Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, December 23, 2004
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State of Nevada
December 23, 2004

Yucca Mountain Update

Yucca Mountain on its Knees

Nevada´s steadfast opposition to the Energy Department´s ill-conceived Yucca Mountain project finally paid off in 2004, much more than most people realize. The biggest thing DOE had going for it was the impression of unstoppable momentum. They violated the law, they mismanaged the project, they distorted the facts, but they kept getting away with it. Lots of people doubted Nevada´s credibility in trying to prevent this federal Goliath from putting the nation´s radioactive waste in the state.

Well, two recent Nevada legal victories—one in the federal courts and another before a judicial panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—have changed all that.

These well-aimed blows knocked DOE off its feet. The Department had assured its backers for years that it would submit a license application to the NRC by December 2004. After its legal reverses, DOE has now put that date off indefinitely. Now they are the ones with the credibility problem.

The case Nevada won before the NRC concerns the public availability of DOE´s Yucca Mountain documents. In a typical lawsuit, both sides get to “discover’ the other side´s documents before trial. Under pressure from the government to speed up the Yucca Mountain hearing, the NRC “streamlined’ the procedures by eliminating the “discovery’ phase. In return, however, NRC required that DOE submit all its documents—there are millions of them—in electronic form in advance. In fact, the NRC cannot accept a DOE license application until six months after DOE top management certifies that it has submitted its complete database in a readily accessible form.

DOE so certified last June. But a Nevada spot check found that many documents, perhaps millions of them, were missing altogether or in part. The situation was so chaotic and so obviously out of compliance with the NRC rule that after hearing Nevada´s argument, the NRC panel canceled DOE´s document certification. DOE said they´d be back in a month with a corrected database. It is now six months later and they are now saying they will be ready “next spring.’ Even so, they wouldn´t be eligible to submit a license application until the end of 2005. Even that date is doubtful because DOE´s database is such a mess.

The case Nevada won in federal court goes to the gut issue that DOE has been trying to avoid for years—the suitability of the Yucca Mountain geology for a radioactive waste site. There is much more water in the mountain and it moves much faster than DOE realized at the start. This means waste package corrosion is more likely and the leaking waste will reach people faster. DOE´s response has been essentially to claim their “miracle metal’ waste containers will resist corrosion, so there is nothing to worry about.

Eventually, the waste containers will leak, of course, and some radioactivity from the waste will get to people. By law, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets the allowed annual limit on the radiation dose to the surrounding population. To get an NRC license, DOE has to show—by running a computer simulation model—that it meets the EPA annual limit on public irradiation.

DOE´s problem was that even its optimistic simulation model showed that once the waste packages fail, the public radiation exposure goes above the EPA limit. EPA helped DOE out here by choosing a duration for compliance (10,000 years) that was less than DOE´s claimed lifetime for its waste containers. That way, DOE would never have to confront the inadequacy of the site when the packages leak. And NRC was going along with this, too.

But this approach violated Congress´s 1992 instructions. Congress had told EPA to follow the advice of the National Academy of Science. The Academy advised EPA to make sure its standard covered the period after the waste packages corroded and released their radioactive contents. That way, you could not ignore the site geology the way EPA´s standard permitted DOE to do. After hearing the arguments, the Court of Appeals (D.C. Circuit) threw out EPA´s standard.

EPA, NRC, and DOE are now scratching their heads about a new standard for licensing. They can´t bring themselves to pick the obvious one recommended by the National Academy of Science because they know DOE can´t meet it. DOE´s desperate last hope is that Congress will save the project by overturning the Court of Appeals decision. It would be an awfully raw act for Congress—putting bureaucratic convenience and sweetheart construction contracts ahead of the public protection it had itself mandated.

After years of fighting DOE´s Yucca Mountain Project, we in Nevada know that we knocked them down. But it´s too early to count them out.  There are too many billions at stake. So we´re getting ready to do it again. I am more and more confident that the project will eventually join other once-supposedly unstoppable DOE projects—like the nuclear airplane, the fast breeder reactor, and the supercollider—in the ashcan of history.

YUCCA MOUNTAIN:

No Time to Lower Standards

When the next Congress returns, we can expect the Department of Energy to make a last-gasp effort to save its Yucca Mountain radioactive waste project by getting Congress to lower the safety bar for licensing. It is vital for public radiation protection, not only in Nevada but also throughout the country, that Congress reject attempts to relax the radiation safety standards to accommodate DOE. If the Yucca Mountain site can´t meet the standard, that´s proof the site is wrong, not that the safety standard is too strict.

The Yucca Mountain standard applies to Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing to permit building and operating a waste repository at the site. By law DOE has to demonstrate to NRC—by running a computer simulation model—that the radiation dose to people in the area will be below a limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The question at issue is: how far into the future does the DOE model have to go to show compliance? On this and other points, Congress had told EPA to follow the recommendation of the National Academy of Science. In 1995, the scientists told EPA to make sure above all that DOE compliance extended beyond the time of peak radiation impact to the surrounding population – which comes after the waste containers corrode and their radioactive contents leaks out.

But such a sensible standard posed problems for DOE because the site geology around Yucca Mountain was poor at containing radioactive leakage. The Department´s calculations showed that after the containers failed, the public radiation dose in the area exceeded the EPA limit. To protect its Yucca Mountain project, DOE didn´t want the safety regulators to look beyond the time waste containers fail. DOE wanted a fixed time limit for compliance, one over which it could argue that its “miracle metal’ containers would stay whole and so DOE would never have to confront the inadequacy of the site´s geology. EPA accommodated DOE by choosing a fixed 10,000-year limit, even though the National Academy of Science had previously and specifically rejected this option.

A duration of 10,000 years sounds like a long time, and it is. But it isn´t the specific duration that is most important here, but rather whether or not it has to include the time of peak radiation impact on people. That peak occurs at a time that depends on the assumptions of the computer simulation model, in particular assumptions on waste container corrosion. DOE´s assumption about the longevity of their waste containers, which can only be described as wildly optimistic, led to peak public impact at times much later than 10,000 years. But with more realistic assumptions, the peak public dose would come much earlier, probably well before 10,000 years. The main thing that is wrong with the fixed 10,000-year standard is that it opens the door to DOE manipulation of its model to push the non-compliance problems beyond the 10,000 years. That way, it can rely principally on its container design and more or less ignore the site´s geologic deficiencies. Regrettably, the “independent’ safety regulators have shown a willingness to go along with this approach. That was not what Congress intended in legislating a process for developing a geologic repository.

The disparity between Congressional direction and the National Academy´s scientific advice, on the one hand, and EPA´s standard, on the other, could not have been starker. In July 2004, in a suit brought by Nevada, the federal Court of Appeals (D.C. Circuit) threw out the EPA 10,000-year compliance limit because it was completely at odds with the recommendation of the National Academy of Science, on which Congress told EPA to rely.

EPA should now write a new rule. It would be easy to do so — it would only involve changing a few words — but that´s too straightforward. DOE and its allies, emboldened by the recent election results, now want Congress to overturn the court ruling to get back their sweetheart safety standard. They attempted to attach such a rejection of the July 2004 court ruling to legislation during the recent November post-election session, but they failed. They will be back; they said so. Strangely, the Congressional proponents claimed to have White House support for overturning the court´s decision, but a White House spokesman said this wasn´t so. President Bush, he said, was sticking with his pre-election pledge to Nevada to accept the court´s decision. It appears that DOE, although it works for the president, has policies of its own, at least up to now.

It is difficult to believe that in these circumstances Congress would reward DOE´s poor performance and inability to meet the required standard for protecting people around Yucca Mountain by lowering that standard. At the same time, we should not underestimate the forces lined up to defend the project. There is simply too much pork involved in this multi-year, multibillion-dollar project. Everyone who cares about the integrity of federal decision-making in this area should urge Congress to keep its public protection priorities straight.

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Slate
December 23, 2004

Harry Reid Is Not Boring

Has Scorsese fictionalized your U.S. senator?

By Chris Suellentrop

Like flies to wanton boys are politicians to the press. We kill them for our sport. But rarely has a public figure been subject to a campaign of character assassination as unfair as the one that's targeted Harry Reid since the Nevada senator was chosen to replace Tom Daschle as Senate minority leader. A vast conspiracy has lacerated Reid as "plain," or worse, boring. "As dry as the martinis he never drinks," Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist Steve Sebelius told Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard, though Continetti devised an even better insult for the Democratic leader's "soporific public persona": Reid "might be taken for the man in the gray flannel suit's shorter, quieter second cousin," he wrote. The attacks on Reid's charm deficit aren't new—Congressional Quarterly noted 10 years ago, "Even Reid's supporters call him 'colorless'"—but Charles Babington of the Washington Post took the rhetoric to a new low last month when he declared that Reid "lacks Daschle's flair."

There was a time when a remark like that—akin to saying that someone lacks Emmanuel Lewis's height—was considered out of the bounds of respectable Washington discourse. Granted, Reid compares poorly to say, Mary Lou Retton when it comes to charisma. But what congressional leader doesn't? The Republican leadership, after all, includes Bill Frist and Mitch McConnell.

Reid may not be the most colorful figure in Washington, but his career is far more interesting than that of the average senator. In politics, Nevada is the next best thing to Louisiana. To take just one example, is there another U.S. senator who has been part of the inspiration for a character in a Martin Scorsese film? (A character played by Dick Smothers, no less.) In Casino, Robert DeNiro's character melts down in front of the Nevada Gaming Commission after the commission denies him a license to operate a casino. The scene is loosely based on a December 1978 hearing when Reid was the commission's chairman, and some of the dialogue spoken by Smothers is taken directly from Reid's words during the hearing. (The rest of the scenes involving Smothers, who plays a composite politician known only as "Senator," have nothing to do with Reid.) OK, it's lackluster Scorsese, but at least it's not Gangs of New York. And there are other Reid echoes in Casino: Joe Pesci's character refers to a "Mr. Cleanface," which gangster Joe Agosto said was his nickname for an in-his-pocket Reid, but a five-month investigation of Agosto's claims cleared Reid of wrongdoing.

Sure, Reid can sap these stories of some of some of their innate interest. "Well, it's true that when I served with the Gaming Commission that I had a number of threats on my life," he told me during a brief interview earlier this week. When talking about taping the windows in his house to protect his family from the threat of shattered glass, he used the same tone that he used to discuss the importance of Senate procedure. But no matter what tone you use to discuss the fact that your wife once discovered a bomb wired to one of the family cars, it's not boring.

Besides, on other occasions, Reid can, despite his reputation, give good quote. He has called the move to put a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain the "Screw Nevada Law." On meeting his wife, he once told the Las Vegas Review Journal, "The first time I saw her, she was washing her parents' car. She was wearing short shorts." He's a reliable defender of pork who once said, "I resent and object to people who refer to this as being 'pork' in the negative sense. Would they rather that money go to New Orleans?" He skipped the 1992 Democratic convention to stay home and campaign for re-election to the Senate, noting dryly that "it's a foregone conclusion who is going to win" the nomination.

And here's another story from Reid's tenure as chairman of the gaming commission: A man named Jack Gordon, who later married LaToya Jackson, tried to give Reid a $12,000 bribe. Reid let the FBI videotape Gordon offering him the bribe, and then, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal account, he "put his hands around Gordon's neck and said, 'You son of a bitch, you tried to bribe me.'" That's right, Senate Democrats are being led by a man who once tried to strangle LaToya Jackson's future husband-manager. You call that boring?

Even if he had never served on the gaming commission, Reid's biography would still be a better read than the average senator's. He is the son of an alcoholic gold miner who killed himself. His mother did laundry for, in Reid's words, "houses of ill repute." He once disguised himself as a homeless man and spent the night at a mission in Las Vegas. Quirkily, he never says good-bye, even to his children, when he hangs up the phone. He once filibustered the Republicans for nine hours, by himself, by reading from the history book he wrote about his hometown of Searchlight, Nev. (Even better, the reason for the filibuster was to prevent the GOP from protesting the delaying tactics being used by Democrats.) And just this past week in Time, Reid told Joe Klein that he got into a fistfight with his future father-in-law before he eloped with his wife.

I'll concede. Harry Reid is no Tom Daschle. Whether that will be good for the Democrats remains to be seen. But it won't be boring.

Chris Suellentrop is Slate's deputy Washington bureau chief. You can e-mail him at suellentrop@slate.com.

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Salt Lake Tribune
December 23, 2004

Toward an energy policy

Everybody says the United States needs a national energy policy, but neither Congress nor President Bush has managed to come up with one. However - drum roll, please - a bipartisan committee of people outside government has done the job.

Earlier this month, the privately funded National Commission on Energy Policy issued its report after three years of work. It's an integrated plan that is neither a sell-out to the Texas oiligarchs nor a hippie environmental manifesto. Instead, it's a sensible, balanced approach.

For example, it proposes to both expand and diversify international oil supplies while also significantly raising federal fuel economy standards for cars and trucks and appliance efficiency. It would introduce mandatory tradable emissions permits to reduce greenhouse gases and also create incentives for new generations of nuclear reactors, coal-gasification and advanced biomass technologies.

That's just a sample of the recommendations in the report. Congress and the president should look to it as a basis for reform, much as they have used the 9-11 Commission   Report to spur repairs of the nation's intelligence services. After all, the first goal of the energy commission was to end the current stalemate over a national energy policy.

Of particular interest to Utahns is a proposal to provide 10-20 percent more funds to the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to evaluate and manage access to natural gas on public lands. The commission also urges $4 billion in incentives over 10 years to spur deployment of advanced coal technologies. One of these

would gasify coal using a chemical process and then burn the resulting synthetic gas to fuel a combustion turbine. Not only is that process more efficient than generating electricity with a steam turbine, as is done today, but it reduces harmful emissions, including mercury.

The commission also would pump $2 billion over 10 years into researching and building one or two new advanced nuclear power plants. Without expansion of nuclear power generation, American energy dependency on fossil fuels will increase, and natural gas supplies   will be exhausted in order to generate electricity. But to succeed, the federal government must resolve concerns about nuclear waste management (the Yucca Mountain repository) and proliferation.

This is only a snapshot of the proposals, and a partial one at that. For the full report, go to www.energycommission.org.

We hope that members of Congress and the Bush administration will log onto that site. It is hard to think of a policy gridlock that is more of a threat to national security and the economy than this one.

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Pahrump Valley Times
December 22, 2004

Vote was for Bush, not for nuke project

GOP Poll Finds Nevadans Oppose Waste Repository

Poll: Democrats erred in keying on Yucca issue

By Steve Tetreault
PVT Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - The presidential election still is being fought in Nevada, at least when it comes to Yucca Mountain.

Both sides in the dispute over the proposed nuclear waste repository continue to debate President Bush's victory on Nov. 2, and what it means in terms of public opinion and for upcoming fights in Congress.

A new poll commissioned by Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., indicates most Nevadans remain opposed to Yucca Mountain and a majority wants the state to continue fighting the nuclear waste project even though voters chose to re-elect Bush.

The senators said the poll reported the true feelings of Nevadans as they cast their votes in November. Others maintained the senators were trying to control Election Day damage on the Yucca issue.

Of Nevadans who voted for Bush in November, 85 percent polled said their choice was based on the war, the economy - issues other than Nye County's Yucca Mountain, which the president designated for a nuclear spent fuel repository in 2002, according to the survey.

Seven out of 10 respondents said they opposed the repository, consistent with an earlier state poll, while 57 percent said Nevada's elected officials "need to continue fighting against Yucca Mountain," the poll showed.

"The voters of Nevada, just because they voted for Bush, it does not mean it was an endorsement of Yucca Mountain by any stretch," Ensign said. "Nobody should misread this election."

The survey, taken of 600 registered voters Nov. 30 through Dec. 2 by the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, carried an error margin of plus or minus four percentage points.

Ensign said he and Reid commissioned the poll for ammunition in Congress and to fight a perception growing out of the election that Nevadans have become more accepting of the repository that the Energy Department proposes to build 50 miles from Pahrump and 20 miles east and north of Beatty and Amargosa Valley, respectively.

Senate aides said the poll cost about $20,000. They said it was paid out of unspent funds from the state's 2002 fight against legislation that designated Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste disposal.

Reid and Ensign ordered the poll a few weeks after Bush defeated John Kerry by 50.5-48 percent in Nevada. The president's victory followed a campaign where Democrats played up Yucca Mountain and Kerry's promise to kill the project if elected.

Stumping for Kerry in Henderson on Oct. 30, President Clinton said if Bush wins Nevada, "the inescapable conclusion will be the majority of the people of Nevada have voted to put (nuclear waste) here."

Consequently, Bush's victory in the state was touted by supporters of the Yucca Mountain Project. They predicted the Nevada election results would become part of an aggressive effort in Congress next year to pass bills that would help the Energy Department move the repository program forward.

But even though Democrats built up the Yucca issue during the campaign, Reid said the new poll indicates it was not at the front of voters' minds.

"In spite of the election where Yucca Mountain could have been terminated by voting for Kerry, the people of Nevada still don't like it, and that feeling is very, very strong," Reid said. "Personally, I'm tired of hearing that the people of Nevada changed their mind."

Political science professor Eric Herzik said that, in taking the poll, the senators are attempting to reclaim control of Yucca Mountain as a political issue.

"It's somewhat damage control in that the way the election results have been spun is that this was a referendum on Yucca Mountain and now the Democrats are back-pedaling," said Herzik, who teaches at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Democrats "tried to use it as an issue and it blew up on them," Herzik said.

Herzik said the senators' involvement also signals Nevada legislators and other elected officials they are not to break ranks against Yucca based on the election.

"This is Reid and Ensign saying, 'Don't go there,'" Herzik said.

David Damore, a professor at UNLV, said the results send a message to the White House and to Energy Secretary-designee Samuel Bodman that state leaders do not intend to back down on Yucca Mountain.

Robert List, a former Nevada governor who is a consultant to the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the poll may re-energize environmental activists who were discouraged by the election results.

Other than that, List said the survey is unlikely to be persuasive.

On key questions, List said it confirmed what polls were showing before Election Day - that Yucca Mountain was not foremost in the minds of voters and Democrats were making a mistake in amplifying the issue.

Reid and Ensign "will try to sharpen the arrows in their quiver any way they can but I don't think that's going to have any resonance on (Capitol) Hill," List said.

Peggy Maze Johnson, an anti-nuclear activist and executive director of Citizen Alert in Nevada, said the poll reflected the views of voters who were weighing Iraq, the economy, and homeland security as they cast their ballots.

"When you talk to people, you can see (the election) was not at all how some people are trying to portray this (as pro-Yucca)," Johnson said. "I believe the people here want us to continue to fight."

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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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