Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, November 18, 2004
---------------------------

Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 18, 2004

Yucca Mountain prominent issue for lame duck Congress

Landscape muddied by conflicting reports

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Yucca Mountain has emerged as a major focus as federal lawmakers try to complete a lame duck session and adjourn for the holidays.

The proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository figures prominently in debates about federal spending. It also is at the heart of an apparent stalemate among Senate powers over filling vacancies at the federal agency that regulates nuclear power.

The landscape was further muddied on Wednesday by conflicting reports about whether the Bush administration is trying an 11th-hour move to overturn a July federal court ruling that threw out an Environmental Protection Agency radiation standard, placing the project in turmoil.

Marnie Funk, spokeswoman for Senate Energy Committee chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the White House has sent proposed legislation to Domenici that addresses the court ruling.

Funk said the proposal, along with a second provision that changes accounting rules for that Yucca Mountain construction fund, "are in play, they are in negotiations."

Chad Kolton, an official at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said that was not true. Kolton said the administration planned to abide by a campaign promise by President Bush not to interfere with Yucca Mountain court rulings.

"OMB has not been pursuing any initiative related to the EPA rule," Kolton said.

Whether true or not, there does not appear to be much appetite among lawmakers to pursue much more than absolutely necessary when it comes to resolving Yucca Mountain matters this year, according to a variety of officials.

Any attempt to make big changes this late would ignite controversy at a time most members are eager to go home, they said. Lawmakers said they hope to wrap up by the weekend.

Aides to Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., said they have not detected efforts by repository supporters to push hard for major changes that would affect the Energy Department program, including potential alterations to the federal court ruling.

But in the final days of a congressional session, most anything can be possible as lawmakers and lobbyists frantically jockey to get key legislation passed, or killed.

"This is standard operating procedure around here," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said. "There is almost a desire to create this confusion so nobody knows what's going on. You end up fighting windmills instead of negotiating the issues."

Lawmakers stalemated over Yucca Mountain for much of the year, unable to solve nagging budget, accounting and personnel problems.

With days remaining in the session, Congress will likely vote to freeze Yucca Mountain spending at last year's level, or about $577 million, according to lawmakers and lobbyists. Still to be settled is whether the freeze would extend for a full year, or for only several months while negotiators keep working on a new repository budget bill, they said.

A budget freeze could force the Energy Department into another reshuffling of the Yucca program, raising new questions about DOE schedules for the repository.

Reid, White House officials and Republican senators continue to negotiate whether to confirm Reid's science adviser, Gregory Jaczko, to fill a vacancy on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The nuclear industry strongly opposes Jaczko, who it believes is a guaranteed vote against the Yucca Mountain Project when the NRC reviews it. Reid has blocked dozens of President Bush's nominees to high-ranking federal jobs in order to force the president to approve Jaczko.

---------------------------

Reno Gazette-Journal
November 17, 2004

Earthquake experts to present research, celebrate colleague

Some of the world´s leading earthquake experts will present their research during a two-day symposium that begins today at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The symposium also will include the celebration of UNR seismology professor James Brune´s 70th birthday.

“The best birthday present anyone could give Jim is to challenge him scientifically,’ said John Anderson, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory. “That is exactly what we plan to do — present him with new, exciting science.’

More than 40 of Brune´s former students and co-authors are scheduled to present their most recent research results in seismology.

That will include presentations on “Earthquake Doublets and Multiplets in the Yucca Mountain Range’ by David Von Seggern of UNR and “The Earth´s Inner Core: Evidence for Super-Rotation’ by Paul Richards of Columbia University.

Richards, co-author of “Quantitative Seismology,’ was one of Brune´s first students.

“Jim has been a mentor and a colleague to many of the brightest minds in this field,’ said Rasool Anooshehpoor, a UNR associate research professor of seismology and one of Brune´s closest research partners.

Five scientists are scheduled to come from Mexico, where Brune established a research network with Mexican seismologists more than 35 years ago.

International researchers from England, New Zealand and Switzerland also are expected to attend the symposium.

Brune also will be honored for the more than 200 publications he has contributed over the past 45 years.

In 1997, he received the Medal of the Seismological Society of America, the highest honor in his field.

Brune earned a bachelor´s degree in geological engineering from UNR in 1956 and a doctorate from Columbia University in 1961.

---------------------------

Salt Lake Tribune
November 18, 2004

Yucca Mountain fight sinks Senate vote on energy spending

The fallout: Without a vote, there won't be a showdown over funding nuclear weapons testing

By Christopher Smith
The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON - Prolonged wrangling over future funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada has apparently derailed any chance of a Senate vote on a 2005 energy spending bill this year.

That means a rumored showdown in the Senate Appropriations Committee this week over the Bush administration's request to continue studies on modifying existing warheads into burrowing "bunker buster" bombs isn't likely to happen.

Instead, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that holds the purse strings on nuclear programs, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is advocating passage of a long-term continuing resolution. Such a measure would keep spending for Department of Energy programs at existing levels through the new fiscal year.

Anti-nuclear organizations had been urging supporters to lobby subcommittee members, including Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, to strip funding for weapons research. The groups fear studies will ultimately lead to test firings in Nevada.

The Bush administration's request for $27 million to study the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" and $9 million to study advanced nuclear weapons concepts was deleted from the House version of the energy spending bill in September. All three of Utah's House members voted in favor of the cuts.

If the nuclear weapons funding is includedin a continuing resolution, it is expected to pass both the House and Senate with support of majority Republicans. However, 2nd District Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, has previously voted against continuing resolutions that include the weapons study funds and his spokeswoman said Wednesday that he would probably oppose such an approach.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham have pressured Senate leaders to restore the money cut by the House, along with hikes in the Nevada Test Site's budget to shorten the time it would take to prepare for a resumption of underground testing. Although such tests are currently banned under a moratorium, the Bush administration wants greater flexibility to verify that aging nuclear weapons are still operational.

Domenici's decision not to press ahead with a Senate energy bill indicates that deadlocked negotiations with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., over future funding of the Yucca repository have been abandoned for this year.

"I'm willing to work with him on the funding for Yucca Mountain," Reid said. "I would rather we did not do a continuing resolution. I would rather that we were able to come up with some meaningful legislation."

The Capitol Hill newspaper CongressionalQuarterly reported that any potential deal sank when the White House asked that the Senate bill allow using a nuclear utility industry trust fund to help pay for Yucca's completion. The White House also reportedly supported a rider authorizing Congress to dictate safety standards for the project.

The latter provision would circumvent a federal appeals court ruling earlier this year that found the Environmental Protection Agency standards used to design the repository did not adequately address safety concerns over the hundreds of thousands of years the waste would remain toxic. Some lawmakers have said the court-ordered standards are virtuallyimpossible to meet and could doom Yucca Mountain's completion.

---------------------------

Tri-City Herald
November 18, 2004

DOE cleanup chief tours Hanford

This story was published Thursday, November 18th, 2004

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

The Department of Energy still is evaluating its options on Initiative 297, said Paul Golan, DOE's acting assistant secretary for environmental management, Wednesday.

Golan, who holds the position sometimes called the cleanup czar, spent two days visiting the Hanford nuclear reservation just two weeks after Washington residents voted to ban importing radioactive waste to Hanford until waste already there is cleaned up.

In Benton County, the only county that voted against the initiative, residents have been concerned that DOE's nationwide cleanup plan calls for importing some low-level radioactive waste to Hanford but sending far more radioactive material from the site to Nevada, New Mexico and possibly South Carolina.

Speculation has focused on whether DOE will challenge the legality of the initiative.

The nation will have to work together to clean up and shut down its nuclear sites left from the Cold War, Golan said. Hanford made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. When DOE's nuclear complex was built, it was integrated across the nation and the cleanup must be the same, Golan said.

"We will do it on our watch," he said.

DOE continues to push to open Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a national nuclear repository, he said. Some of Hanford's worst waste is planned to be turned into glass logs at a $5.8 billion vitrification plant now being built at Hanford and sent to Yucca Mountain for disposal. The state of Nevada is fighting to prevent the mountain from being used as a national repository for nuclear waste.

Just as it took years of work to open a national repository in the New Mexico desert for DOE wastes tainted with plutonium, it will take some time for Yucca to open for high-level radioactive waste and nuclear industry waste, Golan said. Hanford wastes already are being sent to the New Mexico repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project.

DOE also is working to find a place to ship leftover plutonium, Golan said. Hanford officials would like to start moving the plutonium kept in a heavily guarded vault in central Hanford to a more appropriate location in 2005.

"We're looking for a complete solution, and we do not have that yet," Golan said, although talks continue to send the plutonium to the Savannah River, S.C., nuclear site.

The Hanford Advisory Board and boards for other nuclear sites across the nation are warning that challenges to disposing of waste at several DOE sites, including Hanford, are creating the risk of gridlock.

In a letter still making the rounds of site advisory groups for signatures, nine board chairmen warn that the challenges to waste disposal create the potential for skyrocketing costs and delays in cleanup. They're calling for a national forum to produce a technically and fiscally sound solution to dispose of waste and nuclear materials across the DOE complex.

Golan said he had not seen the letter, but that DOE is committed to working with communities and regulators.

He said he expects substantial progress in cleanup at Hanford and other DOE nuclear sites to continue in the next few years.

"Look at the magnitude of work and how much safer Hanford has become in the last three years," Golan said after touring the site. "Urgent risks are removed."

In 2004, Hanford workers emptied the last of the high-level radioactive liquid waste from the site's leak-prone underground tanks and finished stabilizing the plutonium left at the end of the Cold War in the Plutonium Finishing Plant. Within the last month, workers finished removing 2,300 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel that were corroding in leak-prone indoor pools 400 yards from the Columbia River.

Progress also has been made in preparing old reactors for long-term storage and digging up contaminated dirt near the Columbia River.

The tour "left a lot of good impressions of Hanford," Golan said.

He's pleased with the contractors at the site and with its local DOE leadership, he said, singling out Roy Schepens and Keith Klein, who manage DOE's two Hanford cleanup programs in the Tri-Cities.

Golan has served as acting assistant administrator since Jessie Roberson resigned in July, but this was at least his sixth trip to Hanford, he said. He was worked at DOE headquarters since 2000.

He met with representatives of the Yakamas, the Nez Perce and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation on Tuesday and Wednesday to continue government-to-government discussions, he said.

DOE has offered the tribes eight additional internships for high school or college students to work on science or technical projects, Golan said. He's also interested in more use of a Mid-Columbia-based bus equipped for training and education, he said.

After Golan left Washington, D.C., to tour the Rocky Flats, Colo., and Hanford nuclear sites this week, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham resigned. Abraham had a strong commitment to nuclear cleanup and seeing him leave is tough, Golan said.

When Abraham was energy secretary, cleanup spending at Hanford increased to about $2 billion a year, although that is expected to decline in coming years.

Golan also discussed the protests that have become routine when Hanford contracts have been awarded in recent years. The transition of the contracts have been delayed while protests are decided.

"We're going to have to deal with it," he said. Because of the strong bid proposals made for Hanford contracts, the losing contractors' protests are understandable, he said.

With substantial progress made to clean up Hanford along the Columbia River, attention is turning to how to clean up central Hanford. It has some of the most technically challenging and heavily contaminated cleanup projects.

DOE will be applying knowledge learned on other cleanup projects, Golan said. The goal is to keep the workers safe, protect the environment and respect the taxpayer, he said.

"We're not going to be perfect," he said. But "there are a lot of great things we can do here."

---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN
November 17, 2004

Reid vows to continue fighting for Nevada

By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., vowed today to balance his duties as the Senate's top Democrat with his duties to serve Nevada.

Reid on Tuesday was unanimously elected by Senate Democrats to be their new leader.

He will replacing Tom Daschle of South Dakota, whose opponent, John Thune, ousted Daschle by arguing that the veteran lawmaker had forgotten South Dakota.

Reid said he would continue to serve Nevada as he did as the minority whip, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat.

"I really don't think it will be any different than what I've been doing," Reid said in an interview today.

He promised to continue his long-running fight against turning Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, into the nation's high-level radioactive waste dump.

Reid is working with Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to finalize the current fiscal year's budget for Yucca. Reid vowed to continue to work to slice the project budget each year.

The legal and legislative battles over constructing a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca will continue to be a problem for President Bush because people will lose faith in the government's ability to establish a safe project, Reid said.

"What they should do is just save money and leave (waste) where it is," Reid said.

Reid said he had a number of other Nevada-specific projects in the works that would demand his time in the next session, which begins in January. Those include Walker and Colorado River issues, and other special programs, including transportation projects in the state, that would require federal funding.

"We have some very, very big projects, and then we have some small ones," Reid said. "But they are all big to the people that get the money."

Reid said he is making plans with the Democratic National Committee and other strategists to help the Democratic Party do a better job of articulating its agenda to voters, which will be a big challenge given that Republicans control Congress and the White House. Reid noted that the Democrats are making big strides in reclaiming some of the talk radio market from conservatives.

Reid's $8 million leader's office budget will allow for some new hires, including several in his communications office, and 200 resumes have already been received.

"Our message is going to get out more than it has in the past," Reid said.

Reid said his leadership style will evolve.

"Everyone knows my close personal relationship and affinity with Sen. Daschle, but I'm a different person," Reid said. "But people will be able to see in a few months how we differ."

Reid this week is meeting with senators on both sides of the aisle and is intimately involved in negotiations on a huge omnibus spending bill pending in the final days of a lame duck session. Lawmakers are hoping to finish business as early as the end of this week.

Reid has been inundated with media interview requests. He planned interviews on three CNN shows today.

Reid said he would do "as much as I have to" in terms of national media interviews but said he would share the media spotlight with colleagues.

"I do have a lot of people (Democratic senators) who are willing to go to the cameras," Reid said. "I'll lateral the ball when I feel it's appropriate."

Reid today reiterated that he planned to work to bridge partisan divides in the Senate.

"But remember the Senate wasn't set up by the founding fathers to be easy," Reid said. "It was set up to make government better. That's what the bicameral legislature is all about. I represent millions of people out there and I want to make sure that the initiatives the majority has, that we keep in mind the millions of people that we represent."

Reid said he had no comment on who he would like to become the next Energy Secretary, whose department oversees the Yucca Mountain project. Secretary Spencer Abraham resigned this week.

"It doesn't matter," Reid said. "They take their orders from the president."

On another topic, Reid said he recommended Republican Attorney General Brian Sandoval to President Bush for a federal judge job this week because he was a qualified candidate.

"I like Brian Sandoval," Reid said. "He's a fair, honest man."

But Reid added that, under a Democratic administration, his first choice would have been U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Linda Riegle. Reid recommended her to President Clinton for a job as a federal judge in Nevada, but the nomination stalled and died in Senate in 2000, shortly before President Bush took office.

Reid said he was not motivated to recommend Sandoval because it takes a talented Republican off a political track to higher office.

"He's a free agent," Reid said. "No one twisted his arm. I called and asked him if he wanted this and he said yes."

Republicans this week were closely eyeing Reid and their Democratic colleagues.

Reid and the Democrats will have to "redefine" their agenda, said Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., if they expect to make progress with Republicans. Reid faces a big challenge in creating party unity after dramatic losses on Election Day, Allard said.

"He's partisan, but I wouldn't say he's highly partisan," Allard said of the new Democratic leader.

Reid continues to gather praise from fellow Democrats. Rising Democratic star and senator-elect Barack Obama, D-Ill., said he happily gave his support to Reid when Reid called him shortly after their Election Day victories.

"I think he has the right mix of toughness and openmindedness that the caucus is looking for," Obama said. "Sen. Reid has seen hardship in his life and he is not likely to get rattled under difficult circumstances, and certainly right now, the Democratic caucus is looking for that kind of leadership."

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said he was "in mourning" for a week after the elections because of the losses by so many Democrats, including Kerry.

But Reid was rallying the troops already, he said.

"By the end of today's caucus, my spirits had lifted significantly," Carper said.

---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN
November 17, 2004

White House denies attempt to change Yucca radiation rules

By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun

WASHINGTON -- The White House today denied a report that it is pushing Congress to change the radiation standard for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in an apparent attempt to overturn a federal appellate court ruling.

Congressional Quarterly, a Washington publication that tracks action on Capitol Hill, reported Tuesday that the White House wanted to attach to a spending bill a provision that would set the radiation standard, which a Washington appellate court this year threw out.

Chad Kolton, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, denied the report.

"The president has said the administration will live with the court's decision," Kolton said, asking "what White House" this proposal came from.

During the campaign, President Bush told Nevadans, "I will allow this process to be appealed to the courts and to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and I will stand by the decision of the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

The Energy Department and other federal agencies have made clear they are not appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court. Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the Environmental Protection Agency would develop an appropriate regulatory response to the court's decision, as recommended in the court's opinion.

The federal court ruling was a blow to the administration, which was pushing to file its license request this year because it put the key standard -- how long the mountain is to keep radiation inside -- at issue and could delay the project.

If Congress passed a law setting a new standard, it would pave the way for the administration to move forward on the planned nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Congressional Quarterly also reported that the White House was pushing to get more funding for Yucca Mountain by allowing Congress to dip directly into the Nuclear Waste Fund.

Marnie Funk, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee spokeswoman, said both requests came in about three days ago.

Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., knew nothing about the proposal to change radiation standards.

Gov. Kenny Guinn and Attorney General Brian Sandoval also were not aware of the EPA proposal, according to their offices.

Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources committee also had not heard of the proposal yet, spokesman Bill Wicker said.

Ensign was told by the White House today that is was only pushing for the Nuclear Waste Fund change, spokesman Jack Finn said.

Kolton said the administration is strongly encouraging Congress on the waste fund to avoid further delays.

But Bush has wanted to reclassify the Nuclear Waste Fund since he first introduced his 2005 budget in February.

Taking Yucca "off-budget" is a proposal that has long been advanced by project proponents, but has met with resistance not just from Nevada lawmakers but fiscal hawks in Congress who do not want to relinquish annual budget control.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee considered a similar proposal earlier this year but the proposal failed.

News of these possible riders broke at the same time if became clear that a stalemate in the Senate over the Yucca budget would not likely be broken as the lame-duck Congress tried to finalize business for the year.

The Energy and Water spending bill has been reported to be left out of consideration of a larger bill that will roll eight spending bills in one.

Reid and Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., couldn't agree on the Yucca budget for the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. Domenici also heads the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee.

Each year, Reid wants to cut the funding while Domenici and pro-Yucca lawmakers attempt to secure what the Energy Department requested.

The department wanted $880 million. The House approved $131 million, and the Senate has not been able to come to a compromise. The resulting impasse likely will result in lawmakers simply allocating to Yucca the same amount the project got in the last fiscal year.

Reid on Tuesday hinted that he hasn't given up hope of working out a compromise on the Yucca budget that could mean a lower project budget. He said today that the project would most likely be left at the $577 million. Reid and Domenici have talked on the phone several times with each other since the Senate reconvened on Tuesday.

But a Domenici aide said there's no time left in the session for more negotiation. Domenici will not accept less than the $577 million, said Funk, Domenici spokeswoman.

"It's a little late in the game to be considering other options," Funk said.

---------------------------

Guardian
November 17, 2004

Senate OKs $800B Debt Limit Hike

ALAN FRAM
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A divided Senate approved an $800 billion increase in the federal debt limit Wednesday, a major boost in borrowing that Sen. John Kerry and other Democrats blamed on the fiscal policies of President Bush.

The mostly party line, 52-44, vote was expected to be followed by House passage Thursday. Enactment would raise the government's borrowing limit to $8.18 trillion - more than eight times the total federal debt that existed when President Reagan took office in 1981.

In his first remarks on the Senate floor since his presidential bid ended in defeat two weeks ago, Kerry, D-Mass., said his former opponent had presided over ``the worst fiscal turnaround in our nation's entire history.''

He was referring to the change from the $5.6 trillion in surpluses that were projected for the next 10 years when Bush took office in 2001, to the $2.3 trillion in deficits now estimated for the coming decade. Kerry and other Democrats complained that those bills will have to be paid by future generations.

``This can be called a birth tax, a birth tax that is dumped on the back of every American child unwillingly,'' said Kerry, who voted against the borrowing increase.

Republican senators did not join in the debate, underscoring how politically uncomfortable the measure is for them. That discomfort was highlighted when they refused to bring the bill to a vote before the elections.

Administration officials urged lawmakers to act quickly. The government reached its $7.38 trillion borrowing cap last month, and since then the Treasury Department has paid federal bills by taking cash from a civil service retirement account, which it plans to repay.

``We are nearing the end of our rope, and it is critical that Congress act,'' said Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols.

Failure to raise the debt ceiling could force a federal default and leave the government unable to pay Social Security recipients, federal workers and other obligations.

The Senate's debt-limit vote came as congressional bargainers used the lame-duck session to continue writing a giant $388 billion spending measure to finance scores of agencies over the next 10 months.

That package - a combination of nine separate spending bills - will finance the heart of the government's domestic programs, everything except the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. The measures were supposed to be approved by last Oct. 1, when the government's budget year began.

Democrats complained that the bill - which will let non-defense, non-domestic security programs grow by about 2 percent next year - was too stingy. They said clean water grants, the National Science Foundation and federal subsidies for hiring local police officers were all being cut from last year, and that funds for education, biomedical research and veterans health care were inadequate.

``I don't agree with these priorities, but it is time to move the process forward,'' said Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Even so, Democrats were cooperating in negotiating the bill's final form, and many of them were expected to vote for it on grounds that it was better than the alternative.

If the bill is not completed, GOP leaders are offering to simply continue programs at last year's levels. That formula would cut about $4 billion from overall spending, and eliminate the thousands of home-district projects the bill is likely to include.

One of the biggest remaining problems was the bill financing energy and water programs, popular with lawmakers because of the many local projects it finances. Its knottiest dispute was over funds to continue planning and building a nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, which is opposed by incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said if no agreement is reached, Yucca Mountain would probably get no more than $500 million, less than last year.

``We don't have any more money,'' he said.

---------------------------

Salt Lake Tribune
November 17, 2004

Will Reid's new job heat up N-waste fight?

Yucca Mountain vs. Skull Valley: The minority leader has battled Utah senators to keep spent fuel out of Nevada

By Christopher Smith
The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON - Harry Reid's selection as the new Senate Democratic leader may pit his personal ties to Utah against his irritation with the state's congressional delegation for lining up against Nevada in the nuclear-waste fight.

While the new Senate minority leader and native Nevadan is known as someone who is willing to work with Republicans, he also plays to win on key issues like keeping spent fuel rods from the nation's nuclear plants out of the designated Yucca Mountain repository, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

Asked whether he would continue to block passage of a 2005 spending bill for energy and water projects because of his opposition to funding Yucca, Reid said he hoped to reach agreement with GOP lawmakers this week. At the same time, the former boxer and Utah State University graduate gave no hint of taking off the gloves.

"I always would rather dance than fight, but I know how to fight," Reid told reporters after the closed-door caucus vote.

As Reid's battle against further funding adds to continued delays at Yucca, there is concern that a proposed private temporary storage site on the Skull Valley Indian Reservation west of Salt Lake City could become - by default - the Department of Energy's alternative site.

When Congress began debating burying the nation's toxic nuclear power-plant waste in Nevada, the state's two Democratic senators, Reid and Richard Bryan, launched the long fight against it. And for the 12 years Bryan was in the Senate, the former Nevada governor distinctly remembers each friend and foe.

"We never, on any issue involving Yucca Mountain, got any support from Utah, not once," Bryan said from Las Vegas, where he now practices law after retiring from the Senate in 2000. "That was always profoundly disappointing."

Monday's resignation of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham from President Bush's cabinet also stirred speculation on the future of the proposed "temporary" nuclear waste storage site on Goshutetribal lands. Abraham brokered a deal with Utah Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett the day before a critical 2002 Senate vote on whether to move forward with the Yucca repository.

Hatch and Bennett met with the energy secretary and Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card and agreed to back the administration's plans to build the dump in Nevada. In return, the Bush administration would oppose federal funding for the Goshute project, which has yet to be licensed.

Spencer gave the assurance in a vaguely worded letter to Bennett and the Utah lawmakers voted with a 60-39 majority to proceed with Yucca Mountain, a rare legislative defeat for Reid.

Later that year, then-Rep. Jim Hansen of Utah inserted language into a defense bill to create a wilderness area on the Utah Test and Training Range, effectively blocking rail shipments to the proposed Goshute storage site. Reid got the Hansen wilderness provision struck from the final bill and Hansen cried payback.

"It was because he was so doggone mad at Hatch and Bennett" for their Yucca votes, Hansen told the Associated Press at the time.

The possibility of quid-pro-quo also was raised when Reid refused to support the annexation of Wendover, Utah, by West Wendover, Nevada. He said he opposed the plan because of the business impact on stateline casinos from moving the Utah-Nevada border eastward.

 Lobbyists who have worked with the staffs of the two states' delegations say Utah's Yucca Mountain support periodically flares up on certain issues.

"Essentially you have two states that don't want nuclear waste, but there is a real tension between the two," said Peter Downing, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance legislative director.

Reid's staff has consistently discounted any notion of a grudge against the Utah lawmakers and Reid himself has maintained close ties to several state leaders. One of his sons, Josh,is a Salt Lake City attorney who ran unsuccessfully this month for a spot on the Cottonwood Heights City Council. According to one Utah associate, Reid has vacationed at the Deer Valley cabin owned by the family of Gov.-elect Jon Huntsman Jr.

Bennett and Hatch downplay any edginess in their working relationships with the new Democratic leader, who is a fellow member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"Senator Reid is a good friend of mine and we're very close," Hatch said Tuesday. "Having said that, he's tough as nails."

Nevada political scientist Erik Herzik is skeptical that Reid would try to leverage his political influence to extract revenge.

"It will be interesting to see if Harry Reid continues to make Yucca Mountain his personal crusade to the point he would go out of his way to punish Utah," said Herzik. "And Utah is not without some chips in this game, because your senators are in the majority and have some clout."

Bryanwon't hazard a guess if the lawmaker Las Vegas newspapers call "Ruthless Reid" still harbors any ill will over Utah senators' votes in favor of sending tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel to be buried in Nevada.

"What implications that may have I don't know," said Bryan. "But I've never frankly seen any reciprocity from Utah on this issue. That's always disturbed me."

As Senate Minority Leader, Reid becomes the highest ranking LDS Church member in Congress.

---------------------------

Salt Lake Tribune
November 17, 2004

Nuclear fission

It would be like bringing a Beta videocassette to play in a VHS player.

Or it would be like that, if the Beta cassette were highly radioactive, the store you rented it from locked the door when you tried to return it, nobody knew what to do with it - and the tape weighed 44,000 tons.

The plan to store - temporarily, they kept saying - 4,000 containers of spent nuclear fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation 45 miles from Salt Lake City has been cussed and discussed for years. But only in the last few weeks have we discovered that:

1. The type of containers the spent fuel rods are to be stored in for their trip from reactors back East, and during their 40-year lay-over in Utah, has not been safety tested under any real-world conditions;

2. Waste containers, tested or not, will not be accepted if they simply show up welded shut - which they will be - at the doorstep of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the supposed final resting place for such hazardous material.

Thus the stuff is likely to be movedhere in containers that aren't reassuringly secure and, once here, might never leave.

Utah state officials are now even more determined to convince the federal Atomic Safety Licensing Board to deny the Goshutes and their client, Private Fuel Storage, approval of their project.

If this information doesn't justify a reconsideration of the whole proposal, then the national plan to deal with nuclear waste is not just “dysfunctional,’ as the state says. It's downright disastrous.

Not that anything else could be expected from a system that's so disjointed and mired in underfunded bureaucracy.

PFS is an alliance of nuclear power plants that only want to get rid of the stuff as inexpensively as possible.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission certifies the fitness of containers for shipment of such waste. But it doesn't have the money necessary to test the containers that will pass through 45 states and within glowing distance of 11 million people to see if they would survive truck crashes, train derailments and the fires that would likely follow.

TheDepartment of Energy, which is to operate Yucca Mountain if it ever opens, is not supposed to accept nuclear canned ham, even in NRC-approved cans. It is supposed to satisfy itself that the nuclear fuel was packaged properly at its point of origin, which it cannot do if the stuff has already been shipped to Skull Valley and sat around for decades. Repackaging it to Yucca standards in Utah is not in the plans, because it is both expensive and scary as all heck.

It's well past time for someone at the highest levels of governmentto put on the protective suit and sort out this politically radioactive mess, once and for all.

---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------