Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, November 15, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
November 15, 2004
Another Yucca advocate likely to replace Abraham
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The departure of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham likely would not herald changes in the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project because President Bush is sure to appoint another Yucca advocate, observers said today after Abraham's resignation was announced.
The Energy Department has been studying Yucca Mountain for nearly two decades as it researched whether the site would be a suitable place to construct a repository for the nation's most radioactive waste.
Abraham will be remembered by opponents of the project as the energy secretary who ultimately approved it -- on Feb. 14, 2002, an unwelcome Valentine to Nevada, Yucca critics noted at the time. That led to President Bush formally approving Yucca a day later.
In his formal endorsement, Abraham told Bush that "sound science" proves that waste could be safely stored at Yucca. Abraham cited "compelling national interests" in backing Yucca, including national security and energy security.
"Secretary Abraham's tenure was an absolute disaster for the state of Nevada, but also for the nation," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said, citing Yucca and soaring gas prices.
Before nominees can join the Cabinet, they need confirmation from the Senate.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who likely will be elected Senate Democratic leader on Tuesday, was unavailable for comment this morning.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., commended Abraham for his service, noting Abraham's support for counterterrorism training programs at the Nevada Test Site.
"Of course, I strongly disagree with his advocacy of the Yucca Mountain project and believe he gave the wrong advice to President Bush on that issue," Ensign said.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said he expects the next energy secretary to be in lockstep with Bush on Yucca, but added, "It is my hope that the individual is a forward-looing nominee who is open to alternative solutions to nuclear waste."
Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said, "I am confident that Yucca Mountain will be rigorously debated when confirmation hearings begin for the new nominee in the Senate."
The delay-plagued Yucca project's future is uncertain given court challenges, budget shortfalls and questions about radiation safety standards.
Still, Energy Department leaders have said they are determined to open Yucca, ideally by 2010.
The next step for the department is submitting an application for a license to construct the underground repository. Department officials have said they intend to submit the application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by year's end.
Early speculation on possible replacements for Abraham centers on Deputy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow, outgoing Sen. John Breaux, D-La., and Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute.
McSlarrow has been a vocal supporter for advancing Yucca and this year told Congress that it could overcome a legal setback dealt by a federal court over health standards. But he has also signaled that the department may not be able to meet its goal of submitting the license application by the end of December.
Kuhn has been an outspoken Yucca advocate as leader of a trade group that includes nuclear industry members.
Breaux met with President-elect Bush in December 2000 about taking the job, but declined. Breaux ultimately voted against Yucca Mountain under heavy lobbying pressure from Reid, although he is sympathetic to the nuclear industry.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 15, 2004
Editorial: Big Dig has implications for Nevada
We don't have a nickname for the work going on at Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, although we could easily refer to it as the "Big Mistake." Gigantic tunnels and caverns are being built underneath the mountain to hold the nation's high-level nuclear waste until it ceases being a fatal threat to human beings. That would be several hundred thousand years from now, making the whole notion of underground burial -- in a seismically active area, no less -- preposterous on its face.
In Boston they do have a nickname for their biggest project. They call it the "Big Dig." It's a highway re-routing and rebuilding job that's been going on since 1991, around the time work on Yucca Mountain started. It's designed to streamline Boston's notorious traffic, and it involved tunneling under Boston Harbor to Logan Airport. The nearly finished project would merit only passing interest in Las Vegas except for two things: Hundreds of leaks are allowing millions of gallons of water to pour into the tunnel. And the co-manager of the Big Dig, Bechtel Corp., is the same corporation co-managing construction at Yucca Mountain.
Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, which is fighting against the opening of Yucca Mountain, told the Sun's Washington reporter, Benjamin Grove, that Bechtel's problems with the Big Dig were no surprise to him. Loux cited the many times Nevada has faulted Yucca Mountain contractors for flawed science and shoddy work. Bechtel and its partner at Yucca Mountain, Science Applications International Corp., are among the defendants in a lawsuit filed by some Yucca workers, who have alleged the companies ignored worker safety issues.
Bechtel, founded in 1898, is one of the world's biggest engineering, construction and project-management firms. Having completed thousands of projects all over the world, it is, on paper, a highly reputable company. But how can it explain away those leaks? Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney found the work so abominable that he called for the resignation of the head of the state's Turnpike Authority, which had oversight over Bechtel.
Here in Nevada, we must take note of this development in Boston and ask the logical question: If the Big Dig tunnel is not safe the moment it opens, how can we expect the tunnels inside Yucca Mountain, whose workmanship is being overseen by the same corporation, to be safe for several hundred thousand years?
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Seattle Post Intelligencer
November 15, 2004
Abraham leaves without passing energy plan
By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON -- By the time he soon leaves, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will have led his department longer than any of his predecessors. His greatest disappointment, though, is his failure to deliver on the Bush administration's high priority of getting Congress to enact a broad energy agenda.
As a Republican senator from Michigan, Abraham once called for dismantling the Energy Department. But once at the helm of the agency, he changed his mind and realized it was essential in dealing with a broad range of issues from nuclear nonproliferation and securing the nation's nuclear weapons to developing promoting diverse energy supplies.
In a letter to President Bush on Monday, Abraham said that he was submitting his resignation because he wanted to devote more time to his family, including three young children. He said he would remain at the department until a successor is confirmed early next year.
Abraham predicted that with the Republican gains in the Senate "needed energy legislation will finally be enacted" by the new Congress that convenes in January.
Abraham faced a number of major issues during his tenure, from the nation's worst power blackout to soaring crude oil and gasoline prices as well as a growing urgency to find a place to bury the country's nuclear waste and yet another security flap at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico.
As oil raced past $50 a barrel and $2-a-gallon gasoline became commonplace, Abraham repeatedly rejected calls to release oil from the government's emergency reserve, citing Bush's long-standing view that the reserve should not be used to manipulate prices.
Abraham was credited with getting the White House to provide more money to work with Russia in protecting nuclear materials. He considered reducing the global nuclear nonproliferation threat his top priority.
Abraham also took a personal interest in expanding research into hydrogen fuel. He sought to end a decades-long struggle to find a burial site for the tons of nuclear waste accumulating at commercial reactors. He recommended, and the president approved, Yucca Mountain in Nevada for the site, but the decision since has been put into question by a federal court challenge to proposed environmental standards.
He moved swiftly when officials at the Los Alamos weapons lab couldn't account for computer disks containing classified weapons by ordering a systemwide halt in weapons work at Los Alamos and other facilities until security could be assured.
But Abraham was unable to convince Congress to adopt a broad energy plan, although he said in his letter Monday that 90 percent of the recommendations issued by Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force - those that didn't need legislation - had been implemented.
Among other things, Cheney's task force recommended opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, increasing reliability of the nation's electricity grid, incentives for developing new nuclear power plants, streamlining regulations for oil and gas development, and expanded use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline. Congress failed to take action on any of these issues.
Abraham joined the administration after being defeated for re-election in 2000 and acknowledged having had little experience in energy issues.
But Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Abraham "proved to be a steady hand on a whole range of issues both in terms of national security and the domestic economy."
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Provo Daily Herald
November 15, 2004
Feds don't have funds to test nuclear waste casks
The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY -- A federal agency is lacking the funds to test casks that will be used to transport nuclear waste across the country to the underground repository planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
But even without that testing, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the casks for transporting 3,000 tons of waste yearly past more than 11 million people in 45 states -- including Utah -- to the repository 90 miles north of Las Vegas.
The NRC, however, won't test casks to demonstrate their ability to survive severe real-world accidents, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday. The agency, instead, is relying on computer analyses and scale modeling.
One in question is the cask model destined to hold waste at a temporary storage facility in Utah.
Critics contend the computer simulations are inadequate.
"The NRC has adopted as fact the fictional notion there are no real-world accidents that could cause casks to fail," said Bob Halstead, a consultant to Nevada on Yucca Mountain transportation issues.
NRC senior transportation adviser Earl Easton says the agency doesn't have the money to do real-world testing.
"We're trying to scrape together the funds," Easton said.
The states of Utah and Nevada are demanding full testing of the casks.
NRC regulations require casks to pass a series of hypothetical accident conditions: a 30-foot free fall onto an unyielding surface, followed by a 40-inch fall onto a steel rod six inches in diameter.
Then, casks would be subjected to a 1,475-degree Fahrenheit fire for 30 minutes before being submersed in 3 feet of water for eight hours. The sequence is supposed to mimic a rail or truck crash.
The casks are protected by "impact limiters," which are caps on both ends that make the containers resemble barbells and cover vulnerable seals and bolts.
The NRC has tested full-scale impact limiters by dropping them onto unyielding surfaces. But Halstead said the most dangerous impact wouldn't be to the limiters.
"It's a sideways truck jackknifing so the bridge abutment hits the cask in the body, bypassing the limiter, causing it to twist and force the lid to pop open, like Popeye's can of spinach," he said.
That could cause a tiny opening and allow lethal radioactive cesium and strontium to escape.
The casks, weighing between 25 and 125 tons, are made of multiple layers of steel and other materials. The NRC has certified 16 different designs, including a rail-transport model made by New Jersey-based Holtec International that Private Fuel Storage would use at its facility proposed for the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Holtec would be willing to sell the $3 million casks for any kind of testing NRC would want to do, said Joy Russell, a Holtec spokeswoman.
Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight utilities, is planning to send 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel to an open-air storage site in Skull Valley.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission'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.
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.
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MSNBC
November 15, 2004
New nuclear opportunity for companiesBy
Justin Rubner
With a pro-nuclear president back in office for a second term and public fear waning 25 years after the Three Mile Island disaster, interest in nuclear power is at an all-time high.
That could mean big opportunity for two power-generation leaders in Atlanta: GE Energy and Southern Co. (NYSE: SO). In April the two companies helped launch a first-of-its-kind nuclear consortium, Pennsylvania-based NuStart Energy Development LLC. On Nov. 4, NuStart received a commitment from the Department of Energy to fund a new program designed to streamline the long, complicated and expensive process of applying for a permit to build a new nuclear power plant. The DOE also will fund another consortium, Virginia-based Dominion.
DOE funding could save reactor developers such as GE Energy hundreds of millions of dollars, as the agency will kick in roughly half of all expenses associated with obtaining construction and operating licenses. The new process also will save time -- potentially years -- because it allows companies to apply for both licenses at once.
"It's a very positive sign," said NuStart President Marilyn Kray. "The fact we were formed at all is positive. We have both individually and collectively [emphasized] that the nuclear option needs to be preserved. Now, the DOE shares that vision."
On Nov. 2, several pro-nuke U.S. House and Senate members were elected, industry watchers say. And with natural gas prices shooting up, many believe the pendulum is swinging in favor of the nuclear industry.
It has been 31 years since the last new nuclear plant was licensed, eight years since the last one was built. Nuclear reactor makers, which have been selling overseas for years, have been pushing the U.S. power industry to take the leap once again. Power companies, on the other hand, have been waiting for a strong commitment from the federal government to proceed.
Marietta-based GE Energy will be vying against fellow NuStart member Westinghouse Electric Co. to build a next-generation reactor that could be in place as early as 2010.
GE Energy's nuclear division in Wilmington, N.C., has designed the new reactor, which still has to get final clearance from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). GE Energy, a division of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), has eight major nuclear reactors operating in Canada; Japan; Spain; San Jose, Calif.; Wilmington and Huntersville, N.C. The company is almost finished building one in Taiwan.
NuStart will work with both reactor-makers to get them certified with the NRC. But the consortium will pick only one for the operating license, Kray said.
Both GE Energy and Westinghouse are powerhouses in the industry.
"We believe we have an extremely competitive reactor," said Andy White, CEO of GE Energy's nuclear division. "And we do believe we have a superior design. But we're both headed in the right direction."
Where the reactor will go -- no matter which manufacturer is picked -- is up in the air. The Dominion consortium has indicated a virgin site is possible. White, however, said the consensus within NuStart is to build next to an existing plant.
Building on an existing site makes sense politically, White said, because nuclear power is so controversial. It also makes sense from a power-generation standpoint: The previous generation of reactors were not built to their full potential.
Southern, a member of NuStart along with eight other power companies, operates three nuclear plants in Augusta, Baxley and Dothan, Ala. About 17 percent of its energy comes from those plants.
Although Southern has been an active member of NuStart, the company has not publicly announced immediate plans to build a new plant. Steve Higginbottom, spokesman for Southern's nuclear division in Birmingham, Ala., said the company at this point is participating only to study the costs and risks.
Nonetheless, Higginbottom said, the climate is ripe for nuclear power, with the decreased financial risks associated with the DOE announcement coupled with the current political climate.
"Because of the Bush Administration's interest, we're seeing more activity than we've seen in a while," Higginbottom said.
But by no means will building the nation's next nuclear plant be without controversy. Several public interest groups, such as Public Citizen, have lambasted the DOE's plan, complaining that the agency gave the nuclear industry a carte blanche green light without reviewing where the next plant would go. Public Citizen cites concerns over terrorism and especially waste disposal. One proposed repository, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, has attracted a firestorm of opposition, not to mention lawsuits.
But with all the concern, nuclear power already is a mainstay. There are 103 nuclear power plants in the United States, supplying about 20 percent of the country's power. Coal, meanwhile, makes up about 50 percent, with natural gas and other sources making up the rest. Nuclear backers say that to maintain the diverse mix of energy, new plants must be built to replace aging ones.
"This is not to say nuclear should replace the others," said NuStart's Kray. "But if you look at the need, the environmental issues, the greater need for energy diversity and the rising price of natural gas, this strongly suggests the need to maintain and perhaps expand the role of nuclear."
© 2004 Atlanta Business Chronicle
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Nevada Appeal
November 14, 2004
Referendum on Yucca? Not really
Guy W. Farmer
Shortly after Nevada election results were announced on Nov. 2, Nuclear Energy Institute lobbyists and their Silver State lackeys boasted that President Bush's victory meant that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is a fait accompli - a done deal. That's the bad news; the good news is that they misread the election results.
"It turned out the wrong way for them (Yucca Mountain opponents)," said John Kane, the Nuclear Energy Institute's senior vice president for governmental affairs. "We believe the people of Nevada realize this project is going to happen, and in fact, are focused on other issues."
In my opinion, however, Mr. Kane has a bad case of wishful thinking. The truth is that an overwhelming majority of Nevadans remains adamantly opposed to the Yucca Mountain project.
A recent poll by Northwest Survey and Data Service, of Oregon - which isn't financed by Kane's Institute - revealed that 76.8 percent of Nevada respondents oppose the toxic project, and two-thirds of them want to continue to fight the plan instead of making a deal with the federal government. This is a resounding slap in the face to the Institute and its highly paid consultants including former Nevada Gov. Bob List, who asserted that Bush's three-percentage-point victory in this state was a vote for Yucca Mountain. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, without the nuclear dump issue, Bush would have won our "red" (conservative) state by five or six points.
I agree with John Hadder, Northern Nevada director for Citizen Alert, an anti-Yucca Mountain organization, who said that Nevada's pro-Bush vote didn't constitute an endorsement of the nuclear waste dump project. "There's a lot of factors that go into how voters decide on a presidential candidate," he added. "(Nevada) voters had a lot of other things on their minds." Like the War on Terrorism, for example.
"Yucca is as bad an idea today as it was yesterday, or before the election," said Tessa Hafen, a spokesperson for Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who will soon become the new Senate minority leader following the defeat of Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota. In that position, Reid will spearhead opposition to Yucca Mountain by carrying the fight to the Bush administration and the Energy Department. Every time President Bush needs Democratic votes in the Senate, he'll have to deal with Reid, who drives a hard bargain despite his soft-spoken style.
Some state officials, including Nuclear Projects Director Bob Loux, believe the Yucca Mountain project is "dead in the water" because of a federal court decision last July finding that the repository failed to meet National Academy of Sciences safety standards, a requirement set by Congress for the project to move forward. To save the project, the Environmental Protection Agency must write new standards - a process that could take more than a decade - or Congress must change its standards.
The Nevada Legislature's Interim Finance Committee last Monday appropriated $1.6 million to continue the battle against Yucca Mountain. Of that amount, $1 million will replace money the federal government cut from the state's budget request. The new appropriation will permit the state to meet a deadline to enter more than one million documents into an electronic database set up by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency as part of its licensing process.
After the Nevada Republican Party surrendered to the Nuclear Energy Institute at its statewide convention several months ago, I was concerned that GOP office-holders would follow their party's embarrassing sellout. But I'm pleased to report that they held firm and rejected blandishments offered by nuclear industry lobbyists - specifically, elected Republicans told the lobbyists what they could do with their million-dollar payoffs. In so doing, they refused to gamble the health and safety of our children and grandchildren in exchange for turning our state into the nation's nuclear waste dump.
So my hat is off not only to Sen. Reid and his fellow Democrats for fighting this dangerous project but also to their Republican counterparts: Gov. Kenny Guinn, Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Jim Gibbons and Attorney General Brian Sandoval. Although I've criticized Sandoval and state gaming control authorities for permitting Nevada gaming licensees to operate Indian casinos in California, I applaud his firm stand against Yucca Mountain.
Even after speaking at the Republican National Convention last summer, Sandoval has continued to lead our fight against the nuclear waste dump. "People realize this is a fight that is in the courts," he said. "It is important for the public to know how the people in Nevada are consistently against the project regardless of who is in the White House." Well said, Mr. Attorney General. I admire your principled stand against powerful forces in your own party.
The Nevada Appeal commented as follows in an editorial last Sunday: "The real reason to keep battling Yucca Mountain continues to be the illogical transference of 77,000 tons of radioactive waste from around the country to a site where safe disposal is scientifically questionable." And since Nevada generates none of this toxic waste, why should we be the repository for it? President Bush and his aides should consider alternative sites starting with Crawford, Texas, a small, isolated town with little political clout. After all, those were the reasons our state was chosen when Congress passed the infamous "Screw Nevada" bill in 1987. Fair enough? I think so.
Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 14, 2004
Nevada likely to benefit from Reid's promotion
More dollars coming to state, professor says
By Samantha Young
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid's anticipated election as Senate minority leader is a milestone personal achievement cementing his place in history.
So what's in it for the rest of us Nevadans?
Could be plenty, according to analysts and lawmakers familiar with how power is exercised in Congress.
Reid's elevated stature will translate into "a lot of goodies, additional pork and dollars for Nevada," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.
"Every majority and minority leader takes care of his state first," Sabato said.
Although Reid already sits on the powerful Appropriations Committee, which divvies up federal spending, Sabato said, the Nevadan will be in position to protect home state projects while majority Republicans give themselves larger shares of the pie.
"It guarantees he will be able to deliver even when his party drops lower in seats," Sabato said.
Nevada also may reap the benefits of politically savvy businesses that may locate in the state to curry favor with Reid, some say.
When Rep. Tom Foley, D-Wash., became House speaker in 1989, the Boeing Corp. acknowledged his power by opening an office in his Spokane district, said Peggy Maze Johnson, a political organizer in the state at the time.
"There are lots of people who are going to want to be where the Senate minority leader is," said Johnson, who now heads the Citizen Alert watchdog organization in Nevada. "I see this as something that is going to help us become a healthier economy."
When Reid, 64, assumes his party's top leadership job, it will be a peak for the senator's career and a milestone for Nevada never attained by those who served before him.
But it also makes him a larger target for critics to charge he has gotten too big for his britches, said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who has served as Democratic whip, minority leader and majority leader during 44 years in the Senate.
"There are those that feel good their senator is in the leadership. Then those who are saying he's forgotten us back home," Byrd said. "It's a love-hate relationship."
Richard Bryan, a former Nevada senator who worked alongside Reid for 12 years in Washington, cautioned Nevadans to avoid creating lofty expectations for what Reid can accomplish for the state.
"It will be difficult for him to do much more because he's already been extremely successful," Bryan said. Last year, Reid secured $148 million for projects not requested by the Bush administration, one measure of congressional "pork barrel."
Nevada ranked 11th in a list compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste, a spending watchdog group.
"People in Nevada don't realize how powerful Senator Reid is," said former Nevada Congressman Jim Bilbray, a Las Vegas attorney.
Besides luring federal spending to Nevada, Bilbray credits Reid with defending sports books against a proposed college sports betting ban, boosting covert operations at the Nevada Test Site, and slashing the budget for the Yucca Mountain Project.
Reid's growing national role may require the rest of the Nevada congressional delegation to pick up the slack on home state issues, Bryan said.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said he expects Reid will instruct his staff to keep Nevada projects a priority. He expressed hope Reid will have additional leverage to get Nevada bills passed.
Ensign and Reid spent a half-hour on the telephone Wednesday, strategizing on state initiatives.
"He's in a better position than before," Ensign said.
As a man who has suffered political defeat -- in a 1974 Senate race and in a 1975 campaign for Las Vegas mayor -- Reid is keenly aware of keeping voters happy, friends say. The point was emphasized after he won re-election by only 428 votes six years ago.
"Senator Reid had a near-death experience in 1998, and he has devoted himself with that character of persistence to rebuilding his staff and doing even better with constituent outreach," Bryan said.
Among major Nevada interests is the Yucca Mountain Project, which Reid has fought throughout his congressional career.
Lobbyists for the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear lawmakers say they have new hope Reid will pay less attention to the issue as he becomes distracted by leadership duties or a need to dampen his efforts to satisfy pro-nuclear members of his caucus.
Others say that is unlikely given Reid's long history of battling the nuclear waste project.
Johnson said Nevadans who oppose Yucca Mountain expect Reid to maintain vigilance at every turn.
"I have great confidence in the senator, and I expect we will stop Yucca Mountain during his tenure as Senate minority leader -- but tell him 'no pressure,' " Johnson quipped.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 14, 2004
Harry M. Reid Timeline
Born: Dec. 2, 1939, Searchlight
Religion: Mormon
Family: Wife is former Landra Gould. They have five children, 15 grandchildren
Career chronology:
1959
Earns associate in science degree, Southern Utah State College, Cedar City
1961
Earns bachelor of arts degree in history and political science from Utah State University, Logan
1964
Earns law degree from George Washington University, Washington D.C.
1964
Appointed Henderson city attorney
1968
Elected to Nevada Assembly
1970
Elected Nevada lieutenant governor
1974
Ran for U.S. Senate, lost to Republican Paul Laxalt
1975
Ran for Las Vegas mayor, lost to Bill Briare
1977
Appointed Nevada Gaming Commission chairman
1982
Elected to U.S. House, defeating Republican Peggy Cavnar
1984
Elected to second House term, again defeating Cavnar
1986
Elected to U.S. Senate, over Republican Jim Santini
1992
Elected to second Senate term, over Republican Demar Dahl
1994
Elected co-chairman, Senate Democratic Policy Committee
1998
Elected to third Senate term, over Republican John Ensign
1998
Elected Senate minority whip
2001
Becomes majority whip in closely divided Senate, after Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont leaves Republican caucus, tipping control to Democrats
2002
Reverts to minority whip after Republicans regain Senate control
2004
Elected to fourth Senate term, over Republican Richard Ziser
-- SOURCES: Politics In America, Almanac of American Politics, Office of Sen. Harry Reid
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Las Vegas SUN
November 14, 2004
Soft-spoken Reid to face biggest challenge
By Benjamin Grove <grove@lasvegassun.com> and Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
Weekend Edition
November 13 - 14, 2004
WASHINGTON -- As head of the Nevada Gaming Commission in December 1978, Harry Reid was on the receiving end of a tirade by Stardust Casino executive and convicted sports fixer Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal and Rosenthal's lawyer, Oscar Goodman.
In the high-profile showdown at a commission meeting, eventually portrayed in the movie "Casino," Rosenthal berated Reid for denying his application for a gaming license.
Goodman learned something that day: "Both of us are probably the most strong-headed people in Nevada."
"There was no love lost between us at the time, but there was always a mutual respect and admiration," said Goodman, now the mayor of Las Vegas. "I put my face in his face and he didn't back down, and of course I didn't either."
The typically soft-spoken Reid has a history of facing conflict and winning.
Now the 64-year-old senator will face perhaps the biggest challenge of his life -- he's about to take the leadership role of the Senate Democrats and will have to face the president of the United States and the Republicans who control Congress.
Senate Democrats on Tuesday are expected to elect Reid their new leader, making him perhaps the most visible Democrat in Washington -- the face of the party.
"Harry Reid will become a household name in this country," Nevada archivist Guy Rocha said, calling Reid the most powerful congressional member the state has ever had. "The world is going to be watching the Senate, and the whole world is going to be watching Harry Reid."
Reid has long enjoyed plaudits as a back-room deal-maker and floor manager, skills required of a party's No. 2 man, the whip.
But leader is a different job, with a dizzying array of responsibilities.
Democrats will look to Reid to craft message, policy and strategy. Reporters will close on him every time he leaves a meeting. Party fund-raisers will require him at events.
The question, Rocha said, that will take time to answer is: "Does that job play to his strengths or not?"
Washington's atmosphere of partisan rancor only increases the position's importance.
Reid, whose campaign slogan was "Independent Like Nevada," will now be anything but independent, several observers said.
He will lead a group of strident Democrats frustrated by an Election Day trouncing, said Jon Lauck, history professor at South Dakota State University, a Congress watcher who closely monitored the race of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., whose Election Day loss to Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., opened the job to Reid.
Reid, who declined interviews this week pending his election, is perhaps an odd choice for leader of a generally liberal group of Democratic senators, Lauck said.
"My suspicion is that Harry Reid will have a very difficult time of it," Lauck said.
Reid's biggest strength now may be that he is not viewed as exceedingly partisan, observers said. But that can work against him as the leader.
Reid has frustrated Democratic activists and a few in his caucus, for not being enough of a Democrat.
He is against abortion with a mixed voting record. Reid's abortion stance could prove dicey during a high-profile fight over Supreme Court nominees, observers said.
Reid has been criticized by his own environmental allies for backing pro-mining regulations. And the National Rifle Association has praised him with compliments typically reserved for GOP allies. Reid was one of a handful of Democrats to vote against extending a national handgun ban.
Reid supported a state initiative that banned gay marriage but stood his caucus against a similar proposal that would have amended the U.S. Constitution.
Long-time political ally Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., shrugged off critics who suggest Reid may not be the best senator to lead a Democratic caucus that is arguably more liberal now that it has shed several centrists, including Sen. John Breaux, D-La.
"Whenever we elect a new leader, there will be some differences among the caucus," said Durbin, who is a contender for Reid's whip job.
Critics say that unlike Daschle, Reid is not a charismatic, telegenic spokesman.
"He's not flashy," Durbin said, shrugging off the criticism. "But I don't think that is the person we are looking for. We're looking for a person of substance."
Back in 1994, doubters had similar concerns about Daschle that they have about Reid -- too quiet, too gun-shy, not up to representing the liberal majority of his party, said Steve Smith, director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University.
Daschle proved doubters wrong, Smith said.
"In the end they found that he was just the right guy," Smith said.
That likely will prove true for Reid, too, Smith said.
Reid will lead a caucus that is reeling. Republicans picked up four seats and now have a 55 to 44 majority; Independent James Jeffords of Vermont typically sides with Democrats.
In announcing his bid to be the new leader, just hours after Daschle conceded, Reid said the Democratic agenda in the next Congress is a "work in progress." He huddled on Tuesday in Washington with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., fresh from his loss but vowing to be a high-profile player in the Senate.
Part of Reid's very high-profile job will be bridging partisan divides, senators said, and after the heated presidential election, that's an added burden. It's also difficult given the Democrats' bigger deficit in the Senate.
Republican Senate Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he respects Reid. McConnell said Reid works with Republicans in the spirit of compromise but holds his ground for his party.
Reid understands that the "business of the opposition is opposing," McConnell said, quoting former Republican Senate Leader Robert A. Taft, who fought President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies.
"Harry is going to do his job," McConnell said. "The point I want to make is that when he disagrees with you, he doesn't do it in a disagreeable fashion."
That could win him points in his new role.
Sometimes senators prefer folksy to erudite traits in their leaders, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., has said, in reference to Reid.
"I think Harry comes off as soothing in some respects," Lott told congressional newspaper The Hill last year.
Just a few hours after Daschle conceded his race at about 3 a.m. Election night, Reid was on the phone lining up support among his colleagues. He has at least 30 supporters, he announced Nov. 3.
Among them is Kerry, who praised Reid for leadership on veterans and Yucca Mountain issues. Reid is a master of the Senate like Lyndon Johnson and George Mitchell, Kerry said.
"He's been my friend, my partner in the Senate, and an outstanding voice for Nevada, as I learned from Nevadans everywhere I went in this campaign," Kerry said in a statement released by his Senate office.
Jeffords also supports Reid, a spokesman said.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said Reid's leadership position will give Reid even more power to dictate how state issues are handled in the Senate.
Ensign predicted the Senate's larger, new GOP majority will help bring more fiscal conservatism to the chamber. It will also be easier for President Bush to win Senate approval for his judicial nominees, Ensign said.
It remains to be seen whether Republicans ultimately view Reid as an "obstructionist" on judges and other issues, Ensign said.
But senators respect Reid as a man of his word, Ensign said.
"Republicans trust Reid more than they do Daschle," Ensign said.
Reid and the Democrats likely will face showdowns with Bush and the Republican majority on issues including tax reform and Social Security reform.
The most treacherous waters ahead for Reid likely will flow from fights over Bush's judicial nominees, especially possible Supreme Court nominees, observers said. Reid has played a lead role in previous fights that left Daschle most susceptible to "obstructionist" charges.
Just because Reid disagrees with Republicans doesn't mean he is "obstructionist," said former Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., a long-time friend and ally of Reid.
Reid is adept at forging compromises, he said.
"Clearly there are a number of philosophical differences between the parties on a number of key issues," Bryan said. "The American people didn't give Bush a mandate to change Social Security (or a mandate) on prescription drugs, health care, the economy."
Reid must quickly decide how to best use his strengths in his new job, observers said. Reid might decide to delegate some of the on-camera posturing to others, said UCLA political science professor Barbara Sinclair, who studies the Senate.
Republicans at times have been jealous of Daschle for having Reid because of his sheer willingness to spend long hours doing thankless work on the floor, Sinclair said.
But that quiet toiling is over, she said. And Reid won't be able to play good cop to Daschle's bad cop anymore, she said.
"He sought this position," Sinclair said. "He's going to have to satisfy his caucus and that is going to mean a fair amount of fighting Bush."
She added, "The Republicans like him. Of course, they are going to like him a lot less over time."
Reid's tangles with organized crime 25 years ago may offer a clue about his grit -- and his new leadership challenges, Nevada historian Rocha said. Reid didn't blink even when his car was reportedly wired to explode, and when federal investigators probed Reid's own ties to organized crime, Rocha said. (Investigators found none.)
"Ultimately, he stood up to the mob," Rocha said. "He was really tested. The mob was out to get him dirty."
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Las Vegas SUN
November 13, 2004
Reid will need to balance his newfound power
By Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com> and Benjamin Grove <grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
Weekend Edition
November 13 - 14, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid's likely election next week as Senate Democratic leader will give him even more power to deliver federal money and projects to the Nevada, experts say.
But the new high-profile job will also put him at risk of losing touch with state voters, the fate of current Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., they said.
"He has two constituencies now, Nevada and Democrats in Washington," said Congress watcher Christian Grose, assistant professor of government at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis. "Reid will have to do this really careful balancing act of being liberal in a conservative state. Can he keep his party happy in Washington while keeping his constituents happy in Nevada?"
Reid has been the assistant minority leader, known as the whip, since 1999, but his new role will give him much more power and national attention. Nevadans should expect more media coverage and more visits by other senators. Reid may spend even more time in the capital.
Being leader will be an even more time-intensive job than being whip, said Steve Smith, director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. Reid will have new events to attend, fund-raisers to speak at, more meetings to broker.
"It's a very personal job," Smith said. "It's a lot of interaction with his colleagues."
Reid will be in a slightly better position to make important deals for Nevada, Smith said.
"Senators of both parties are in a position to bring home the bacon," Smith said. "Being a leader helps improve that only marginally, although it's safe to say your colleagues are a little more interested in doing you a favor."
Reid already is not shy about boasting of pork projects he secures for Nevada from his seat on the Appropriations Committee. The constant interaction and owed favors may translate into even more grants, projects and federal money funneled to the state, experts said.
But at what cost?
Reid won't face re-election for six years. But eventually, voters will be asked to decide if Reid's new job as a national Democratic spokesman and high-profile Bush basher distracted him from his duties to the state.
Experts drew parallels between Daschle and Reid, because both are Democratic senators from small-population states with large conservative populations.
Daschle lost his re-election race to former Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., after being painted by his opponent as a liberal Washington insider who had lost touch with South Dakotans and had become President Bush's chief obstructionist. Political experts say Reid will have to watch himself from the start to avoid that fate.
"Maybe it will be a little more difficult to find the rhetoric to satisfy both his colleagues in Washington and his constituents back home," Smith said.
Certainly, Daschle was able to claim he brought home a lot of bacon for the state, said South Dakota State University history professor Jon Lauck. Daschle based his whole campaign on being a powerful provider for South Dakota, but he faced voters who don't care much for boasting, Lauck said.
There were times when Daschle's lofty position hurt him, as when his Democratic colleagues blocked an energy bill that would have provided ethanol benefits for the state, Lauck said.
"Daschle's clout didn't amount to anything then," Lauck said. "It's a double-edged sword."
But Nevada politicians have faith in Searchlight's most famous resident.
"(Reid's) not going to forget his constituents here," said former Nevada Gov. Robert List, a Republican. "Sen. Reid is a very, very bright guy. He will never forget his roots. He's a Nevadan to the core."
Daschle "went over the edge" in his role as Bush foil, but Reid's too smart for that. Reid will find a way to carry the torch for Democrats and still be loyal to the interests of Nevadans, List said.
Reid's rise carries only advantages for the state, said former Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., who long worked with Reid. State residents will understand that at times Reid will be diverted from state issues by his role as a national Democratic leader.
"I think everyone accepts that with leadership come certain responsibilities," Bryan said.
Part of Reid's job will be to work with the Republican leader to choose members of conference committees -- teams with members from both parties that negotiate the final draft of bills. By picking those members, he'll have another chance to protect his interests and the interests of Nevada.
Beyond the general floor management and Senate business, Reid also will be a de facto national spokesman for the Democrats.
Bruce Oppenheimer, political science professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said that when a party does not control the White House, the party's House and Senate leaders take on the national role.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 13, 2004
Columnist Jon Ralston: Placid style masks Reid's fire
Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.
Weekend Edition
November 13 - 14, 2004
So who is this guy named Harry Reid, who this week will become the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill?
Is he, as an editorial in The New York Times put it, "a conservative with a reputation for steeliness and attention to detail and a knack for floor skirmishing"? Is he, as a political scientist in The Los Angeles Times painted him, "a kind of Dickensian figure" who "haunts the floor (as) the hovering spirit of Democrats"? Or is he, as well-known political observer Larry Sabato told the National Journal, a product of the state from which he hails:
"Look, he's from Nevada," Sabato said. "You don't get in the Senate and stay there by being totally on the up-and-up all the time. That's what you need in a Senate leader."
Can this be our Pinky, the Searchlight-born son of a hard rock miner who overcame adversity (losses in the '70s for the U.S. Senate and then Las Vegas mayor) to become one of the most powerful politicians this state has seen, rivaling the likes of Pat McCarran and Howard Cannon?
Those of us who have followed Reid closely for decades know him to be the ruthless, skilled backroom player that he has become on Capitol Hill -- and he applies those talents equally well on the Senate floor or scaring prospective opponents out of races. (Where have you gone, Jim Gibbons?)
He can indeed reach out to the other side of the aisle, especially if they can help him. And Dickensian? How many times have special interests back home seen him heed their call for funds as he, in his own special way, approached his colleagues and innocently asked, "Please, sir, may I have some more?"
Reid is the unique political figure whose outer mask -- mild-mannered, almost introverted -- belies a Machiavellian master of maneuvering who can cultivate anyone's trust and earn chits, whether the person has an R or a D after his name. And it never ceases to amaze how national observers, seeing his anti-abortion stance, reflexively refer to him as a conservative when his voting record is decidedly left of center.
In a sense, he has been preparing his entire career for the job about to be handed to him by his Senate colleagues. Reid is a fully functioning schizophrenic -- the angry partisan who is at once asked to be the leader of the sometimes not-so-loyal opposition and the friendly negotiator who is called on to forge the compromises that seem out of reach to others, as many GOP senators have pointed out since the election.
The only glimpses so far of Reid's approach as leader came in an exclusive interview on "Face to Face" after the election. Here are some highlights:
Reid described his conversation after the election with President Bush, whom he has called a liar on Yucca Mountain:
"I said, 'Mr. President I am going to work with you every chance I can but I am also going to tell you when I think you are wrong and when I think you are doing the wrong thing.' ... The president knows that he is not going to get anything done unless he works with us. ... He knows that and that is why he reached out to call me. President Bush and the people around him are not a bunch of dopes."
Reid indicated that he will have none of the president's efforts to change Social Security to allow private investments:
"I think if someone wants to privatize Social Security they are going to have to look for somebody else to get in bed with other than me."
On tort reform, Reid also was hewing to the Democratic line, but was he auditioning for the new job or foretelling the battle too come?
"I know this may not be politically correct, but I believe the people who are injured deserve some ability to be made whole," he said. "I want to keep the system. I think there are things we can tinker with to change it. ... Do you realize in hospitals, doctors killed 100,000 Americans last year? Should we just shovel that under the rug and say it is not right to compensate these people for this?"
As for Yucca Mountain, Reid said his new position probably won't help much:
"It is obvious we had, it appears, a referendum on Yucca Mountain and the people in the state of Nevada, by a slim margin, said we guess we will take Yucca Mountain. ... There are limited things that can be done, legislatively. That is why I was surprised in the paper some of the (Nevada) representatives said we are going to continue to fight. ... Our options are becoming more limited every day. ... The state of Nevada has to look to the courts for help. I can slow things down but I can't stop it."
Reid also said he recognizes what history has thrust upon him and scoffs at commentary about his lack of charisma or TV presence:
"I realize the tremendous responsibility I have. I have never had anything even close to this in my life but not many people do. But I am who I am. I am not Tom Daschle. I am not George Mitchell. I am not Robert Byrd. I am not Bob Dole. I am not Bill Frist. I am Harry Reid and I have this position, I have these responsibilities and I will do the very best I can for our country."
But can he possibly still have time to find pork for his home state? There is no more pork out there that he hasn't already obtained, is there?
"We'll see," Reid smiled broadly.
Another indefatigable character, Oliver Twist, would be proud.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
November 14, 2004
Letters: Bush´s Nevada vote was contradictory
I am really disturbed that our citizens do not see the contradictions that were present in this last election. We voted by a large majority to raise the minimum wage. A survey says that over 85 percent oppose the nuclear repository in Nevada. Then we vote for Bush who is adamantly opposed to the minimum wage and is committed to the nuclear dump.
Nationally, the polls tell us that the greatest reason for voting for Bush was because of moral values. Bush´s policies are driven, not by his faith, but by money. Money for the wealthy and depriving the unfortunate, the aged, and the poor.
I have read the Bible many times. Christ taught that above everything else, worshipping money is evil. Money and selfishness are the root of evil. The reason behind Bush´s policy on social security is to give his cronies in the stock market access to the money. His policies on the environment are always directed at lessening the cost of billionaires to do business, not protecting the environment. Christ never spoke about homosexuality, let alone criticize it, so where are all these ideas coming from? Our educational system needs to teach our children to do some analytical, critical thinking.
Will Brown
Sparks
Re “Nevadans still oppose Yucca dump,’ [Nov. 6]. (Interesting in itself, is the term “dump’ as opposed to repository.) I was going to email RGJ the day after the election to voice what the RGJ mentions. Those in favor of a nuke dump point to the state of Nevada voting for Bush as proof that Nevadans approve. Now it appears that those who helped re-elect Bush want to have their cake and eat it too.
One other item that may interest you. Several years ago, while in Minnesota, I pulled up the 2002 EWG Nuclear Waste Route Atlas web site. The planned railroad route showed the Nuclear Waste Train traveling though, among other places, the town of Pipestone. EWG had showed the entire route in all states affected by nuclear goodies en route to Yucca. The site is now prohibited.
So Nevada, half of you anyway, asked for it, now live with it.
Ed De Yonge
Reno
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New York Times
November 14, 2004
Congress Set to Return to Hash Out Spending
By Carl Hulse
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - The old Congress returns to a new Washington on Tuesday to face unfinished spending bills and other lingering legislation in an atmosphere significantly altered by the Nov. 2 elections.
President Bush's re-election and Republican gains in the House and in the Senate have leaders of that party in a celebratory mood, ready to press ahead with their agenda.
But while Republicans expanded their majorities in the House and Senate for the term beginning in January, the post-election session will be the domain of the current Congress, with its much smaller divide in the Senate.
As a result, lawmakers from both parties say they would prefer to dispose of the must-pass spending bills, and perhaps a few other measures, quickly, and wind up the lame-duck meeting, leaving a clean slate for the more Republican 109th Congress when it convenes in January.
"There is no reason to start next year worrying about this year's problems," said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire. Even as they try to finish up the leftovers of 2004, lawmakers will begin preparing for 2005.
Both parties will select leadership teams in the House and Senate, with the most significant changes coming among Senate Democrats. The Democrats are expected to replace Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who was defeated in his re-election bid, with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.
In addition, dozens of new members of the House and Senate will be in town for their orientation as well as the organizational meetings of both parties, though some will be doing double duty because four of the new Republican members of the Senate are currently serving in the House.
The main legislative business will be nine spending bills that Congress did not pass before breaking in mid-October, leaving much of the federal government operating under a stopgap bill that is due to expire.
Congressional aides said the most likely action would be to wrap the nine bills together into a single $388 billion package and seek one final vote.
A few tangential issues, like dairy provisions, have yet to be resolved, and the measure setting spending on energy and water projects will probably be held to current levels because of an inability to settle a dispute over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project in Nevada.
But House and Senate officials said there was a widespread desire to finish the bills, particularly since the two Republican chairmen of the Appropriations Committees, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, will be stepping down from those posts next year under party term limits.
"Everybody from the leadership to the White House to the departing chairmen really seems to want to get our work done," said John Scofield, a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee.
The main lame-duck political fight could come over a proposal to raise the federal debt limit to avoid disrupting the government's ability to borrow and keep operating. Republicans pushed off the issue before the election, wanting to avoid an embarrassing vote that drew attention to the increase in the federal deficit under the supervision of Mr. Bush and the Republican-led Congress. But they may not be able to avoid one now with the Treasury Department warning that it has exhausted other accounting options.
Senate officials said they expected to bring a stand-alone increase to the floor because those in charge of the spending bills did not want the issue to complicate their work.
House Republican leaders were still considering their approach, but House Democrats were pressing for a separate vote on the debt limit and the return of budget rules that require new spending to be offset to avoid more increases in the deficit.
"The president said he is going to cut the deficit in half in the next four years,'' said the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, "but without any discipline, how on earth can he reduce it?"
Some lawmakers were still holding out hope that Congress could adopt a final version of the intelligence reorganization legislation based on the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. House and Senator negotiators have been trying to come to terms for a month on the plan to create a new national intelligence director, but officials were growing increasingly pessimistic that an agreement could be reached this week.
"We just have not seen any movement from the House," said one top Senate leadership aide.
Failure to adopt a final bill now would push the issue into 2005, and some of its chief proponents say they worry that the completion of the election will have sapped momentum from the reorganization effort, which has run into resistance from the Pentagon and its Congressional allies.
Lawmakers involved with education issues say they could potentially reach a deal on an overdue renewal of the federal special education program, freeing up money for states clamoring for resources.
Though Mr. Daschle is still the minority leader for several more weeks, his aides said he intended to defer to Mr. Reid for the most part after the party leadership elections on Tuesday morning.
While Congress finishes up, its newly elected members will be in town for a series of meetings on matters like office budgets, local real estate and the rules and procedures of the House and Senate.
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Salt Lake Tribune
November 14, 2004
N-waste to travel through Utah in untested casks
Feds don't have the bucks to do it: Instead, nuclear agency relies on computer analyses and scale modeling
By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune
Federal officials are planning to have armed guards escort nuclear waste shipments as they travel by barge, train and truck from reactors to the underground repository planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev.
But the real hedge against disaster, the officials say, are the "robust" casks the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved for transporting 3,000 tons of the deadly waste per year past more than 11 million people in 45 states - and through Salt Lake City - to the repository 90 miles north of Las Vegas.
The NRC, however, won't test any of those casks to demonstrate their ability to survive severe real-world accidents. One of the casks in question is the cask model destined to hold waste at a temporary storage facility in Utah.
The agency hasn't even tested actual casks to see if they satisfy the NRC's own regulatory standards, relying instead on computer analyses and scale modeling. Critics say those simulations are inadequate, especially regarding a tunnel fire as severe as occurred in Baltimore three years ago.
"The NRC has adopted as fact the fictional notion there are no real-world accidents that could cause casks to fail," said Bob Halstead, a consultant to Nevada on Yucca Mountain transportation issues.
NRC senior transportation adviser Earl Easton says the agency doesn't have the money to do real-world testing. "We're trying to scrape together the funds," Easton told The Salt Lake Tribune.
While acknowledging the value of computer modeling, the states of Utah and Nevada are demanding full testing of the casks. The American Association of Railroads is concerned about what would happen if one cask crushed another in a train derailment and also wants full-scale failure tests.
Frustrated with NRC, Nevadahas spent $60,000 on a computer analysis that shows a transport cask would fail after two hours in the kind of fire that engulfed a Baltimore rail tunnel in 2001. That fire reached temperatures of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit and burned for more than 24 hours.
Halstead said the only satisfactory fire-safety test would be to burn a full-scale demonstration cask at that temperature for three hours and then cool it for five hours.
NRC regulations require casks to pass a series of hypothetical accident conditions: a 30-foot free fall onto an unyielding surface, followed by a 40-inch fall onto a steel rod six inches in diameter. Then, casks would be subjected to a 1,475-degree Fahrenheit fire for 30 minutes before being submersed in three feet of water for eight hours. The sequence is supposed to mimic a rail or truck crash.
The casks are protected by "impact limiters," which are caps on both ends that make the containers resemble barbells and cover vulnerable seals and bolts. The NRC has tested full-scale impact limiters by dropping them onto unyielding surfaces.
But Halstead said the most dangerous impact wouldn't be to the limiters. "It's a sideways truck jackknifing so the bridge abutment hits the cask in the body, bypassing the limiter, causing it to twist and force the lid to pop open, like Popeye's can of spinach," he said.
That could cause a tiny opening and allow lethal radioactive cesium and strontium to escape. "All you really need is the equivalent of a square centimeter leak around the lid," he said.
The casks, weighing between 25 and 125 tons, are made of multiple layers of steel and other materials. The NRC has certified 16 different designs, including a rail-transport model made by New Jersey-based Holtec International that Private Fuel Storage would use at its facility proposedfor the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Holtec would be willing to sell the $3 million casks for any kind of testing NRC would want to do, said Joy Russell, a Holtec spokeswoman. "We are confident our system could withstand the scrutiny and testing it would undergo," she said.
PFS, a consortium of eight utilities, is planning to send 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel to an open-air storage site in Skull Valley. It could receive its operating license as early as January and begin shipping high-level radioactive waste by 2007.
Allegations about Holtec cask integrity surfaced last year when a whistle-blower claimed the casks fabricated by U.S. Tool and Die had faulty welding and other safety shortcomings. In August, the NRC's inspector general reported deficiencies but concluded quality assurance programs at both companieswere adequate.
The casks' durability came into question again during closed-door hearings that ended last month on the potential effects of an F-16 jet-fighter crash on the casks, which would be stored above ground beneath Hill Air Force Base's flight path.
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TechnologyReview
December 2004
A New Vision for Nuclear Waste
Storing nuclear waste underground at Yucca Mountain for 100,000 years is a terrible idea. A better approach may be to buy some time—until new containment technologies mature.
By Matthew L. Wald
When American Airlines Flight 11 flew at low altitude down the Hudson River valley on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, its target was the north tower of the World Trade Center. But its impact is still being felt at a cluster of buildings it passed about five minutes before it reached lower Manhattan, at a nuclear-reactor complex called Indian Point in Buchanan, NY. Adjacent to the site´s two operating reactors are two buildings packed with highly radioactive spent-fuel rods, in pools of water 12 meters deep and tinged Ty-D-Bol blue by boron added to tamp down nuclear chain reactions. The soothing hum of the pumps that circulate the building´s warm, moist air—and, critically, keep the water cool—lends an atmosphere of industrial tranquility.
Without that cooling water, the fuel cladding might overheat, melt, catch fire, and release radiation. Whether the impact of a Boeing 767 like Flight 11 could drain one of the pools and disable backup water pumps, starting such a fire, is far from clear. Nevertheless, the threat of terrorism in general and the flyover of Flight 11 in particular have reignited the debate about why all of this dangerous fuel is still here—indeed, why all spent fuel produced at Indian Point in three decades is still here—and not at Yucca Mountain, the federal government´s burial spot near Las Vegas, where it was supposed to be shipped beginning six years ago.
Late this past summer, a construction project began at Indian Point that will allow the fuel to be pulled out of the pools. But it´s not going to Yucca. The government says Yucca won´t be ready until 2010. Executives in the nuclear industry say a more likely date is between 2015 and never. So instead of traveling to Nevada, Indian Point´s fuel is traveling about 100 meters, to a bluff overlooking the Hudson River. On a late-summer day this year, a backhoe tore out maple and black-walnut trees to make way for a concrete pad. Beginning next year, the first of a planned 72 six-meter-tall concrete-and-steel casks will be placed there, a configuration that adds storage capacity and thus allows the twin power plants to keep operating. Though they provide a hedge against a worst-case fuel-pool meltdown, these casks are merely another temporary solution. The fact that they´re needed at all represents the colossal failure of the U.S. Department of Energy´s Yucca plans and technology.
Yet as engineering and policy failures go, this one has a silver lining. Conventional thinking holds that Yucca´s problems must be solved quickly so that nuclear waste can be squirreled away safely and permanently, deep within a remote mountain. But here´s the twist: with nuclear waste, procrastination may actually pay. The construction of cask fields presents a chance to rethink the conventional. The passage of several decades while the waste sits in casks could be immensely helpful. A century would give the United States time to observe progress on waste storage in other countries. In the meantime, natural radioactive decay would make the waste cooler and thus easier to deal with. What´s more, technological advances over the next century might yield better long-term storage methods. “If it goes on for another 50 years, it doesn´t matter. It could go on for 100 or 200 years, and it´s probably for the better,’ says Allison Macfarlane, a geologist at MIT and coeditor of a forthcoming book on Yucca. “We´ve got plenty of time to play with it.’
The government must now accept that its Yucca plan is a failure and that casks are the de facto solution. Indian Point´s cask pad will not be the first; about two dozen operating reactors have them already. Others are likely to soon join the list. And some casks—at Rowe, MA, Wiscasset, ME, Charlevoix, MI, and a site near Sacramento, CA—are nuclear orphans, having outlived their reactors. Each cask pad is roughly the size of a football field, floodlit, watched by motion sensors and closed-circuit TV, and surrounded by razor wire and armed guards. Given the homeland-security concern posed by nuclear-waste facilities, and the need to guard them individually, do we really want 60 of them—serving all 125 commercial reactors that have ever operated—to rise around the nation, many near population centers? If casks are the solution for the next generation or two, they should be put in one place.
Yucca is already on tenuous ground; in July a federal appeals court said that to open the mountain burial site, the government would have to show that it could contain waste for hundreds of thousands of years. Extensive scientific analyses by the Energy Department show it cannot. The court´s decision throws the whole question back to the U.S. Congress, which must now decide whether to proceed with Yucca at all. This presents an opportunity to align policy with physics and abandon the Yucca-or-bust dogma that has dominated the debate for nearly 20 years. Casks, centrally located, could make the high-level-waste problem a lot easier to solve and increase national security much sooner, too.
The Tunnel Vision
The federal fixation on Yucca Mountain now spans two decades. Beginning in the early 1980s, the government agreed to take waste from any nuclear utility that paid a tariff of a tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour generated by its reactors. All the companies quickly signed up. But the selection of Yucca, 150 kilometers northwest of Las Vegas, was never driven by science. The site was chosen by that august group of geologists and physicists, the U.S. Congress. So far, the Energy Department has spent about $6 billion on development, including building an eight-kilometer, U-shaped tunnel through the mountain, in some places nearly 300 meters below the surface. It plans to spend at least $50 billion more to build dozens of side tunnels, package the waste in steel containers that look like the tanker portion of a gasoline truck, place the waste in the tunnels, and operate the site for 50 to 100 years before sealing it for eternity.
Problems have plagued Yucca since the beginning. In Senate debate, proponents stressed how dry it is. Yucca is, in fact, located in what is now a desert. But it turns out that the ground is moist. Even the 19 or so centimeters of rain the mountain gets each year is a major problem. Over time, moisture can corrode even the best alloys known to man. Corrosion would mean that rainwater percolating through the ground could carry radioactive materials with it and convey them to irrigation systems and drinking-water wells in the region, delivering substantial doses of radiation to unsuspecting people generations hence.
Heat is another problem. The shorter-lived radioactive isotopes in used fuel, principally cesium-137 and strontium-90, give a single fuel assembly, fresh out of the reactor, a heat output equal to that of about 20 handheld hair dryers. That´s why each power plant has an adjacent storage pool that circulates cooling water. Once the fuel was underground at Yucca, it would be hot enough to boil ground water into steam. Steam could corrode the containers or break up surrounding rock, raising uncertainty about secure burial. Spreading the waste out would dissipate the heat, but it would also greatly reduce Yucca´s storage capacity. Then there´s the problem of radioactive decay. High-energy particles can interact with surrounding materials, breaking them down or causing them to give off hydrogen, a gas that can explode or burn.
Early this year, researchers at Catholic University of America, hired by the state of Nevada, took samples of the kind of metal the Energy Department wants to use at Yucca and put them in some water mixed with the minerals present in the mountain. As a series of speakers lectured reporters on why Yucca was a bad idea, the researchers sautéed the metal over a burner. By the time the lectures were done, the samples had corroded, some of them all the way through. How faithfully the stunt reproduced the chemistry of Yucca Mountain is debatable. But clearly, Yucca is subject to serious doubts. “You have to think somewhere back in the premise structure of the whole thing, something was dreadfully wrong,’ says Stewart Brand, a San Francisco–based consultant who once advised the Canadian government on what to do with its own waste.
Cooler Fuel
The argument against casks is that they are merely temporary, not meant to serve longer than perhaps 100 years, and that they are a kind of surrender, leaving this generation´s waste problem to a future generation to solve. Yet their impermanence is exactly what´s good about them. A century hence, spent reactor fuel will be cooler and more amenable to permanent disposal. In fact, within a few decades, the average fuel bundle´s heat output will be down to two or three hair dryers. After 150 years, only one-thirty-second of the cesium and strontium will remain. The remaining material can be buried closer together without boiling underground water. Reduced heat means reduced uncertainty.
Granted, spent fuel will be far from safe after such a relatively short period. Even after 100 years, it will still be so radioactive that a few minutes of direct exposure will be lethal. “It´s many, many, many thousands of years before it´s a no nevermind,’ says Geoffrey Schwartz, the cask manager for Indian Point, which is owned by Entergy Nuclear. “But the spent fuel does become more benign as time goes by.’
The fuel could be more valuable, too. For decades, industry and government officials have recognized that “spent’ reactor fuel contains a large amount of unused uranium, as well as another very good reactor fuel, plutonium, which is produced as a by-product of running the reactor. Both can be readily extracted, although right now the price of new uranium is so low, and the cost of extraction so high, that reprocessing spent fuel is not practical. And the political climate does not favor a technology that makes potential bomb fuel—plutonium—an item of international commerce. But things might be different in 100 years. For starters, the same fuel could be reprocessed much more easily, since the potentially valuable components will be in a matrix of material that is not so intensely radioactive.
And in 100 years, advances in reprocessing technology might make the economics compelling. The existing American technology dates from the Cold War and involves elaborate chemical steps that create vast quantities of liquid waste. But an alternative exists: electrometallurgical reprocessing. Though research into the technique has lagged of late because of the economic climate, the concept might be taken more seriously in the future. Electrodes could sort out the garbage (the atoms formed when uranium is split) from the usable uranium (the uranium-235 still available for fission and the uranium-238 that can be turned into plutonium in a reactor), in something like the way jewelers use electrometallurgy to apply silver plate. Resulting waste volumes would be far smaller.
Perhaps most importantly, in 100 years, energy supply anddemand might be very different. Reprocessed nuclear fuel might well become a critical part of the energy supply, if the world has run out of cheap oil and we decide that burning coal is too damaging to our atmosphere. If that happens, we might have 1,000 nuclear reactors. On the other hand, we might have no reactors, depending on the progress of alternate energy sources like solar and wind. At this point, it´s hard to tell, but we are not required to make the decision now; we can put the spent fuel in casks for 50 years and then decide if it is wheat or chaff.
There is a final, more practical reason that we might choose to take the plutonium out of spent fuel for reactor use: it makes the remainder easier to store. For the most part, what´s left will not be radioactive for nearly as long, and the sheer volume of material will be lower. Mark Deinert, a physicist at Cornell University, says reprocessing, like recycling, removes about half of the material from the waste, dramatically decreasing storage costs and effectively doubling the capacity of a facility like Yucca.
Betting on Better Storage
While nuclear waste would be easier to handle in 50 or 100 years, it would still require isolation for several hundred thousand years. But there is every reason to expect that storage technology will improve in the next century. When we decide to permanently dispose of the waste, either after reprocessing or without reprocessing, we may be smarter at metallurgy, geology, and geochemistry than we are now.
Today, the basic technology at Yucca is a stainless-steel material called alloy 22, covered with an umbrella of titanium—a “drip shield’ against water percolating down through the tunnel roof. That could look as primitive in 100 years as the Wright brothers´ 1903 Flyer looks to us in 2004. Or it might simply be obsolete. Space-launch technology could become as reliable as jet airplanes are today, giving us a nearly foolproof way to throw waste into solar orbit. The mysteries of geochemistry might be as transparent as the human genetic code is becoming, which would mean we could say with confidence what kind of package would keep the waste encased for the next few hundred thousand years.
Or there might be easier ways to process the waste. For example, particle accelerators, routinely used to make medical isotopes, could provide a means to make the waste more benign. The principle has already been demonstrated experimentally: firing subatomic particles at high-level radioactive waste can change long-lived radioactive materials to short-lived ones. Richard A. Meserve, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now the chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel on nuclear waste, says this technology, known as transmutation, might become more practical in 100 years. The technology of accelerators has advanced in the last few years, he says, and it is a good bet that it will continue to do so.
Some alternative storage technologies may need only a few more years of research and development. One is ceramic packaging. Ceramics have good resistance to radiation and heat, and they don´t rust. At the moment, nobody casts ceramics big enough to hold fuel assemblies, which are typically about four meters long. But there is no theoretical limit to the sizes of ceramics; there has simply been no economic incentive to make giant ones. Nor will there be, until the only likely customer for them, the Energy Department, decides that the metal it is shopping for now isn´t up to the job.
Another alternative calls for mixing waste with ceramics or minerals to form a rocklike material comprising about 20 percent waste. The waste would be chemically bound up in stable materials that are not prone to react with water. With a few decades´ grace time, engineers could build samples and test them in harsh environments. But even though the idea has been around for more than 10 years, no one has put serious research money into it, since its only possible American customer, the Energy Department, has been committed to Yucca.
That situation shows no sign of change. The Energy Department, following Congress´s orders, has so far declined to consider alternatives. Man-Sung Yim, a nuclear researcher at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, argues that some of these technologies are already mature but have been shoved aside in the Energy Department´s rush, possibly futile, to open Yucca. “My reading at this point is, people working at the Yucca Mountain project office do not really want to change the design. The more change you bring in, the more delayed the processes,’ Yim says. “It´s a pity, because we could make it better.’
Central Casking
But the pursuit of the perfect solution (assuming deep geologic disposal even could be perfected) has ignored a realistic solution. And when the perfect fails, as now seems likely, we will be left with something no rational person would have chosen: waste sites scattered from coast to coast, in places where reactors used to be, each with its own security force, maintenance crew, and exclusion zone. “We´re here to run a business as efficiently as possible,’ says John Sanchez, the project manager who oversaw the planning for the pad at Indian Point when he worked at Consolidated Edison, the site´s former owner. “In a perfect world, you would not have 60 of anything, if you could have one.’ But after 20 years of pursuing geologic disposal, and 15 years of chasing Yucca and avoiding any mention of a plan B, just such an ad hoc, and suboptimal, solution is emerging.
And it´s emerging without the support of the Energy Department. Testifying before the Senate Energy Committee over the summer, Kyle McSlarrow, the Energy Department´s deputy secretary, said that “continued progress toward establishing a high-level waste repository at the Yucca Mountain site is absolutely essential.’ He told another committee on the same day that with progress toward Yucca´s opening, “industry saw clearly that the nuclear-power option was truly back on the table.’ (The department would not make McSlarrow or other officials available for comment for this article.)
Cask storage is not pretty, but what´s wrong with the idea of an industrial repository, a few hectares set aside for the next century or so, a single, guarded location in a little-populated area, a location that in ten years or so will be remarkable only because it´s a place where the snow doesn´t stick? Macfarlane of MIT says making such site secure and terrorist-proof would cost $6.5 billion, at most. “Isn´t that worth it? How much have we spent on Iraq? Look what we got for that money. And there´s more at risk here,’ she says.
Finding a central site poses obvious challenges; nobody wants any type of radioactive waste site in his or her backyard. But after extended negotiations, a group of utility engineers, including Sanchez, cut a deal with the Skull Valley band of the Goshute Indian tribe for a long lease on part of its reservation 80 kilometers west of Salt Lake City. The area already hosts an air-force bombing range, a nerve gas depot and incinerator, and a dump for low-level radioactive waste; the Goshutes figure they can use the rent to buy themselves land in a nicer neighborhood.
Some experts think the federal government could take over the Goshute project and push it to completion, but there is a snag—an ironic one, given the fears of a September 11–style attack on a nuclear site. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined that an F-16´s crashing into the casks on its way to or from the test site is a “credible accident.’ But while such a crash would doubtless be disastrous, casks do provide some safety advantages over today´s fuel pools. The fuel in casks is much more spread out and does not require a flow of cooling water to prevent spontaneous, spreading fire. Thus the worst-case effects are more limited. In any case, one remote central site would be easier to protect with air defenses than numerous scattered sites.
Those scattered sites are already creating local problems. The casks from the former reactor in Wiscasset, ME, are blocking the redevelopment of the peninsula where they´re stored, a valuable industrial site. A cask site near the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant in Welch, MN, is adjacent to a tribal day-care center and casino, which is nobody´s idea of a long-term solution. Inevitably, in the wake of September 11, the Indian Point casks will be a locus of fear. These outcomes will seem even sillier in 30 years, when many of the reactors that made the waste are gone.
Sanchez recalls carrying a picnic lunch to the stand of maples and black-walnut trees now being replaced with a concrete pad for storing nuclear waste. As the years roll by, fewer and fewer people will know those trees existed. Several decades from now, as today´s aging nuclear power plants are decommissioned, people may not remember that the reactors themselves existed. If we don´t take action soon, however, casks of waste will stand alone on that bluff above the Hudson River—and in dozens of other places across the country.
Matthew L. Wald, a reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, has written about the nuclear industry for 25 years.
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Guardian
November 13, 2004
Congress to Return for Lame-Duck Session
By Alan Fram
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans' election triumph behind them, members of Congress return Tuesday for a lame-duck session amid hope they can finish a huge pile of spending bills stalemated all year.
Legislators also must vote on raising the government's tapped-out borrowing limit, now at $7.4 trillion. In addition, they would like to pass a bill to put in place the Sept. 11 commission's vision of reshaping intelligence agencies, although House-Senate disputes make the chances appear seem dim.
Congressional aides of both parties were working toward an agreement that could let lawmakers quickly finish eight of the nine remaining spending bills for the federal budget year that started Oct. 1.
The deal would involve extra money for veterans, NASA and other White House and congressional priorities while imposing across-the-board cuts of perhaps 0.75 percent on other programs, said aides who spoke on condition of anonymity.
``One way or another, we're going to get done,'' House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla.
Lawmakers have ample motivation for a quick postelection session, perhaps lasting little more than a week.
Republicans are eager to clear the decks for President Bush's second-term initiatives, which he would like to feature overhauls of the tax laws and Social Security.
Many Democrats want to settle now for spending increases they consider modest, knowing the elections mean next year's Congress will be more conservative and probably will look less kindly on domestic programs.
``It's important that Congress get its work done, and we're very encouraged by what we see,'' said Noam Neusner, spokesman for the White House budget office.
A postelection session has become a congressional habit, to the dismay of lawmakers who used to spend Novembers and Decembers at home. This will be the fifth consecutive election year in which members of the outgoing Congress have returned to the Capitol, including those who were defeated.
Among them will be outgoing Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the only Senate incumbent to lose on Nov. 2.
Aides say he plans a low-key role, deferring to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who seems certain to be elected Tuesday as Senate Democratic leader for next year's Congress.
Also in the mix are the Democrats' defeated presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who is retiring. Both are trying to work out what their future roles will be.
Sen. Arlen Specter hopes to make a direct plea, in a private meeting with Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, for his case to become chairman. Abortion opponents want Specter, R-Pa., bypassed because of his comment after the elections that anti-abortion nominees for judgeships would face a tough time winning Senate confirmation.
By midweek, Republicans hope to approve a bill to increase the government's debt limit by perhaps $690 billion.
Without a higher borrowing ceiling, an unprecedented federal default could occur. Democrats, searching for telling issues after losing seats in the House and Senate, see the must-pass bill as a chance to highlight the record federal deficits that have arisen during Bush's presidency.
``A matter of this importance deserves center stage,'' said Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Of the 13 annual spending bills for the federal budget that started Oct. 1, Congress still must complete nine with a total price tag well over $300 billion. They would finance a dozen Cabinet departments, from Agriculture to Veterans Affairs, and scores of other agencies.
Least likely to be completed this year is the bill to finance energy and water programs. It is bogged down largely because of a fight over whether to build a nuclear waste depository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, which Reid opposes.
Bush wants the 13 bills to total no more than $821.9 billion. The House matched that amount but the Senate exceeded it by $8 billion, paying for it with accounting devices such as delaying the mailing of some welfare checks into a future budget year.
The emerging agreement would provide roughly $4 billion extra, paid for mostly with the across-the-board cut, aides said. That would let lawmakers provide extra money for community colleges, the postal service, and a Bush initiative to increase foreign aid for countries that embrace democratic reforms.
Aides hope Bush's victory will persuade lawmakers to drop contentious provisions in the bills that block administration rules on overtime, trade with Cuba and giving federal jobs to private contractors.
The week's work will be slowed because many lawmakers are expected to fly to Arkansas for Thursday's opening of former President Clinton's presidential library.
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Daily Telegraph
November 13, 2004
Fergus Gibb's 'granite coffin' may finally reconcile us to the beauty of nuclear power
By Adam Nicolson
Nuclear power is the only form of electricity generation that will keep us happy. It does not contribute to global warming. It does not spread itself in ugly swaths across remote hillsides. It is by far the safest form of power generation ever devised. It can satisfy large energy demands from an increasingly energy-hungry world. It reduces dependence on oil supplies from the Middle East. Its own raw material is enormously abundant.
And yet you have only to mention nuclear power for long, gloomy faces to shake long and gloomily over the list of nuclear tombstones: Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the Irish Sea the most radioactive in the world, Karen Silkwood, the China Syndrome and now, added to that list, Yucca Mountain, the place in Nevada where the American government has decided to bury large quantities of nuclear waste, a proposal that now seems dangerous because ground water percolating between the seams in the rock will leach out the radioactivity and spread it in a hellish slew of deformed babies and pale-faced mothers across the beautiful landscape of Nevada.
The nub, of course, is the waste. It was waste that got all over Karen Silkwood. It is reprocessing waste that has caused all the problems at Sellafield. It is waste that is focused on by all the anti-nuclearist greens and it is waste that has meant governments have been wary for the past 20 years of doing anything about nuclear power.
Waste, though, is not a technical problem, or at least does not need to be. It is a political problem, founded on irrational fears of nuclear power. It is those political fears that have starved research into the technical solutions of the necessary money.
An English geologist has come up with one of the most ingenious ideas yet suggested. Dr Fergus Gibb, a specialist in igneous rocks at Sheffield University who has done mould-breaking research into the beautiful columnar dolerites of the Hebrides, has suggested that the really high-grade nuclear waste should be returned to the earth and allowed, in effect, to melt itself back into the rocks from which the nuclear ores were originally mined.
Gibb's idea has a brilliant circularity about it. The very heat that nuclear material generates, which is at the heart of much of the difficulty of storing the waste at all, could actually be put to use. His idea is to drill enormously deep holes right into the granite of the continental crust, perhaps 5,000 metres down, at the bottom of which it is quite hot anyway: about 900C. Add some canisters of high-level nuclear waste and the whole bottom of the shaft turns molten. The waste is then "engulfed", in Gibb's word, by the surrounding rock, which would resolidify in a matter of weeks. The waste would be entombed for millions of years until erosion would again expose it. By then the nuclear material will have lost its potency. Gibb calls his solution "the granite coffin".
If this is for real, then it turns the entire nuclear debate on its head. Gibb, with his colleague Philip Attrill, has reproduced in the laboratory the heat and pressure conditions in molten granite five kilometres down. They found that the rock did indeed resolidify within a few weeks. There is undoubtedly a problem in drilling a hole through granite deep enough for the safety margin required and big enough (about 40cm across) to take the canisters of waste. There are also problems in handling the extremely dangerous material he has in mind.
But those problems do not sound insuperable. About 400 holes are needed for the current British stockpile of some 2,000 cubic metres. But once it was done, it would be done. There would be no maintenance. Water does not circulate through rocks below about 4,500 metres and so there would be no Yucca Mountain problem. Processed nuclear waste would be reintegrated with the Earth, where it would form a tiny fraction of the nuclear material already there.
Prominent, serious-minded greens such as James Lovelock are now perfectly clear about a set of things: the phenomenon of global warming is a reality; it has within it the seeds of its own acceleration; the burning of fossil fuels is to blame; the end result of that warming will be massive grief for the poor of the world and a general diminution of the planet. The melting of the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean will turn the North Pole from ice-white to sea-black and the far north will no longer cool the world, but warm it.
What about renewable energy sources: the beautiful geothermal power stations in Iceland; the windmills on which the Scots and Danes are so keen; the wave and tide-stations? They, it seems, are nothing but vanities, half-decorative eyecatchers like the temples and obelisks that 18th-century grandees placed around their pet landscapes. The elegant landscape decorations of Stowe or Castle Howard had nothing to do with the real world of commerce, empire and war that paid for them. Those clean energy systems are also nothing but a kind of would-be Arcadia.
And as for the perennial green wish that people would use less energy: that, more than ever, seems like hoping for rivers to flow uphill. Only nuclear power has the capacity, the responsiveness and the cleanness to address this nest of problems. And Fergus Gibb's granite coffin may well be the key.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 12, 2004
Bechtel's Big Dig problems no surprise to Yucca critics
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- Yucca Mountain critics glumly note that Boston's controversial "Big Dig" public works project, plagued by leaks and cost overruns, is managed by the same corporation in charge of the proposed nuclear waste dump.
Critics wonder how the Bechtel Corp. expects to forever seal away the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste if it can't plug holes in a highway tunnel.
"Bechtel is as over-bloated a bureaucracy as our own federal government," said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Nevada environmental group Citizen Alert. "We have to start demanding more accountability."
Yucca is managed by Nevada-based Bechtel SAIC Co., LLC, a partnership of Bechtel National Inc., and Science Applications International Corp., currently under a $1.8 billion six-year contract for Yucca that is up in 2006.
Bechtel SAIC is the lead contractor under the Energy Department, which oversees the project aimed at establishing a national nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
A Bechtel SAIC spokeswoman in Nevada referred questions to a corporate spokesman in Maryland, who was unavailable.
The $14.6 billion Big Dig, managed by Bechtel and New York-based Parsons Brinckerhoff, was launched in 1991 as one of the largest public works projects in the world and aimed at unclogging Boston traffic. Workers have largely completed the project, replacing an elevated downtown highway with an underground tunnel, and extending an interstate through a tunnel under Boston Harbor to Logan Airport.
But now millions of gallons of water are leaking into the tunnel system, an engineering investigator says. Finding and fixing the leaks could take up to 10 years, said a consultant hired by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. The consultant found oversight lapses, suggesting Bechtel and a co-contractor knew it had faulty construction in the late 1990s.
Bechtel issued a statement this week saying "seepage" is inevitable in new tunnels of the type in Boston, but can be mitigated with maintenance programs. "The tunnel is structurally sound," the statement said.
Nevada officials have long faulted Yucca contractors, including Bechtel, for flawed science and shoddy work. It's no shock now that Bechtel is facing charges of bad construction and oversight lapses in Boston, said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency.
"It doesn't surprise me a bit," he said.
Bechtel SAIC is one of the corporate defendants in a lawsuit filed by some Yucca workers alleging the company and several of its subcontractors ignored worker safety issues, despite knowing risks. Bechtel officials strongly deny wrong-doing.
The problems at the Big Dig further call into question Bechtel's management at Yucca, said lawyer Joe Egan, who represents the workers who filed the lawsuit.
"I don't think you can have confidence in anything the Department of Energy does, or in any of the contractors it is supposedly managing," he said.
Bechtel has a 100-year history of reaping huge profits at the expense of taxpayers and the environment, consumer watchdog group Public Citizen said in its report "Bechtel: Profiting from Destruction," released last year. The report cited the Big Dig and Yucca as examples.
"We think there is a pretty long history of negligence and misuse of taxpayer dollars by this company," said Sara Grusky, a policy analyst for consumer group Public Citizen.
Now Public Citizen is tracking abuses by Bechtel in government projects in Iraq, Grusky said. A number of former Bechtel employees have landed jobs with the Bush administration, she said.
"Because Bechtel has such an inside line to the Bush administration, there's just no accountability," Grusky said.
Bechtel is the ninth largest government contractor with $14.1 billion in contracts since 1997, according to Washington watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.
Bechtel has projects in 60 countries. Bechtel projects have included Hoover Dam in the 1930s, reconstruction programs in Kuwait after the Gulf War and the English Channel Tunnel.
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Newhouse News Service
November 12, 2004
Will New Senate Minority Leader Bridge the Divide?
By Chuck McCutcheon
WASHINGTON -- The most powerful Democrat in Congress next year will be a soft-spoken Mormon who shuns self-promotion and opposes abortion and banning assault weapons.
But because of Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's atypical political qualities, many observers predict he will be effective as the Senate's new minority leader in bringing together Democrats and bridging their partisan divide with Republicans.
No one is expected to challenge Reid for the minority leader's job when the Senate meets next week. He announced he had secured enough votes from colleagues shortly after current Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., lost his bid for re-election.
"I actually have found Harry Reid very good to work with, and I think Republican leaders enjoy a very constructive working relationship with Harry Reid -- much more so than Sen. Daschle," said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore.
"Reid is a good choice to succeed Daschle," said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "He knows the Senate and its rules, he is very hardworking, he has good political instincts, and he will help his party colleagues decide when to make a stand in opposition and how best to do it."
Reid, who turns 65 next month, has spent the past six years as Daschle's chief lieutenant. He will have to balance being a pragmatic deal-maker against being the last line of defense against GOP initiatives that members of his own party consider too extreme.
"He knows how to make government work," said retiring Sen. John Breaux, D-La. "That is something Democrats have to be perceived as being able to do."
Reid has warned he will not be overly deferential to President Bush. He said in a post-election statement that his priorities include improving the environment and making education and health care affordable -- not mentioning the GOP's goals of legal reform, tax cuts and partial privatization of Social Security.
"I will not shirk from my responsibility to stand up and fight for Nevada values and Democratic principles," Reid said.
Reid is best known for leading the move in 2001 to persuade Vermont Sen. James Jeffords to abandon the Republican Party and become an independent, allowing Democrats to control the Senate until the GOP regained the majority in the 2002 elections.
"This guy is as partisan as they come," syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh said on his show Monday, according to a transcript on his Web site.
Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen responded that Reid "is a very moderate Democrat and he's pledged to work with the White House as much as they're willing to work with Democrats."
Reid has cited his ability to work with Republicans on issues ranging from health care to the budget as proof that his partisanship is not reflexive. He also has worked with Republicans to stop the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in his state.
"My goal is to get more done," he said in an interview several years ago. "I'm a legislator -- I want to make that as easy as possible."
Reid typically votes with his party, but steers an independent course on some issues. In 1999, he was one of two Democrats to oppose an amendment expressing support for the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision making abortion legal.
Reid also was one of just six Democrats who crossed party lines in March to vote against renewing the 10-year federal ban on assault weapons.
Political experts and lawmakers agreed Reid would not let his personal views obstruct what he considers good for Democrats. They also said he will gladly yield the spotlight to other more outgoing and charismatic members of his party.
"He is charismatically challenged, but I think that's what's called for here," said Ted Jelen, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Liberal Democrats in the Senate said they are pleased that Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, a more outspoken liberal voice, will become the second-ranking Democrat behind Reid.
"I feel very comfortable with (Durbin) in a position of influence," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. "So it's a good team for all of us."
(Chuck McCutcheon can be contacted at chuck.mccutcheon@newhouse.com)
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GovExec
November 12, 2004
Omnibus negotiations on the move, but no agreement yet
By Peter Cohn
CongressDailyPM
Negotiations on an omnibus package of incomplete fiscal 2005 appropriations bills appear to be moving rapidly, with aides involved in a flurry of meetings throughout this week and possibly into the weekend.
The real heavy lifting will have to be done when lawmakers begin returning Monday, and there is some skepticism that a final deal can be struck by Nov. 20, when the current continuing resolution expires at midnight. If no agreement is reached, another short-term CR might be required for a couple of days.
Discussions also continue about a year-long CR for programs funded by the fiscal 2005 Energy and Water appropriations bill, which remains stuck in a dispute over how to fund the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. But for the other eight spending bills, aides were generally positive about completing an omnibus package. The vehicle for that overall bill is shaping up to be the fiscal 2005 Foreign Operations appropriations bill conference report. Conferees were appointed before the break. Congress also must increase the statutory debt ceiling of $7.384 trillion before adjourning. While apeculation has swirled that it would be in the omnibus; aides said GOP leaders have not made a final decision.
The gap is being steadily narrowed between the House and Senate on additional spending requested by Senate appropriators and the White House is expected to get most, if not all, of its requests appropriators did not fund. The Senate initially added $8.1 billion to its version of the fiscal 2005 spending bills, mostly to the VA-HUD and Labor-HHS measures, although that total has come down significantly.
While Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, made liberal use of emergency designations and other gimmicks to get around spending caps, the White House has said it would not support that approach. Thus negotiations have centered on what are considered "real offsets" for spending above the fiscal 2005 discretionary cap of $821.9 billion. That will include an across-the-board cut of less than 1 percent, which will allow about $3 billion in extra spending. Aides said that total is likely to increase by an additional $1 billion or more through other savings.
On top of congressional priorities such as education and healthcare funds, the administration was likely to receive close to its full requests for additional NASA and Millennium Challenge Account funds. The House bill would have cut about $1.1 billion from the White House request for NASA and $1.25 billion for the Millennium Challenge program, a new foreign aid program initiated by the administration. Complicating matters is a plethora of late-inning project requests from lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol, particularly in the Senate, sources said.
But unlike previous years, final negotiations are unlikely to be plagued by inclusion of controversial authorization bills. One such measure that will not be tucked into the omnibus is legislation favored by Northeastern and Midwestern lawmakers to extend the Milk Income Loss Contract program, which provides subsidies to small dairy farmers to compensate for low milk prices. The MILC program, a campaign centerpiece of both Bush and Kerry campaigns in Wisconsin, will expire next Sept. 30 if it is not extended.
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Johns Hopkins News-Letter
November 12, 2004
President must make more green initiatives
by Dave Marvin
Dear President George W. Bush, More than the Iraq war, tax cuts, gay marriage and abortion, the environment has an impact on every American.
As a country that consumes more energy and resources than any other, we are directly responsible for influencing global ecological conditions.
Air pollution has been estimated to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.
We may feel that we are far removed from nature, yet we remain inextricably linked to the earth. Therefore, we ask that during the next four years as president you pursue positive environmental goals for the country.
If you believe the American people have given you a mandate, then you have the responsibility to assure their health and well-being. The following issues must be addressed this term:
Emissions of carbon dioxide are the leading cause of climate change. Industrialized countries are responsible for 75 percent of all CO2 emissions, and the U.S. ranks number one among them. We have the technology to reduce mercury by 90 percent in 2008. Your Clear Skies Initiative plans to reduce mercury emissions by 70 percent in 2018. Clearly, this is not enough.
You should reconsider any attempt to promote legislation allowing the opening of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration.
Many studies warn that oil exploration would severely damage habitats of a range of species, including caribou, muskoxen and polar bears.
In addition, the amount of extractable oil present in the reserves will only make marginal progress towards fulfilling our nation's energy needs.
Instead of destroying the Alaskan wilderness or depending on foreign oil, try first solving the fuel efficiency problem at home. Take the initiative to push forward stricter energy requirements for heating and cooling systems and encourage the use of hybrid cars over SUVs. In addition, offer incentives for "green" consumerism.
The Roadless Rule, which was enacted by the Clinton Administration, set aside 60 million acres of U.S. Forest Service lands as blocked to road construction. On July 12, 2004, you repealed this act. We're asking you bring back this rule and limit logging and habitat destruction.
Currently, high-level nuclear waste is "temporarily" sitting at each production site's location, awaiting a final home. The administration has supported the use of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the permanent repository for nuclear waste, yet the scientific validity of the site has not been determined. The administration must either fully support Yucca Mountain and convince officials of the isolated area, or accept that nuclear waste will remain dispersed around the country and build the appropriate facilities.
We understand that you have a small effort to improve the environment, such as planning an increase of three million acres of wetlands, but more must be done. You cannot allow the health and safety of the American people to deteriorate due to problems we can solve today.
-Dave Marvin is a senior and President of Students for Environmental Action.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 10, 2004
UNLV researchers tackle nuke waste
School takes lead in study of transmutation
By Christina Littlefield
<clittle@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
Some UNLV researchers are trying to be the modern equivalent of alchemists, but instead of seeking a cost effective way to turn lead into gold they are searching for an efficient way to change high-level radioactive waste into low-level waste so that it is less dangerous.
The technology could eliminate the nation's need to bury nuclear waste in deep geological repositories such as the Yucca Mountain site, researchers said.
The problem is that it will take a lot of gold -- billions of dollars -- to "transmute" nuclear waste on a large scale, said Anthony Hechanova, director of UNLV's Transmutation Research Program.
The federal government currently funds transmutation research at about $60 million a year, Hechanova said, and at the current rate, large-scale facilities to try to transform the waste will not be online until 2030. Yucca Mountain is scheduled to begin accepting waste by 2010.
"Right now, the Department of Energy's interest in the (research) program is to avoid building a second repository," Hechanova said. "If we stay at the current level (of producing nuclear waste), every 20 years we would need to build a new Yucca Mountain."
As researchers at the lead university in the national transmutation research program, Hechanova and other UNLV researchers are meeting with scientists from around the world this week to discuss advances in nuclear partitioning and transmutation that may make the process easier.
This week's international conference, one of a handful the university hosts on the topic each year, has brought experts on nuclear fuel and transmutation from 22 countries to UNLV's Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies.
Hosting the conference greatly increases UNLV's prestige as a scientific research university while allowing professors to discuss their ideas on transmutation with some of the best in the field, Gary Cerefice, deputy director of UNLV's Transmutation Research Group, said.
UNLV has been at the forefront of the nation's efforts to find ways to change nuclear waste since Congress first funded the research in 2001, Hechanova said. Spurred by the possibility of playing host to the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada's congressional delegation helped fight for both the national funding and UNLV's initial $3 million allocation to research transmutation and radiochemistry.
To date, the university has received about $15 million in federal money in the past four years to pay for student and faculty research projects, equipment and infrastructure support and international collaborations that advance transmutation research.
That's more money than all of the other participating universities have received combined, Hechanova said, and allows UNLV to train both undergraduate and graduate students to be the future experts on an issue that has uniquely impacted Nevadans with the proposed Yucca Mountain site. It's also allowed UNLV to bring on five new professors from such top universities as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"What does that say about UNLV that people are coming here from MIT for our academic program," Hechanova said. "I predict that in about five years UNLV will have the No. 1 actinide program in the nation, if not the world.
"It makes sense for UNLV to lead this research because if they do move forward with Yucca Mountain, we want to have experts here ... who are independent from federal government."
UNLV researchers are studying 27 different issues related to nuclear partitioning and transmutation, including actinide chemistry, which includes the study of how radioactive metals react with other materials over time. A new actinide laboratory being finished this week will allow students and faculty to work with plutonium.
Nuclear partitioning is the separation of the nuclear waste into its individual elements. It allows scientists to significantly reduce the amount of waste that has to be classified as high-level waste, Hechanova said. Only about two percent of used nuclear fuel is extremely radioactive and the rest of the waste can, if separated out, be classified as low-level or non-radioactive waste.
Some of the elements, such as plutonium, can also be recycled to produce more nuclear fuel, Hechanova said. In the future, other elements of nuclear waste may be recycled for use in other industries, such as medicine.
Once spent nuclear fuel is reduced to its individual elements, highly radioactive particles can then be changed into low-level waste, Hechanova said. The transmutation rate can reduce the waste's radioactive life down to 100 to 300 years as opposed to the 100,000 years scientists predict the waste will be toxic if left untreated, Hechanova said.
In predicting the safety of Yucca Mountain, "scientists have a lot of confidence in how geology materials act over 100 years but we don't over 100,000 years," Hechnova said.
With the continued advancement of the technology, Hechanova said it's possible to completely eliminate the need for geological repositories as all nuclear waste will be able to be recycled or reduced to such a low-level toxicity that certified landfills could accept it.
The Nevada Test Site and several other landfills throughout the country already accept low-level waste, Hechanova said.
The UNLV research program works involves students and faculty in six departments across three different colleges, including students studying mechanical and electrical engineering, chemistry, geoscience, physics and health physics, Hechanova said.
Students and faculty also benefit from partnerships with leading nuclear research institutions such as Los Alamos in New Mexico, and through international collaborations with Russia, the Republic of Georgia, France, Israel and Canada, as well as the European community at large, Cerefice said.
The research program has also allowed the university to build eight new laboratories and bring in equipment such as a transmission electron microscope that students in several scientific disciplines can use.
With the capacity to magnify an image up to 1.3 million times, the transmission electron microscope is a $1.3 million investment the university could never have made on its own, Hechanova and Cerefice said.
"We're picking up infrastructure that would take us years to develop," Cerefice said.
The research program supported more than 35 researchers and more than 70 students in its first three years, producing 23 master's degree graduates and one Ph.D graduate, Cerefice said.
"We're training people who will be the decision makers for the next 50 years."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 10, 2004
Nuclear waste at center stage
Scientists discuss reprocessing and recycling
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Scientists from around the world traveled to Las Vegas on Tuesday to talk about a common problem: How to reduce the amount of nuclear waste destined for yet-to-be-built repositories like the one planned for Yucca Mountain.
The solution, they said, is to continue to develop and explore a couple techniques known in scientific circles as reprocessing and transmutation. As one put it, it's like "the alchemist's dream of turning lead into gold."
"What hasn't been shown is the feasibility at the engineering level. We can do it one atom at a time," said scientist Gary Cerefice, among the hosts of the three-day conference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. About 120 scientists from countries including France, Japan and Russia are attending.
Although progress in developing the techniques is measured in decades, the pursuit continues abroad to reprocess or recycle materials in spent nuclear fuel pellets.
Reprocessing spent fuel in the United States has been prohibited since the mid-1970s. The Bush administration allows research into what it takes to extract usable plutonium and uranium.
The other technique, transmutation, is aimed at taking long-lived radionuclides such as americium and neptunium and transforming them into smaller amounts of shorter-lived radioactive materials to be buried in a repository.
"We're doing the research. The implementation is many, many years away," said Carter "Buzz" Savage, who directs the U.S. effort at the Department of Energy.
Reprocessing and transmutation won't change the need for a Yucca Mountain repository but may reduce or eliminate the need for future repositories, he said.
The task of making transmutation viable would entail licensing a new generation of reprocessing plants, fuel fabrication plants and reactors.
Some scientists envision regional facilities to cater to commercial power reactors. One scenario would be to locate them at Yucca Mountain.
The Department of Energy hopes to begin a licensing review in December for the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, with first deliveries of spent fuel from U.S. power reactors in 2010.
Savage said the government is spending $68 million on the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative Program, with the same amount expected next year.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
November 10, 2004
Experts discuss recycling spent nuclear fuel
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — Scientists from around the world were meeting this week to consider ways to recycle spent nuclear fuel, saying the process could relieve pressure to bury the highly radioactive waste at sites such as Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
One expert attending a conference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas compared reprocessing and transmutation to “the alchemist´s dream of turning lead into gold.’
“What hasn´t been shown is the feasibility at the engineering level,’ said scientist Gary Cerefice, among the hosts of the gathering of about 120 scientists from countries including France, Japan and Russia.
Although developing the techniques could take decades, the pursuit continues abroad to reprocess or recycle spent nuclear fuel pellets.
“We´re doing the research. The implementation is many, many years away,’ said Carter “Buzz’ Savage, who directs the U.S. effort at the federal Energy Department.
Reprocessing and transmutation won´t change the need for a repository the Energy Department wants to open in 2010 at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But it might reduce or eliminate the need for future repositories, Savage said.
Reprocessing spent fuel in the United States has been prohibited since the mid-1970s, although the Bush administration allows research into extracting usable plutonium and uranium.
The other technique, transmutation, would transform long-lived radionuclides such as americium and neptunium into smaller amounts of shorter-lived radioactive materials to be buried in a repository.
Savage said the government is spending $68 million on the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative Program, with the same amount expected next year.
Making transmutation viable would entail licensing a new generation of reprocessing plants, fuel fabrication plants and reactors.
Some scientists envision regional facilities handling waste from commercial power reactors. One scenario would be to put a facility at Yucca Mountain.
The Department of Energy plans to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December for a license for the Yucca Mountain repository. Commission review is expected to take several years.
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Las Vegas Mercury
November 11, 2004
Backstory: Four more what?
Michael Green
By small majorities, Americans support terrorism and Nevadans want a nuclear waste dump.
It's not just that those who voted for The Rug want the continued murder of American soldiers in Iraq and persecution of minorities and the unreligious at home because they mistakenly think he's moral. Think about it. The Bush campaign used an ad--a brilliant one, by the way--blasting John Kerry for his comment that terrorism should be a "nuisance." No, obviously we want it to be a major threat, controlling our lives forever. Bush's campaign brilliantly capitalized on public fears and lack of thought to use it to attack Kerry.
As for Nevada, in 2000, candidate Bush lied about nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Kerry vowed not to put it here. But a majority, including the R-J editorial page and its discredited pollster (what happened to Bush's 10- and six-point leads in Nevada?), chose nuclear waste. Logically, it should be buried under 1111 W. Bonanza Road or GOP headquarters, where the theory is that a three-point margin is a mandate only if a Republican wins. Meanwhile...
• Nevada voters are smarter than South Dakota voters. A small state is unwise to unload a powerful senior senator, yet South Dakotans did that to Tom Daschle, a poor minority leader but a major player. Nevadans overwhelmingly returned their powerful senior senator, Harry Reid. But six years ago, with Nevadans knowing he would become assistant minority leader, he won by only 428 votes. So, we're not much smarter.
• If Reid's night was bittersweet, state Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus' night was more sweet than bitter. Ridding the state Senate of Ray Shaffer dropped the GOP majority to 12-9, giving Democrats three seats out of seven on committees and Titus a spot on the Finance Committee--a fine place for her to exert influence, especially with a gubernatorial campaign on the horizon and Republicans staying with Bill Raggio and his pro-Reno budgeting. Meanwhile, Steven Horsford figures to be more of a team player and more effective in representing his district than Joe Neal, who often pecked at Titus, and helping Sen. Mike Schneider win probably improved relations with the incumbent. Her Democratic caucus figures to be a bit more united this time.
• If you thought the presidential election was ugly, try the County Commission. The d