Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, December 9, 2004

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, December 9, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
December 09, 2004

Editorial: Alternative to Yucca

Energy experts, including environmentalists, former government officials and business executives, have recommended that the federal government develop more renewable energy sources, require better fuel efficiency of vehicles and push ahead with nuclear power. Further, the National Commission on Energy Policy recommended that the federal government not relent in trying to get a nuclear waste dump built at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Nevadans should take heart with one of the recommendations involving nuclear waste, however. The privately funded coalition urged the federal government to build multiple above-ground "dry cask" storage sites in the East and West to house nuclear waste in case Yucca Mountain is delayed or isn't given final approval by federal regulators to accept the nation's nuclear waste. It's the first time a national commission has supported dr y cask storage.

"It's proven technology," John Holden, co-chairman of the commission and an environmental policy professor at Harvard University, said of dry cask storage, which can safely contain nuclear waste for at least 100 years. "It's not expensive. It's safe -- it's even terrorist resistant." With a testimonial like that, you'd think Congress would explore dry cask storage as a permanent solution instead of the multibillion-dollar Yucca Mountain project, whose burial site is geologically unsafe and which would require thousands of dangerous cross-country shipments of man's deadliest waste to a location just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It's well past time for the Bush administration and Congress to adopt dry cask storage as the country's nuclear waste storage policy.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 09, 2004

Report urges backup storage

Interim stockpiles for nuclear waste needed, experts say

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The government should build storage farms where nuclear waste can be stockpiled, at least temporarily, in above-ground canisters as a backup to Yucca Mountain, energy experts said in a report Wednesday.

A 16-member commission studying the nation's energy future concluded a new generation of nuclear reactors is needed but will not be built until utilities and the public are convinced the government can take control of radioactive spent fuel.

"No effort should be spared" to complete a Yucca Mountain waste repository, but the government should develop an interim plan, the privately funded National Commission on Energy Policy said in a 128-page report.

It proposed at least two government-operated "dry cask" storage sites, one east of the Mississippi River and one west, "to reduce spent fuel transport burdens."

"This is a proven, safe, inexpensive waste-sequestering technology that would be good for 100 years or more," the commission said.

The storage sites would provide "an interim backup solution against the possibility that Yucca Mountain is further delayed or derailed -- or cannot be adequately expanded," the commission said.

The suggestion got a lukewarm reception from nuclear industry leaders.

"We'd like to move the fuel once, to where it is going to finally stay," said John Kane, senior vice president of government affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

More than two dozen nuclear power plants have built "dry cask" storage facilities on their sites to supplement reactor pools that hold spent fuel assemblies.

The Nuclear Energy Institute said it projects 83 of 103 active reactors will have dry storage by 2050.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said nuclear utilities should use dry cask storage as an alternative to Yucca Mountain.

"This group is acknowledging that dry cask storage is possible, and if it's possible and safe for 100 years, then why go forward with a multibillion project to put waste at Yucca Mountain," she said.

Industry executives said Wednesday that they expected new efforts when Congress meets in January to pass bills to propel the Yucca Mountain Project forward.

Kane said he expects congressional hearings on the federal court ruling in July that invalidated Environmental Protection Administration radiation health standards for the Nevada repository.

The hearings could spur legislation to reinstate the EPA standard, clearing an obstacle that has hampered the Energy Department.

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National Commission on Energy Policy
December 08, 2004

Bipartisan Commission Issues Strategy to Address Long-Term U.S. Energy Challenges

Detailed Recommendations on Oil Security, Climate Change, Natural Gas, Nuclear Energy, and Other Key Topics the Result of 2 Years of Research and Consultation

Consensus Plan; Group to Spend 2005 Advocating Package

(Washington, D.C.) -- A bipartisan group of top energy experts from industry, government, labor, academia, and environmental and consumer groups today released a consensus strategy, more than two years in the making, to address major long-term U.S. energy challenges. The report, “Ending the Energy Stalemate: A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America´s Energy Challenges,’ contains detailed policy recommendations for addressing oil security, climate change, natural gas supply, the future of nuclear energy, and other long-term challenges, and is backed by more than 30 original research studies.

“Political and regional polarization has produced an energy stalemate, preventing America from adopting sensible approaches to some of our biggest energy problems,’ said John W. Rowe, Commission co-chair and Chairman and CEO of Exelon Corp. “Our Commission reached consensus on effective policies because of a willingness to take on cherished myths from both right and left. We believe that this package of recommendations can be of value to Congress and the Administration in energy legislation next year and beyond.’

“Taken together, the Commission´s recommendations aim to achieve a gradual but decisive shift in the nation´s energy policy, toward one that directly addresses our long-term oil, climate, electricity supply, and technology challenges,’ said William K. Reilly, former EPA Administrator and Commission co-chair. “Oil reliance is a fact we will face for some time. So we recommend incentives to spur global oil production, to increase domestic vehicle fuel economy, and to increase investment in alternative fuels. Our climate change plan would both limit greenhouse gas emissions and cap the costs of doing so. At the same time, it provides incentives for low- and non-carbon sources like natural gas, renewable energy, nuclear energy, and advanced coal technologies with carbon capture and sequestration, as well as for increased efficiency of energy end use. We are proposing programs that can work in the real world.’

“It's essential to take some prudent steps now to avoid intolerable costs and impacts later,’ said John Holdren, Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University and Commission co-chair. “The task of energy policy is to ensure the reliable and affordable energy services that a prosperous economy requires while simultaneously limiting the risks and impacts from overdependence on oil, from global climate change, and from other environmental and political liabilities of the available energy-supply options. Meeting this challenge requires measures to encourage increased use of the best available technologies for energy supply and energy end-use efficiency in the years immediately ahead, as well as increased investments in energy research and development to improve the options available to us in the future."

(For reports, see links below)

'Ending the Energy Stalemate: A Bipartisan Strategy to Address America's Energy Challenges' (2.29MB)
http://www.energycommission.org/ewebeditpro/items/O82F4682.pdf

'Summary of Recommendations' (627KB)
http://www.energycommission.org/ewebeditpro/items/O82F4692.pdf

'Economic Analysis of Commission Proposals' (1MB)
http://www.energycommission.org/ewebeditpro/items/O82F4693.pdf

'Compendium of Commission Research: Technical Appendix'
http://www.energycommission.org/research/

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Public Citizen
December 08, 2004

Commission That Produced “Bipartisan’ Energy Report Dominated by Industry Interests, Produced Wish List for Energy Companies

Statement by Wenonah Hauter, Director, Public Citizen´s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program

Congress and the public should read the National Commission on Energy Policy´s report (released today) with a critical eye and should not be fooled by a false “bipartisan and independent’ label. The reality is that this panel was dominated by energy industry interests. It is no surprise that the policies embraced in today´s report represent a wish list for energy companies and coal in the stockings for America´s consumers and the environment.

The commission bows to the electricity industry´s interests by supporting an increase in coal-fueled electric power while opposing a federal renewable energy standard – despite the fact that such a clean power standard has already been adopted by 18 states.

The report readily admits that cost, safety, security, waste and proliferation risks are all “substantial’ barriers to expanding nuclear power. Yet, with the energy giant Exelon´s chief executive as the co-chair of the panel, the commission dismisses these issues as easily resolved and recommends throwing another $2 billion at the industry.

And the report is silent on the failure of energy deregulation to provide lower prices and a cleaner environment, as it fails to endorse strong new regulations of the energy industry that are necessary to protect consumers from continued market manipulation.

The energy industry´s influence on the commission also is apparent in the report´s recommendation that the law be changed to ensure that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) – and not states – has exclusive jurisdiction over onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities. This controversial recommendation is the subject of a lawsuit brought by the state of California against FERC asserting that states and local communities should have adequate say over the siting and permitting of these controversial projects. (Congress slipped language into the recent appropriations bill saying that FERC can pre-empt states on LNG facility siting, but lawmakers didn´t go so far as to change the law.)

And the report´s message on the critical need for improvements in fuel economy and reductions in harmful vehicle-related greenhouse gas emissions is mixed at best. While the report says that meaningful increases in fuel economy standards of 10-20 miles per gallon are feasible, it fails to include a target number or time frame.

And while it concedes that the safety concerns related to fuel economy are properly viewed as a thing of the past because of new advances in technology and the advent of hybrids, it advocates a “credit trading’ program (allowing automakers that exceed fuel economy standards to trade “credits’ to those that do not) that is political pie-in-the-sky. The enormous advantage foreign manufacturers have over the domestics means that Detroit would likely resist any such program.

Overall, the results are not surprising. The commission was dominated by individuals with significant financial interests in major energy corporations, presenting clear conflicts of interest. Among the commission members: John Rowe, president and CEO of Exelon, the largest nuclear power plant operator in the U.S.; Linda Gillespie Stuntz, a corporate lobbyist for the energy industry; and Archie Dunham, chairman of ConocoPhillips, a company that has spent $5.7 million since 2001 lobbying the government on energy policy.

Despite touting themselves as a diverse group of interests, the 16-member commission includes only one person classified as a consumer advocate, who is also the former chair of a state utility commission, , while 10 of the members have direct, financial ties to energy corporations. This is certainly welcome and desperately needed, but a solo voice for consumer interests is insufficient.

Members of the National Commission on Energy Policy
http://www.citizen.org/documents/NatlCommEP12-04.pdf

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NIRS
December 9, 2004

Commission on Energy Clings to Tired Nuclear Myth

A Statement by Michael Mariotte, Executive Director

"In a disappointing relapse into 20th century thinking and conventional compromise, the self-described National Commission on Energy has delivered recommendations that impede its stated goal to slow and ultimately reverse climate change. Given the Commission's industry-loaded leadership, including John Rowe, chief executive of Exelon Corporation, the world's largest private nuclear power utility, its conclusions on nuclear issues should surprise no one.

"The Commission's report, Ending the Energy Stalemate, squanders a golden opportunity to tackle the urgent crisis of climate change, recognized by the Commission as an over-riding driver behind the two-year study. Rather than break a stalemate, the something-for-everyone package approach in the Commission's report would continue lackluster and ineffective energy policies indefinitely. And by accepting the tired myth that nuclear power is 'carbon-free,' the Commission trades the chance to mitigate global climate change, instead making climate change inevitable. This is because the enormous capital costs of building any significant number of new reactors would divert limited resources from those technologies that make a meaningful impact on climate change.

"The suggested expenditure of $2 billion of taxpayer money —"for the demonstration of one or two" new reactors—falls far short of the true cost of just one reactor and even two reactors would not make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions, even if nuclear energy was truly carbon free. Buried in the report text lies the revealing yet preposterous admission that reactors in the United States must double or triple over the next 30 to 50 years, and grow ten-fold worldwide in order to have 'a large impact on greenhouse gas emissions.'

"This absurd pie-in-the-sky thinking is easily debunked by simple math. To meet these goals a new U.S. reactor would have to come on-line every four months for the next 50 years, beginning today. The price tag would soar to at least $800 billion. Add to that the weighty and costly infrastructure, including numerous Yucca Mountain-sized radioactive waste dumps, heightened and necessary new security and safety measures, a couple dozen or more new uranium enrichment plants and the untenable resulting nuclear proliferation risks, and the Commission's nuclear vision departs from fantasy to downright dangerous.

"In short, the Commission's findings, once the environmental veneer and rhetoric are stripped out, read like a discredited nuclear industry wish list. The Commission has clung stubbornly to the energy delusions of nuclear power and "clean coal" and produced what amounts to a Nuclear Energy Institute letter to Santa Claus. For that, it deserves nothing more than a lump of coal in its Christmas stocking."

CONTACT: Michael Mariotte, NIRS, 202-328-0002

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Las Vegas Mercury

December 09, 2004
Democracy in Peril

By Steve Sebelius

LONG GOODBYES: The director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security actually knocked on wood the other day, a superstitious gesture designed to ward off terrorist attacks.

Oh, well, it couldn't be any lamer than forcing us all to remove shoes, belts and now suitjackets in order to go through metal detectors at the airport.

But in announcing his departure, Secretary Tom Ridge said many people had worked long and hard on the color-coded threat level indicator. While it probably hasn't prevented a single terrorist attack--knock on wood!--it has given us in the pundit business plenty to joke about.

Ridge's farewell couldn't compare, however, to Tommy Thompson, exiting Health and Human Services secretary. He seemed actually incredulous that the United States hasn't been attacked, and he knocked on no wood.

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," he said. As if the terrorists didn't have things easy enough without our own officials giving them a road map.

"And another thing," you could envision Thomson saying. "Chemical plants! Why, I toured the ACME Chemical plant in Dayton, Ohio, last year, and there's virtually no security from midnight to 6 a.m. And since the graveyard shift workers prop the back door open so they can take smoke breaks, anybody could just walk right in. That's the ACME Chemical Plant in Dayton, Ohio."

To be fair, Thompson did say he was disappointed that Congress forbade him from negotiating with big drug companies for lower prices for prescription drugs under the Medicare program. Of course, he should have said that when Republicans were actually passing the bill.

With the second-term shuffling almost done, it looks like Donald Rumsfeld is the big winner, having held on to his fiefdom at Defense. Vice President Dick Cheney is staying, too, of course, and Condoleezza Rice, albeit at the State Department, a little farther away from her old White House perch as national security adviser. They're shedding lightning rods like Attorney General John Ashcroft, which is good, although his views on torture of prisoners may not differ greatly from his replacement's, ex-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.

A new secretary of energy has yet to be chosen, a post of particular interest to Nevada given the struggle over Yucca Mountain. Ken Lay being legally indisposed, one possible choice actually discussed in public was Thomas Kuhn, a key presidential fund-raiser and president of the Edison Electric Institute, an industry lobbying arm. It's a safe bet that whomever the president appoints will have at least as much an interest in seeing Yucca become a reality as does the president himself.

The old bosses aren't looking too different from the new ones, but that's what we get when we fail to make a change in the one office over which voters have a say.

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Deseret News
December 9, 2004

Goodbye, Yucca; hello, Utah?

If plan for Nevada N-storage fails, Tooele may be a target

By Jerry Spangler
Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON — Delays in opening a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain are forcing atomic energy producers to consider interim storage sites — like the one proposed on Goshute tribal lands in Utah's Skull Valley — for the spent fuel rods piling up around the country.

"I don't think we would take anything off the table," said John Kane, head of governmental affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the powerful lobbying arm of the industry.

That "anything" would include the plan by Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of NEI utilities, to build an above-ground storage site in Tooele County where the waste could stay up to 40 years before moving on to Yucca Mountain.

At a news media luncheon Wednesday, NEI officials insisted time and again their priority is getting Yucca Mountain funded and operational. Despite growing concerns that it will not open until 2010 or later, officials said they have no real contingency plan.

Waste will likely continue to accumulate at nuclear power plants in deep-water ponds or in dry casks — both temporary solutions. Or it could be shipped to a temporary holding facility at Yucca or to some other site.

But if the Yucca plan falls apart — and there is growing sentiment on Capitol Hill that it might — the nuclear industry would be between a rock and a hard place. With space for temporary on-site storage running out, the industry and its government overseers would have to start over the process of finding a suitable facility, a task that would take up to a decade or more.

"If Yucca is found not to be acceptable, we have to find another site," said Marvin Fertel, NEI senior vice president.

Officially, NEI does not support the Goshute interim storage plan, and officials insist the safest way to address the waste problem is to ship it once from the power plant to a permanent storage site and bury it far underground.

"We're focused on Yucca Mountain, not interim storage," Kane said.

If the industry can solve that pesky waste problem — "and it's the government's responsibility to develop a permanent waste site" — then the future is bright for nuclear power. With support from key legislative leaders and the White House, the industry is poised to start constructing an entire new "fleet" of nuclear power plants to help meet the nation's growing power needs.

The nation's power consumption is expected to increase by a third by 2020.

The industry, which sees growing public support for clean energy such as nuclear power, plans to proceed with the new construction despite the lack of a permanent waste storage solution.

Of course, more nuclear power plants mean more waste.

Kane and Fertel both said they hope that Nevada's fierce opposition to Yucca Mountain will soften and that officials there will engage in constructive dialogue.

That isn't likely. Sen. Harry Reid, the new Democratic leader of the Senate, is unequivocal in his opposition and has pledged to do everything he can to block it.

And the more Reid and others can delay Yucca Mountain, the more attractive interim storage sites such as Tooele County will become.

Still, "We're open to any solution," Kane said.

E-mail: spang@desnews.com

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KSL-TV
December 08, 2004
Group Fights Utah Efforts to Block Goshute Waste

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Organizers of a proposed temporary nuclear waste dump on an American Indian reservation are trying to block a late effort to prevent regulatory acceptance of the project.

The State of Utah had filed a contention with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board alleging that new information from the Department of Energy means the waste won't be transported for permanent storage, as planned, at the proposed Yucca Mountain facility.

The state has long opposed the project planned for Skull Valley Band of Goshutes' land, but filed that complaint Nov. 12, after the time limit for filing new arguments had closed.

It alleged that Gary Lanthrum, a DOE official involved with transporting nuclear waste, told state officials in October in a private conversation the DOE wasn't obligated to accept waste from the Goshute site because it would be in welded canisters.

In its response Monday, Private Fuel Storage, a nuclear power utility consortium that is organizing the project, argued the alleged statement -- presented in an affidavit from a state official and a newspaper report in The Salt Lake Tribune -- wasn't on official transcripts, and therefore wasn't sufficient.

PFS also argued the statements were wrong in the first place, because DOE is legally required to accept all spent nuclear fuel from utilities.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is deciding whether Skull Valley can safely keep nuclear fuel. The board in March 2003 stalled construction by ruling the chances of a fighter jet from Hill Air Force Base crashing into the storage pad makes the project too risky. It has taken arguments for and against that decision and is weighing other aspects of the project.

As planned, the storage pad would hold up to 4,000 casks filled with depleted nuclear fuel -- about 10 million rods -- across 100 acres of the Skull Valley. The waste would be shipped over rail lines, mostly from reactors east of the Mississippi. Utah has no nuclear power plants.

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Salt Lake Tribune
December 09, 2004

Nuclear industry doesn't back temporary Utah storage

Safety issue: A top lobbyist says it would be best to move fuel to Yucca

By Christopher Smith
The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON - A top nuclear utility lobbyist said most of the industry does not support temporarily storing spent radioactive fuel rods at a proposed Utah site and is solely focused on getting Nevada's Yucca Mountain waste repository opened.

"We'd like to move the fuel once to where it's going to stay," Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) Vice President John Kane said Wednesday when asked whether nuclear power plant owners and operators support Private Fuel Storage's proposal to build an interim storage site on the Skull Valley Reservation of the Goshute Indian Tribe.

"We're not taking any of these options off the table, [but] our goal, clearly, is to get Yucca in operation," Kane told reporters during a briefing on nuclear issues in the next Congress.

A consortium of eight utilities, several of which are members of the NEI, has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license the Utah facility to hold casks of waste from Eastern reactors for up to 40 years. Once Yucca begins accepting waste, the plan calls for casks held at the Utah dump to be transported to Nevada.

The NEI's reluctance to back the PFS temporary storage proposal reflects the industry's political strategy to fight onebattle at a time. And the priority for nuclear power plant operators is to get the delayed Yucca Mountain project into the federal licensing process next year.

"You want to keep moving on Yucca Mountain," said Marvin Fertel, NEI's chief nuclear officer. "If Yucca's found not to be acceptable, then you've got to do another site, but so far it has passed all the site suitability reviews and it ought to enter the licensing process."

On power plant operators' interest in locating old fuel rods now stored on-site to a temporary holding pen, Fertel said: "There's a belief in

our industry that you don't handle spent fuel more often than you need to."

PFS spokesperson Sue Martin said the company shares that belief and strongly supports completion of Yucca Mountain, but must face political reality.

"The fact of the matter is Yucca Mountain is later and it's likely to be later, and our member utilities can't continue to wait," she said. "We're just as driven as everybody else in the industry to make sure Yucca Mountain gets done, because that's what all of the PFS member utility ratepayers have been paying for."

Because the PFS proposal to federal regulatorswould only allow a maximum of 40,000 tons to be stored above-ground for up to four decades, NEI officials said it would not be a viable alternative to the permanent underground repository at Yucca Mountain should the Nevada project fail to open. Its original completion target was 1998, but that has now been pushed back to at least 2010.

The discussion came the same day a national bipartisan commission on energy policy recommended that Congress and the Bush administration "move expeditiously to establish a project for centralized, interim, engineered storage of spent fuel at no fewerthan two U.S. locations, as a complement and interim back-up" to Yucca Mountain.

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Los Angeles Times
December 09, 2004

Stanford Lecturer Is Elected to Head State Coastal Commission

Meg Caldwell, one of four appointed to the panel by the governor, wins unanimous support from colleagues to serve as chairwoman.

By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer

Stanford Law School lecturer Meg Caldwell was unanimously elected chairwoman of the California Coastal Commission on Wednesday by her fellow commissioners, strengthening Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's potential influence over the highly independent political body.

Soon after Caldwell took the gavel, the commission approved a new storage facility for spent nuclear fuel at the Diablo Canyon power plant, near San Luis Obispo, in exchange for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s agreement to open to the public more than three miles of coastal trails just north of the nuclear plant's security zone.

Caldwell was one of four people appointed earlier this year by Schwarzenegger to the 12-member commission. The other eight are appointed by the Assembly speaker and Senate Rules Committee — a three-way split intended to shield the commission from political pressure as it decides on development projects along the state's 1,100-mile coastline.

"The governor has an incredible strong ocean- and coastal-protection vision," Caldwell said in an interview Wednesday after her election. "It's completely compatible with the Coastal Act. I view the obligation of a coastal commissioner and his vision as synergistic."

Caldwell, 44, director of Stanford's Environmental and Natural Resources Law & Policy Program for the past decade, is a university lecturer and an expert in land-use policies to manage growth.

As chairwoman of the commission, Caldwell will hold a seat on the state Coastal Conservancy, a sister agency to the commission that doles out millions of dollars a year to preserve the coast and public access.

The vote came shortly after two commissioners were sworn into office: Dr. Dan Secord, a Santa Barbara city councilman, and Mary K. Shallenberger, a longtime environmental staff member of former Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco).

Under rules adopted by the Legislature last year to shield the commission from politicking, Shallenberger will serve a four-year term. That means her tenure will long outlast that of Burton, who must leave office this month due to term limits.

Secord, a physician, was appointed by Schwarzenegger and can be removed by the governor at any time.

The commission, initially established by voters in 1972 and then by the Legislature's passage of the Coastal Act in 1974, has bedeviled previous California governors, who have tried to control the powerful body as it ruled on proposed developments of well-connected individuals and federal projects, and even weighed in on foreign policies.

On Wednesday, the commission touched briefly on federal nuclear policy by granting approval to PG&E's proposed facility to store highly radioactive "spent fuel" from its reactors on the site. This nuclear waste, like that from other plants, has no place to go, as plans to create a permanent burial site in Nevada's Yucca Mountain are mired in controversy.

The commission concluded that the storage facility may outlast the life of the power plant, and thus block public access to this stretch of the coast in perpetuity. In exchange for loss of access, the commission will require PG&E within two years to open land it owns between the power plant and Montaña de Oro State Park near Morro Bay. A task force will study how to open a coastal trail in a safe and ecologically sensitive way.

"This is a signature success story for the commission," said Mark Massara, the Sierra Club's coastal program manager. He also was delighted by the election of Caldwell as chairwoman. "Having her take a higher profile role [on the] commission is only going to help the governor's pro-coast legacy."

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San Luis Obispo Tribune
December 09, 2004

Coast to be opened in Diablo deal

Coastal Commission grants public access in exchange for allowing PG&E to build a radioactive waste storage complex

Nathan Welton
The Tribune

The public will gain access to three miles of coastline north of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant within the next two years, the state Coastal Commission decided Wednesday.

The access was granted in a unanimous vote in exchange for allowing Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to build a new, above-ground radioactive waste storage complex on the plant's grounds. It was the last regulatory hurdle the company needed to clear; its plans have already been approved by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"From our perspective, the important thing was that we got a unanimous approval to go ahead and start this project," said PG&E spokesman Jeff Lewis, noting that he expected construction to begin in April.

His company wanted to build the complex but didn't want to give the public coastal access because of security and safety concerns. But neither PG&E, nor San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace -- a nonprofit group opposed to the facility -- intend to fight the commission's decision with a lawsuit.

The complex will consist of up to 138 steel and concrete storage casks, all mounted on a number of concrete pads. Each cask will hold spent reactor fuel rods, which are highly radioactive.

Because officials believe the storage facility -- and the waste it houses -- will likely cause nearby lands to be off-limits to the public for years to come, the power company is legally required to compensate the public in new coastal access.

As a result, people will be able to visit the bluffs from Montaña de Oro State Park to Crowbar Creek, as well as at least one beach, probably at Point Buchon, along that stretch.

They'll also have increased hiking access on the Pecho Coast Trail, which is currently on the power plant's property. What's more, commissioners approved improvements to the Port San Luis Lighthouse and added an outreach program that would teach schoolchildren about the environmental conditions in the vicinity.

The utility company has six months to detail the public access plan and two years to implement it.

Third District county supervisor-elect Jerry Lenthall was also at the hearing in San Francisco, testifying, he said, as a concerned citizen and fulfilling what he called a promise to his district to be a public safety watchdog.

"At a time we're spending millions of dollars to harden our facilities and ensure our safety from terrorism and general intrusion," he told commissioners, "(the public access requirement) just doesn't make any sense to me."

Environmental groups, including Mothers for Peace and the Sierra Club's Santa Lucia chapter, were opposed to the storage facility for safety reasons, worrying it could become a permanent waste repository if Nevada's Yucca Mountain never opens.

That project is slated to become the nation's main nuclear waste storehouse.

Mothers for Peace spokeswoman Rochelle Becker said she was disappointed that the commission staff did not try to limit the number of spent fuel rods that could be stored at the site -- something other states, such as Connecticut and Minnesota, have fought for.

She noted that her organization's expert geologists disagreed with the state's over the type, severity and location of earthquakes that could happen on the site.

"They made an irresponsible decision," she said, "and they based it on inadequate information."

Coastal Commission executive director Peter Douglas, however, said the federal government has jurisdiction over the state regarding safety concerns on the plant.

- Nathan Welton covers county and health-care issues for The Tribune. Reach him at 781-7858.

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Lompoc Record
December 09, 2004

Diablo waste storage project appeal denied

By April Charlton
Staff Writer

A controversial plan to store highly toxic spent radioactive nuclear fuel rods behind Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant cleared its last regulatory hurdle Wednesday.

The California Coastal Commission, meeting in San Francisco, unanimously paved the way for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to construct and operate an above-ground nuclear waste storage facility at Diablo, located on the coast north of Avila Beach.

"It was an interesting decision," said Rochelle Becker, spokeswoman for Mothers for Peace, which along with the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club, filed an appeal of the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission's approval of the project.

The appeal was denied by the county Board of Supervisors and subsequently filed with the Coastal Commission.

The appeal dealt mainly with safety issues associated with the project - a potential for terrorist attacks, unknown seismic risks at the plant and the lack of a permanent storage facility for spent radioactive fuel anywhere in the United States.

Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada has yet to come online and the opening of the facility is still uncertain.

Becker said the commission agreed it had conflicting information from seismic experts but chose to side with PG&E's experts and wouldn't hold off making the decision until its next meeting.

"It was just amazing," Becker added.

Highly radioactive spent plutonium fuel rods from the plant will be stored in 16-foot-tall stainless steel and concrete casks measuring 8 feet across, which will be on the hillside behind the plant's twin reactors.

Staff writer April Charlton can be reached at 489-4206, Ext. 5016, or acharlton@pulitzer.net.

The dry-cask, spent-fuel storage project consists of constructing seven flat 7.5-foot-thick concrete pads that can store up to 140 casks and help extend the life of the plant for at least another 20 years.

PG&E proposed the dry-cask storage plan because Diablo will be out of spent fuel storage space by 2006 unless it reracks the plant's two existing storage pools.

The plant is licensed to operate until 2025, according to PG&E spokesman Jeff Lewis.

Officials from PG&E couldn't be reached for comment on the decision. But earlier this week, Lewis said the dry-cask storage facility at Diablo will be temporary until the spent-fuel rods can be transferred to a permanent storage site.

In addition to approving a coastal development permit for the project, the commission also followed its staff's recommendation that PG&E has to provide more public access to the coastline north of the plant.

Staff recommended that PG&E open a three mile-stretch of the coast north of Diablo because the project will likely result in a permanent loss of access to the coastline at the plant site because no permanent nuclear waste disposal site exists.

Tom Luster, Coastal Commission project manager for the Diablo project, said the commission gave direction to PG&E to convene a locally based task force that will take an inventory of the environmental resources on the three-mile stretch. The task force will consist of various agencies, nonprofit organizations and county residents.

But that's no comfort to Becker and her colleagues.

"Our feeling is that, what if people in Nevada decided to tell the Department of Energy it's OK to build a nuclear waste dump in our backyard if we're given public access to climb Yucca Mountain?" she said. "We see it as the same analogy. We've been given access to a nuclear waste site; lucky us."

PG&E plans to start construction next year and have the project ready for implementation by 2007, according to Lewis. The spent fuel rods would be moved from inside the plant to the storage casks over a two- to three-year period.

Staff writer April Charlton can be reached at 489-4206, Ext. 5016, or acharlton@pulitzer.net.

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Tri-City Herald
December 09, 2004

New nuclear waste treatment proposed

By Annette Cary
Herald staff writer

A technology similar to one used to purify table salt is being investigated as a way to reduce the cost of treating some of Hanford's worst radioactive waste.

Hanford contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group has awarded a $1.4 million subcontract to Cogema Engineering Corp. to see if a proposal by a CH2M Hill chemist could be adapted for large-scale use.

The Department of Energy is building a $5.8 billion vitrification plant to turn highly radioactive and chemical waste held now in huge underground tanks into a stable glass form for permanent disposal.

But the vitrification plant never was planned to be big enough to meet legal deadlines to treat all 53 million gallons of waste left from processing irradiated fuel for the production of plutonium at Hanford during World War II and the Cold War. The plutonium was made for the nation's nuclear weapons program.

CH2M Hill believes a process called fractional crystallization could reduce costs and remove some of the burden from the first step at the vitrification plant, pretreatment.

The largest complex in the 65-acre vitrification plant will be a pretreatment building the size of four football fields and about 15 stories high to separate waste into low-activity and high-level radioactive streams.

All the waste will be turned into glass, but the low-level waste will remain at Hanford and the high-level waste will be sent to a federal repository, likely Yucca Mountain, Nev., at a far greater cost.

CH2M Hill wants to determine whether 10 percent or more of the waste can skip the pretreatment separation process through its proposed technology.

Chemist Dan Herting of CH2M Hill has spent several years testing ways to use temperature changes and evaporation to selectively precipitate low-activity radiation salts out of the waste.

His tests, most recently using small amounts of radioactive tank waste, have been promising enough to interest DOE.

The technology is not new.

A similar process is used to separate salt and other valuable chemicals from sea water.

But Hanford waste presents some unusual challenges.

Some chemical salts precipitate when heated, others when cooled and all precipitate when the water is evaporated.

"It's up to the Cogema team to come up with the right sequence of heat and evaporation," Herting said.

The process would not work on all tank waste as the pretreatment plant processes must. But the waste in more than half of Hanford's 177 tanks might be candidates for the alternate process, said Richard Raymond, director of supplemental treatment for CH2M Hill.

The fractional crystallization would remove moisture to produce crystals of radioactive sodium nitrates and nitrites. The salts could then be turned into a low-activity glass. Much of it might be turned into glass with another alternate technology, bulk vitrification, which could allow it to bypass the vitrification plant entirely.

That would leave about half the waste remaining as a liquid laced with highly radioactive cesium and technetium. That liquid, which would hold more than 99 percent of the radioactive energy, would still need to be sent to the pretreatment plant. It uses primarily ion exchange and filtration to separate waste into low-activity and high-level waste streams.

Cogema must show not only that the process works on Hanford waste at the engineering scale, but also come up with a way to perform the process at a far lower cost.

"One thing that makes the task challenging is we're asking them to come up with a proposal without a major new capital facility," said Ken Gasper, project manager for supplemental pretreatment for CH2M Hill.

Commercial equipment would be adapted to the project and the process would be done in the field, possibly in temporary facilities.

Cogema has teamed for the project with Framatome ANP, which has expertise in radioactive materials; Georgia Technical Research Corp., which is associated with Georgia Tech University, which has a nationally recognized crystallization expert; and Swenson Technology Inc., which specializes in equipment for the process in nonradioactive environments.

They will produce a design concept for the technology and determine the cost of developing a full scale pre-treatment facility.

In the first phase of the project, engineering work will be done at Hanford, but testing will be done elsewhere. Testing will move back to Hanford when Cogema is ready to try the process with radioactive tank wastes.

"We're hoping the results will be promising enough to warrant a proposal to DOE to go forward," Gasper said.

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Hampton Roads Daily Press
December 09, 2004

Fuel storage permit renewal likely

The commission apparently has confidence in the Surry Power Station to store spent rods safely.

By Chris Flores

Surry Power Station likely will become the first nuclear plant in the country to get its license extended for storing spent nuclear fuel on-site in large steel cylinders.

Surry was the first U.S. plant to get approved by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a 20-year license to use dry cask storage in July 1986. Surry and other plants also use pools to store and cool their waste, which is long, radioactive fuel rods.

The NRC gave preliminary approval last week to renew the license to store nuclear waste for another 40 years rather than the current maximum of 20 years. The regulator is considering permanently changing its rules to 40 years - reflecting the problems with delays in opening the permanent Yucca Mountain repository and the NRC's faith in the storage units.

"It was really the confidence in the casks," said Dave McIntyre, spokesman for the NRC. "The 20-year period established by the NRC was arbitrary."

The NRC noted that when it first started giving 20-year licenses, the government expected Yucca to open in 1998. Yucca now is projected to open around 2010 and will take deliveries of waste through 2048. The allocated space in Yucca is only enough to dispose of the amount of waste that will exist at the nation's 103 reactors when the repository opens in 2011. But much more waste will continue to be generated at the Virginia reactors and others nationwide beyond 2011.

Both of Virginia's Dominion Resources-owned nuclear sites, Surry and North Anna in Mineral, already have licenses to run an extra 20 years. The Surry reactors will run until 2033, which is 13 years before the storage license will expire.

It made sense to extend the storage license beyond the life of the reactors to give time for the last rods to cool for five years and then get shipped to Yucca, said Dominion spokesman Rick Zuercher.

"The issues don't change from 20 years to 40 years in terms of safety," he said.

NRC officials now will negotiate inspection and maintenance requirements of the storage area. Surry's extension, which will allow Dominion to use its dry casks until 2046, will be permanent once the NRC issues the final license with the inspection conditions.

The pending approval comes only a month and a half after an environmental group calculated that, based on current license renewals at nuclear plants, Virginia will have the second most leftover waste in the nation at its two sites after Yucca is full.

Some environmental and anti-nuclear groups challenge the safety of the outdoor storage. The activists have criticized the government and industry for failing to find adequate space for a permanent home for all the waste that is being created daily.

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Las Vegas SUN
December 08, 2004

Experts: Yucca 'backup' sites needed

Panel recommends nuclear storage areas near Mississippi River

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

WASHINGTON -- The nation needs Yucca Mountain as part of a broad energy strategy, including expanded nuclear power -- but the government should also construct above-ground "dry cask" waste storage sites, a coalition of energy experts said today.

The nation needs at least two such storage sites, one on each side of the Mississippi River to provide an "interim, backup solution against the possibility that Yucca Mountain is further delayed or derailed -- or cannot be adequately expanded before a further geologic repository can be ready," according to the "Ending the Energy Stalemate" report issued today by a 16-member panel of experts from industry, environmental, academic and government backgrounds.

It was the first time an independent commission had called for such a proposal. A 2001 energy task force overseen by Vice President Dick Cheney backed Yucca Mountain but not additional above-ground sites.

The nation has put "all its eggs in one basket" in relying on Yucca Mountain as a sole solution to high-level nuclear waste, said John Holdren, co-chairman of the National Commission on Energy Policy and an environmental policy professor at Harvard University.

"It's proven technology," Holdren said of dry cask storage. "It's not expensive. It's safe -- it's even terrorist resistant."

But a high-profile nuclear industry executive was reluctant to offer explicit support for the proposal.

After a press conference today, commission co-chairman and Exelon Corp. chairman and CEO John Rowe said industry leaders would be reluctant to back the commission proposal because it might imply wavering support for Yucca.

"My company is committed to supporting the Yucca Mountain solution," he said. But he added that the industry in general supports any effort by the government to meet its obligation to solving the nation's waste problem.

The nation has 103 active commercial nuclear reactors that generate highly radioactive waste, which plants now store on site in waste pools, and increasingly, in above-ground dry cask containers. The containers can safely hold waste for 100 years or more, experts say.

But Congress promised the industry it would find a permanent solution to storing waste, and since 1987 that solution has been the proposed underground repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The project has been plagued by controversy, budget woes and delays, and Nevada officials have fought to kill it.

Environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, generally oppose Yucca. The commission proposal offers an option worth considering, said Ralph Cavanagh, senior attorney and co-director of the defense council's energy program, who also served as a commissioner.

"I hope that this is welcome news to Nevadans who are tired of being the nation's dumping ground," said Cavanagh, a nuclear energy skeptic. "Under no circumstances can you assume that Yucca Mountain is a complete solution."

The National Energy Commission toiled for three years to assemble a 2,700-page compilation of research and recommendations available on CD Rom and in a 128-page report summary.

Commissioners said they plan to advocate their recommendations in Washington as Congress next year continues efforts to draft a comprehensive national energy policy. Commissioners acknowledged some of their findings are not new.

The commission supported proposals including:

••• Renewing efforts to establish clean-coal technologies;

••• "Increasing and diversifying world oil production," although the commission took no stance on the controversial proposal to drill in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge;

••• Increasing federal funding for renewable technology by $360 million annually;

••• Creating more incentives for auto makers to offer hybrid cars that are already popular with the public;

••• Creating tougher fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, which the auto industry has opposed.

The report recommended $2 billion in federal spending over 10 years aimed at establishing one or two new nuclear plants. It noted that nuclear power represents about 70 percent of "non-carbon" U.S. electricity generation, but no new nuclear plants have been ordered since 1978.

Expanding nuclear power would ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions that harm the environment and alleviate the nation's dependence on natural gas for electricity. Also, uranium is a relatively inexpensive and available nuclear fuel source, the report noted.

But nuclear industry leaders face big hurdles as they pursue plans to build a new generation of new-technology plants in the United States, the report said. Included are the competitive cost of constructing a new plant; the possibility, albeit remote, for accidents or terrorist attacks; and finding a viable waste solution, the report said.

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Las Vegas SUN
December 08, 2004

Editorial: Lagging logistics

The same year that Congress zeroed in on Southern Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the only potential site for burying the nation's high-level nuclear waste, it created a panel to conduct independent analysis of the Energy Department's burial plan. Known as the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, the 11-member panel periodically issues reports about all phases of the plan to bury at least 77,000 tons of lethal waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

In its latest assessment, the Review Board noted a problem that this newspaper has been writing about for years. In a letter to the Energy Department, the board noted the lack of a "detailed strategic plan" for transporting the waste to Nevada from nuclear power plants all over the country. The board expressed concern that because transportation planning is lagging, important safeguards could be "overlooked" as the Energy Department rushes to meets its deadline of beginning shipments to Yucca Mountain in about five years.

"It is important for the Energy Department to develop specific logistical plans ..." the Review Board wrote.

We realize the public will be up in arms when the plans show how close the shipments will pass by their homes and schools. That, however, is no reason to delay the plans. It's all the more reason to get them developed, so that people and local governments all over the country will have time to understand the full potential of Yucca Mountain.

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Pahrump Valley Times
December 8, 2004

Nye can use DOE repository funding

Congress Solves PETT Fund Dispute

By Steve Tetreault
PVT Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Congress has resolved a dispute over how Nevada counties can spend federal money on Yucca Mountain in favor of the counties, officials said last week.

A year-end spending bill that lawmakers passed on Nov. 20 makes clear that local governments can use Energy Department grants to take part in licensing for the proposed nuclear waste repository, they said.

Clark County commissioners protested after DOE issued new grant guidelines in August. One directive disallowed use of grant money for activities such as loading pertinent research into an electronic database being built for Yucca Mountain license hearings.

County leaders said the rules would restrict their ability to fully participate in upcoming hearings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

A provision that reverses the directive was proposed by Clark County officials and was inserted into the bill by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., according to Capitol Hill officials.

Abigail Johnson, a nuclear waste consultant to Eureka County, said the problem appears to be solved for now.

"It provides the specific language that answers the questions that had come up over how we can use our oversight funds," she said. Reid aides said the provision would need to be renewed each year.

Nine Nevada counties and Inyo County in California shared $4 million this year and are being given $8 million during fiscal 2005 to monitor DOE's work at Yucca Mountain and to study the planned repository's potential impacts on their residents.

Yucca Mountain hearings will be conducted in a trial-like format before an NRC administrative panel. DOE officials said their August guidelines were based on their reading of a law that prohibits the counties from spending federal money on repository "litigation."

Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson said DOE welcomed the instructions from Congress.

"Congress has for many years provided us guidance as well as the state and the (counties) on how the funds should be spent," Benson said. "Now we have congressional direction, which helps all of us."

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Free Lance-Star
December 08, 2004

Yucca Mountain repository is not the answer for nuclear waste

Aviv Goldsmith

How would Virginians like it if the feds wanted to deposit nuclear waste in the Shenandoah Valley?

J.WINSTON PORTER ["How to wise- ly deal with nuclear waste? Uti- lize Yucca Mountain," Nov. 22] suggested the answer to the country's growing nuclear-waste problem involves moving the waste from 39 states to Yucca Mountain, Nev. The commentary contained distortions propagated by those hoping to make the national nuclear-waste problem disappear from public awareness, though they cannot make the waste itself disappear.

Porter's thesis seems to be that any solution is better than no solution. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Except as otherwise noted, the data in this commentary come from the Department of Energy's 2002 Final Environmental Impact Statement.

Porter starts with "Congress designated Yucca Mountain as the site for a national waste repository in 1987," and asks whether we wouldn't all be better off burying the waste "a half-mile deep."

Both of these headline statements are false. Congress directed the government to evaluate Yucca Mountain for suitability. The actual depth of waste burial is still to be determined, but it appears that it would be in the range of 660 feet to 1,000 feet, far less than a "half-mile."

After 17 years of study, it is clear that Yucca Mountain is not a suitable site. A magnitude 5.2 earthquake there damaged DOE buildings in 1992.

DOE has repeatedly watered down the criteria for the site, so Yucca Mountain could qualify even though it does not meet the original safety standards.

In July, a federal appeals court said that the government would have to show it could contain waste for hundreds of thousands of years, not just 10,000 years!

Congress directed study of a storage facility of 70,000 metric tons, but DOE now estimates that at least 129,000 tons will need to be stored. DOE is also subsidizing early site permit processes to expand nuclear plants around the country (including a doubling of nuclear reactors at Lake Anna) even though the proposed federal nuclear-waste storage facility would already be oversubscribed. Is that good public policy?

Although past proposals consider burying the waste immediately so that it gets as hot as a self-cleaning oven, the federal environmental impact statement contemplated the more sensible approach that the waste would be stored aboveground for the first 50 years after arrival for cooling.

Putting the waste inside would take 24 years, and closing the repository (actually burying the waste) would start from 74 years to 300 years after the waste is in place. Would you trust government or a contractor to reliably and economically manage a project that takes more than a century?

Before I moved to Virginia, I lived in Nevada and worked in the power industry for 18 years. The nearest sizeable town to Yucca Mountain is just 14 miles away, and a national park is within 22 miles. Even in the desert, these areas are connected by underground aquifers.

In fact, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, Yucca Mountain is one of the best-documented places where water flows from underneath one mountain range to the next. Neighboring Clark County has more than 1.4 million people. Between 1990 and 2000, the population in the three nearest counties grew by 88 percent.

Here in Virginia, we strongly believe in states' rights. Nevadans are overwhelmingly opposed to Yucca Mountain should we set the precedent of allowing the federal government to store radioactive materials at an unsafe location against the will of most state residents?

How would Virginians feel if the site was on a piece of federal land in the Shenandoah, say, near Luray?

The land at Yucca Mountain was reserved for the Shoshone Indians in an 1863 treaty. In the 1950s, U.S. courts tried to take it back, offering a payment the tribe still has not accepted. Does it make sense to invest billions in property with disputed title? If the federal government could not uphold a treaty obligation on this land for less than 100 years, how can we expect it to responsibly steward and monitor the site for tens of thousands of years?

This is not just a local issue in southern Nevada. The waste will be shipped from nuclear power plants across the country. According to studies commissioned by the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Office, 50 million people live within a half-mile of the transportation routes for the estimated 53,000 truck shipments or the 10,700 mostly rail shipments. About 35 times more nuclear waste would be shipped each year than has ever previously been transported.

DOE estimates the cost of shipping and storing the waste will be between $42.8 billion and $57.3 billion. Will these costs be solely borne by the users of nuclear-generated electricity, or will it be fodder for yet another government subsidy of the nuclear industry?

Does it make common sense for the United States to put all of its nuclear-waste eggs in one basket? Think about this question long and hard, given that the eggs will be strongly radioactive for tens of thousands of years and the basket is already showing signs of cracking.

This is not just a concern of "anti-nuclear activists," but of citizens like you and me across the country, who will be exposed to unidentified shipments of highly radioactive waste.

Shipment of all of the nuclear waste generated in this country across the continent to an earthquake-prone site near the fastest-growing population center in the country, where wastes will sit aboveground for the foreseeable future, is not the catch-all solution glibly described by Porter.

- AVIV GOLDSMITH lives in Spotsylvania County and volunteers with the Battlefields Sierra Group and the People's Alliance for Clean Energy.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 07, 2004

Reid gives up three committee seats

Correction on 12/08/04 -- A headline and story in Tuesday's Review-Journal incorrectly reported the number of committees Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., will relinquish in the new Congress. He is dropping membership on four Senate committees, including the Aging Committee, which was not included in the story.

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Monday gave up long-held membership on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as Democrats reorganized for the new Congress.

Reid relinquished a seat he had held since arriving in the Senate in 1987 and from which he had rewritten federal highway programs every four to five years to send millions of road improvement dollars to fast-growing Nevada.

But with Democrats suffering election losses in November, they had to relinquish at least one seat on each of the Senate's 21 committees in order to reflect the Republican Party's 55-45 majority in the session that begins in January.

Reid, as the incoming Senate minority leader, headed the Democrats' reorganization. He took himself off the environment committee to ease reassignments for others, spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said.

"With fewer Democratic senators, they lost seats, and this was a way to accommodate other senators," Hafen said. Freshman Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., replaced Reid on the panel.

Reid also dropped himself from the Indian Affairs Committee, which he joined in large part to scrutinize Indian gaming and look out for the interests of the Nevada casino industry. He also left the Senate Ethics Committee, on which he had served since 1997.

Reid will remain on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which he has utilized to earmark millions of dollars in federal spending to Nevada. The committee also is where Reid has launched campaigns to cut spending for the Yucca Mountain Project.

Senate Republicans may reorganize in January. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., does not know yet whether his committee assignments will change, spokesman Jack Finn said Monday.

Hafen said Reid, as Senate minority leader, still will have influence over bills coming out of the environment committee, including transportation bills he has promoted as a strategy to bolster the nation's infrastructure. Congress will work next year to renew its latest highway bill.

"He won't be sitting down at the table (to negotiate bills), but whoever will be, will be sitting down there with Reid's instructions and input," Hafen said.

Reid had served on the environment committee since he became a senator in 1987, rising to become its top Democratic member. He was in line to become committee chairman but gave up the slot to entice Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont to leave the Republican Party in 2001.

Besides funding for highways and transportation, Reid used the panel to push federal funding for water treatment, development of blighted urban lots called brownfields, and measures regulating poisonous lead and other toxic substances.

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Las Vegas SUN
December 07, 2004

Reid to drop four committee seats
Sun Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., will drop four committee assignments next year, including his seat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, where he was a top-ranking Democrat.

Reid also has dropped his membership on the Indian Affairs Committee, the Aging Committee and the Select Committee on Ethics.

Reid kept one of his committee assignments -- on the Appropriations Committee, considered the best panel assignment because it controls federal spending and allows lawmakers to funnel money to their home states for "pork" projects.

"He will still send earmarks to Nevada," Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said.

Committees are where much of the work of Congress is done. Reid, the incoming Senate Democratic leader, needed to make room on several panels for new members and for veteran members looking to make shifts. Democratic representation on most panels also decreased because Democratic representation in the Senate decreased by four seats.

Newly elected Senate party leaders routinely shed some of their committee assignments to make more time in their schedules for new responsibilities. Reid now has new roles as party spokesman, strategist, fundraiser and policy planner.

The Environment and Public Works Committee had some oversight of Yucca Mountain-related issues, but much of that is handled in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The environment and public works panel handled issues like transportation funding for states.

But Reid's dropping committee seats won't hurt Nevada, Hafen said.

"As leader, Sen. Reid will have a more active role on all the committees," Hafen said.

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Nevada Appeal
December 8, 2004

Panel: Shipping plan lagging for Yucca project

LAS VEGAS - An independent review panel is raising questions about whether the Energy Department will cut corners on safety in plans to ship thousands of tons of nuclear waste to the proposed national nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

The government has yet to develop "a safe, secure and efficient transportation system" for nuclear waste transport to Yucca Mountain, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board said in a three-page letter to the Energy Department.

"We're looking at the letter," Energy Department and Yucca Mountain spokesman Allen Benson said Tuesday in Las Vegas.

Yucca managers say shipping will be done safely, but say transportation planning has been underfunded while they concentrate on repository design and a license application.

The independent panel, based in Washington, D.C., said it feared budget constraints or a rush to meet deadlines might compromise safety in plans to move 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive material across 44 states to Nevada later this decade.

The department has yet to decide matters of cask design, truck and rail acquisition and waste handling "to ensure that the transportation system will operate successfully," the board said.

The panel also said the Energy Department should focus more on a backup plan to ship waste through Nevada by truck if a proposed cross-state railroad line cannot be built in time.

The department has proposed building a 319-mile rail route to ship waste from a railhead at Caliente, 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas, to the Yucca Mountain repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Energy Department announced last month that it would miss a self-imposed Dec. 31 deadline to submit a Yucca Mountain license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

With license review expected to take up to four years, the department has not said whether postponing its license application will push back its plan to open the Yucca Mountain repository in 2010.

Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant hired by the state of Nevada, which opposes the Yucca plan, said officials in states across which waste would travel are trying to gauge the Energy Department's shipping program.

States are particularly concerned whether DOE will have enough money to help them with emergency planning and how that money will be distributed, Halstead said.

Jack Edlow, president of Edlow International Company, a waste shipping firm, characterized the technical board letter as a road map for the Energy Department to follow.

Planning "is not behind yet, but they need to begin the process next year, and with a funding stream, I believe they will be able to do that," said Edlow, who heads the U.S. Transport Council, a coalition of nuclear waste shipping concerns.

The Technical Review Board was created by Congress to evaluate the Yucca Mountain program.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
December 07, 2004

Nevada scores big money

Appropriations bill: Harry Reid claims credit for helping to get funds earmarked to benefit state.

Susan Voyles

Northern Nevada gained millions of dollars to benefit roads, downtown Reno, education and water resources in the annual appropriations bill approved by Congress.

Downtown Reno will get $1 million that will help build a two-block plaza over the railroad trench. And regional transportation officials will gain $6 million to rebuild the busy McCarran and Pyramid Way intersection in Sparks.

“Merry Christmas,’ Reno Mayor Bob Cashell said, adding that most of the city of Reno´s requests had been fulfilled.

President Bush is expected this week to sign the $388 billion appropriations bill that was largely approved by Congress on Nov. 20. At least 22 earmarked expenditures within Washoe County are contained in the 3,320-page bill, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is claiming credit for a good share of them.

“He did pretty well this year,’ said Sharyn Stein, a staffer in Reid´s office. But she said Reid also is mindful of the needs of other Democrats and the country.

For some time, Reid has secured federal funds for Nevada as a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee. This past year, Reid obtained $148 million in projects for Nevada.

That´s according to Citizens Against Government Waste. Its study earlier this year ranked Nevada 11th among the states for money brought home for pet projects on a per-capita basis.

For transportation alone, the spending bill contains $71 million for Nevada. Another $4.8 million for justice programs is provided.

The bill authorizes 147 acres of federal land valued at $30 million to be used for a new veterans hospital in Las Vegas. Earlier this year, $25 million was approved to plan it.

Nationwide, Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates the new appropriations bill contains 11,772 earmarked projects totaling $15.8 billion.

Keith Ashdown, Taxpayers for Common Sense vice president in Washington, said he could probably pick some projects from Nevada´s list that could be delayed, such as $1 million for a new freeway interchange for Meadowood Mall.

In the Virginian-Pilot newspaper, columnist Bronwyn Lance Chester on Monday picked on Nevada for $25,000 in the bill that´s “being vacuumed from our wallets to study mariachi music.’ This money was listed as the No. 1 most egregious earmark in the bill, according to a listing by the Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense group.

The money will go Clark County Schools to create the mariachi music program. Such a class will be just the incentive to keep some students in school, said Emma Sepulveda, a Latina activist and UNR professor.

“You should see the pride in those kids´ faces when they play,’ she said. “That could change a kid´s life.’

Sepulveda said she´d put that up against the sand that Virginia Beach residents in Chester´s hometown wanted but didn´t get in the appropriations bill.

Porker of the Month

Citizens Against Government Waste in Washington named all of Congress as Porker of the Month for November for the appropriations bill that comes while the country continues running up a deficit as it fights a war.

While having nothing to do with appropriations, U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., tucked into the new bill a provision that will allow rural television viewers to receive a digital signal by satellite if they cannot receive an over-the-air signal. That would allow rural Nevadans to watch high definition TV.

The bill whittles the $880 million President Bush wanted for the planned nuclear waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain to $577 million. Gibbons voted against the bill because he doesn´t want a penny spent on the site.

And the appropriations bill will allow the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to sell old wild horses and other horses that haven´t been sold for pets. This will allow the horses to be sold for slaughter — triggering protests from animal activists.

Specifically, wild horses and burros older than 10 or those that have unsuccessfully been put up for adoption three times could be sold without limitations at local livestock sale yards.

Reno trench

In downtown Reno, city Public Works Director Steve Varela said the $1 million for the trench project cover would be added to $1.5 million in federal money received over the past year. Initial work would include environmental studies and engineering work.

He said the exact location for the two-block plaza covering the trench is still being studied. It would be part of a $18 million plan to improve pedestrian access downtown, connecting a new Amtrak train station, a new Citifare bus terminal and the downtown river district.

In a visit to Reno in 2002, U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, House transportation chairman, promised former Mayor Jeff Griffin that he´d fight for this money. And Varela said he believes that promise will be kept.

For the Pyramid/McCarran project in Sparks, the $6 million contained in the bill will be added to $5 million already saved for the project, said Derek Morse, Regional Transportation Commission deputy director.

The $6 million also would include environmental studies for long-range plans to turn the Pyramid Highway into a freeway through Spanish Springs.

The bill also provides $1 million for a proposed interchange on U.S. 395 for Meadowood Mall. Southbound on- and off-ramps would go under the freeway between the J.C. Penney Co.´s furniture store and Barnes & Noble bookstore on Virginia street. About $3 million already has been spent to buy land and for environmental work.

“This is a very critical project,’ Morse said. “It´s very important for the continued success of that premiere retail area.’

Lear Theater

Another on-going project receiving funding is the Lear Theater in downtown Reno.

The appropriations bill provides $400,000 for the theater, in a historic church on Riverside Drive.

While backers initially thought the building could be bought and renovated for $3 million in 1998, they were wrong, said Nettie Oliverio, one of the founding theater board members.

“Boy were we stupid,’ Oliverio said. “When you look back, we said it was a great building, with great bones. We´d just make these changes and be fine.’

The total cost is now approaching $15 million. And for that, the group plans to raise $5 million more for an expected opening a year from now.

The $400,000 would be spent on the next $2.5 million phase that includes a three-story addition on the west side of the building. It would include an elevator, a rehearsal studio, a holding area for actors, and several dressing rooms. This phase also includes a new balcony in the main church building and electrical, plumbing and air handling systems.

A final $2.5 million would be raised for a new roof, finishing the stucco exterior, new seating, fixtures in the bathroom and lighting.

Rising construction costs, including steel, concrete and lumber, are adding to the project costs, Oliverio said.

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Casper Star-Tribune
December 08, 2004

Nuclear power group fights Utah efforts to block Goshute waste site

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Organizers of a proposed temporary nuclear waste dump on an American Indian reservation are trying to block a late effort to prevent regulatory acceptance of the project.

The state has long opposed the project planned for Skull Valley Band of Goshutes' land, but filed that complaint Nov. 12, after the time limit for filing new arguments had closed.

In its response Monday, Private Fuel Storage, a nuclear power utility consortium that is organizing the project, argued the alleged statement - presented in an affidavit from a state official and a newspaper report in The Salt Lake Tribune - wasn't on official transcripts, and therefore wasn't sufficient.

PFS also argued the statements were wrong in the first place, because DOE is legally required to accept all spent nuclear fuel from utilities.

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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Guardian
December 07, 2004

Details of Congress' $388B Bill to Bush

By Alan Fram
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress sent President Bush a $388 billion legislative package Tuesday that covers the spending of every federal agency but the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Bush is expected to sign the bill before midnight Wednesday, when a temporary measure expires.

Congress passed the package Nov. 20. Lawmakers delayed sending it to the White House until they overturned language that would have made it easier for some members of Congress and their aides to enter Internal Revenue Service offices and see income tax returns.

Here are highlights of the bill. The figures do not include effects of an across-the-board cut of at least 0.8 percent imposed on programs throughout the bill, part of a last-minute deal to pay for some of the measure's increases.

-Education: $59.7 billion, $1.4 billion over last year and $300 million below President Bush's request. Aid to low-income school districts $12.8 billion, $500 million below Bush but $500 million more than last year. Grants for improving teacher quality $1.5 billion, 0.7 percent over last year. Aid for disabled students $11.8 billion, 5.4 percent over last year.

-Transportation: Overall $59 billion, $1.1 billion over last year and $1 billion more than Bush requested. Highway construction gets $34.7 billion, $1 billion over last year and over Bush's proposal. Federal Aviation Administration gets $10.4 billion, $100 million over last year. Amtrak gets $1.2 billion, the same as last year.

-Foreign aid: $19.5 billion, $2 billion over last year and $1.8 billion below Bush's request. Total $2.9 billion for fighting AIDS in poor countries, $100 million more than Bush wanted. Child survival and health nearly $1.6 billion, $274 million below last year. Military aid $4.8 billion, $221 million over last year.

-State Department: $8.3 billion, a $554 million cut from 2004. Embassy security would grow by 17 percent to $612 million.

-Land and cultural programs: The Interior Department will get $9.9 billion, nearly $100 million less than Bush wanted and 0.4 percent more than 2004. National parks operating money goes up 6 percent, but money for buying park lands remains nearly two-thirds below the peak of three years ago. The Indian Health Service grows by $100 million to $3 billion. The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities both got more than 10 percent less than Bush wanted.

-Labor Department: Gets $15.4 billion, 0.7 percent over last year. Job training for workers who lose jobs to foreign competition get nearly $1.5 billion, 1.7 percent over last year. Job Corps gets $1.6 billion, 1.2 percent over last year. Occupational Safety and Health Administration gets $468 million, 2.4 percent over last year.

-Health and social programs: Maternal and child health gets $896 million, 0.7 percent over last year. AIDS programs get almost $2.1 billion, 1.2 percent over last year. National Institutes of Health get $28.5 billion, 3.1 percent over last year, one of its smallest increases in years. Energy assistance for low income families $2.2 billion, 4 percent over last year.

-Veterans: Veterans' health care programs will get $30.3 billion, $1.9 billion over last year and $1.2 billion more than Bush wanted. The bill ignores Bush's requests to increase some fees veterans pay for benefits. Construction for veterans' hospitals and other facilities will grow to $459 million, the same as Bush's request and $188 million more than last year.

-Housing, urban affairs: $37.3 billion, 1.6 percent below last year and 1.4 percent over Bush's request. Vouchers to help low-income people pay rent will get $14.9 billion, $700 million over last year. Housing assistance for AIDS patients down $11 million to $284 million. Community development grants $4.7 billion, down $212 million from last year.

-Agriculture, food: Animal and plant inspections $820 million, up $98 million from 2004. Food safety and inspections $824 million, $44 million more than last year. Agriculture conservation $1 billion, down $27 million from 2004. Overseas food aid $1.5 billion, $30 million over 2004. Food and Drug Administration $1.5 billion, $76 million over 2004.

-Commerce Department: $6.6 billion, 10 percent over last year. Most of the increase is for the Census Bureau as it prepares for the 2010 census, and for oceanic and atmospheric programs.

-Justice Department: $20.9 billion, $1 billion over last year. FBI gets $5.2 billion, almost a 14 percent increase over last year. Aid to state and local law enforcement agencies is $1.3 billion, $90 million below last year.

-Environmental Protection Agency: $8.1 billion, 3.3 percent below last year but 3.8 percent over Bush. Clean water fund for states $1.1 billion, or $250 million below last year. Superfund hazardous waste cleanups get $1.2 billion, or 0.7 percent over last year.

-National Aeronautics and Space Administration: $16.2 billion, or 5.3 percent over last year. NASA is given flexibility over how to allocate money among the space station, space shuttle and Bush's goal of exploring the moon and Mars.

-National Science Foundation: $5.5 billion, 1 percent below last year. Research receives nearly $4.3 billion, about the same as last year.

-Energy, water projects: $4.7 billion for dredging, other water projects, $124 million over last year and nearly $600 million more than Bush wanted. $577 million to continue preparing nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., the same as 2004.

-Corporation for National and Community Service, $578 million, $3 million less than last year and $64 million below Bush. Will support 70,000 Americorps volunteers, 5,000 fewer than last year.

-Internal Revenue Service: $10.3 billion, $134 million over last year and $356 million below Bush's request.

-Postal Service: Bill includes $507 million for equipment to detect biohazards and to build a postal facility in Washington, D.C., to irradiate mail to destroy possible biological contamination.

-Congress: $3.6 billion, $43 million over last year. Capitol Police get $232 million, $13 million over last year. No funds provided for continuing construction of Capitol Visitors' Center, which is running well over budget and has money left over from previous years.

-The White House and White House agencies: $770 million, $4 million less than Bush wanted and $12 million below last year.

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