Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
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Provo Daily Herald
May 31, 2005
Skull Valley editorial
The Daily Herald
National dangers of nuke waste
It appears that the possibility of an Air Force jet crash is not enough to keep Utah from getting nuclear waste in Skull Valley.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected Utah's appeal of its decision, saying the chances of an F-16 from Hill Air Force Base crashing into Private Fuel Storage's facility on the Goshute reservation are minimal, and the plan should therefore proceed. It now goes to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for final consideration.
Utah still has a few options left to stop the waste from coming. It can ask the NRC to reconsider the board decision, and go to the federal Court of Appeals if the NRC refuses. It can also take up questions about the right-of-way with the Bureau of Land Management or challenge PFS's lease of Goshute land with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The jet crash argument was dismissed because it focused on waste that would be sitting in static contatiners at Skull Valley, and possibility of poisnoning of large numbers of people after an accident is not extreme.
The stronger argument has always been that the stuff must pass through populated areas to get to the storage site. And that risks people. Even though the nuclear industry maintains that there hasn't been a transportation accident in which radiation has been released, experts always leave out one word: yet. The law of probability says a radiation-releasing accident is going to happen eventually, especially as more waste is shipped around the country.
Jim Hall, former National Transportation Safety Board chairman, said the transportation element of the nuclear waste disposal plan is the weak link in the system. Most of the effort has been spent on planning for storage at Yucca Mountain, Nev., rather than on making sure the transportation element is safe.
Granted, there have been some tests in which casks were dropped and subjected to fire for a short time, but such tests do not seem to cover the worst-case scenarios, such as the Baltimore train fire that burned hot enough to melt railroad boxcars. Nor does they consider terrorist attacks. The steel and concrete casks are not thick enough to stop an anti-tank weapon. A terrorist could easily use explosives to breach a container in transit, releasing radiation to kill bystanders and plunge an entire city into panic. Chances are, the economic consequences of such an attack would be felt regionally, if not nationally.
Utah can argue that because of these unknowns, people living along the transit routes to Skull Valley are being put at risk against their will. Unless the safety of the transportation element of the plan can be upgraded, the government must not allow the waste to be made vulnerable on roads or on rails.
This line of reasoning moves the argument from the not-in-my-back-yard realm and casts it properly as a national security risk. Utahns alone are not at risk, but people all along the way. People in other states could become sympathetic to our cause once they realize we're all in the same boat together.
The transportation argument dovetails with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's legislation to require nuclear power companies to store spent reactor fuel on site rather than shipping it elsewhere. If Utah argues against Skull Valley on the transportation issue, we're more likely to get Reid, a Nevada Democrat, on our side. For Reid, Utah's public safety protest makes the case for his legislation all the stronger.
Utahns have plenty of reasons for not wanting nuclear waste. But if we're going to win, we need to show people in the rest of the country exactly what they have at stake.
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Las Vegas SUN
May 29, 2005
Gibbons seeks to shift priorities of Nevada land sales money
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS - Money from Nevada land sales would go to education, wildfire prevention, noxious weed control, sage grouse protection and other natural resource programs under a bill being drafted by Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.
Gibbons said he's working on the proposal in an effort to head off the Bush administration's plan to take land sale revenues to close the budget deficit.
Gibbons said funds also could be spent on routine operations of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies in Nevada.
His proposal would shift priorities of the 1998 Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act by setting aside 35 percent of land sale proceeds for education and 55 percent for federal land managers in Nevada.
The 1998 act now earmarks 5 percent of revenues for education and 85 percent for environmental purposes in Nevada, including acquiring environmentally sensitive land and making improvements at Lake Tahoe.
Under Gibbons' plan, the Southern Nevada Water Authority would retain its 10 percent share of land sale revenues.
Gibbons, who has opened talks with the White House to promote the plan, said he wants to show that land sale profits can be put to good use in Nevada.
"I know that if we do nothing, (the money) will sit there and grow and become even more attractive to others," Gibbons told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "I want 100 percent of the money spent in Nevada."
The plan to siphon off 70 percent of proceeds from the auction of federal land in the Las Vegas area to developers was included in Bush's $2.57 trillion budget.
Bush justified the proposal by noting that the 1998 act has raised far more money than expected. While the Congressional Budget Office anticipated $70 million in sales each year, proceeds from 2005 will top $1 billion.
Gibbons' proposal was criticized by other members of the state's congressional delegation, including Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., author of the 1998 act.
Now is not the time to meddle with the formula, said Ensign, who opposes the Bush administration's effort to divert land sale profits out of Nevada.
"Just like on Yucca Mountain, it's important we have a united front, that there are no breaks in it because there are people trying to get this money," Ensign said.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he opposes allowing the revenue to be spent on other programs, even within the state.
"I'm not going to be part of that," Reid said. "The BLM has certain responsibilities."
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., questioned the motives of Gibbons, who's expected to run for governor in 2006.
"To have a member of our delegation deliberately attempting to undermine our efforts for his own political ambition is the height of irresponsibility," Berkley said. "He is going down a slippery slope, and if he is successful he will take the state down."
But White House officials have expressed an interest in Gibbons' plan.
"We had a constructive meeting with U.S. Rep. Gibbons and are reviewing his proposal," said Scott Milburn, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget.
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Al Jazeera
May 30, 2005
Closed down U.S. bases to be nuclear repositories
In a small section of a spending bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week, closed military bases could become repositories for nuclear waste further exacerbating the fears of local lawmakers who are fighting the scheduled closure of four of New England's biggest bases.
The energy and water bill from the House Appropriations Committee includes $15.5 million for the reprocessing of nuclear waste from power plants and construction of an interim nuclear waste dump. Though the legislation does not specify where that dump would be, the Appropriations Committee report, which explains the bill, suggests that mothballed military bases be considered as potential sites for the waste.
Lawmakers say the idea adds to the pain of a region that faces the loss of 14,500 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars if the recommendations by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) are adopted.
Maine lawmakers met with the chairman of the BRAC to plead for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, which is on the closure list, and the Brunswick Naval Air Station which is to be ''realigned," or shrunk.
''I'm very, very concerned about this. Our citizens would be very upset," Maine Governor John Baldacci said when he was shown the committee report language. He said he had been unaware of the proposal, and ''to think that someone could put nuclear waste there...is outrageous."
The Defence Department, which is under fire from Congress, promised to give lawmakers access to detailed material backing up its recommendations to shut down about 180 military installations across the country. As parts of the report are classified, the Pentagon said legislators and staff with security clearances can only review that data at a secure location in northern Virginia.
The Pentagon´s concession only came following increasing demands from lawmakers and state and local officials for the release of what will be an unprecedented amount of data in defense of the base closing plan. Lawmakers hope to use the information to persuade the independent commission reviewing the base closings to remove certain installations from the hit list.
Representative Edward J. Markey said the proposal to put nuclear waste on closed bases was an insult to local communities that face a hardship from the job losses attached to the closings. ''Congratulations -- you may have lost your military facility, but you may be the winner of nuclear waste coming to your community," Markey said.
He sought to kill the idea of temporary nuclear waste dumps by de-funding it in the energy and water bill, but his amendment was defeated, 312 to 110.
The report emphasises the need to find interim sites for nuclear waste until the opening of a permanent nuclear waste repository. Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert, has been selected for permanent commercial nuclear waste disposal, but administrative and court actions have delayed the opening until at least 2012.
Sites such as shut military bases and other federally owned lands would be more cost-effective as temporary nuclear waste sites than privately owned parcels since they are federally owned and have security systems in place, the report said. It did not recommend any bases by name or location, or indicate a preference between bases that have been closed and those facing closure.
A Department of Energy spokesman, Mike Waldron, said the agency ''is reviewing the proposal."
''However, we believe that a permanent geological repository is the right policy for America," he added, underscoring the administration's determination to open Yucca Mountain as a permanent site.
Environmentalists have raised concerns over the health and safety of residents near closed bases. President Bush last month suggested putting oil refineries on shuttered bases. The energy bill approved by the House last month would limit the state and local role in issuing permits for refineries -- a provision opposed by local officials.
Environmental activists are also concerned about language in the Department of Defence authorisation legislation making its way through Congress. The DOD is required by law to clean up closed military sites, many of which have accumulated toxins from handling radioactive material and lead paint among other substances, said Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.
The Senate version of the Defence Department's bill says the fund for realignment and closures should be the ''sole source" of funds to clean up the sites. Such language could be interpreted to mean that the Pentagon isn't responsible for cleanup once the BRAC funds are exhausted, or the fund is retired, Clapp said.
''There is literally no way of calculating how many billions -- or even up to a trillion dollars -- how much liability would be dumped on state and local governments for clean-up," Clapp said. ''It's saying, 'once it's [depleted], that's your problem'," he said.
The House language states that the Defense Department cannot shirk its obligation to clean up contaminated former military sites. A Democratic House energy staff member said a revised House version made the language explicit once lawmakers realized it might free the Pentagon from responsibility to clean up the sites.
Baldacci joined other Maine lawmakers yesterday in a group appeal to Anthony Principi, chairman of the BRAC Commission. The lawmakers said that the Department of Defense has not produced the data, and that the documentation is required under law to support the closure decisions.
''This is typical stonewalling and obfuscation by the Department of Defense on base closings," Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, said after the meetings.
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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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