Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
October 13, 2004
Examiners OK added funds to fight Yucca
By Cy Ryan
<cy@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Capital Bureau
CARSON CITY -- The Yucca Mountain nuclear dump is "more than likely dead" because of problems at the Department of Energy, but more money is needed to try to drive a stake through the project's heart, a state official said Tuesday.
Bob Loux, executive director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, told the state Board of Examiners that the federal budget for the high-level nuclear dump is "in great jeopardy." And he believes it's unlikely that the energy department will file its application for Yucca Mountain by December, its intended target.
But just in case, the board fulfilled Loux's request and recommended an additional $1.1 million for his agency to continue to retain attorneys and scientists to fight the potential application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The board also approved a request for $650,000 to pay attorneys to continue the legal battles against Yucca Mountain.
Those recommendations now go to the Legislative Interim Finance Committee that meets Nov. 17 for final approval.
Gov. Kenny Guinn, chairman of the examiners board, suggested the state file a lawsuit to stop the Energy Department from processing its application before the regulatory commission.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled on July 9 that the Environmental Protection Agency did not follow the law when it established a 10,000-year standard for protection of the public from radiation at the site.
The EPA adopted a rule that people would not be exposed to more than 15 millirems of radiation for 10,000 years after the nuclear dump opened at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The court said the law required the EPA to follow the suggestion of the National Academy of Sciences, which proposed 300,000 years.
Guinn said that should disqualify the Energy Department from applying or using the old standard.
Loux said there was "no appetite" in Congress to change the standard, as such a change could take years to adopt. Guinn said the state should sue if the Energy Department submits an application based on the standard that has been struck down by the appeals court.
The governor suggested the state seek a temporary restraining order against the Energy Department if it files the application without a new standard.
Loux suggested the federal agency might try a "Machiavellian" maneuver in submitting the application to get the hearings started while waiting for the new standard to be adopted.
But, he said, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a four-year deadline to consider an application.
In the past, Loux said, it has taken eight years to develop a radiation standard.
Loux said the Energy Department in the past has been getting $500 million to $600 million a year to finance the study and preparation of Yucca Mountain. But he said the department may receive only $131 million this year. If that happens, there will be "massive layoffs," he said.
The department, in its budget submission, failed to follow the guidelines in asking for money for Yucca Mountain, hence the qualification for only $131 million this next fiscal year.
While the Energy Department is having troubles, Loux said there are "so many uncertainties that it would be imprudent for us not to be prepared" if the hearings before the regulatory commission start.
Loux said the extra $1.1 million would last the agency until March. Guinn said the Legislature would be in session then and the agency could ask it for more money.
If the Department of Energy files its application in December, it must electronically submit its entire record of documents. And the state must provide an electronic submission of documents 90 days before any hearing begins, said Loux. Some of the requested $1.1 million would be spent on that work.
In the past, the state has received $2.5 million a year from the federal government to prepare its case. But the state got only $1 million last year. The state appealed both to the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to recover the $1.5 million, but those requests were denied.
If the state does somehow wind up getting the $2.5 million from the federal government, the $1.1 million from the state's emergency fund would be returned, Loux said.
Attorney General Brian Sandoval said the $650,000 is to continue to pay private lawyers for their handling of several Yucca-related lawsuits for the state. The state has filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., contending the federal government improperly withheld about $4 million from the state for the nuclear budget. The court arguments in that case are set for Jan. 12.
In addition, the Nuclear Energy Institute, a private group, has indicated it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court the radiation standards ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., Loux said.
Also, Sandoval said, the state is waging a third lawsuit to prevent nuclear waste from being shipped to Nevada from another state.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 13, 2004
Columnist Jeff German: GOP lacks courage to fight Yucca
Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.
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Have they no shame? No fortitude to stand up to the president of the United States?
For weeks now, with Nevada considered a battleground state in the race for president, top Republican leaders here, from the governor on down, have had a rare opportunity to put political pressure on President Bush to halt the Yucca Mountain Project.
Polls show the race is a dead heat.
And Bush, in all likelihood, needs Nevada's five electoral votes if he wants to defeat Democratic challenger John Kerry, who has promised to kill the nuclear waste dump.
If Nevada Republicans had any political courage, they would do what they should have done weeks ago -- tell the president they won't support his re-election unless he does something about Yucca Mountain.
Courage, however, isn't part of the state GOP creed. Elected Republicans here have chosen to be good party soldiers and back Bush's re-election unconditionally. They have chosen to put the president's future over our own.
And they don't even care that they're letting us down -- or worse, our children.
On Thursday, the same day Kerry will be in Las Vegas, Republicans are holding a campaign rally for Bush at the Thomas & Mack Center. The man who wants to send the nation's deadliest nuclear waste our way will be on hand to pat his party loyalists on the back and tell them how rosy things are here. And nobody will come close to pressing the president on Yucca Mountain.
Even as the spin pours out of the president's mouth, his Energy Department in Washington will be moving forward with its license application for the multibillion-dollar project, making those loyalists look like fools -- again.
"This is the guy who stabbed Nevada in the back," says former Democratic Sen. Richard Bryan, a member of the state's Nuclear Waste Projects Commission. "He made commitments to us on Yucca Mountain and no sooner does he get elected than he turns on us."
If anyone is going to have leverage with Bush at this critical stage in the election, it's going to be the Republicans, the members of his own party, Bryan says.
The leverage, however, in true Yucca Mountain tradition, is being wasted.
"The Bush administration," Bryan says, "could be doing so much more for us, but it really has done everything it possibly can to accelerate the placement of high-level waste in Nevada."
This is why it's so troubling watching the Republicans demonstrate their blind allegiance to the president.
At a time when the fight against Yucca Mountain is starting to go our way in the courts, we continue to send mixed signals about our desire to stop the waste from coming here.
Republicans are putting on a public lovefest for a president who doesn't care about the well-being of this state.
You can almost see Karl Rove and company laughing back at Bush/Cheney headquarters.
They sure are spineless in Nevada, the president's handlers must be saying.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 13, 2004
YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROJECT: Money request approved
$1.75 million sought to fight repository
By Sean Whaley
Review-Journal Capital Bureau
CARSON CITY -- A panel that includes Gov. Kenny Guinn approved a request Tuesday for $1.75 million in additional funding for the state's ongoing efforts to fight construction of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
The request for $1.1 million for the Agency for Nuclear Projects and $650,000 for the attorney general's office for outside legal assistance was approved by the Board of Examiners and will go to the Legislature's Interim Finance Committee on Nov. 17.
Bob Loux, executive director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the additional funding he requested from the Legislature's contingency fund is needed for several reasons.
The U.S. Department of Energy has indicated it plans to file a licensing application for Yucca Mountain with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December, and the state has to be ready with its experts and legal advisers, he said. But funding to the state from Congress for its Yucca Mountain efforts is in limbo, because a new federal budget has not been passed for this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, he said.
If the federal budget is approved later this year and Nevada gets its funding, the extra state funding may not be required, Loux said.
Though it is unlikely the DOE will be able to file its licensing application because of Nevada's legal victory in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals in July, the state has to be ready, he told the board.
That court decision voided a 10,000-year radiation standard the Environmental Protection Agency had written for the nuclear waste repository, suggesting the period should be longer, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
"We think the program is in big trouble," Loux told the board.
The board made up of Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval and Secretary of State Dean Heller, approved the request for funding.
Guinn said the money should last through at least March, when the Legislature can debate the funding issues for the agency.
The 2003 Legislature put in just under $1 million a year in general fund revenue to support the state agency in its fight in the current two-year budget.
Another $2 million was allocated to the attorney general's office for legal expenses related to Yucca Mountain in the current two-year budget, but due to a misunderstanding, about $1.1 million reverted to the state general fund at the end of the 2003-04 fiscal year on June 30. The $650,000 request by Sandoval would be covered by the reverted funds.
The Nuclear Projects Agency has relied on federal support for its fight, but Congress allocated only $1 million for fiscal 2004, far less than the $2.5 million anticipated. And with the current budget stalemate, no funding is yet available this year.
Sandoval has sued the Energy Department for more government funding.
Guinn and most Nevada political leaders oppose plans by the DOE to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 13, 2004
Court refuses to delay radiation ruling
Nuclear industry seeking court review
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- A federal court has denied a nuclear industry appeal to keep a damaging Yucca Mountain ruling on hold until the Supreme Court decides whether to intervene.
The decision means a July court ruling throwing out a 10,000-year radiation protection measure for the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository could become final within a week.
The legal setback could further complicate the Energy Department's repository program, which is facing other financial and technical problems.
Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency officials had said they accepted the July ruling and planned to develop new radiation standards to replace the ones invalidated by the court.
But the Nuclear Energy Institute indicated it wanted to ask the Supreme Court to review the issue. Industry attorneys asked a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to delay formalizing the July decision until the higher court could rule.
The appeals court denied the NEI appeal in a one-sentence order Friday that became available on Tuesday.
NEI officials "are assessing what our options are and we don't have a firm hand on it yet," spokesman Steve Kerekes said.
Asked if NEI might abandon its bid to take the Yucca Mountain case to the Supreme Court, Kerekes said, "That's a possibility, but I don't know. Everything is up in the air right now."
The deadline for filing a Supreme Court appeal is Nov. 30.
NEI in court papers said the Yucca case raises questions about EPA powers to form regulations. Legal experts considered it a longshot that Supreme Court justices would take an interest.
The industry's effort to attract the justices' attention probably would be hurt further because the government was not planning to join the appeal, the experts said.
The July ruling has complicated the Energy Department's plans to move the repository project forward.
DOE officials have said they want to complete a repository license application by the end of the year, but it has been unclear whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could review an application that lacks radiation protection standards.
DOE deputy secretary Kyle McSlarrow said last month the project's time lines were being reassessed in light of mounting problems.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 13, 2004
Group admits violating state open-meeting law
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Elected officials from rural Nevada who met behind closed doors to discuss a rail corridor to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site violated the state open-meeting law, the state attorney general's office says.
The group, known as the Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group, was found to be a public body and admitted to violating the open-meeting law, according to a settlement agreement signed by Deputy Attorney General Neil Rombardo.
To avoid a criminal investigation, the group agreed "to hold as many public meetings as necessary to cure its failure to comply" with the open-meeting law, the agreement stated.
"At these meetings (the group) shall reconsider all past items and not consider any new items until all past items have been considered in public," said the agreement with officials from Lincoln, Esmeralda and Nye counties and the city of Caliente.
The group was formed last year at the suggestion of the Department of Energy. It includes Nye County commissioners Henry Neth and Candice Trummell; Esmeralda County Commissioner Ben Viljoen; Lincoln County commissioners Spencer Hafen and Tommy Rowe; Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips and City Councilman Ashley Moore.
Phillips had said the open-meeting law didn't apply because they were "a very informal working group ... less than a quorum of folks talking about issues relate."
Instead, Rombardo found that the group, because of its members and function, meets the definition of a public body.
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KVVU
October 12, 2004
Emergency Funds OK'd For Nevada's Fight Against Yucca
CARSON CITY (AP) -- A state panel has voted to give a one-point-one million-dollar emergency appropriation to the Nevada Nuclear Projects Office to continue its fight against the high-level nuclear waste dump that the Bush administration wants to open at Yucca Mountain.
The state Board of Examiners also endorsed a $650,000 emergency allocation to Attorney General Brian Sandoval's office for its legal battle against the dump.
Bob Loux heads the Nuclear Projects Office. He says his budget is "tapped out" and needs the funding to ensure a proper review of the building permit application expected from the federal Department of Energy in December.
With the approval by the Board of Examiners, the request goes to the Legislative Interim Finance Committee for final action. That panel meets November 17th.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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Platts
October 12, 2004
Court ruling forces US nuclear industry to rethink appeal
Washington (Platts)--12Oct2004
The US nuclear industry is considering whether it will proceed with a planned appeal to the US Supreme Court of an appeals court ruling remanding to the Environmental Protection Agency a 10,000-year regulatory requirement considered critical to the licensing of a high-level nuclear waste respository in Nevada, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute said Tuesday.
The group was forced to reconsider its options after the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Friday rejected the organization's request to stay the remand order pending an appeal to the high court. All petitions seeking Supreme Court review must be filed by Nov 30. In its ruling earlier this year, the appeals court found that the EPA regulation, which was designed to protect humans from radioactivity for 10,000, was insufficient.
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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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