Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
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Reno Gazette-Journal
December 15, 2004
Letters to the Editor
Employment promise of Yucca is laughable
Ed Rugg´s comments [Your Turn, Nov. 22] about employment through the Yucca Mountain project are laughable. The Department of Energy´s own Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on Yucca Mountain estimated peak employment to be about 3,400 jobs, representing about 0.36 percent of the regional employment base. And there is no guarantee that all of those jobs will be granted to Nevadans as we have seen with other Department of Energy projects.
Certainly, we can create jobs without accepting radioactive waste. And, the potential negative impacts could result in much greater loss of employment as Las Vegas becomes a less attractive travel destination.
Malkah Gelah
Sparks
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Reno Gazette-Journal
December 14, 2004
Editorial
Finally, an idea Nevada can use
Among the best land use ideas to come from the federal government of late is the proposal to build a new facility at the Nevada Test Site to manage some of the nation´s secure documents and to house special Government Printing Office projects. Unlike the dangers posed by a repository at Yucca Mountain, this facility would be a non-toxic, non-threatening use of the Nevada desert, and it might create economic benefit.
Years of secrecy surrounding the site and tests conducted there leave little doubt that whatever takes place can be kept under wraps, at least for a while. Even in this age of viruses, hackers and intelligence leaks. The state and the nation should have a reasonable expectation that storing and producing sensitive documents (paper and digital) would offer a clean use of the desert, an efficient national security site and a new job sector.
Growth in Las Vegas from employees, suppliers to support the facility and businesses to serve all the people would be the worst foreseeable fallout to come from the project. Is it significant that a Nevadan came up with the plan?
Even with the necessity to manage the growth, it would be more acceptable than some other federal projects.
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Tri-City Herald
December 15, 2004
Keeping wastes here at 'heart' of initiative
Monday's Seattle Times included some revealing comments from Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, sponsors of Initiative 297.
"I believe if Yucca Mountain is not safe, it shouldn't be open," Pollet told The Times. It's hard to argue against safety, but Pollet went on to say, "Glassified, high-level waste should stay at Hanford. That's the safest thing."
Funny, we can't remember any election ads for the anti-nuclear waste initiative mentioning its potential to strand high-level nuclear wastes at Hanford, let alone any rhetoric endorsing the idea.
Certainly, when Pollet described I-297 as a way to stop the feds from turning Hanford into a nuclear waste dump, he left out the part about keeping its most dangerous wastes here.
Critics of I-297 warned that by encouraging every state to fend for itself, the measure threatened plans to ship Hanford's most dangerous waste to Nevada for burial beneath Yucca Mountain.
The Herald lent its editorial voice to the small chorus, suggesting that if Heart of America had its way, Hanford wastes would have nowhere to go and no way to get there.
But we thought that was just an unintended consequence of a badly written initiative. Pardon our naivet.
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Las Vegas SUN
December 14, 2004
Efficient nuke plants could lessen need for dumpsite, Domenici says
By Mary Manning
<manning@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
Nevada is locked in the middle of a nuclear waste disposal debate that could ease with a new generation of smaller, more efficient nuclear power plants necessary to a stable energy future for the nation, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said.
Yucca Mountain, the proposed national repository for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel, is "kind of the buck stops here," Domenici told more than 200 people packed into the Atomic Testing Museum on Flamingo Road and Swenson Street Monday night.
Domenici said nuclear waste should be stored, not buried permanently, until a technique for reprocessing and reusing it comes along.
Domenici, who chairs the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said while reprocessing nuclear fuel eventually will become necessary, since uranium is a limited resource like gas and coal, a Yucca Mountain repository is still needed but should be temporary.
Scientists are working on nuclear technology to build smaller nuclear reactors that can't burn up. "Then there's no 'China Syndrome,' " Domenici said, referring to the 1970s movie starring Jane Fonda that described a reactor core meltdown.
"We're just behind in the game," the senator, who has been in Congress 32 years, said.
Domenici has written a book, "A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy," in which he presents a case for nuclear power contributing energy to allow this nation and other countries to grow.
"You can't do it without energy," the senator said.
The senator noted that while the U.S. relies on nuclear power for 20 percent of its electricity, France supplies 80 percent of its power from the atom and China has ordered 20 new nuclear reactors.
"It's pathetic that in a country as powerful and smart as ours it's still a problem," he said, referring to fears about the dangers of nuclear power.
Domenici peppered his speech with salty remarks. At one point he asked, "Did any of you come out here to express some anti-nuclear feelings?"
At least one person who attended did. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said that Congress should find and fund a better method for handling, shipping and storing nuclear waste.
"I agree with the senator that we don't want to be beholden to Middle East dictators," Berkley said of U.S. reliance on foreign oil after the speech.
The Energy Department estimates it will cost $308 billion to ship the waste from 103 reactor sites by road and rail to Yucca Mountain, she said. Instead, put the funding into solar and wind power and leave nuclear waste in place stored inside dry casks.
"I don't think nuclear is the way to go," Berkley said. "Let's harness that sun, let's harness the wind."
Most of those attending Domenici's speech and book signing agreed with the senator's vision for nuclear energy.
"We are not reprocessing commercial nuclear fuel yet," Anthony Hechanova, in charge of the Transmutation Research Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said. The bulk of spent fuel -- 70,000 tons -- destined for Yucca Mountain, if it is approved, is from commercial reactors.
The United States has reprocessed small amounts of weapons-grade plutonium, Hechanova said. "It works," he said.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas students participated in stripping a small batch of spent nuclear fuel to almost pure uranium in 2002 inside an Energy Department laboratory, said Denis Beller, coordinator for the Department of Energy's Advanced Accelerator Applications program at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who is working at UNLV.
"We've got a lot of research and development to do" before developing a process that is efficient, cleaner and economical for reducing nuclear waste, Beller said.
But it would be worth it, he said.
The research on transforming nuclear waste into reuseable fuel needs up to $1 billion a year, he said.
Recycling nuclear fuel would cost the average power customer an extra 75 cents a month.
"That's all it takes is a policy change," Beller said.
Domenici declined to elaborate on future strategies to change nuclear waste policy.
As for progress on licensing Yucca Mountain by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Domenici said he had "some new ideas" to propel the repository forward.
The senator expects "a full battle about funding for the future: do we fund it every year or no?"
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 14, 2004
Senator frustrated Yucca project not moving faster
Domenici says delay slowing expansion of nuclear plants
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Sen. Pete Domenici, the powerful Republican from New Mexico who wants to get the ball rolling on burying nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, said Monday he's frustrated the project doesn't get more funding, because it leaves expansion of U.S. plants mired while other countries are becoming more reliant on nuclear power.
"The frustration is why has it taken so long? Why does it seem elsewhere to be so easy and here to be so tough?" he said before signing copies of his book, "A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy."
Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee who also chairs the subcommittee that writes funding bills for energy and water projects, attended the book-signing at the Atomic Testing Museum on the Desert Research Institute campus.
Earlier in the day, he met for several hours with officials at the Energy Department's Office of Repository Development after first meeting with a group on water desalination in Las Vegas.
The senator noted that although the United States relies on nuclear power for 20 percent of its electricity, France has an 80 percent reliance and China has ordered 20 new power reactors.
"So my frustration is, `Why not in America?' " he asked.
Currently, the $58 billion project to build a maze of tunnels inside Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and entomb highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies there is creeping along at a $577 million annual funding pace.
Despite the fact there's $12.6 billion in a ratepayers' fund to finance the effort, the Department of Energy has missed its target to submit a license application for review this year, and it's questionable if plans and methods to begin hauling the waste will be in place by 2010.
Among the apparent roadblocks is an appeals court ruling this summer that the Environmental Protection Agency's 10,000-year radiation protection standard needs to be extended to hundreds of thousands of years in the future.
Asked if he intends to pass legislation next year to keep the current standard intact, Domenici said, "We're looking very carefully at what that court decision means."
He said legislation to skirt the court's ruling might not be needed, but "we'll see."
In his book, Domenici urges the United States and other countries to rely more on nuclear power and to follow through on the government's commitment to dispose of spent fuel in a permanent site where it can be retrieved for reprocessing and reduction in the amount of waste as technology permits.
In essence, Yucca Mountain is an interim solution to a long-term problem that eventually will be resolved through reprocessing and transforming the waste, he said. "But we're late in the game because of past executive orders by presidents like Carter."
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Reno Gazette-Journal
December 14, 2004
Letters to the Editor
Yucca Mountain fight is a lost cause; give up
I am sick and tired of people whining about Yucca Mountain. It is an established fact that the project will be in Nevada. Accept it. Reason: Politicians from other states don´t want the thing in their state either, and we don´t have the political clout to stop it, regardless of what Sen. Reid wants the gullible to believe.
When Sen. Kerry said he would stop Yucca Mountain I wanted to ask him, “So that means you will transfer the whole thing to your state? If not, what state will you force to accept the nuclear dump?’ Gee, I wonder why I thought Kerry was lying?
My personal preference for a nuclear dump would be the moon (regardless of the cost). After all, we have proved we can land there and nobody is using it. Or is the thing reserved for a Los Angeles parking lot?
Gary L. Benefield
Reno
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The White House
December 10, 2004
President Nominates Sam Bodman as Secretary of Energy
The Roosevelt Room
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Good morning. Today I am announcing my nomination of Sam Bodman as Secretary of Energy. I am pleased to welcome Sam's wife, Diane, and all his family members -- I emphasize "all" -- who have come today. Welcome to the White House.
Sam Bodman is an experienced executive who has served in my administration as Deputy Secretary of Commerce and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. During his varied and distinguished career in the private sector, Sam has been a professor at MIT, president of an investment firm, the chairman and CEO of an industrial company with operations worldwide. In academics, in business, and in government, Sam Bodman has shown himself to be a problem solver who knows how to set goals and he knows how to reach them. He will bring to the Department of Energy a great talent for management and the precise thinking of an engineer. I thank him for agreeing to serve once again.
The Department of Energy has responsibilities that directly affect all Americans, from the security of nuclear facilities to reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation around the world to environmental clean up to enhancing conservation and developing new sources of energy for the future. Every day, employees at the Department of Energy are working to protect the American people and to ensure that our country's homes and businesses have reliable, safe and affordable supplies of energy.
During the last four years, the Department of Energy has been active and effective and has delivered important results for the American people. We've taken vital steps to upgrade the nation's energy infrastructure. We have begun an ambitious research program to develop a viable hydrogen powered automobile. We have strengthened cooperation between the United States and foreign governments, to safeguard nuclear materials and to fight proliferation.
For these achievements, and more, the nation is grateful to Secretary Spencer Abraham. As a United States Senator, and a Cabinet Secretary, Spence has shown himself to be a man of integrity and wisdom. He's a good man, a superior public servant and a friend, and I thank Spence for leading his department so ably. And I wish him and Jane all the best.
During the next four years, we will continue to enhance our economic security and our national security through sound energy policy. We will pursue more energy close to home, in our own country and in our own hemisphere, so that we're less dependent on energy from unstable parts of the world. We will continue improving pipelines and gas terminals and power lines, so that energy flow is reliable. We will develop and deploy the latest technology to provide a new generation of cleaner and more efficient energy sources. We will promote strong conservation measures.
In all these steps, we will bring greater certainty of costs and supply, and that certainty is essential to economic growth and job creation. And we will continue to work closely with Congress to produce comprehensive legislation that moves America toward greater energy independence. I'm optimistic about the task ahead, and I know Sam Bodman is the right man to lead this important and vital agency. So I urge the Senate to confirm his nomination without delay.
Congratulations, Sam.
MR. BODMAN: Thank you, Mr. President. President, with me today is my wife Diane, my daughters, Beth and Sarah, their husbands, Charles Mott and Bob Greenhill, my stepson, Perry Barber, and five of our eight grandchildren, Sam, Colin, Eliza, Liza, and Lindsey. On behalf of my entire family, Mr. President, I thank you for the opportunity to continue serving you as a member of your administration.
I also want to thank the extraordinary employees of the Department of Treasury and the Department of Commerce, with whom I have served these past four years. Their dedication and efforts on behalf of your administration, sir, have allowed Secretary Snow and Secretary Evans and me to do our jobs that much better.
Mr. President, the job as Energy Secretary, in many ways, combines all aspects of my life's professional work. I started as a teacher in chemical engineering at MIT, spent 17 years helping create and manage Fidelity Investments, and then spent 14 years managing Cabot Corporation, a globally-deployed chemical company. Each of these activities dealt with the financial markets and the impact of energy and technology on those markets.
Mr. President, in May of 2001, you presented to our country the first comprehensive national energy plan in a decade, that promoted affordable, reliable, and secure energy supplies through conservation, investment in new technology, and finding and producing new domestic sources of energy. Thanks to your leadership, sir, and the work of so many, particularly Secretary Abraham, nearly 75 percent of the recommendations put forward in your energy plan have been implemented, and our nation is the better for it.
I have tremendous respect for Secretary Abraham, and I look forward to building upon his outstanding record at the Department of Energy. If confirmed by the Senate, my colleagues and I at the Department of Energy stand ready to carry forward your vision of sound energy policy to ensure a steady supply of affordable energy for America's homes and businesses, and to work toward the day when America achieves energy independence.
Mr. President, thank you for this great honor and opportunity and for your continued confidence and trust in me. I appreciate it, very much.
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Washington Times
December 13, 2004
Sen. Reid's new power may shut down Yucca
Washington, DC, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Shifting power on Capitol Hill is casting doubt on whether nuclear waste will be transferred on schedule from Washington State to Nevada.
The Seattle Times reported Monday the ascension Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., as Democratic leader puts him in a better position to stall or kill the project to move some 30,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste from Hanford, Wash., to Yucca Mountain, Nev.
Reid became minority leader last month after Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota lost his re-election bid.
The Yucca Mountain site is scheduled to open in 2010. Hanford's nuclear waste is to be mixed with glass and made into logs 14 feet long and 2 feet in diameter.
Some 9,000 logs were to be transported to Yucca Mountain between 2013 and 2028. Officials are not sure where the Hanford nuclear waste would go if it cannot be stored in Yucca.
Officials in Washington said the issue is not over, however.
"I wouldn't say Yucca Mountain is a foregone conclusion," said Mike Wilson, a nuclear-waste manager for Washington's Ecology Department. "We're in a wait-and-see posture."
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Inyo Register
December 13, 2004
DOE to miss Yucca deadline
Agency admits it won't be able to apply for nuke waste license by end of '04; Inyo cites chance to leap into the fight
By Jon Klusmire
The Inyo Register Staff
Suzanne Struglinski
Las Vegas Sun
The Energy Department will not file the Yucca Mountain project's license application next month as planned, said Margaret Chu, the department official who oversees the project.
It was the first time the department has said it will not meet its goal of turning in the application by the end of 2004.
The delay could give Inyo County officials some additional time to get California's two senators and the county's congressman to jump into the fray and try to clarify contradictory guidelines from the Department of Energy regarding transportation issues and how the county can spend its DOE oversight grants to address the potential impacts of Yucca Mountain on the county. The proposed nuclear waste repository is located about 15 miles east of Death Valley at Inyo's southeasternmost border.
The Inyo County Board of Supervisors decided earlier this month to seek the help and political pull of Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Congressman Buck McKeon to get some straight answers out of DOE about the county's concerns.
"They have the resources, let's put 'em to work," said First District Supervisor Linda Arcularius of the area congressional delegation.
One question about how the county can spend its oversight funding was just made crystal clear by recent legislation awaiting the president's signature, said Andrew Remus, Inyo County's Yucca Mountain Project Assessment Office coordinator. The law allows Inyo County and other "Affected Units of Government" to use oversight funds to make comments during the licensing process that will conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he said this week. The DOE had recently said it would not allow AUGs to use oversight money to prepare comments or data and present it during the licensing process.
The new law is "the best news we've heard lately," said Remus, "because it puts us right in the game" during the licensing process.
Another top county concern is the status of State Route 127 as a potential route for shipments of nuclear waste through the county to Yucca Mountain. The DOE also told the county it cannot use oversight funds to study transportation-related issues.
The contradictory, confusing and, in the county's opinion, illegal new guidelines about what the county can spend its oversight funds on got a sour review from the supervisors.
The new guidelines "feed into the feeling that this is a done deal," said Fourth District Supervisor Butch Hambleton of the DOE's push to get Yucca Mountain open.
The proposed ban on spending DOE oversight money on a "transportation impact assessment" flies in the face of various court decisions and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, noted Remus.
He called the latest DOE directives "either schizophrenic or an experimental approach to get people off their backs" concerning high-level nuclear waste transportation issues.
The DOE seems to be assuming that the status of S.R. 127 is solely a state issue, Remus said. However, since the highway is currently being used as a route for low-level nuclear waste shipments, the county is concerned that DOE will simply use S.R. 127 for high-level nuclear waste shipments, regardless of whether the state and Inyo County designate the route for such use, Remus noted.
The supervisors directed Remus to continue to work with the state and Caltrans on the transportation issues surrounding the possible designation of S.R. 127 as a high-level nuclear waste route.
The Planning Department was instructed to also provide Boxer, Feinstein and McKeon with copies of all queries and documents about the county's concerns about the DOE and Yucca Mountain. During a recent trip to Washington, D.C. to talk face-to-face with DOE officials, Planning Director Leslie Klusmire said she and Remus also visited the county's congressional group (the trip was paid for by DOE oversight funds). She said staff members from Sen. Boxer's office were already "taking some action" on the county's concerns, and that Feinstein and McKeon's staff would be "looking into the issues" raised by the county.
The DOE's decision to delay its license application will be "helpful to us," said Remus, because it will give the county time to complete the transportation risk assessment currently under way and also complete some hydrological and groundwater studies from data recently collected by test wells in the Death Valley area, he noted.
While Inyo County tries to get some clarification about local transportation issues, the DOE's plans regarding submittal of the license are still a bit vague.
Remus said that he wouldn't be surprised if missed December deadline pushes back the entire Yucca Mountain schedule by almost a year.
Chu, the director of the civilian radioactive waste program, said the department is "revising our original intent," by not submitting the application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She did not give a specific reason for the delay.
Chu did not specify when the department plans to turn in the application.
"We do not expect long delays," Chu said at a management meeting between the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Monday at the commission's headquarters. She said the department hopes to have a tentative new schedule by the next quarterly management meeting.
The department said it has a draft of the application done.
W. John Arthur, the deputy director of the department's Las Vegas-based Office of Repository Development, told the commission staff that a lot of progress has been made on the application but not enough to meet next month's deadline.
"We do not believe the delay will be significant," Arthur said. "We'll take no more time than is absolutely required."
Arthur said department staff has been reviewing each page of the application's draft. It is "technically sound and adequate" but needs more transparency, readability and consistency throughout the document.
The department sent documents to back up its license application to the NRC earlier this year, but an NRC licensing board found the information inadequate. The commission will not put a license application on its docket until six months after the backup information is certified.
Arthur said the department could recertify its material on the License Support Network, a database of documents supporting technical aspects of the project, by spring 2005.
C. William Reamer, director of the commission's High Level Waste Repository Safety Division, asked Chu if the department would not be handing in the application by the end of 2004. Chu said it would not.
Reamer later asked the department to put in writing any new decisions that are made on the schedule, especially if they are made before the next meeting, so that those involved are aware of them.
Meanwhile, the department is trying to figure out how to allocate the $577 million earmarked for the project by Congress over the weekend.
This is the same level it received in 2004 but $303 million less than the department's request for 2005.
Chu said it will take some time to study how the decrease from its request will affect the program and the department is already planning its budget request for 2006.
"We have reached a point where historical levels of funding no longer work," she said.
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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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