Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
May 24, 2005
Board Rejects Utah's Nuclear Dump Appeal
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A federal licensing board on Tuesday rejected Utah's appeal to thwart the stockpiling of spent nuclear fuel rods at an American Indian reservation.
The state had argued in April that radiation could escape from waste casks if an outer protective shield was breached, even if the interior canister holding the fuel rods remained fully intact.
But lawyers for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Utah's argument was too late and lacked scientific merit, advising the three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to reject it.
The ruling clears the way for the NRC to approve the project, which would create a temporary waste dump for spent rods pending the opening of a national repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. It was not immediately clear when the commission would issue its final decision.
The Goshute Indian tribe has sought the waste station at its reservation in Skull Valley, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, to make money for the impoverished tribe.
The state had previously argued that the proposed waste station's close proximity to an Air Force base increased the risk of a fighter jet crashing into the spent fuel rods. The licensing board dismissed that scenario as unlikely.
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Deseret News
May 24, 2005
Letter: Yucca for temporary storage?
Temporary spent nuclear fuel waste is getting a new twist these days, but I will add another. Sen. Reid has vowed most assuredly that he will kill Yucca, so we may need to return to plan "A" that was started when the local recycling plant was completed. Maybe we ought to give Yucca the new role of "temporary storage" and get to rebuilding the recycling plant to handle spent fuel waste. This nuclear recycling system has worked well for Japan, Germany and France. Why not us? The last plant we built was put together in five years, and I would imagine the old site here is still available, and the plans workable.
This way Yucca will see a happy exit in a few years, and Sen. Reid can rest easier in his role as champion of the state of Nevada.
J. Dean Hill
Bountiful
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Tri-City Herald
May 24, 2005
Hanford may temporarily store spent nuclear fuel
Annette Cary
Herald staff writer
A committee report on an appropriations bill to be considered by the U.S. House today suggests Hanford be considered as one site where spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants might be stored temporarily.
Additional legislation likely would be required to allow the Department of Energy to establish a temporary storage site for commercial spent nuclear fuel.
Plans call for sending fuel from commercial nuclear reactors to Yucca Mountain in Nevada for permanent disposal deep underground. But the House Appropriations Committee report on the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill questions whether that repository will be approved and opened even by the projected delayed opening date of 2012.
The report urges that DOE "move aggressively" to take title to commercial spent fuel and consolidate it for interim storage at existing DOE facilities. Now the fuel is being stored at 129 private and government sites across the country.
Yucca Mountain is the logical place for an interim repository, the report said. But the Nuclear Waste Policy Act prohibits placing both an interim and permanent repository at the same site.
"Other possible alternative DOE sites include Hanford, Idaho and Savannah River, all of which presently store government-owned spent fuel and high-level waste," the report said. It pointed out that extensive site security measures already are in place.
Should Hanford and the other sites prove impractical, DOE should investigate other alternatives for interim storage, such as closed military bases and nonfederal fuel storage facilities, the report said.
Hanford has spent defense reactor fuel removed from the K Basins now stored in one of three vaults at the Canister Storage Facility. The remaining two vaults were planned to hold high-level waste from Hanford's underground tanks once it is vitrified, or turned into a more stable glass form for permanent disposal at Yucca Mountain.
The remaining vaults can hold glassified waste from just two years of production at the $5.8 billion vitrification plant until Yucca Mountain can accept that waste. The plant is supposed to begin vitrifying waste in 2011, although that start may be delayed because construction work on the project was recently slowed in part because of new earthquake data.
Hanford also has an outdoor interim storage area in the center of the site for some Hanford and other spent fuel.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., opposes using Hanford for interim storage.
"It doesn't make any sense to send more nuclear material to a place where we've had problems with leaks in the past, and that's why I'll continue to work with my colleagues on the Energy Committee to fight this risky proposal," Wyden said in a prepared statement.
Heart of America Northwest, a watchdog group, also is concerned about the risk of trucking the spent fuel on Oregon and Washington roads to reach Hanford.
"It is in the public interest to guard this commercially produced spent nuclear fuel where it is currently housed instead of putting it on the roads en route to Hanford," said Rebecca Sayre, field director for Heart of America, in a prepared statement.
Yucca Mountain was supposed to open in 2010 to accept commercial spent nuclear fuel and some weapons waste, including vitrified high-level waste from Hanford. But problems, including years of underfunding and falsified documents on quality assurance of ground water modeling, mean the repository may not be able to open by 2012, according to the report.
Every year of delay in opening Yucca Mountain costs the federal government an additional $1 billion, based on a conservative estimate of $500 million in legal liability for failure to take title to commercial spent fuel and another $500 million to monitor and guard waste and fuel at DOE sites, according to the report.
The committee recommends a concerted initiative to recycle spent nuclear fuel but said until then that it should consolidate fuel from around the country at interim storage sites.
DOE already stores spent fuel from various foreign research reactors at DOE sites at taxpayer expense in the interest of nonproliferation, the report said. A similar interim storage program for commercial spent fuel makes sense, the report said.
The report recommends $10 million be spent to support early acceptance of spent nuclear fuel in addition to $10 million for transportation casks.
If the process for licensing Yucca Mountain is delayed beyond 2006, the committee would support spending more money on the program. An application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license the repository is due in December.
Four months after the bill becomes law, the committee wants DOE to submit a plan on early acceptance of commercial spent fuel, transportation to a DOE site and centralized interim storage at one or more DOE sites.
In addition to money for Yucca Mountain and related projects, the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill to be voted on today also includes money to bring the Hanford budget back to about $2 billion in 2006.
After DOE proposed cutting spending for Hanford by about $267 million, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., succeeded in getting about $200 million of the cut restored in the House bill.
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Seattle Post Intelligencer
May 24, 2005
U.S. House considering bill to prepare INL buildings for bomb-grade uranium
By Christopher Smith
Associated Press Writer
BOISE, Idaho -- The U.S. House considered a spending bill Tuesday that would set aside money to upgrade buildings at the Idaho National Laboratory for storing bomb-grade uranium stockpiles from federal weapons labs in other states.
The $29.7 billion appropriations bill for federal energy and water programs includes money for several existing and new programs at the eastern Idaho nuclear research compound. If passed by the House, the spending bill would need to be reconciled with a Senate version before being sent to the White House for President Bush's signature.
The House bill would boost the budget for the Energy Department's Office of Security and Performance Enhancement to $356.5 million, more than the $300 million recommended by Bush. An unspecified portion of that increase would be used to design renovations to two concrete bunkers at INL to house surplus plutonium and highly enriched uranium no longer needed for nuclear bomb production.
Hundreds of tons of the so-called "special nuclear materials" are stored at installations around the country. The bill would order the Energy Department to come up with a plan by Sept. 30 to consolidate much of the weapons material in Idaho.
The Bush administration is seeking to cut costs and the threat of terrorist attack by moving the materials from multiple sites near population centers to more remote locations.
Idaho Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson is a member of the House appropriations panel that approved the language in the spending bill. He said that because the enriched uranium is not waste and similar materials are already stored at INL, he's willing to consider using the Idaho lab as a storage site.
"It's important to keep in mind that Idaho has the experts, the facilities and the security to deal with these materials in a safe and responsible manner," Simpson said Tuesday. "If the Idaho National Laboratory can play a significant role in helping to secure our nation against nuclear terrorism and save taxpayers billions of dollars in the process, we have a responsibility to sit down with DOE and talk about it."
Opponents say that although the Idaho lab has been billed as the proving ground for new generations of clean nuclear power, consolidating the material there would put INL into a Cold War-era role of atomic weapons support.
"Just because INL has better security than Los Alamos (National Laboratory in New Mexico) - which isn't hard - it seems all of the real dangerous programs are turning toward us," said Jeremy Maxand of the Boise-based Snake River Alliance. "It's all happening through the appropriations process and there's no public debate, no hearings, no environmental impact statements."
Maxand also points to $8.5 million in the bill for INL to plan and build facilities to take over Los Alamos National Laboratory's production of plutonium-238, which is used in "space batteries" to power orbiting satellites.
Simpson said several provisions in the House spending bill reinforce INL's role in developing nuclear power reactors, including $13.5 million for an advanced test reactor for the Navy, $7 million to accelerate operation of a homeland security test range to study ways to protect the nation's electrical grid and wireless communications systems, and $16 million for upgrading research facilities at the site.
The bill also would direct the Department of Energy to begin storing spent commercial nuclear reactor fuel at interim storage sites by 2006, specifying INL as one possible alternative until a permanent repository is operating at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
Simpson says chances of that ever happening are slim. He said the bill's language does not alter the force of a 1995 court-ordered settlement between the state of Idaho and the Energy Department that states DOE "will make no shipments of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants" to INL.
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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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