jon Huntsman Junior and Democrat Scott Matheson Junior, oppose the facility. So do members of Utah's congressional delegation.
University of Utah chemical engineering professor Bonnie Tyler says science is showing there's no safe place to store radioactive nuclear materials safely over thousands of years.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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Las Vegas SUN
October 08, 2004
Moving deadly cargo
Safety questions arise over shipping nuclear waste on nation's railroads
By Steve Kanigher
<steve@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
Weekend Edition: October 10, 2004
Buried in the Energy Department's environmental impact statement on Yucca Mountain is a telling admission:
"Accidents could occur during the transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste."
That is hardly a comforting thought given the catastrophic possibilities of a radioactive release in a densely populated city such as Las Vegas.
The Energy Department would prefer to use railroads instead of trucks to ship most of the nation's spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But the department -- which has been accused of ignoring scientific questions related to repackaging of the waste, to the threat of terrorism and to the mountain as a safe storage site -- has yet to answer the following:
How reliable is the nation's freight-rail system and how can we be sure that it is safe enough to transport the proposed 77,000 tons of radioactive material from 127 sites in 39 states?
The answer is, no one knows for sure because the rail system has yet to be studied in depth as it relates to Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department does not even know the rail routes it would use, let alone the trains and waste storage casks it would use.
Among the rail-safety issues that merit attention are:
· The history of nuclear waste transport by rail and whether it is relevant given the much higher number of shipments that are expected to come to Nevada.
· The railroad accident records of each state that would be crossed by trains carrying radioactive waste.
· The risks involved in transporting nuclear waste by rail from Caliente in Lincoln County to Yucca Mountain, a proposed route of 319 miles.
· The impact deregulation of the railroad industry in 1980 has had on rail safety.
· The impact of railroad worker fatigue.
· The ability of federal and state railroad inspectors to keep on top of safety issues.
Historical perspective
The rail industry and the Energy Department say they believe nuclear waste shipments by rail would be safe based on the success of transports that have occurred nationwide since 1957.
Allan Rutter, then-administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, which oversees safety, made that clear in March while testifying before the House Transportation of Nuclear Waste Subcommittee on Railroads.
"Rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel have a long and very positive safety history, having been transported safely by rail in the United States for more than 46 years," Rutter testified. "During that time, there has never been a single train accident or incident involving these rail shipments that has resulted in an injury, a death or a release of the material from the packaging."
There is dispute about Rutter's claim that there never was a cask leak. According to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state's Yucca Mountain watchdog, three rail yards at unspecified locations were contaminated by cask leaks in June 1960. And there was a cask leak confined to a rail car at another undisclosed location in December 1963.
There have been at least four other train accidents related to nuclear waste transport with no reported radioactive release and four accidents involving trains that were carrying empty decontaminated nuclear waste casks. One was in a North Carolina rail yard in March 1974 when a train with an empty cask was struck by another train that derailed, causing superficial damage to the cask.
The most highly publicized incident occurred in March 1987 in St. Louis when a train carrying nuclear waste to Idaho from the damaged Three Mile Island reactor near Middletown, Pa., collided with a stalled vehicle at a railroad crossing. There were no fatalities or radioactive release, but the city's Board of Aldermen cited the collision in a resolution calling for an end to nuclear waste shipments through that city until a permanent solution for nuclear waste is found.
The Energy Department estimated there would be eight accidents involving nuclear waste trains between 2010, the projected starting date of shipments to Yucca Mountain, and 2034. The state nuclear projects agency predicted 160 to 390 rail accidents based on possible shipments over a 38-year period. Even if the 24-year schedule is met, the state believes the Energy Department has grossly underestimated the number of accidents that would occur.
The reason for the discrepancy is that there have been only about 1,200 rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste in this country -- the history the Energy Department relied on heavily to make its prediction. The state argues that there could be at least 14,000 rail shipments to Yucca Mountain.
"I used to think rail would be safer and cheaper than trucks, but I am beginning to realize it wouldn't be safer or cheaper," said Bob Halstead, Nevada's lead transportation consultant on nuclear waste. "The public perception is that rail would be safer because the number of shipments would be smaller. But rail casks handle four to six times as much nuclear waste as truck casks, so there is a trade-off when it comes to safety and security from terrorism."
Accidents by state
The Energy Department has not yet determined which rail routes the nuclear waste would be transported to Nevada. But Federal Railroad Administration data show that the states with the most noncrossing train accidents from 1995 through 2003 -- mishaps that involve mostly derailments or collisions on main rail lines and in rail yards -- are all sure bets to be included because they are on paths to nuclear reactors.
Those states are Texas (2,731 accidents), Illinois (2,424), California (1,537), New York (1,151), Pennsylvania (1,059), Ohio (951), Iowa (850), Nebraska (838), Kansas (822), Minnesota (752), Missouri (750) and Louisiana (745).
Nevada had 94 noncrossing train accidents from 1995 through 2003. Only seven states had fewer mishaps along main rail lines and in rail yards. Nevada ranks low in this category because it has relatively little freight-train activity compared to other states.
Nationwide there were 9,330 train accidents from 1975 through May that damaged cars carrying hazardous material. Of those accidents, 1,653 resulted in spills and 689 forced temporary evacuations. Nevada only accounted for slightly more than three-tenths of 1 percent of those accidents and four-tenths of 1 percent of the spills.
But the state is not immune from train mishaps.
Nevada's most infamous rail accident involved a passenger train, "The City of San Francisco," which derailed off of a bridge in Eureka County in August 1939. The accident, in which five cars plunged into the Humboldt River, killed 24 people and injured 121. Sabotage was suspected but never proven.
From 1975 through May the state had 497 noncrossing train accidents. Thirty-four of those damaged cars holding hazardous material such as chemical compounds and solvents. There were seven spills, although no deaths or injuries resulted.
Nevada also had 274 incidents -- 48 in Clark County -- where trains and motor vehicles collided at road crossings.
For all train activity combined in Nevada from 1975 through May there were 119 fatalities and 2,742 injuries. Most fatalities were railroad trespassers and motorists involved in train crashes, and most of the injuries were to railroad workers.
To Fred Dilger, a traffic consultant to the state's nuclear projects agency, Nevada's past train accidents are "not like anything that could happen in the future."
"We're looking at orders of magnitude of difference in terms of the shipment of nuclear waste and other hazardous material," Dilger of Henderson said. "High-level nuclear waste is unlike any other hazardous material because it is unsafe even when it is enclosed. The waste packages do not contain all the radiation because there are gamma rays that escape."
The Association of American Railroads, a trade group in Washington, believes its industry is very safe. Nationally there are four rail accidents for every 1 million miles traveled.
"Generally speaking, rail is safe and it is the preferred method of shipping most hazardous waste," spokesman Tom White said. "Last year there were only 25 accidents in this country in which any hazardous material was released. That is out of close to 1.8 million freight cars of hazardous material that moved by rail.
"I don't think anyone has found a way to make anything accident-proof, but you make it as safe as you possibly can. Our record speaks for itself."
Through Nevada
Halstead of Portage, Wis., said Nevada is lucky it hasn't already had a major calamity tied to a hazardous-material spill.
Nevada has 1,200 miles of rail, all owned by Union Pacific Railroad Co. The state ranks 39th in actual track mileage. Nevada is well behind Texas (10,347 miles), Illinois (7,261) and California (5,908). But portions of the Nevada lines go through densely populated Las Vegas and Reno.
In Las Vegas, the rail line cuts through a 30-mile-long urban corridor that also includes nearby petroleum and natural gas pipelines. In 1989 a railroad car in Union Pacific's Las Vegas rail yard overturned and barely missed two petroleum pipelines.
"We do have conditions conducive to severe accidents," Halstead said. "The very fact that we have had accidents in the past is a concern because it tells you more severe accidents are possible. It's not the statistical data that concerns me. It's the conditions we have in Nevada."
One condition in Nevada is extreme summer heat, which can cause rails to expand. In certain parts of the state, extreme cold temperatures can cause rails to contract.
Another condition is Nevada's mountainous terrain, which prompted the state to file another federal lawsuit earlier this month against the Energy Department. Bob Loux, executive director of the state nuclear projects agency, said the federal department exceeded its jurisdiction by proposing in April to build a 319-mile rail route from Caliente to Yucca Mountain.
"There are 11 major mountains that would have to be crossed and that would require tunneling and very steep grades," Loux said.
Energy's strategy is to have most of the nation's radioactive waste shipped by rail to Caliente, a line that would take at least four years and $880 million to build. Rail experts say the safest waste transports would be on short trains -- possibly only five or six cars in length -- to reduce slack and jerky motions that can occur with longer trains.
The railroad industry believes the trains should have no other cargo, be given priority so that other trains on the same tracks would have to move aside and have a security escort.
The Federal Railroad Administration, which has a safety compliance plan for nuclear waste transports, also would require railroads to detect rail flaws so that repairs could be made before shipments occurred. And federal inspectors would check each shipment prior to departure and during each crew change.
Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad and largest hauler of chemicals by rail, is not concerned about transporting spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain, spokesman John Bromley said.
"We have never had a nuclear waste spill or an accident while transporting nuclear waste so we have an excellent track record," Bromley said. "We will handle it with the greatest of care when it comes our way."
But critics say the Caliente route would be unsafe because of steep hairpin curves through the mountains.
"It puts a lot more demand on the operators of the train," said Rick Moore, a rail engineering consultant for Nevada's nuclear projects agency from Laramie, Wyo. "You could be going too fast down a grade and then have a tight curve that the train can't handle, and it could jump the tracks. Because of the weight of the train, it could push on the outside rail and that could pull the rails apart."
If the casks should be thrown from a train in Nevada, Dilger said it could take five hours for special cranes in Los Angeles or Salt Lake City to arrive at the scene to retrieve them.
Critics also say a high volume of nuclear waste could still pass through Las Vegas if the Energy Department chooses southern routes to transport spent nuclear fuel west to California and then back through Nevada.
Railroad deregulation
To help economically depressed railroads, Congress in 1980 deregulated the industry. This led to profitability, but also promoted consolidation to the point where only four railroad companies, including Union Pacific, control 90 percent of the nation's rail-freight business.
Industry representatives say freight-train safety has improved dramatically since deregulation, with a 65 percent decline in train accidents overall and an 86 percent drop in accidents involving hazardous material.
The reason given was that railroads began spending profits on safety upgrades. White said railroads spent $10.1 billion on maintenance and safety improvements in 2002, compared to $5.8 billion in 1980.
"One thing that happened is that the economic condition of railroads has improved," White said. "They have had more money to spend on tracks and equipment, and things are better maintained than they were 20 years ago."
But according to a Labor Department inflation calculator based on the Consumer Price Index, $5.8 billion in 1980 would have translated to $12.6 billion in 2002.
The Federal Railroad Administration also reported in 2002 that railroads reduced their research and development programs "despite record traffic levels in the freight-railroad industry and the creation of fewer, larger railroad companies."
Deregulation also caused major railroads to reduce the amount of track they use nationally from 165,000 miles to 100,000. The result is heavier traffic along the tracks still in use, which Halstead said increases the chances for train accidents.
"The desire of the railroads to maximize profits has led them to do things that have major safety implications, like having 110 cars per train instead of 100 and increasing the payload per train," Halstead said.
"The locations where there are high probabilities for a serious accident are places where there are high speeds, places where two-way traffic is heavy, places where two trains are close enough for collisions to occur or places where there are deficiencies in infrastructure, such as bridges."
The trend also has been to rely on heavier and faster trains. While the standard tank car weighs up to 263,000 pounds, there has been talk that a fully equipped nuclear waste car could weigh as much as 400,000 pounds because of the heavy casks. That has prompted concerns whether the nation's rail beds are strong enough to support heavier trains.
Because of rail consolidation, more cargo also passes through urban rail yards, and because of sprawling suburbs, more people live closer to rail lines than ever before, Halstead said.
"The real problem is when you have railroads hauling hazardous material in close proximity to heavily populated areas," he said.
Worker fatigue
After more than 20 years of steady declines in the number of train accidents, hitting a bottom of 2,397 in 1997, the trend has turned upward, with 2,958 accidents recorded last year.
Of those accidents, 1,197 were caused by human error, the most since at least 1993.
Railroad labor unions believe potential accidents could be avoided if working conditions improved. The United Transportation Union, which represents 46,000 train engineers and conductors, is chagrined that its employees must work longer shifts with less time off because of workforce reductions.
The reductions are partly caused by employees who retired early because of changes in railroad pensions regulated by Congress.
"We have a lot of crews working 12-hour shifts and then given only 10 hours off," spokesman Frank Wilner of Alexandria, Va., said. "A lot of people are getting only five or six hours of sleep a night. The problem is the railroads don't have enough crews. This has led to a significant reduction in morale and the increased potential for human error."
Of Nevada's 497 noncrossing accidents from 1975 through May, which caused $44.4 million in damage to trains and tracks:
· 193 were caused by equipment problems. The most frequent problems were related to overheated axles.
· 165 were caused by human error. The most frequent errors were excessive speed when attempting to link cars and improperly aligned rail switches, which are rail-traffic guidance devices.
· 77 were caused by track problems. Missing or defective rail crossties and broken rails were the leading factors.
· 62 were caused by other factors.
Although three-fourths of those accidents derailed cars, Bromley said Nevada's freight-train system is "very safe." Based on an estimated 50 trains a day -- or 18,250 a year -- that pass through Nevada, the state's eight train accidents last year would have translated to one for every 2,281 trains.
Track problems in Nevada and elsewhere have been reduced by improving the quality of metal used in rails and by replacing old wooden crossties with concrete. Bromley characterized most of Union Pacific's accidents as "fender benders in rail yards," although federal statistics show that 65 percent of the train accidents in Nevada since 1975 have occurred on main rail lines.
"You will always have accidents as long as people are involved," Bromley said.
But some railroad employees don't think the industry shoulders enough blame.
Yucca Mountain is a central issue in a lawsuit rail workers filed in November against the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. in federal court in Sioux City, Iowa. The lawsuit alleges that the railroad -- one of two that operate in Nevada -- disregards safety measures to expedite shipments and increase profits.
The workers allege that the company doesn't report all accidents and injuries to the government. The lawsuit claims vandals can disturb company rail switches because thousands of keys are in circulation that can open generic locks used to secure the switches.
The lawsuit also addresses the Energy Department's intent to contract with Burlington Northern and other railroads to haul nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.
"DOE (the Energy Department) is informing the public and state and local government that using these railroads, including BNSF, is safe," the lawsuit stated. "DOE is wrong. It is not safe to move nuclear waste by rail across the BNSF. DOE could not lawfully enter into such contracts if it knew the truth of the unsafe conditions of BNSF operations."
Lena Kent, a Burlington Northern spokeswoman, declined comment on the lawsuit. But Kent said her company has complete confidence in the rail system, including the Union Pacific rails it uses in Nevada.
"We run a very safe operation and wouldn't do anything to put our crews at risk if we thought it was unsafe," Kent said. "We have no reason to believe the Union Pacific rails are unsafe."
A different take came from Harry Zanville, a San Diego attorney who represents the rail workers in the lawsuit.
"The concerns they have are systemic and involve all 28 states that Burlington Northern comes through," Zanville said. "If they had a calamitous accident with nuclear waste, a lot of people would get hurt and a lot of property would be damaged. It would be a catastrophe. And there are a lot of things that can produce a catastrophic accident.
"We had one incident where the train crew in Iowa was told by management not to inspect the brakes before a train left the rail yard. That train had an accident in a train yard in Denver."
Railroad inspections
Railroads are responsible for inspecting their own tracks and equipment. Their work is checked by Federal Railroad Administration inspectors and, in Nevada's case, by inspectors employed by the state's Public Utilities Commission.
There are about 500 federal and state safety inspectors nationwide. But Halstead said there aren't enough inspectors, resulting in possible under-reporting of accidents.
"Part of the problem with railroad accident statistics are the self-reporting requirements," he said. "There is also a lack of precision in the definitions of an accident."
From 1995 through mid-August, federal and state railroad inspectors conducted 5,734 inspections in Nevada and found 18,745 instances where federal standards were violated. They found fault in:
· 15.8 percent of the railroad's operating practices inspected.
· 12.9 percent of the railroad signals.
· 11.4 percent of the hazardous materials areas.
· 6.7 percent of the cars and locomotives.
· 6.5 percent of the tracks.
Hundreds of things can go wrong with trains. As the Federal Railroad Administration reports, a tank car designed to hold chemicals can malfunction without warning because of corrosion, cracks or fatigue.
Administration spokesman Warren Flatau said many violations fixed immediately do not result in penalties.
"There is a lot of attention placed on human factors, particularly in rail yard settings," Flatau said. "Sometimes we'll do a focused inspection based on accidents that have been reported."
As for the violations in Nevada, Flatau said those figures can be misleading because the real measure of safety is the number of accidents.
"A defect is the equivalent of a warning," Flatau said. "Now if a train pulls out of a yard and there are no shipping papers to go with it, that's a very serious thing. If there is a gaping hole in a car and something is leaking, that would trigger action."
Vic Crumley, one of four PUC rail-safety inspectors, said the defect rates found in Nevada are below what he would consider unsafe.
"We haven't really had a problem in this state with damaged rail," Crumley said. "If you look at the 6.5 percent, that's not an alarming defect rate. I'd say it would be a problem if it was 10 percent or higher."
The federal government can prosecute railroad employees for willful violations of safety regulations and levy civil penalties. Railroads last year paid nearly $11 million in penalties, including $1.4 million for violations of hazardous material standards.
"We take a great amount of care in using limited and finite resources to achieve the goals of the Department of Transportation," Flatau said of inspections.
But Zanville is leery.
"The Federal Railroad Administration performance has been miserable," Zanville said. "There is a problem with underreporting of accidents and injuries. The government responds only when it has to."
Rail postscript
The Energy Department declined requests to discuss rail issues. Instead, spokesman Allen Benson referred to documents stating that it intends sometime before 2010 to create a transportation plan that includes the training of railroad workers.
Dilger has a theory on why rail safety hasn't been studied in detail.
"I believe it is the same reason the DOE has not studied a lot of the safety and security aspects," Dilger said. "They expected that if they got the waste package right, everything else would be OK. They know they can't prevent accidents or keep stupid things from happening on the roadways and railways."
Nuclear scientist Edward Bentz of Springfield, Va., who has worked on federal contracts related to nuclear waste transport, was contracted by the Energy Department beginning in the 1980s to study the nation's railroad system. By the mid-1990s money for transportation studies related to Yucca Mountain dried up, and Bentz took his expertise elsewhere. He now studies homeland security issues.
Federal transportation funding related to Yucca Mountain, $57 million in 1995, dropped all the way down to $2 million by 2000 before picking back up to $64 million this year. During that time, most of the department's efforts were focused on the packaging of the waste in casks, Bentz said.
"Very little money has gone into transportation issues," Bentz said. "And of the transportation money, most of it has gone into the packaging. So most of the qualified people who study transportation issues went elsewhere."
When the department issued its environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain in 2002, the emphasis on transportation was mostly on the amount of radioactivity that could be released in an accident.
Nevada and Clark County have requested in vain that the Energy Department study rail safety.
"We definitely pointed out to the DOE that examining human error and looking at the entire system for moving the waste was central to understanding its impact," Dilger said. "We want the DOE to do a separate environmental impact statement related to the transportation side of the project. But we never heard back ... on that.
"The DOE wants to get this program on. They really believe that the casks are so tough that they don't have to worry too much about accidents."
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San Jose Mercury News
October 10, 2004
Newcomers in Nevada erase edge for Bush, put state up for grabs
By Laura Kurtzman
Mercury News
LAS VEGAS - In the four years since George W. Bush beat Al Gore by about 22,000 votes in Nevada, the state has added nearly 15 times that many people.
Many are thought to be blue-collar workers drawn by Las Vegas' thriving tourist industry, and as much as anything in this unsettled political season, these newcomers are keeping Nevada and its five electoral votes in play.
Bush won the state by 4 percentage points in 2000 and Republicans swept all six statewide offices two years later.
But as the nation's fastest-growing state, Nevada is beset by growth-related problems -- from too few schools to inadequate health care -- that could make the state ever more friendly to the Democrats.
Nevada grew by a phenomenal 70 percent from 1990 to 2000.
``Demographically, what you find is people who might be more likely to identify with the Democratic Party,'' said David Damore, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
But he cautioned that the boom would help the Democrats only if they succeed in turning out their voters, an area where Republicans have always done better. ``At the same time,'' he added, ``I've never seen a year like this.''
With many different groups signing up voters, Democrats have seen a bonanza in registration numbers.
Although they began the year at a numerical disadvantage, the Democrats pulled even with Republicans by August and are now slightly ahead, according to officials with both parties. The number of Democratic voters in Clark County, where Las Vegas is and where about 1.6 million of the state's 2.4 million people live, increased 25 percent.
Republicans have launched their own effort, much of it by mail, registering enough new voters to raise their smaller base 20 percent in Clark County.
Polls show the Nevada race remains tight. A Mason-Dixon poll for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Reviewjournal.com done in mid-September found Bush leading Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry 50 percent to 45 percent among likely voters in the state. The margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points. Four other polls, all done before the first debate between Bush and Kerry on Sept. 30, also had Bush in the lead, with margins ranging from two to nine percentage points, plus or minus.
Some analysts are surprised to find that Bush needs to fight for the state. Nevada's booming economy, as evidenced by the construction cranes that rise above the Las Vegas strip, should be good news for the president.
But his decision to allow the nation's nuclear waste to be stored at an underground repository in Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, appears to have hurt him with some voters.
As a candidate in 2000, Bush promised to let scientists determine whether the site was safe before he allowed it to go forward. But once in office, Bush approved it while the studies were still being done.
Jon Ralston, a non-partisan political analyst in Las Vegas, began the year convinced that Bush wouldn't be hurt by Yucca Mountain because he thought Nevadans had grown sick of debating the issue.
``It's possible a very small number of voters are driven by the Yucca Mountain issue,'' Ralston said. ``It may be enough to make this race close.''
Yucca Mountain is intended to be the single repository for spent fuel from the nation's nuclear reactors. Such fuel is currently stored at each plant. Supporters of Yucca Mountain say it can safely contain the fuel. By centralizing the waste in one site, they say, the radioactive materials can be better kept from terrorists.
On visits to Nevada, Kerry has attacked Bush over Yucca Mountain and has said he would stop the project, but he hasn't said what he would do with the nuclear waste.
Some say Kerry's attacks would have found a wider audience if he had made Yucca Mountain part of a larger argument about what Bush has done wrong on the environment.
``I would have pounded away, if I was Kerry, the fact that Bush reversed quite a few of the clean-air, clean-water initiatives that affect Lake Tahoe,'' said Billy Vassiliadis, a Democratic consultant in Las Vegas. He faults Kerry's national campaign for being flat-footed when it comes to local issues.
Instead, it's been the Bush campaign that has blanketed the airwaves in Reno, near Lake Tahoe, with messages to shore up the heavily Republican base there. Those voters tend to be more moderate than the president on social issues and on the environment. In the first three weeks of August, the Bush campaign advertised more in Reno than in any other market in the nation.
Before the advertising, said Pete Ernaut, a Republican consultant in Reno, polls showed a tie in Washoe County, where Reno is located, despite the Republicans' 15-point registration advantage.
But after the Republican convention, he said, Bush was leading by eight or nine points, ``which is where we should be.'' He added that the change was a reflection of ``not just the success of the Bush message, but it's also the weakness of the Kerry message.''
Republicans also are heartened by the presence of independent candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot, although he's barely registered in the polls.
Democrats, however, may have other reasons to hope for victory.
A ballot measure to raise the minimum wage and a hot race in the 3rd Congressional District, which includes the southern portion of Las Vegas, are expected to bring Democrats to the polls.
And then there's the success of their voter-registration groups.
``It's been startling,'' said Ralston, the analyst. ``It's got to be worrying the Republicans.''
Contact Laura Kurtzman at lkurtzman@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5608.
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New York Times
October 10, 2004
Bill Allows Atomic Waste to Remain in Tanks
By Matthew L. Wald
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - House and Senate conferees have agreed to let the Energy Department leave some highly radioactive waste in tanks in South Carolina and Idaho, instead of pumping it out and preparing it for deep burial, effectively reversing a court ruling in a case brought by environmentalists last year.
The agreement is spelled out in an amendment, introduced by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and attached to a military appropriations bill. Once conferees reach agreement, approval of such bills is usually routine.
The Energy Department has defined some of the salts and sludges in the tanks, left over from the production of plutonium for bombs, as "waste incidental to reprocessing;" that means it is not high-level waste, which is covered by laws requiring that it be solidified and put in a "deep geologic repository," presumably Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
A Federal District Court judge in Idaho ruled in July, in a case brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council, that the department did not have the authority to redefine the waste, and the department went to Congress to get that authority. The suit was supported by South Carolina, Idaho and Washington.
The environmental group said that leaving the waste in place would arbitrarily create "national sacrifice zones." Geoffrey Fettus, who brought the suit, said: "Congress is trying to throw out more than two decades of nuclear waste cleanup law, in flagrant disregard of public health. Congress did this behind closed doors, with no debate or public input, attaching it to an unrelated bill, one designed to support our troops."
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement that the new provision "will allow the Department of Energy to move forward with safe and sensible environmental cleanup of nuclear waste storage tanks." The department will be required to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the states to set appropriate standards, Mr. Abraham said.
The department said no one ever contemplated that it would be able to get all of the waste out of the tanks, and that the issue was its ability to set standards. It plans to put grout over the remaining wastes to stabilize them.
But at another environmental group, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Brice Smith, a physicist, said government agencies have raised questions since 1991 about the stability of the grout. Among the problems, he said, is that the waste generates heat, and that the temperature in the environment around the tanks varies greatly by season. The resulting temperature differences could create cracks in the grout, he said. The group had previously calculated that if as little as one part in 1,000 of the radioactive cesium in the tanks were allowed to escape in the first 100 years, local drinking water supplies would be polluted above allowable standards.
The tanks with the largest volume of waste are in the government's Hanford nuclear reservation, in Washington. Representative Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, said in a statement, "This deal allows D.O.E. to establish a dangerous precedent for Hanford on reclassifying high-level nuclear waste because it suggests that less cleanup is needed if the name of the waste is arbitrarily changed."
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Casper Star-Tribune
October 10, 2004
Enviromental groups bring protest over nuclear storage to Skull Valley reservation
SKULL VALLEY, Utah (AP) - If the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission lets this tiny reservation enrich itself by storing tons of spent nuclear fuel, environmental groups say they will wage a battle in the courts to overturn the decision.
Given the project's many delays, ''I believe the facility won't be coming through,'' said Margene Bullcreek at a gathering of 35 environmental activists at the wind-swept desert valley 45 miles west of Salt Lake City.
Bullcreek was the only member of the Skull Valley band of Goshutes to show up Saturday near a spot that would be turned into a way station for spent fuel rods, which might later be moved to a permanent burial ground at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
But she said tribal politics kept away many of the 123 other Goshute members who oppose Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of seven electrical utilities whose nuclear power plants are fast running out of onsite storage for the depleted but radioactive fuel rods.
''They say it will just be temporary, but there are no plans for an exit strategy, and that should be a red flag for everyone,'' said Jason Groenewold, director of Healthy Environmental Alliance of Utah and one of the visitors to the 18,000-acre reservation. ''We need to remember and be very clear that once the waste gets here, no one else is going to take it.''
Outgoing Utah Gov. Olene Walker, who was invited to attend, instead sent a letter of support.
''High-level nuclear waste should not be dumped on the reservation or anywhere in Utah,'' Walker wrote. ''It will only create a serious, new risk for the Skull Valley Band.''
Both major party candidates for governor, Republican Jon Huntsman Jr. and Democrat Scott Matheson Jr., oppose the facility, as do the members of Utah's congressional delegation.
Also on hand Saturday, fighting wind-blown sand and rain, was University of Utah chemical engineering professor Bonnie Tyler, who said science is showing Yucca Mountain isn't a viable option to store nuclear materials safely over thousands of years. ''The scientific community does not know how to solve the problem,'' she said.
Even though the project would bring millions of dollars to the tribe and members, ''it is poisonous and it's going to affect our small reservation, the only small piece of land that is left for us,'' Bullcreek said.
The Skull Valley Band has been locked in a leadership battle since Tribal Chairman Leon Bear signed a lease in 1997 allowing PFS to store up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in upright steel-and-concrete casks on Goshute land.
The NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is expected to decide early next year whether Skull Valley can safely keep nuclear fuel. The board in March 2003 stalled construction by ruling the chances of a fighter jet from Hill Air Force Base crashing into the storage pad makes the project too risky. It has taken arguments for and against that decision and is weighing other aspects of the project.
As planned, the storage pad would hold up to 4,000 casks filled with depleted nuclear fuel - about 10 million rods - across 100 acres of the Skull Valley. The waste would be shipped over rail lines, mostly from reactors east of the Mississippi. Utah has no nuclear power plants.
Pete Lister, coordinator of the Nuclear Free Great Basin Campaign, said the nuclear industry was exploiting the Goshute's sovereignty and called on Goshutes to reject the project.
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Deseret News
October 10, 2004
Gathering opposes nuclear waste storage
By Tiffany Erickson
Deseret Morning News
SKULL VALLEY, Tooele County — Fighting sandstorms, wind and rain, representatives of environmental groups from Utah and other states gathered this weekend on the Goshute Indian Reservation here to oppose plans to store nuclear waste.
Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a corporation that represents eight nuclear utilities, has contracted with the Goshutes to store 40,000 tons of nuclear waste in above ground canisters on the reservation, located about 75 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
But some tribe members and dozens of environmental groups vehemently oppose bringing waste into the state.
Margene Bullcreek lives on the reservation and has been one of the leaders opposing the waste storage. She said it is important for the public to know there are tribe members who do oppose it and that it is an issue that has divided the tribe.
"PFS is a large corporation targeting our small traditional Native American reservation for its dangerous project, and taking advantage of our sovereignty," Bullcreek said. "Sovereignty isn't selling your heritage to the highest bidder. . . . The dump will threaten our tribe's health, cultural traditions and reservation community life."
But on the flip side, storing the waste could spell economic prosperity for the impoverished reservation.
Aside from money, Pete Lister, coordinator of the Nuclear Free Great Basin Campaign, said it is also a chance for tribe members to assert their rights as Native Americans to use their lands how they see fit.
That view is understandable, Lister said, but the nuclear industry is exploiting that sovereignty and fails to support those who have a spiritual tie to the land.
"People say 'We can get rich off this . . . why is Utah against it?' " Bullcreek said. "But it is poisonous and it's going to affect our small reservation, the only small piece of land that is left for us. We welcome the states' contentions to oppose the waste."
The site would be a "temporary" storage site inasmuch as the contract is for 20 years with an option for renewal. Utah officials and other groups, who are fighting the proposal, are concerned it will become permanent.
"They say it will just be temporary, but there are no plans for an exit strategy, and that should be a red flag for everyone," said Jason Groenewold, director of Healthy Environmental Alliance or Utah (HEAL Utah). "We need to remember and be very clear that once the waste gets here, no one else is going to take it."
In March 2003, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied PFS its license to begin construction of the dump, citing a risk of accidents involving F-16 fighter jets that routinely pass over the valley en route to Hill Air Force Base.
In May 2003, PFS appealed the decision and offered to reduce the size of the site. But it was turned down due to the process in which the appeal was filed.
The proposal remains on the table.
"We need to stop the nuclear industry from targeting vulnerable communities — that's what they do," Lister said. "We don't want this impression to be left — whether it's in the press or in public policy — that these communities are just going to roll over. There is in fact solidarity behind them."
Lister said events like the Skull Valley gathering are organized to help demonstrate that there is support for people who struggle in these indigenous or vulnerable communities.
About 60 people attended the three-day event, including representatives from HEAL Utah, the Goshute and Wind River reservations and environmental groups like the Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen, Oregon-based Peaceworks and Citizen Alert of Reno, Nev.
Saturday's was the second protest gathering in Skull Valley since 2001.
E-mail: terickson@desnews.com
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Salt Lake Tribune
October 10, 2004
Las Vegas SUN - Moving deadly cargo
N-waste protesters rally at Skull Valley
Supported by politicians: Top state officials also oppose storing spent fuel rods at the reservation
By Patty Henetz
SKULL VALLEY - Even if the Nuclear Regulatory Agency licenses a high-level nuclear waste storage facility on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation - and tribal member Margene Bullcreek has her doubts - the facility would face another round of resistance, Bullcreek promised Saturday.
At a protest that drew about 35 activists to the reservation 45 miles west of Salt Lake City, Bullcreek, founder of Ohngo Guadadeh Devia Awareness, said the grass-roots group would file a legal challenge to any license granted to Private Fuel Storage (PFS).
Given the project's ongoing delay, "I believe the facility won't be coming through," she said. "If it does, Ohngo Guadadeh Devia will appeal."
Those attending the protest included members of the Shundahai Network, a group working to keep nuclear waste out of the Great Basin, and HEAL Utah, which works on environmental health-related issues.
Jason Groenewold of HEAL Utah said such gatherings have helped stall the project. "People have been dedicated to the effort to keep Utah from becoming a dumping ground," he said, warning that believing the facility would be temporary is futile. "Once the waste gets here, no one else is going to take it," he said.
Gov. Olene Walker, whom Bullcreek invited to attend the protest, instead sent a letter of support.
"High-levelnuclear waste should not be dumped on the reservation or anywhere in Utah," Walker wrote. "It will only create a serious, new risk for the Skull Valley Band."
Both major party candidates for governor, Republican Jon Huntsman Jr. and Democrat Scott Matheson Jr., oppose the facility, as do the members of Utah's congressional delegation.
No other members of the Goshute tribe attended, though many oppose the PFS proposal, Bullcreek said. She attributed their absence to intertribal disputes.
The Skull Valley Band has been locked in a leadership battle since Tribal Chairman Leon Bear in 1997 signed a lease with PFS to allow the company to store up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on Goshute land.
The proposal must be approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has been holding meetings on the license.
PFS is a consortium of seven electrical utilities whose nuclear power plants are running out of on-site storage for spent fuel rods. Proponents say it would provide temporary storage for some of the nation's deadliest nuclear waste that later would be transported to the permanent facility planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The Energy Department has promised to open the Nevada repository by 2010, but many doubt the federal government will be able to meet the deadline.
University of Utah chemical engineering professorBonnie Tyler told the protesters that science is showing Yucca Mountain isn't a viable option to store nuclear materials safely. "The scientific community does not know how to solve the problem," she said.
As planned, the facility would be big enough to hold up to 4,000 steel-and-concrete containers of spent fuel - about 10 million rods - on concrete pads sprawling across 100 acres of the Skull Valley Goshute reservation. The waste would be shipped over rail lines, mostly from reactors east of the Mississippi. Utah has no nuclear power plants.
As an oncoming cold front whipped thick dust into the open-sided tent across the desert valley from where the casks would sit,Western Shoshone tribal elder Corbin Harney pleaded with the gathering to honor younger generations' need for clean water, air and Earth. "Let's bring this to the attention of the world," Harney said.
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The Seattle Times
October 10, 2004
Plutonium: Is it really in safe hands?
Mark Clayton
Christian Science Monitor
The biggest threat facing the United States — and the world — is the spread of nuclear material to rogue states and terrorists. So say terrorism experts. Both major American presidential candidates concurred in their first televised debate.
So why is the United States moving plutonium from military to less secure civilian control? And why, critics ask, is it embarking on research programs that teach other nations how to use plutonium in nuclear-power plants after a quarter-century of opposing such moves? Knowing terrorists are seeking nuclear material, nations have made strides to secure bomb-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU). But they have paid far less attention to an alternative: plutonium.
Last week, about 300 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium oxide was shipped from the United States to France for use in nuclear plants. The U.S. shipment, its first overseas, is not only a security threat but also clouds America's nonproliferation message, critics say.
Moreover, it focuses attention on plutonium from another source: nuclear-power plants. This "separated" plutonium can be converted into a weapon and poses a threat comparable to HEU, experts say.
"The big risk we face with separated plutonium is from theft by terrorists at a factory making reactor fuel — maybe an inside job," said David Albright, a researcher at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington think tank. "You always have to worry about the physical protection of plutonium. Nations always tell you their protection is good. But it may not be enough."
Consider:
• The world is swimming in plutonium. Although military stockpiles have stabilized, the amount of civilian-held plutonium has doubled in the past 13 years, said a new ISIS report. At the end of 2003, 14 nations' civilian reactors held 235 metric tons of the most dangerous variety in terms of a terrorist threat — separated plutonium. That's enough material to fashion some 40,000 Nagasaki-sized weapons; the amount is growing by five to 10 tons a year.
• France annually converts tons of this plutonium to a mixed-oxide or MOX fuel, which is trucked to its nuclear-power plants. Despite its "reactor grade" label, MOX could make an effective bomb — as a U.S. test in 1962 revealed. Even if a weapon "fizzled" because its plutonium was only reactor-grade, it would still yield a one-kiloton explosion that would "rip the heart out of a city," said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
• While it's far simpler to make a bomb from HEU, it's conceivable that terrorists could build a plutonium-based device with expert help, observers say. Just 15 pounds of the material, a baseball-sized chunk, would be enough to wipe out a large portion of a major city. Last month, Kyrgyz security agents arrested a man trying to sell 60 small containers of plutonium.
Precautions stressed
The United States has carefully protected this onetime shipment of plutonium to France, countered Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy. "There are efforts and procedures in place we're not going to discuss publicly."
By developing new technology to reprocess the plutonium in nuclear fuel, the United States can boost its energy independence and reduce the volume of nuclear waste, the Bush administration argues. It contends this could make unnecessary a second nuclear-waste repository beyond Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
"It is our hope that this technology will ... provide the benefits of recycling spent fuel without increasing proliferation risks," Kyle McSlarrow, deputy secretary of Energy, told Congress in July.
Plutonium is created when uranium fuel is irradiated within a nuclear reactor. Reprocessing extracts the plutonium from spent fuel, which may then be fabricated into more fuel for reactors. Civilian plutonium comes in two basic varieties: the separated plutonium and irradiated plutonium, which is embedded within spent nuclear fuel rods.
Ironically, irradiated plutonium is less worrisome because it is so radioactive. Terrorists typically wouldn't be able to handle spent rods without fatal consequences, though it could be used in a dirty bomb. But separated plutonium could be diverted within a plant or stolen en route and readily transformed back into metal plutonium suitable for bombs, nonproliferation experts say.
Earlier efforts
The arrival in France on Wednesday of U.S. weapons-grade plutonium — destined for fabrication into commercial reactor fuel — highlights these concerns.
During the 1960s, it was thought that future shortages of uranium would make it economical to extract plutonium from reactor waste and use it for fuel. Some nations forged ahead — Britain, France, Japan and the Soviet Union among them — despite the higher cost of reprocessing. So did the United States — until India in 1974 conducted a "peaceful nuclear explosion" using a device created with plutonium culled from a research reactor.
Recognizing the danger of nuclear proliferation, Presidents Ford and Carter discouraged the use of plutonium as a fuel in civilian reactors. The U.S. government withdrew its support for a "plutonium economy," throttling back America's use of plutonium as reactor fuel.
So while the U.S. military has plenty of weapons-grade plutonium, America has refused to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium for civilian use. Therefore, the United States does not have a growing stockpile of civilian plutonium — which some would say is a huge blessing, given the costs involved in disposing of it.
Even so, the idea of plutonium for civilian use gained a toehold during the Clinton administration. The United States and Russia in 2000 signed a disarmament treaty to dispose of "excess" military plutonium by following a dual-track approach. Some of the 34 metric tons of military plutonium from each country would be mixed with nuclear waste and put into canisters for burial — while the rest would be made into MOX for use in the United States and Russia.
Russia had resisted the burial option, declaring plutonium a valuable resource. In January 2002, the Bush administration dropped the idea, too. Instead, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced all 34 tons of excess U.S. weapons plutonium would be made into MOX for power plants.
"The U.S. and Russia have agreed to dispose of 34 tons each of weapons plutonium through the Russians' preferred method of conversion to MOX," said Wilkes, whose agency oversees the joint weapons-to-MOX program. "We need the Russians on board."
The U.S. plan calls for France to create a limited amount of reactor fuel from the weapons-grade plutonium and then ship it back to South Carolina's Catawba nuclear plant for a test next spring. After that, the plan is for MOX to be made on U.S. soil at a new $2.2 billion fabrication plant in South Carolina. The facility is to be completed by 2008 by a U.S. subsidiary of Areva, the French company that's supplying the MOX to Catawba.
The plan faces some obstacles. Environmentalists have filed suit in a bid to block the use of MOX fuel in the Catawba plant. A bigger obstacle is a dispute between Russia and the United States over who would be liable in case of an accident or terrorist act involving U.S. contractors working in Russia on the new MOX plant there. Absent an agreement, the whole plan will grind to a halt, analysts say.
Officially, the United States still discourages other nations from using plutonium-based fuels in civilian reactors. But shipping plutonium to France to make MOX undercuts any U.S. efforts to discourage the likes of Iran and North Korea from reprocessing spent reactor fuel, several experts say.
Bad example?
Even for disarmament purposes, the use of MOX in U.S. power plants "sets a terrible example for the world" when burying the material is still an alternative, said Paul Leventhal, head of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington. "You don't want to in any way legitimate the use of bomb-grade fuels to generate electricity — because you can do that with low-grade fuels. So why allow it?"
In May 2001, the Bush administration's new National Energy Policy emphasized the use of nuclear power to meet energy needs. At the same time, it also endorsed and promoted reconsideration of "advanced reprocessing" of spent reactor fuel. Despite the administration's hopes, such material would not significantly decrease terrorists' ability to use it to make a bomb, critics say.
The United States has spearheaded the Generation IV International Forum with some 10 nations to develop new generation nuclear power plants. At least three of the five reactor designs under consideration would use recycled plutonium, said Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist in the global-security program of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The United States has also contracted with South Korea and other nations to work on the International Nuclear Energy Research Initiative, which includes new technologies for recycling plutonium. South Korea revealed last month that in 1982 some of its civilian researchers, without permission, had separated plutonium.
The revelation caused an uproar among nonproliferation experts, who worry about civilian programs developing reprocessing expertise that can lead to weapons development. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said the experiments were "of serious concern."
Meanwhile, Japan has a new reprocessing plant seeking certification. India wants to expand its reprocessing capacity. China has said it, too, wants to reprocess for civilian purposes.
Hard to track
The spread of reprocessing technology, combined with the move to use MOX fuel in U.S. reactors, comes at a time when the world is desperate to corral loose nuclear material before terrorists can get it.
Plutonium is especially hard to track. When it's being reprocessed or fabricated, it sticks to nearly everything it comes in contact with.
Last year, for example, international nuclear inspectors reported that the Tokaimura nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant north of Tokyo could not account for some of its plutonium — enough to make 25 nuclear weapons.
Similarly, France's COGEMA Cadarache plant where the United States shipped its excess military plutonium, was found by EURATOM in 2002 to have "an unacceptable amount of material unaccounted for," according to a recent report in Nuclear Fuel, a trade publication.
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Chicago Tribune
October 10, 2004
A new generation of atom power
Federal regulators have extended the operating licenses of 26 nuclear generating plants around the country past their original life expectancies. Applications for extensions for another 42 plants are pending or expected. Exelon Corp., which owns Commonwealth Edison of Illinois, says it intends to seek license extensions for all or most of the 10 nuclear power plants it owns.
The reasoning behind the decisions to prolong the life of these plants is fairly simple: They're safe and their construction costs have been paid, so they're relatively cheap to operate.
And yet, while the U.S. is extending the life of the last generation of nuclear plants, the notion of building new nuclear facilities is all but forgotten. It's time for that to change.
That is, it's time for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to prune the bramble of regulations that has effectively prevented construction of nuclear plants in the U.S. for almost 30 years. What began as prudent federal oversight has turned into the near destruction of an industry by endless government regulation and litigation brought by environmental groups.
There's a clear reason to revive the nuclear industry: The U.S. needs the juice. Between 1993 and 2003, electricity use of all types nationwide increased by nearly 20 percent, according to the Edison Electrical Institute. By 2020, the U.S. will need an estimated 40 percent more energy. Nuclear power must be part of the mix.
Nuclear power construction in the U.S. has been stymied by safety and environmental concerns--some reasonable, others not--stemming from the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. But while new construction all but stopped in the U.S., other countries continued to upgrade and expand their nuclear generating capacity.
France now has 59 reactors that generate nearly 80 percent of its electricity. Belgium gets 55 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and Sweden 49 percent. The U.S. generates only 20 percent of its electricity from the 103 reactors operating in the country. The U.S. uses coal to generate approximately half of its electricity.
Countries like France have concluded that every energy source has its financial costs and environmental liabilities and that--all factors considered--nuclear is a desirable option.
Oil has to be imported--to a large extent from politically unstable parts of the world--and is also expensive. Coal pollutes and relies, in some instances, on strip mining. Prices of natural gas, which has its own environmental problems, fluctuate. To build a pipeline to tap natural gas sources in Alaska will be enormously expensive. More exotic sources--wind and solar power--ought to be part of the mix, but they have their own drawbacks and have failed to be placed into widespread use.
A study released in August by the University of Chicago pointed out that with the help of federal loan guarantees and investment tax credits, the cost of nuclear plant construction would approach that of coal- and gas-fired plants. Congress should promote such incentives.
If stringent policies against the release of greenhouse gases are eventually imposed on coal-fired plants, or carbon capture and sequestration strategies don't turn out to be effective, the study says, nuclear power generation could become fully price-competitive with fossil fuels.
An important step to revive nuclear energy has to be for Congress to break the impasse over construction of a national repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
President Bush approved the Yucca Mountain site on Feb. 15, 2002, and Congress ratified his decision that summer. By the end of 2004, the Department of Energy is expected to request an operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Brace yourself for more lawsuits and delays.
Right from the start, the building of a repository at Yucca Mountain has been politicized beyond all science or reason. During his first campaign, President Bush promised to study the science and safety considerations regarding the repository, and ultimately gave the go-ahead. Now, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has vowed to put the kibosh on construction of the repository.
The latest twist in the saga to open Yucca Mountain illustrates how absurd the nuclear power debate can get. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set a standard to guarantee that waste at Yucca Mountain would be stored safely for 10,000 years. Responding to environmental groups and state officials, a three-judge appeals court ruled in July that the EPA must use an even higher standard, as recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. That could make it impossible to build a repository that meets government requirements. Congress can establish that a 10,000-year standard be used, and it should do so.
Meanwhile, there are some faint signs of life for the nuclear construction industry. Last year, three utilities, including one in central Illinois, were preparing applications to build new reactors, a sign of an industry coming back from the edge.
Environmental organizations argue that the government does a poor job of regulating older nuclear plants and that most of them ought to be shut down. They also cite concerns about national security, the threat that terrorists would attack a nuclear plant or obtain nuclear material here.
All legitimate concerns, but all answerable. The nuclear industry has learned a great deal about safety and reliability over the decades. And the concerns about nuclear power must be weighed against the various safety and environmental concerns about drilling for oil and gas, strip mining for low-sulfur coal and using high-sulfur coal from underground mines.
The country's demand for electricity is going to grow dramatically. The U.S. must revive the nuclear option.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
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Express Times
October 10, 2004
Pollution divides political activists
Environmental issues keep Bush, Kerry on defensive.
By Kurt Bresswein
The Express-Times
Backers of President Bush's environmental policies speak softly, building their cases on the president's overall character and occasional victories in cleaning up the air and water.
His detractors create Web sites and organize voter-education drives to support presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.
Bush's opponents are also clear about their frustration with the president's stewardship of the nation's natural resources.
"I would say that we've been running in place for four years," said William Rosebrock, chairman of the Warren County Environmental Commission. "We haven't made any progress, and there's been a lot of discouragement in people in the environmental community. We're losing a lot of battles."
Rosebrock and his ilk have plenty of anti-Bush ammo:
( Toxic pollutants in America's air, water and land have increased in volume for the first time since 1997, and it's happened under the Bush's administration's watch.
( A June report put Pennsylvania in first place in deaths blamed on power-plant emissions.
( Environmentalists and sometimes entire states seemed to challenge every new regulation the administration proposed.
High on Rosebrock's and other environmentalists' list of Bush's misdeeds was the energy task force established in 2001. The participants and meeting minutes have been kept secret, yielding suspicion of a national energy policy beholden to the fossil-fuel industries. Congress has not passed Bush's energy bill.
"That bill drafted by representatives that clearly have vested financial interests was sent to Congress and was brought to a vote without a single public hearing," said David McGuire, a Bethlehem resident and professor of chemistry and environmental science at Muhlenberg College.
"If it's not good for big business, Bush doesn't believe in it," said Moore Township native Michelle Zielinski, now of Pueblo, Colo., before taking her Great Dane, Tasha, for a walk at Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center during a recent visit home.
Campaign organizers hoping to re-elect Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are fighting criticism by bringing attention to unprecedented cuts mandated in mercury and in emissions produced by off-road, heavy-duty diesel vehicles.
The campaign also points to the Bush administration's continuation of a 30-year expansion of the national economy while decreasing air pollution from the six major pollutants: carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter.
Americans served by water systems meeting all health-based standards rose from 79 percent in 1993 to 94 percent, or 251 million people, in 2002, according to the Bush-Cheney camp.
"Some of these environmental groups are all too often preoccupied with perfection, and perfection should not be the enemy of progress," re-election campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said. "The president is interested in working in a bipartisan fashion to achieve progress in terms of cleaning up the environment."
The Sierra Club endorses Sen. Kerry
The largest and oldest of the environmental groups, the Sierra Club, announced in May its endorsement of Kerry in the Nov. 2 election. As the big day approaches, the club continues to ratchet up its voter-education campaign in 10 states.
"People are very hungry for information," Sierra Club spokeswoman Elise Annunziata said from the education campaign's office in Narberth, Montgomery County. "They don't know where the candidates stand."
The Sierra Club's campaign centers on the distribution of fliers comparing Bush's and Kerry's records. The goal is to illuminate their environmental priorities. They paint Bush as a friend of industries that pollute, who proposes weaker rules on mercury in the air and arsenic in the water than the Democrats.
Kerry, on the other hand, voted for cutting taxpayer subsidies to industries that spread animal waste contamination and also to logging companies. He vows to redirect money to jobs restoring damaged forests and to increase funding for enforcement of environmental laws, according to the Sierra Club.
Nazareth resident Karl Loser, a Republican and clean-water advocate, cautions voters against making their choice for president without considering all the factors that go into environmental policy.
"It's circumstance really," said the secretary of the Forks of the Delaware Chapter 482 of Trout Unlimited. "There's give and take in everything. What's great for us is going to hurt somebody else.
"I think Mr. Bush is more sincere. I like what he's doing more than what Kerry says he may or may not want to do."
Tom Ford of Phillipsburg, pausing before a September evening run at Merrill Creek Reservoir in Harmony Township, expressed a similar view of Kerry.
"He doesn't really say what he's going to do," said Ford, a Vietnam War veteran like Kerry. "He says, George W. Bush is wrong on this, wrong on that, but he doesn't say what he's going to do to right it.
"I would love to vote for him," Ford said about Kerry, "but he doesn't say what he's going to do."
The environmental records of Kerry and Bush have given the Sierra Club plenty of partners in condemning the environmental policies of the Bush administration.
Eight environmental groups in September filed suit to challenge new Bush administration rules that allow the government to approve new pesticides with fewer reviews by government wildlife experts on the potential effects on endangered species.
Even federal attempts at further study of wildlife drew skepticism. Saying the U.S. Interior Department routinely ignored its power to defer energy leases to protect wildlife, environmentalists scoffed at the department's August announcement that it would delay some new oil and gas drilling projects until the effects on wildlife are studied more thoroughly.
Logging has sparked battles as well. In September, the Allegheny Defense Project sued to stop the Bush administration's use of the Healthy Forest Initiatives to log the Allegheny National Forest. The suit charged the U.S. Forest Service was dividing one plan into 19 projects to avoid environmental studies.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman had visited that 513,000-acre forest in western Pennsylvania on Earth Day this year. Her explanation that the president's plans for harvesting millions of dollars of trees blown down in storms last July drew claims the administration was pandering to gas, oil and timber interests.
Fear of clear-cut logging led to criticism from the Campaign to Protect America's Lands. The nonprofit group charged that the administration's proposal to repeal President Clinton's "roadless rule" in national forests would endanger 163 miles of the Appalachian Trail that runs from Georgia to Maine.
Alternative energies move into mainstream
Satisfying the nation's energy needs underlies both candidates' plans for environmental protection.
Both Bush and Kerry have plans for alternatives to oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear fuels for electricity.
Bush's energy bill, which Democrats in Congress blocked in 2003, authorized $300 million for solar power development. Kerry is committed to a national goal of producing 20 percent of the nation's electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass by 2020.
In the meantime, the debate continues over how to best control pollution.
An EPA study released in June said the amount of toxic pollutants jumped 5 percent in 2002, making it the highest increase since the federal government in 1988 started tracking toxins in the nation's air, water and land. The only other increase was in 1997.
The agency said industries spewed 4.79 billion pounds of poisonous substances in 2002. Mercury increased by 10 percent, lead by 3 percent. Another well-known toxin, dioxin, dropped 5 percent.
In the wake of the report, the environmental group PennEnvironment announced in August that 45 percent of fish sampled from Pennsylvania waterways exceeded safe levels of mercury for women of average weight who eat two fish meals a week.
The data for PennEnvironment's study came from EPA statistics from 1999 to 2001. The group used the figures to oppose the Bush administration's proposal to cut emissions of mercury, which can impair the brain and kidneys.
Bush's proposal, which his campaign touts as the first-ever mandated cut in mercury emissions from power plants, requires a 70 percent reduction by 2018. The Clinton administration had proposed cutting mercury emissions by 90 percent by 2008.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey in June joined nine other states in announcing formal opposition to the Bush administration proposal.
"Why do we have to wait for 14 years to reduce mercury in our lakes and rivers?" asked Kerry campaign spokesman Mark Nevins. He later added, "Their whole mission is to save these corporations money at the expense of our health."
Rosebrock, from the Warren County Environmental Commission, urged the federal government to institute and enforce tougher emissions standards today. The cost would be defrayed over time by lower health care costs resulting from less pollution, he said.
"If I had my way, the law would state: If the technology is available, put it on," Rosebrock said. "I'm going to pay one way or the other."
McGuire, the Muhlenberg professor, said technology is also available to increase fuel efficiency in light trucks and sport utility vehicles. The problem is resistance by the Bush administration against requiring their use, McGuire said.
Auto emissions paired with increasing power-plant pollution builds up as prevailing winds push the dirty air east over Pennsylvania and New Jersey, McGuire said.
"It's quite clear that the Bush-Cheney environmental program has just been terrible, and it impinges on me here in the Lehigh Valley," McGuire said.
While some pollutants have risen, the EPA notes progress in total emissions of carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter. Those have dropped from 301.5 million tons in 1970 to 147.8 million tons in 2003, the EPA reported.
Bud Allen, chairman of the Warren/Northampton Regional Air Quality Advisory Panel, said it is too early to tell whether Bush administration policies have impacted air quality at all.
"We haven't seen enough of the data to see trends on what's been done in the Bush administration," Allen said.
Nevertheless, Allen notes victories for clean air in the Bush administration, including a rule finalized in May that mandates reductions in pollution from heavy-duty diesel engines used in construction, agricultural and industrial equipment.
What's the country to do with nuclear waste?
Figuring out the future of the nation' stock of nuclear waste represents another great challenge for the next administration: maintaining clean water for drinking and wildlife habitat and dealing with hazardous waste.
The Kerry campaign has sided with opponents of the Bush administration's plans for storing the nation's spent nuclear fuel in Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Kerry spoke about his opposition to the plan during visits last summer to Nevada. But, Nevins, his campaign spokesman, notes that the danger affects all Americans.
"To get all the nuclear waste there you have to put it on railcars and trucks that go within miles of people's downtowns and schools and communities," Nevins said.
The Kerry campaign accuses Bush of backing away from campaign promises to base his support of the Yucca Mountain plan on "sound science." Nevins said Kerry is making that same promise over the thorny, no-one-wins issue.
"We need to make sure that the sound science says that that site is the best site, and I think we also need to have more information about the security of the transportation of the nuclear waste," he said.
On the issue of cleaning up toxic pollution on land, Bush touts his bipartisan 2002 brownfields legislation that speeds the cleanup of former industrial sites to better protect public health, create jobs and revitalize communities.
The Kerry campaign says the key is to put more money into the Superfund, the nation's program for holding polluters responsible for the cleanup of the nation's worst toxic dumps.
This region has eight sites on the EPA's final National Priorities List for Superfund -- from Lower Macungie Township in Pennsylvania to Kingwood Township in New Jersey.
Kerry promises to work with Congress to reinstate the "polluter pays" tax on chemical and oil companies. Enesta Jones, an EPA spokeswoman, said that tax expired in 1993.
"The misnomer that a lot of people make is that has something to do with how many Superfund sites we clean up," Jones said.
Since Superfund started in 1980, the EPA has been able to hold polluters responsible for cleanup costs 70 percent of the time, Jones said. For the other 30 percent in fiscal year 2003, federal tax dollars paid $142 million for short-term cleanup and $292 million for long-term cleanup, she said.
"In actuality, this administration has been very supportive of Superfund," Jones said.
To protect the nation's water, Bush proposes spending $21 million for his Water 2025 initiative that aims to address competing demands for a finite water supply serving states, tribes and local communities.
Bush also proposes money for restoring wetlands and cleaning toxic pollution in the Great Lakes, as well as continued restoration of marine ecosystems in the oceans.
In "The Kerry-Edwards Vision for a Cleaner Environment, a Stronger Economy and Healthier Communities," the Kerry campaign calls for increased cooperation with states and cities to tackle stormwater runoff, sewer overflows and agricultural pollution.
The Kerry campaign also proposes focusing on encouraging efficient water use, restoring damaged watersheds, protecting the oceans and investing in riverfront, lakefront and coastal communities.
( Knight Ridder and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reporter Kurt Bresswein can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at kbresswein@express-times.com.
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New London Day
October 10, 2004
Editorial: Bush, The Polluter's Friend
A Republican group has urged President Bush to be more like Theodore Roosevelt when it comes to the environment. That's unlikely.
This is the third of a series of Day editorials examining the views on major issues of President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry.
The only thing green about the Bush administration's record on the environment is the color of money, measured specifically by how much the White House has helped big corporations by weakening regulations and opening up public land to industrial development. The administration's actions are so bad they sparked the formation of REP America (Republicans for Environmental Protection), which has urged the president on this issue to follow the enlightened path of other GOP chief executives, such as Theodore Roosevelt.
Fat chance of that happening. Next to the war in Iraq, the Bush record on the environment has done the most damage to the public interest. In too many ways, environmental exploitation, not protection, has been the order of the day.
Yet the Bush spinmeisters are quick to slap happy labels on anti-environmental proposals in Congress. The “Clear Skies’ legislation, for example, contained provisions which increased the amount of mercury pollution that coal-fired energy plants could spew into the atmosphere. Compared to a more stringent bill in the U.S. Senate, Clear Skies extended by 10 years the deadlines for reducing air pollutants such as sulfur dioxides and placed no caps at all on carbon dioxide, which is believed to contribute to global warming. It also didn't require older plants to install modern pollution-control technology.
Similarly, the administration's “Healthy Forests’ proposal would expand logging in national forests — a giveaway to the timber industry under the guise of preventing forest fires. Meantime, the bill limits public comment regarding Forest Service decisions, limits court challenges to timber clearing and, firefighters testified, could increase the frequency of forest fires. The White House announced in July it plans to open 60 million acres of pristine forest land to logging, oil drilling and mining.
Pollution runs amok
The administration weakened New Source Review, an important Clean Air Act program that requires old power plants, steel mills, incinerators and like facilities with outdated equipment to install modern pollution control equipment when they expand. Under administration rules, corporations could dramatically increase the amount of pollution without having to install equipment to reduce emissions. A federal appeals court has blocked the regulations from going into effect because the states' attorneys general have challenged the move.
Then there's the perennial favorite, the administration's unquenchable desire to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a proposal that would gain for the nation about six months of oil supplies in return for marring a pristine area of the world. It has been repeatedly blocked in the Senate. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney both were employed by the oil industry before they came to the White House, which may explain why the administration set aside any American commitment, real or implied, to go along with the Kyoto Treaty's attempt to combat global warming. It also explains why their energy plan, put together with the help of industry, stiff-armed conservation to reduce reliance on oil.
The few bright spots in the president's otherwise-dismal record are as follows:
He supports finishing and using the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada for storing nuclear waste which has accumulated all across the country, including the waste piling up from Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford.
Mr. Bush supported giving $1.2 billion to encourage fuel-cell research in his energy bill last year. It's an infant technology that could, if made more affordable, become an alternative source of energy. Connecticut is a leader in developing this technology. The energy bill passed the House of Representatives but so far has failed to pass the U.S. Senate.
He ordered regulations to reduce pollution from off-road vehicles that use diesel fuel. Mr. Bush more than doubled proposed spending to clean up polluted industrial sites.
Yet those few glimmerings of common sense can't possibly make up for proposals that, if passed, would make the Bush White House the most destructive in modern history with regard to the environment.
Could anyone be worse than Bush?
It's no revelation to say that John Kerry would be a better president on environmental issues. So would just about anybody. Sen. Kerry has been the thoughtful chairman of the oceans and environment subcommittee in the Senate. Despite his near-perfect marks from the League of Conservation Voters, he's been no wild-eyed extremist on environmental issues. He fought Mr. Bush's weakening of the Clean Air Act, point by point. He is against drilling in the Arctic, but he has supported efforts to drill in other places. He advocated tougher fuel-efficiency standards in automobiles, but also believes the goal can be achieved in a way that doesn't hurt business. Mr. Kerry has noted the flaws in the Kyoto treaty as well as its laudable overarching goal.
Mr. Kerry is flat-out wrong on one issue: he doesn't support a high-level nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain and says that if he is elected his budget will not fund the project. Four years ago, then-presidential candidate Bush promised that he would not support the project unless it was deemed “scientifically sound’ and thus carried Nevada in 2000.
Kerry opposes Yucca Mountain
His subsequent decision to give the facility the green light could well cost him the state's five electoral votes this time around. Seeing an advantage, Mr. Kerry has pounced on the issue. “I'll guarantee you, if I'm president, Yucca Mountain is not going to happen,’ Mr. Kerry said. “Nevada can take that to the bank,’ he told KRNV-TV in Reno last week. In reality, federal courts, not the president, may have more authority in whether or not the project goes forward.
If Mr. Kerry is elected, he promises to significantly reduce carbon dioxide, sulfur, nitrogen and mercury emissions, protect wild lands and national parks for future generations, create jobs in pursuing clean energy technology. He says that he will lead the way in protecting the ocean and promises to devise a treaty to reduce greenhouse gases.
The environment and its protection have been important to Sen. Kerry throughout his Senate career. If he becomes president, he'll have a lot of damage to undo.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 09, 2004
Yucca ruling's appeal rejected
Options weighed after court rejected radiation standard
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Addressing a potential problem for President Bush in Nevada, the Justice Department said Friday the government will not ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a ruling that went against the Yucca Mountain Project this summer.
Attorneys disclosed the decision in a one-page brief filed late in the day at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The filing aimed to put an end to speculation whether Bush intended to follow through after he said in Las Vegas on Aug. 13 he would allow the courts to set a course for the proposed nuclear waste repository.
Nevada Democrats and critics of the Yucca Mountain program pounced on Bush after Tuesday's disclosure that Justice Department officials had told the court in a Sept. 23 document they hadn't decided whether to appeal a July 9 ruling that struck a blow against the program.
That decision voided a 10,000 year radiation standard the Environmental Protection Agency had written for the nuclear waste repository.
EPA and Energy Department officials have said they will develop new radiation regulations to satisfy the court rather than prolong a legal fight.
While the court ruling in July damaged a key portion of the project, it also upheld most other segments in favor of the government.
Although officials at the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency were stating there were no plans to take the Yucca Mountain issue to the Supreme Court, Democrats charged the Justice Department quietly was allowing Bush to keep his options open.
Two sources confirmed that state Attorney General Brian Sandoval, co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Nevada, telephoned the White House on Wednesday and complained. It could not be learned who took his call.
"The word was, 'What's going on here,' " said one source aware of the conversation. "Your underlings aren't on the same page."
On Friday, the Justice Department told judges: "We are now in a position to report that the Solicitor General's Office has reached a decision and that the United States does not intend to file a petition" seeking Supreme Court review.
An industry association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, has indicated it will file an appeal, but experts have said its chances are diminished if the government doesn't join in.
After the Justice Department filed the document, Sandoval issued a statement saying the government's decision not to appeal "is a resonant indicator of the strength of Nevada's legal position on Yucca Mountain."
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the development put an end to the possibility of a prolonged legal fight.
"I hope this decision also puts an end to partisan claims meant to put President Bush in an unfavorable light," Ensign said. "The president has said he would abide by the court's rulings, and he is doing just that."
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said she would not take the Justice Department's announcement at face value. She said the administration still could turn to Congress to overturn the unfavorable ruling.
"I'm wary. I'd like to know what the next trick is up their sleeves," Berkley said. "There is still a lot of mischief that can be done."
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Reno Gazette-Journal
October 09, 2004
Emergency funds sought for fight against Yucca
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The state Nuclear Projects Office is seeking an emergency appropriation of $1.1 million to continue its fight against the high-level nuclear waste dump that the Bush administration wants to open at Yucca Mountain in Southern Nevada.
The request goes before the state Board of Examiners on Tuesday, which also will consider a $650,000 emergency allocation to Attorney General Brian Sandoval´s office for its legal battle against the dump.
Bob Loux, who heads the Nuclear Projects Office, said his budget is “tapped out’ and the federal Department of Energy intends to apply in December for a building permit. The filing goes to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The state was getting $2.5 million a year from the federal government to help in the battle against Yucca Mountain, but that amount was slashed to $1 million.
If the federal government submits its application in December, Loux said his office will have 90 days to review whether it is complete.
The $1.1 million will carry the projects office through the end of February, but “we may have to come back for more money,’ he said.
If the Board of Examiners, chaired by Gov. Kenny Guinn, approves the request, it goes to the Legislative Interim Finance Committee for final action. That panel meets Nov. 17.
Sandoval wants the $650,000 to cover outstanding and expected litigation expenditures through February next year.
The 2003 Legislature allocated $2 million to the attorney general´s office for legal costs, including hiring outside lawyers, to pursue the court battle against Yucca Mountain. Half the money was spent and the rest reverted to the general treasury.
State Budget Director Perry Comeaux said the attorney general´s office could have carried the unused funds over from one year to the next, but didn´t. Sandoval said he thought Interim Finance gave him authority last April to carry the money forward but there was a “misunderstanding.’
Sandoval said the $650,000 is needed because the state has sued in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. contending the federal government improperly withheld funds from the state for the nuclear budget. Arguments are set for Jan. 12.
Also, he said the Nuclear Energy Institute plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a ruling that gave the state a partial victory in the waste dump fight.
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Salt Lake Tribune
October 09, 2004
Goshute group to hold weekend nuke protest
A Goshute grass-roots organization, Ohngo Guadadeh Devia Awareness, is sponsoring weekend activities for the public to protest proposed storage of high-level nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Indian Reservation in Tooele County. Events today and Sunday begin around 7 a.m. with sunrise prayer ceremonies, and will include talks by tribal elders and activists and a Goshute-led "spirit run" to the proposed Private Fuel Storage waste site. A news conference is planned for 12:30 p.m. today. Other event sponsors include the Shundahai Network, a regional organization working to support campaigns to keep nuclear waste out of the Great Basin, and the environmentalist group HEAL Utah. The protest will be held on the reservation, about 45 miles west of Salt Lake City and approximately 26 miles south from I-80 off Exit 27 to Rowley/Dugway. Signs will direct participants to the protest site. Those attending are asked to register at the time of the event. Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of seven electrical utilities whose nuclear power plants are running out of on-site storage for spent fuel rods, in 1997 signed a lease with members of the Goshute tribe to store up to 44,000 tons of the spent fuel. The proposal has been opposed by the state and must be approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has been holding closed-door meetings on the proposal. Goshute tribal member Margene Bullcreek, chairwoman of Ohngo Guadadeh Devia, is one of the leaders of the anti-PFS movement. The group last month, along with the state, asked to intervene in the NRC's review of the proposal. Proponents say the facility would provide temporary storage for some of the nation's deadliest nuclear waste that later would be transported to the permanent facility planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev. But Congress has reached a stalemate in the fight over funding the Yucca Mountain project, and no action is expected until after the Nov. 2 election. In July, an appeals court found the federal government wasn't following its own rules on Yucca Mountain, further threatening its viability. It is unknown what would become of the PFS proposal if the Yucca Mountain project is scuttled. - Patty Henetz
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Salt Lake Tribune
October 09, 2004
Nevada vs. Utah
Your Sept. 22 editorial on problems at Yucca Mountain being an opportunity for Utah and Nevada to cooperate to end nuclear waste disposal in both states was wishful thinking. You noted that Nevada is “a political swing state,’ but you failed to see the consequences for Utah, the furthest thing from a swing state in the nation.
Yucca Mountain will never happen because neither party can afford to alienate Nevada's voters, the consequence to the party in power if it comes to fruition.
However, both parties can alienate Utah voters with impunity. The Republicans will make Utah the nation's dump, knowing they will still carry Utah in the elections. The Democrats will make Utah the nation's dump because doing so won't make their prospects in Utah any worse than they already are.
Moreover, Sens. Hatch and Bennett sealed Utah's fate. When Nevada Sen. Reid sought their help in stopping Yucca Mountain, Hatch and Bennett turned him down. Sen. Reid, one of the most powerful Democrats in the U.S. Senate, will not forget Utah's betrayal of the Western solidarity you seek in your editorial. Nevada will not help Utah. Nevada will work against Utah. Nevada will win.
The only way Utah can avoid becoming the nation's dump is to derail the political process now in motion at the national level, and the way to do that is by following Nevada's lead and becoming a swing state, too.
Keith Baker
Heber City
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Charleston Post Courier
October 09, 2004
SRS waste issue may be resolved
House-Senate deal expected to break impasse
Bo Petersen
Post and Courier Staff
On-site cleanup of more than 30 million gallons of radioactive sludge at the Savannah River Plant is expected to resume under a U.S. House-Senate conference committee provision adopted Friday.
The issue had South Carolina's two senators squared off on the Senate floor in May.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham wanted to reclassify the sludge to allow it to be buried in its tanks rather than moved to storage in the West. Democratic Sen. Fritz Hollings called it "an environmental disaster in the offing."
The waste is being removed from 51 aging tanks from the federal Cold War-era bomb-making plant near Aiken. It has been earmarked for burial at Yucca Mountain, Nev., but the work has been stalled by a lawsuit over nuclear waste handling.
The role of a conference committee, composed of members from both the House and the Senate, is to iron out differences between the two chambers. The bill then is returned to the House and the Senate for their approval, usually a formality, before being sent to the president's desk for his signature.
"Congress has placed critical South Carolina and Idaho drinking water sources at risk of radioactive contamination," said the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, in a press release Friday. "Congress is trying to throw out more than two decades of nuclear waste cleanup law, in flagrant disregard of public health. Congress did this behind closed doors, with no debate or public input, attaching it to an unrelated bill designed to support our troops."
Graham in a press release called the provision good for the site, the state and the nation.
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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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