Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, May 23, 2005
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
May 23, 2005
POLITICAL NOTEBOOK: Official warns Nevadans against lowering Yucca guard
Loux believes project is dead, but it will take a couple more years before state's residents can officially celebrate its demise
By Erin Neff
Review-Journal
Bob Loux has had his battles with the Department of Energy over the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
Now the director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects is battling a different kind of opponent: the state's own residents.
A recent poll, commissioned by the Review-Journal and reviewjournal.com, found that 46 percent of residents supported ending funding for the state's anti-Yucca Mountain efforts. Forty-four percent wanted to continue the funding.
Those numbers are down considerably from the number of Nevadans, 70 percent, who oppose the project.
"We may be a victim, partially, of our own success or (the Department of Energy's) failures," Loux said. "We've been making a lot of noise about the project being dead."
Nevada's congressional delegation has been on a rampage since the release of e-mail messages from Yucca scientists suggesting there were attempts to falsify data.
Several Nevada officials have declared the project dead, even though Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman recently refused to halt the project.
State lawmakers have also cut $1 million from a $2 million budget request Gov. Kenny Guinn proposed to fund the state's legal challenges to the repository.
Loux said he thinks the project is dead, but that Nevadans won't be able to officially celebrate for about one or two more years.
"You are going to see the end of Yucca Mountain when the nuclear energy leaders come to Congress and pressure them for an alternative to Yucca," Loux said. "I think we are going to start to see that and to see Congress change within the next few years."
Dual purposes
Three elected officials hoping to be the next governor of Nevada each had a different take on where to campaign this past weekend.
Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, a two-term Republican, drove to tiny Hawthorne to meet with residents about the proposed closing of the Army Ammunition Depot. Her official duty came as head of the state's economic development efforts. Unofficially, it was a chance to court the rurals.
Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, took part in an Armed Forces Day celebration on the Capitol Mall in Carson City. His official duty was as a legislative leader. Unofficially, it was an homage to veterans who vote.
Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, drove to Elko to deliver the commencement address at Great Basin College. Her official duty was as a legislative leader serving on the committee which finances higher education. Unofficially, it was a rural tour for votes.
Guinn waiting on AG
Gov. Kenny Guinn said he doesn't want to start interviewing potential attorney general candidates until things in Washington, D.C., settle down enough for Brian Sandoval to officially get his federal court nomination.
"It's not finished yet and he still has a job to do," Guinn said of the process.
The slow-down in the Capitol, as a result of the filibuster fight, has left Sandoval in a holding pattern.
But that isn't keeping those who want the job still.
State Sen. Mark Amodei, R-Carson City, is believed to be the favorite for appointment to the position when Sandoval takes the expected federal position. Guinn has said he will not merely appoint a caretaker to the position, but will pick someone ready to run for the seat in 2006 when the term expires.
To that end, Amodei has been making the rounds amid his legislative duties, even making an appearance at the Clark County Lincoln Day dinner several weeks ago.
University Regent Bret Whipple also has applied for the position, and Las Vegas attorney George Chanos has recently expressed interest in the job as well. Chanos is married to Adriana Escobar-Chanos, the state attorney general's office consumer advocate.
Marshal eyes race
Kate Marshal, a former deputy attorney general who also has worked for the Department of Justice on anti-trust cases, is exploring a bid for secretary of state.
The Reno-based attorney has represented a telecommunications company before the state Public Utilities Commission and worked to launch the state attorney general's anti-trust unit under Frankie Sue Del Papa's administration.
"It's not that much of a stretch to go from anti-trust to securities," Marshal, 45, said of the secretary of state's job.
She may be in a primary with state Sen. Valerie Wiener, D-Las Vegas, who is considering a bid.
"If I run, I'll run to win," Marshal said.
At least four Republicans also have declared their candidacy for the race: former assemblywoman Merle Berman; former chief deputy secretary of state Dale Erquiaga; Clark County GOP Chairman Brian Scroggins; and Danny Tarkanian, son of Las Vegas City Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian.
Contact political reporter Erin Neff at 387-2906 or ENeff@reviewjournal.com.
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Christian Science Monitor
May 23, 2005
Limits on filibusters are already pervasive
Amid 'nuclear option,' Congress has already restricted rights to debate and amendment on other matters.
By Gail Russell Chaddock
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – With Congress poised to vote on the so-called nuclear option, one fact has been largely lost amid the debate: Restrictions on the use of filibusters are already in place on a host of matters, from budgets to resolutions granting war powers to the president.
Obviously, the question on the floor this week - judicial appointments - is unique. Democrats are eager to preserve their current ability to stall a vote, especially on nominees to the Supreme Court. And Republicans are just as eager to change the rules so that 51 Senators, rather than 60, can end debate on a nominee.
But the fight over judges is hardly as pure a contest over Senate traditions as many people believe. The use of filibusters to prolong debate, though revered by many as a tool for the Senate minority, has been progressively curtailed in recent years on a host of important issues.
One key reason: A rising belief in official Washington that the only way to get contentious legislation out of Congress is to rein in debate and amendment. The restrictions are also, in part, a holdover from the early 1970s, when a Democratic Congress sought to bolster the power of the legislative branch clout against an "imperial" (and Republican) presidency.
"When we talk about 'unlimited debate' in the Senate, we've already limited that unlimited debate over the last 30 years in a major way," says former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove, now a professor at George Washington University. "We have on the books probably a couple of hundred laws that set up specific legislative vehicles that cannot be filibustered or only amended in a very restricted way."
Consider some big-ticket items now before Congress on which lawmakers have given up their rights to filibuster.
• The Pentagon's 2006 Base Realignment and Closure plan, which proposes closing 180 sites.
• The pending Central American Free Trade Agreement.
• President Bush's proposed $70 billion in tax cuts and $35 billion in mandatory spending cuts, protected by budget reconciliation.
• Drilling in the Arctic Regional Wildlife Refuge. The years-long effort by Republicans to pass this legislation may finally succeed this year, because this time it is protected from filibuster as part of the budget reconciliation.
The first curbs on extended debate came in 1917, after Congress refused to move to a vote on President Wilson's request to arm the merchant marine. Much of the impetus to rein in the filibuster in the 1960s and '70s came from liberal Democrats, whose main experience with extended debate had been as a hammer by conservative southerners to stop civil rights legislation.
"In the 1960s the word filibuster only meant one thing in the Senate, with very few exceptions," explains Mr. Dove. "Successful filibusters were filibusters against civil rights legislation. And if you were going to create an atmosphere in which civil rights legislation would get through more easily, you needed to change the cloture rule" - the votes needed to end debate.
In 1975, the Senate, led by liberal Democrats, lowered the bar to end debate again, from two-thirds of those present and voting (as many as 67 votes) to 60 votes. Tuesday's expected move, led by GOP conservative, would lower the bar for judicial nominations to a simple majority.
"We're in a year of romanticizing the filibuster, but it's important to remember there has often been a dislike of that tool," says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University.
A tide of self-limitation
In addition to periodically changing its rules for ending debate, Congress has written curbs on extended debate or amendment into specific laws in a bid to make the legislative process more efficient.
Laws that restrict debate include: the War Powers Act, the Budget Act of 1974, the Trade Act of 1974 (and subsequent "fast track" votes on trade), arms export controls, Federal Election Commission regulations, the Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Act of 1976, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (including the choice of Yucca Mountain as a national waste-disposal site), the 1991 act governing military-base closings, US participation in the World Trade Organization, and the Andean Counterdrug Initiative.
One lawmaker's travails
In between negotiating sessions with other moderates over how to avoid changing the filibuster rule, Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine has also been worrying about the blow her state is taking from a new round of proposed military-base closings. Earlier this month, the Pentagon proposed closing the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery as well as massive downsizing for the Brunswick Naval Air Station, among 180 sites nationwide.
"It's my top priority," she says. "The nation can't have all our bases in the South and Southwest." Yet base closings are one of the many areas where Congress has already waived its right to filibuster or even amend the list, once it is finalized by a base-closing commission.
Pragmatism, or partisanship?
Congress, essentially, has come to realize that some issues are so thorny that the normal congressional process doesn't work. Base closings is such an issue, given that few lawmakers will support shutting bases in their own districts.
Republicans leaders say the same principle applies this week. "We limited the filibuster when the Budget Act was passed, and the dome of the Capitol didn't crumble," says Bob Stevenson, a spokesman for Senate majority leader Bill Frist.
But critics say there's an important distinction: Today's sharp party split. "If you look at these areas that limit the filibuster individually, they had broad bipartisan support," says Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. "This is a change that's being forced through on very narrow, partisan support, and that's a big difference."
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Post-Crescent
May 22, 2005
Kewaunee nuclear plant deal spurs lawsuit from groups
Richard Ryman
Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers
The Citizens Utility Board and other advocacy groups sued the state Public Service Commission Friday to block the sale of the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant.
The commission voted 3-0 in March to approve the sale of the plant, co-owned by Wisconsin Public Service Corp. of Green Bay, to Dominion Resources Inc. of Richmond, Va. Commissioners had blocked the deal in 2004, but reconsidered their decision after conditions were added to ease their concerns about ratepayer protection, nuclear waste storage and any future sale of the plant.
“When the commission approved the deal, they accepted these conditions Dominion offered. That´s what we are challenging is the enforceability of those conditions,’ said Charlie Higley, executive director of Madison-based Citizens Utility Board.
“Last March, when the commission approved the sale with the new conditions, they determined that the conditions were legally binding, that they protect ... citizens for the long term and that they provide economic benefits to ratepayers,’ said Linda Barth, commission spokeswoman.
Rick Zuercher, manager of nuclear public affairs for Dominion, said, “This has been going on for more than a year now and has a lot of public support in the area. We still think it´s the right thing to do. We think it´s good for consumers and it´s a good thing for Dominion.’
Joining the Citizens Utility Board in the suit are Local 2150 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Municipal Electric Utilities of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group, Higley said.
Plant owners Wisconsin Public Service Corp., a subsidiary of WPS Resources Corp. of Green Bay, and Wisconsin Power & Light, a subsidiary of Alliant Energy, will receive $220 million in the transaction. In addition, customers will get back $193 million from one decommissioning fund and any money left after decommissioning from another.
Through 2013, the utilities will purchase electricity from the plant at a price comparable to the cost they would pay if they still owned it, and are first in line to negotiate a new deal after 2013.
Richard Ryman writes for the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
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Chicago Tribune
May 23, 2005
Lawmaker trips get closer look
Critics: Pricey travel paid for by advocacy groups shouldn't fly
By William Neikirk, Tribune senior correspondent. Dawn Withers of the Washington Bureau contributed
WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Energy Institute, a potent policy and lobbying organization for the nuclear power industry, also runs a popular travel program for an elite group of Americans.
Each year it invites selected members of Congress and their staffs to travel to some prized destinations, such as Paris, Rome, Barcelona and Seville in Spain, and Marseille, France, not to mention Las Vegas.
Since 2000, at least 17 members of Congress, and in some cases their spouses, have toured nuclear facilities at the expense of an organization that has been working hard to revive the industry in the United States.
Such trips are coming under greater scrutiny in the wake of a controversy involving privately financed travel for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Some critics say there should be tighter regulation and greater disclosure of such travel. Others say these trips should be banned outright.
While it is illegal for a lobbyist to directly pay for such travel, a trade association or other policy group can fund a trip.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and critic of both congressional junkets and the nuclear industry, called such trips "the biggest joke on Capitol Hill" and nothing more than a way to take members and their spouses "on a high-priced vacation."
He added: "What is fascinating is how much the members want to preserve this perk. These trips are almost entirely valueless."
Critics say such trips give special interest groups access to lawmakers that no ordinary citizen could get.
Several lawmakers who took trips at the institute's expense said they went to learn about the complexities of nuclear technology and that they have an interest in its resurgence in the U.S.
"Nobody lobbied me," said Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who took a $17,708 trip to Paris and other parts of France in 2000 to tour nuclear facilities. "It was a fact-finding trip for me."
Lawmakers have racked up large costs on the institute's tab. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went on a fact-finding trip to Rome at a cost of $10,638 in August 2003. The senator also authorized aide Denise Bauld and her spouse to go along, and they incurred $19,700 in expenses.
The senator also approved an institute-sponsored trip to Japan in 2004 for an aide, Aleix Jarvis, at a cost of $10,299. And this year, from March 29 to April 2, Graham aide Matthew Rimkunas took a $5,761 trip to France. All together, that's more than $46,000 paid by the institute on behalf of one senator and his staff in two years.
Graham's office did not respond to a query about the trips.
An `active travel program'
For more than 15 years, the Nuclear Energy Institute has maintained "a very active travel program" for members of Congress and their staffs, according to spokesman Steve Kerekes.
"We are a policy program and we are sponsoring informational trips," Kerekes said, explaining that nuclear technology is complex and has to be seen to be well understood.
The institute also maintains a staff of lobbyists to push legislation on Capitol Hill related to such issues as nuclear waste disposal and the industry's liability for nuclear accidents.
Since 2000 the institute--with an annual budget of $36 million--has spent $272,877 for 21 such trips by members of Congress, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.com, a Web site that tracks money and politics. There are three or four trips every year, Kerekes said, and often as many as 10 to 12 people, including staffers, go on each trip.
Illinois lawmakers Ray LaHood, John Shimkus and Mark Kirk, all Republicans, are among House members who have gone on institute-sponsored trips. LaHood went on a $15,002 visit to Paris and Cherbourg, France, in 2001, while Shimkus and Kirk traveled to the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Nevada that year.
LaHood's wife accompanied him, while aides Joan Mitchell and Diane Liesman took separate trips to France, which cost the institute a total of $8,110.
Shimkus' trip, which included a stop in Las Vegas, cost $1,707, and an aide accompanied him at a $1,091 expense. The institute paid only $360 of Kirk's expenses, including a $340 helicopter ride from Las Vegas to Yucca Mountain. An aide incurred the same expense.
Kirk flew to Las Vegas at taxpayer expense to view a classified electronic warfare "range" at a naval facility. He said he stayed at a $50-a-night hotel near the base rather than in an expensive hotel on the gambling strip offered by the institute.
"I hate Las Vegas and I hate gambling," said Kirk, a supporter of burying nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Congress approved legislation in 2002 designating the Nevada site as a nuclear repository, but the project faces fierce opposition from environmentalists and some political leaders in Nevada. The project needs approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Kerekes, the institute spokesman, said lawmakers invited to visit Yucca Mountain usually stay in a hotel off the strip and take a long bus ride from Las Vegas rather than a helicopter. Those trips start at 6:30 a.m., and the buses arrive back in Vegas at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., he said.
But an itinerary for an Aug. 12-14, 2003, Yucca Mountain trip allowed four hours for a helicopter trip to Yucca Mountain, and two nights and an afternoon in Vegas. The group stayed at the luxurious Mandalay Bay Hotel, which has a casino, and the itinerary called for a post-tour dinner at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant in the Paris Hotel.
Rep. J. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.) disclosed that he and his wife toured Yucca Mountain on those dates at a $3,774 cost to the institute. Three aides accompanied them. Barrett did not respond to queries about the trip.
"Member trips typically result from members expressing an interest in learning about particular facets of nuclear technology," Kerekes said. He said it is "not a case of us `selecting' them on the basis of any criteria."
`Back office' relationship
Reps. Martin Meehan (D-Mass.) and Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) recently introduced legislation to strengthen regulation of lobbyists. Although the Nuclear Energy Institute does lobby, it considers itself primarily a policy organization.
Emanuel said, "Our bill is comprehensive and deals with the fact that special interests and lobbyists have a seamless relationship with the Congress and they become a back office, travel included." But the legislation would not bar privately financed trips, he said.
Mary Boyle, press secretary for the Washington watchdog group Common Cause, said that if all privately funded congressional trips were banned, it is doubtful that Congress would come up with the money for such extensive travel.
Lawmakers who travel with the nuclear institute say they gain valuable information about the reprocessing and storage of nuclear material, which are major issues in the debate over whether to build new nuclear plants. There has not been a new nuclear plant started in the U.S. in 32 years.
But there is time for other activities. Clyburn, accompanied by his wife, Emily, said he felt compelled to visit the U.S. cemetery at Normandy, site of the D-Day invasion in World War II, because he was a history major. "There's always down time," the South Carolinian said.
Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) said: "Obviously, [an institute-paid trip to Europe] gave me a chance to see Barcelona. I won't deny that. But I also had a chance to see something in another country in terms of recycling and reusing" nuclear material.
Pastor visited facilities in Barcelona and Avignon, France, in 2003, and Paris and Normandy in 2000. The institute picked up the tab of more than $19,000 each time.
The congressman took issue with Turley's assessment. "It was not a joke to me," he said. "It was a working trip."
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) also took two institute-paid trips, one to Italy in 2003 and another to Paris in 2001, when he was a member of the House. His wife accompanied him on the Paris trip, which cost $15,769. The Italy trip cost $18,912.
The senator said he never has been criticized at home for taking informational trips about an important industry in his state.
--wneikirk@tribune.com
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Groups footing bill for congressional trips
January 2000 through April 2005
Aspen Institute
Think tank promotes "enlightened leadership"
$3,151,206
Ripon Society/Ripon Education Fund
Public policy group allied with Republicans
$745,626
AIPAC*
Pro-Israel lobbying organization
$673,625
Intl. Management and Development Institute
Pro-trade group financed by European companies
$534,492
Association of American Railroads
Includes Amtrak and major freight railroads
$394,312
Harvard University
Ivy League institution in Cambridge, Mass.
$312,788
Nuclear Energy Institute
Promotes nuclear energy and technologies
$272,877
American Association of Airport Executives
Lobbies for U.S. airlines
$242,844
Islamic Free Market Institute Foundation
Advocate for American Muslims
$235,839
Confederation of Indian Industry
Industry group in India
$233,456
TOP FOREIGN DESTINATIONS FOR
SPONSORED TRAVEL
January 2000 through April 2005
Israel: 134
Mex.: 133
Ger.: 108
China: 106
Italy: 103
*American Israel Public Affairs Committee/American Israel Education Foundation
Source: PoliticalMoneyLine.com
Chicago Tribune
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Nashua Telegraph
May 22, 2005
Keep the passion, tone down language
Calling a sitting president a “liar’ and a “loser.’ Accusing Democrats opposed to President Bush´s judicial nominees of trying to “assassinate’ them.
Referring to the anti-filibuster push as it relates to the president´s judicial nominees as the “nuclear option.’
No, we´re not talking about various rants contained in partisan letters to the editor, online political forums or the blogosphere.
We´re talking about language being used these days by our “esteemed’ elected representatives in the U.S. Senate.
If you think civil discourse isn´t dead in what used to be referred to as “the world´s greatest deliberative body,’ think again:
n While speaking earlier this month to a civics class of high school students in Las Vegas, no less, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said of President Bush: “I think this guy is a loser.’ Reid later called the White House to apologize for the remark. The “liar’ remark from Reid came in 2002 after the president had given his approval to designate Yucca Mountain as the country´s nuclear waste repository.
n More recently, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, while complaining about the Democrats´ frequent use of the filibuster to end debate, accused them of using this tactic “to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees’ – a reference to the pitched battle over the confirmation of the president´s nominees for federal judgeships.
n And then there is the incessant use by both parties of the phrase “nuclear option’ to describe the efforts to block opponents from using the filibuster – which requires 60 votes to overcome – so that judicial nominees would face a straight, up-or-down majority vote.
While there is some debate over who officially coined the term – Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi is widely credited with the origin of the phrase – it hardly matters. While striking the use of filibusters in the Senate when considering judicial nominees certainly has important ramifications, there is nothing nuclear about it – for which we should all be thankful.
Now, some might argue that, to quote Shakespeare, this is “much ado about nothing.’ What´s wrong with our elected officials showing some passion when debating the nation´s business? In this talking-head world of point/counterpoint TV journalism, isn´t that what the public expects these days?
The problem is that the decline in civil discourse among our political leaders invariably translates into a similar decline in public trust among both officials and our public institutions.
Several recent polls seem to support that view.
An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday found that only 33 percent of the 1,005 adults polled during the period of May 12-16 approved of Congress´ performance – the lowest level of support in more than a decade. The margin of error for this poll was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Perhaps more to the point, a Pew Research Center poll found that 64 percent of the 1,502 adults contacted May 11-15 – nearly two out of every three – said they believe there is “more bickering and opposing one another’ in Congress than in the past. The margin of error in this poll was also plus or minus 3 percentage points.
“Most Americans don´t know what all this fighting is about,’ Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, told The Associated Press this week. “All they know is that there´s a lot of fighting.’
Toward the end of the 1995 film “The American President,’ the fictional President Andrew Shepherd portrayed by Michael Douglas makes the following statement at a press conference in this climactic scene:
“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious men to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, friend, I promise you, (political opponent) Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who´s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.’
Sounds a whole lot like what´s going on in Washington today, doesn´t it?
Clearly, it is time for our elected officials to turn down the volume a few decibels and to demonstrate some civility as they debate the important issues of the day.
After all, how can they expect voters to respect them when they can´t even respect each other?
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Washington Times
May 21, 2005
Outside view: Huge costs of nuclear power
Helen Caldicott
Outside View Commentator
Washington, DC, May. 21 (UPI) -- There is a huge propaganda push by the nuclear industry to justify nuclear power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases.
At present there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. If, as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to replace fossil fuels on a large scale, it would be necessary to build 2,000 1,000-megawatt reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant has been ordered in the United States since 1978, this proposal is less than practical. Furthermore, even if we decided today to replace all fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to four years.
The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for. The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidized by the U.S. government. The true cost of the industry's liability in the case of an accident in the United States is estimated to be $560 billion, but the industry pays $9.1 billion -- 98 percent of the insurance liability is covered by the federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing U.S. nuclear reactors is estimated to be $33 billion. These costs -- plus the enormous expense involved in the storage of radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years -- are not included in the economic assessments of nuclear electricity.
It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.
In the United States, where much of the world's uranium is enriched, including
Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Ky., requires the electrical output of two 1,000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50 percent of global warming.
Also, this enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, release from leaky pipes 93 percent of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the United States. The production and release of CFC gas is banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is the main culprit responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilizes large quantities of fossil fuel at all of its stages -- the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20- to 40-year operating lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste.
Contrary to the nuclear industry's propaganda, nuclear power is therefore not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry considers these particular radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential. This is not so.
These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon, which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near a nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty tissues of the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit high-energy gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm and cause genetic disease.
Tritium, another biologically significant gas, which is also routinely emitted from nuclear reactors is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen composed of two neutrons and one proton with an atomic weight of 3. The chemical symbol for tritium is H3. When one or both of the hydrogen atoms in water is displaced by tritium the water molecule is then called tritiated water. Tritium is a soft energy beta emitter, more mutagenic than gamma radiation, which incorporates directly into the DNA molecule of the gene. Its half-life is 12.3 years, giving it a biologically active life of 246 years. It passes readily through the skin, lungs and digestive system and is distributed throughout the body.
The dire subject of massive quantities of radioactive waste accruing at the 442 nuclear reactors across the world is also rarely, if ever, addressed by the nuclear industry. Each typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33 metric ton of thermally hot, intensely radioactive waste per year.
Already more than 80,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling pools next to the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a storage facility yet to be found. This dangerous material will be an attractive target for terrorist sabotage as it travels through 39 states on roads and railway lines for the next 25 years.
But the long-term storage of radioactive waste continues to pose a problem. Congress in 1987 chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a repository for the United States' high-level waste. But Yucca Mountain has subsequently been found to be unsuitable for the long-term storage of high-level waste because it is a volcanic mountain made of permeable pumice stone and it is transected by 32 earthquake faults.
Last week a congressional committee discovered fabricated data about water infiltration and cask corrosion in Yucca Mountain that had been produced by personnel in the U.S. Geological Survey. These startling revelations, according to most experts, have almost disqualified Yucca Mountain as a waste repository, meaning that the United States has nowhere to deposit its expanding nuclear waste inventory.
To make matters worse, a study released last week by the National Academy of Sciences shows that the cooling pools at nuclear reactors, which store 10 to 30 times more radioactive material than that contained in the reactor core, are subject to catastrophic attacks by terrorists, which could unleash an inferno and release massive quantities of deadly radiation -- significantly worse than the radiation released by Chernobyl, according to some scientists.
This vulnerable high-level nuclear waste contained in the cooling pools at 103 nuclear power plants in the United States includes hundreds of radioactive elements that have different biological impacts in the human body, the most important being cancer and genetic diseases.
The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years following exposure to radiation. It is important to note that children, old people and immuno-compromised individuals are many times more sensitive to the malignant effects of radiation than other people.
I will describe four of the most dangerous elements made in nuclear power plants.
Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the United States, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2,000 children have had their thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded in pediatric literature.
Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast during lactation and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia.
Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food chain, particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.
Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 440 pounds is made annually in each 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant.
Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause severe congenital deformities.
Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and induce genetic diseases in future generations. Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living on to induce cancer and genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.
Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons -- only 11 pounds is necessary to make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 440 pounds per year. Therefore any country with a nuclear power plant can theoretically manufacture 40 bombs a year.
Nuclear power therefore leaves a toxic legacy to all future generations, because it produces global warming gases, because it is far more expensive than any other form of electricity generation, and because it can trigger proliferation of nuclear weapons.
--(Helen Caldicott is an anti-nuclear campaigner and founder and president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, which argues that nuclear energy is dangerous.)
--(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
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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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