Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, June 5, 2005
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New York Times
June 05, 2005
Casks Gain Favor as Method for Storing Nuclear Waste
By Matthew L. Wald
WASHINGTON, June 4 - As the Energy Department falters in its effort to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the nuclear industry and Congress are taking steps toward a radically different storage strategy: putting the waste in huge casks that could be parked in a handful of high-security lots around the country for decades.
That idea advanced on two fronts last month. A panel of judges at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommended on May 24 that a private utility consortium be allowed to open a lot to store 4,000 casks of waste on an Indian reservation west of Salt Lake City. On the same day, the House voted to order the Energy Department to establish similar storage areas, providing $10 million for the project.
In the Senate, Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is chairman of the Energy Committee, has expressed interest in the concept. And the Energy Department itself has opened the door to considering an alternative to what has long been the favored strategy of deep burial of nuclear wastes.
But even if President Bush receives and signs legislation, it may be years before the Energy Department sets up any lots. The proposal has already encountered opposition from elected officials whose districts include potential storage lots.
Laying out the rationale for the new approach, Representative David L. Hobson, an Ohio Republican who is chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Committee, said: "It is time to rethink our approach to dealing with spent fuel. If we want to build a new generation of nuclear reactors in this country, we need to demonstrate to Wall Street that the federal government will live up to its responsibilities under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to take title to commercial spent nuclear fuel."
Since the act was passed in 1982, the Energy Department has focused on deep burial of nuclear waste and the government has signed contracts with reactor owners guaranteeing that it would take the waste. Congress later voted to make Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the prime storage site. The Energy Department was supposed to have the site ready by 1998, but the effort has stumbled, and it is now unclear whether it will open.
When it became obvious, more than a decade ago, that the government would not fulfill its obligations on time, reactor owners built steel casks to put the waste in, filled them with inert gas to inhibit rust and loaded them into concrete silos.
The Yucca project is now so far behind that some of the reactors have been retired and torn down, leaving nothing but a field of storage casks.
An Energy Department spokeswoman, Anne Womack Kolton, suggested this week that federal officials would consider the storage lots as an interim solution. "The administration believes that permanent storage at a geologic repository is the appropriate approach, Yucca Mountain is the place to accomplish that, and we are moving forward with that goal," Ms. Kolton said.
But she added, "Yucca Mountain's capacity is currently limited by statute, and therefore we are studying Chairman Hobson's proposal."
Ms. Kolton said lawyers were exploring whether a site that her department established would need a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A spokesman for the commission, Eliot Brenner, said that it would, if it were going to store civilian fuel.
Senator Domenici, a strong supporter of nuclear power, said in a statement that he believed that the Yucca Mountain project should proceed but that the spent fuel should be kept on the surface to allow reprocessing to recover its plutonium, which can be used as reactor fuel. "Interim storage is a key component of that," he said. "I certainly want to keep that option on the table."
A utility consortium, Private Fuel Storage, has negotiated a 50-year lease with the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians for a storage site on 840 acres of the tribe's reservation about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The group has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license, uncertain whether they would need to build.
In May, a panel of administrative law judges appointed by the commission rejected the last technical objection, an argument raised by Utah that a plane from a nearby Air Force base could crash into the silos and release radiation. The state will appeal to the full five-member commission and plans a variety of other challenges, including trying to block the transportation routes.
Members of the commission said they would not talk about Skull Valley before they had voted. But the chairman, Nils J. Diaz, was asked in a public appearance in March if the commission could back such a project, because it conflicts with a 23-year-old federal policy to focus on deep burial.
He replied, "This is an issue of the law. The Atomic Energy Act asks us to proceed with certain types of actions, including license applications, that meet the qualification of protection of public health and safety."
Another member, Jeff Merrifield, said in a telephone interview, "We've basically said if you put fuel into an approved storage cask, and you place it on a concrete storage pad, that that, as a general matter, is a safe way of storing fuel. Obviously, that's subject to site-specific considerations."
He added that the commission would probably act on the application "in a fairly timely way."
Many reactor sites have casks, usually a few dozen, and unless Yucca Mountain opens for burials or unless big surface storage sites like Skull Valley are established, the nation could eventually have more than 60 of these sites.
The casks are licensed by the regulatory commission for 20 years but the licenses can be renewed. Nuclear engineers said they could last a century or more, a tiny fraction of the time it would take the radioactivity to die away. If burial plans eventually go forward, experts say, it will be easier to handle fuel that has been stored in casks and that no longer generates as much heat.
Just before the House vote, Representative Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, said: "This is a hazardous and capricious idea that does not take into consideration the environmental, safety and health impacts of storing such waste in the ground near the Columbia River. There have not been any hearings or public input into this idea, which is an obvious backdoor attempt to circumvent longstanding bipartisan policy."
But there are also strong reasons for casks. For the commission, one problem is a decades-old policy stating that building reactors was environmentally sound because there would be a waste solution in place by 2025. A century of interim storage could sidestep the problem.
Another problem is money. Every reactor operator has sued the Energy Department for failure to accept the waste on time. The department, the courts have ruled, must pay storage costs beyond the date when it was supposed to accept the fuel.
"The Department of Energy recognizes that the only way to mitigate its damages is to find someplace to put this material, to get it off the utilities' hands, so they can get out of these lawsuits," said Joe Egan, a lawyer for the State of Nevada, which opposes construction at Yucca Mountain.
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch
June 05, 2005
Lawmakers get away, courtesy of special interests
By Deirdre Shesgreen
Post-Dispatch
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - On a brisk January day in 2004, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson and her husband traded the chill winds of southern Missouri for the warm breezes of the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
This wasn't a typical post-holiday getaway. It was an "educational" trip, with a Washington lobby group picking up the $13,000 tab for the Cape Girardeau congresswoman and her labor-lawyer husband, Ron Gladney.
Current members of Congress from the bistate area and their aides have accepted more than $1 million in free trips from outside interest groups in the last eight years - to far-flung destinations such as France, Israel and Italy, along with domestic warm-weather spots like Pebble Beach, Calif., and Palm Beach, Fla., disclosure reports show.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and his wife went to the Grand Cayman Islands. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Columbia, Mo., spoke at conference on Florida's Amelia Island. Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr., D-St. Louis, visited Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and other cities in Brazil. Advertisement
Although nonprofit think tanks and public-policy groups sponsored some of the trips, others were paid for by special interests with pressing business before Congress - from Washington's most powerful pro-Israel lobby group to the nuclear power industry to the American Association of Airport Executives, which hosted Emerson and other lawmakers in Hawaii.
In addition to privately paid travel, lawmakers can take government-funded trips, or dip into their campaign accounts to pay for other jaunts.
Under House and Senate ethics rules, lobbyists can't pay for the trips. But businesses and other interest groups can. And lobbyists are free to join lawmakers on travel paid for by their employers.
"There's very legitimate fact-finding educational trips that members of Congress should participate in," said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for the watchdog group Common Cause. "The concern is, when you have some of these privately funded trips that basically amount to corporations ... trying to buy this access and influence."
The trips often offer a unique opportunity to bend a congressman's ear, Boyle said. "You're out of town, you're flying around the world with a member of Congress, you're having dinner, you're having drinks with them, maybe you're even sitting poolside with them. Some of these trips amount to little more than an effort to cozy up to these guys."
Lawmakers defend their use of the perk, saying travel is an important part of their job and the trips offer a chance to learn firsthand about important problems or policy issues facing the country.
During her trip to Hawaii, Emerson said, she and other lawmakers talked with airport executives about crucial transportation issues. And she held a meeting with Federal Aviation Administrator Marion Blakey and the executives to discuss homeland security.
"It's having all the people in the same room, all the airport executives, talking about what are the challenges, especially in homeland security, that we face today," Emerson said. But, she added, "I will be the first one to admit that (on) that Hawaii trip, you only have to work every morning."
In 2004, the airport association spent about $1 million lobbying Congress and the executive branch on a wide range of issues, from cargo security to increased funding for airports, according to the group's lobbying disclosure reports. Emerson has sway over funding issues, since she sits on the House Appropriations Committee, including its homeland security panel. Jeffrey Connor, her spokesman, said Emerson has supported some increases in homeland security funding for airports, saying she wants to do "what's necessary to help airports cope with new mandates" put in place after 9/11.
"I was the roof guy"
Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, took the most expensive trip of any local lawmaker - a $19,000 five-day journey with his wife, Karen, to China, paid for by the U.S. Asia Foundation. His office racked up nearly $150,000 in free travel, second only to Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Strafford, Mo., the House majority whip, among the members examined by the Post-Dispatch.
"There are some very credible trips that encourage learning and are just a good experience for members to get a handle on issues around the world," Shimkus said.
Shimkus said the China trip, taken in October 2003, wasn't a leisurely vacation. He and his wife spent nearly three days en route, and two days there helping to build a one-room computer lab at a rural Chinese school.
"I was the roof guy," Shimkus said. "By the time we were done, they had about 18 computers hooked up to the World Wide Web for the first time."
But there was a bonus for the company helping to fund the U.S. Asia Foundation and coordinate the trip, United Parcel Service. UPS sent some 40 lobbyists along to work side-by-side with Shimkus and the three other lawmakers on the project.
Shimkus said UPS' interest in China is obvious. "They're having great growth in the Chinese market" and hope that will increase with the 2008 Olympics.
The company's interest in Shimkus is also obvious. He sits on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, which deals with a broad range of business issues, from environmental regulations to foreign commerce.
This trip offered a unique opportunity for "relationship building" and a chance to tell lawmakers about UPS, said company spokesman David Bolger.
"We want to take the opportunity, while we're nailing down plywood with a member of Congress, to say you may not have known this" about UPS, Bolger said. "It gives them the opportunity to learn about us and gives us the opportunity to learn more about them."
By the end of the building effort, he said, "It was not Congressman (Rep. Jim) Clyburn or Congressman Shimkus. It was Jim and John," Bolger said. (Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, was also on the trip.)
UPS spent more than $4 million in 2003 lobbying on everything from pension reform to the energy bill, which was before Shimkus' committee.
Shimkus said UPS officials didn't talk to him about legislation during the China trip. And he disputed any suggestion that such trips give lobbyists special access to him.
Noting the office hours he holds in his home district, he said, "I probably give the public more access ... than I give lobbyists, and that works well."
Heading to Israel
One of the most popular destinations for members of Congress is Israel, whose decades-old conflict with the Palestinians is front and center in American foreign policy.
An affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of Washington's most formidable lobbying forces, and other pro-Israel groups have spent more than $70,000 sending five area lawmakers or their aides to the region in the last eight years. The group's Washington lobbyists often go on the trips.
The trips "provide members of Congress with the opportunity to see firsthand the situation on the ground and to have an incredible educational experience," said Josh Block, a spokesman for AIPAC.
Block said the trips do not tilt toward his group's perspective. Lawmakers are able to "form their own impressions based on meetings" with Israeli and Palestinian politicians, academics, journalists and others who represent "a wide variety of opinions across the political spectrum," he said.
Blunt has been the most avid Israel traveler. He and his aides have taken six trips, totaling more than $45,000, at the AIPAC affiliate's expense, including one trip with his son Andrew and another with his daughter Amy.
Blunt often hosts GOP freshman lawmakers on the trip, a role Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., plays for Democrats.
Blunt, who plans to take freshmen on another AIPAC trip in August, is also one of the staunchest defenders of Israel in the House. He recommends the trip because "of all the places in the world, the problems of the Middle East are best seen by being there in Israel."
He acknowledged that "you do see it through (AIPAC's) eyes." But he said he always suggests an "alternative schedule" to the one proposed by the group that includes more meetings with Palestinians.
More travel for the leader
Overall, Blunt's office accepted more than $300,000 in free travel during the period, the most of any lawmaker reviewed by the Post-Dispatch. He's gone to Boca Raton and Miami to speak to business groups. He's also gone to less exciting destinations, such as Maryland and West Virginia, for congressional retreats paid for by a public-policy group.
Blunt said his tab is higher than most because of his leadership position; he has more staff and they are involved in more issues. Blunt also defended his use of another travel perk: corporate jets to get to fundraisers and other events. Lawmakers reimburse companies for such flights from their campaign accounts, but critics say the rates never match the actual cost and convenience.
A Washington Post analysis found that Blunt and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, were the top two users of corporate jets among congressional leaders. Blunt attributed his frequent travel to the 100 congressional districts he visited in the last election to raise money or campaign for GOP candidates, saying if he had to rely solely on commercial flights, it would have taken "forever" to get to some of the GOP's rural districts.
In a Post-Dispatch interview, Blunt acknowledged the jets are "certainly one of the more helpful things under the law that a company can still do. (But) it's no more helpful a relationship than the hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate dollars that my friend Dick Gephardt raised over the years," a reference to the now-banned unlimited soft money contributions that the former St. Louis County congressman raised for Democrats.
Las Vegas and Alaska
Las Vegas is a favorite domestic destination for Congress.
The draw, lawmakers say, is not the casinos but Yucca Mountain, the proposed site to store the nation's nuclear waste. The Nuclear Energy Institute, which supports Yucca, sponsors the visits.
Shimkus' office alone has gotten six trips from the nuclear industry, five to Las Vegas and one to France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
"It was a pretty important trip for me to take since I'm in the room and writing national energy policy with regard to nuclear energy," Shimkus said, a reference to his seat on the energy committee.
Shimkus said it was an efficient way for him to see the site: after a four- or five-hour tour, he went straight back to the airport and flew home. Shimkus has twice voted in favor of the Yucca Mountain site.
"Having a national repository ... is not only in our national interest but also in our local interest," Shimkus said. "Illinois is a big nuclear state. We've got 12 nuclear plants, and we have high-level nuclear waste spread" across the state.
Durbin got quite a different view of a controversial environmental issue when, in August 2003, he and his son Paul went camping in Alaska, where they trekked along the crystal-clear Canning River in the shadow of the Brooks Range. The Alaska Wilderness League picked up the $4,200 tab.
The area where Durbin and his son stayed - the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - was at the time a subject of hot Senate debate. The Bush administration has proposed opening the refuge to drilling - a measure Democrats such as Durbin have vehemently opposed. In four separate votes both before and after his trip, Durbin has opposed opening the refuge to drilling.
He said the trip allowed him to see firsthand the difference between the protected refuge and an adjacent area opened to oil exploration. "They took a piece of this real estate and desecrated it," he said of the latter.
"The next time there was a debate about it in the Senate, I felt like I had a better feeling for (the issue) than other members," he said. His feeling, of course, was the same one promoted by the Alaska Wilderness League.
The senator's other destinations in recent years have included Rome, San Juan, the Cayman Islands and Lithuania. As with the Alaska trip, he said the other trips have enriched his understanding of key issues and made him a more engaged legislator.
"I believe every member of Congress should have to explain why they don't travel at least once a year to an important place," Durbin said. "It's inspired me to be involved in a lot of issues that I never would have dreamed of."
A trip to Africa, for example, spurred the Illinois Democrat to start the Global AIDS Task Force and push for increased funding to fight the disease. And a trip to Bangladesh got him interested in a small loan program to help poor individuals in Third World countries. "These trips have put a face and a story behind some interesting public policy issues," he said. "Were it not for travel I probably would have an interest in these things but not a passion."
Durbin said he favors trips funded by the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan public policy group, because the trips allow members to immerse themselves in an issue and they don't push a particular political agenda.
Plus, he said, he gets to take his wife, Loretta, to nice locales. "I have spent 23 years in this business and my wife has paid a price for this," he said. "If I get a chance, at someone else's expense, not the government's, to take her with me, I jump at it."
Ed Ronco of the Post-Dispatch's Washington bureau contributed to this report.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 03, 2005
Brief news stories from Las Vegas
Yucca Mountain-Documents
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Energy Department says it expects to finish posting documents this summer on an Internet database supporting its plan to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
In a report this week to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C., Energy Department officials said they expect to be able to certify the Licensing Support Network as complete in August.
The network is designed to help the NRC review some 3.5 million documents compiled during two decades of study on the Yucca site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Certification is required six months before the NRC begins considering the Energy Department's license request to entomb 77,000 tons of the nation's most highly radioactive waste at the site. Congress and the Bush administration approved the plan in 2002.
An Energy Department effort to certify the database failed last year after Nevada and other opponents complained it was incomplete.
After other recent setbacks, the department revised its target date for opening the repository from 2010 to be 2012 or later.
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 3, 2005
County Commission Preview
Another huge agenda awaits
Best Uses for Calvada Eye Among Number of Big Issues
By Phillip Gomez
PVT
Nye County's Board of Commissioners meet Tuesday in Tonopah and via videoconference at Pahrump's Bob Ruud Community Center to deal with a large number of miscellaneous items.
At 10 a.m. a presentation of Nye County's parks and recreation projects for prior years is scheduled, with spending and evaluations of previous awards.
At 10:30 a.m., commissioners are scheduled to discuss the highest and best use for the Calvada Eye; also scheduled at this time: update on the Pahrump Detention Facility.
At 1:30 p.m. the assistant deputy director for the federal Department of Energy, Technical and Regulatory Programs Office of Repository Development will present a status update on the Yucca Mountain project.
Other significant items on the agenda include:
• Approval of a contract with the Bureau of Community Health to provide nursing services to Nye County for $66,000 for the next two years.
• Approval of a contract with the state of Nevada for reimbursement of costs associated with the treatment of juvenile sex offenders.
• Appointment of two people to the Federal Impacts Advisory Board and one person to the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission.
• Discussion and decision on proceeding with the sale of property at 3232 Golden Mountain Lane in Tonopah, purchased through the federal HUD Dollar Homes program.
• Presentation of a plan and approval for changing the location of certain county offices and facilities, including that of the county manager, emergency management services and the county commissioners. The former Calvada Eye apartments would become the new multi-office location in the facility plan. Expansion plans for the planning and public works departments are also part of the facility plan.
• Discussion and approval of 10 professional service contracts in support of the county's oversight program regarding the Yucca Mountain project. The total amount cannot exceed $310,796.
• Reclassification of the position of manager at the Nye County Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities to director, nuclear waste repository project office. Approval is being sought to extensively recruit for this position.
• In the planning department, two status reports are scheduled on upcoming public hearings for the Tesora subdivision, proposed by Beezer Homes Holding Corp., and Pleasant Valley subdivision, proposed by Sheri's Ranch brothel. Both hearings are scheduled for June 22.
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 3, 2005
Letter: Why change?
Every time I open my PVT in recent weeks I find articles about brothels. Mr. Willis and Mr. Bishop want to change PTO 3 to allow prostitution within the town limits. Why? The developers out at Sheri's Place want to build an RV park, condos and single-family housing on brothel property, so they took another run at the commissioners. Why?
I have read the recent articles about amending PTO 3 so many times that my eyes are bloodshot. Proponents of the PTO 3 amendment claim that there would be financial gain in annexing the brothel's property, but who would actually see the benefit? Somehow this just doesn't gel. I thought we received some of our operating money from Nye County. Wouldn't putting the brothel island within Pahrump's town limits mean that we could actually receive even less money from the county?
How does Pahrump come out ahead? There's something else I don't understand. Why would intelligent, civic-minded individuals like Mr. Willis and Mr. Bishop keep pushing this issue? They have already been told in two meetings by a large group of citizens to leave it be. It ain't broke, don't fix it. I don't get it. Willis and Bishop's actions could lead to a recall of the town board and still they press on. Why? What is their actual intent? Are they trying to divide the town?
As for the land question at Sheri's and the proposed "Sunrise Development," catchy name, why should the zoning be changed? I'm sure they knew what they were buying when they bought it. How many times do they have to be told "No"? They just keep coming back. Do they have reason to believe the commissioners will change their mind? Why?
There are other important issues that our elected officials should address.
Our young people deserve educational opportunities here in their own community. Our senior citizens need our attention. Pahrump's roads need to be chip-sealed or repaired, ditches need to be dug and culverts put in place. We need to build basins to retain water and for heaven's sake, will someone please make sure that the Yucca mountain project doesn't poison all of us? Could we possibly just say no, it's not what we want, and put these brothel issues to bed? Could we possibly listen to citizens and leave it be?
Janice Bearss
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Boston Globe
June 04, 2005
Don't put nuclear waste on military bases
Allison M. Macfarlane
A nuclear waste storage facility coming to a former military base near you? Last week the House of Representatives voted to establish temporary storage facilities for nuclear waste at federally owned facilities, including military bases slated for closure in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine.
Republican Representative David Hobson of of Ohio, who sponsored the measure, claims it is a stop-gap solution to the problem created by delays in licensing the waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Congress approved Yucca Mountain as a geologic repository for the nation's high-level nuclear waste.
But we can solve this problem without increasing the environmental burden on already contaminated military bases in New England. The nation has a nuclear waste crisis, but this is not the way to resolve it.
The current crisis is a time bomb that Congress set ticking in 1982 when it passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
The Department of Energy was to begin shipping spent fuel from nuclear power reactors to a permanent storage facility in 1998. But a permanent repository has not yet opened and it is questionable if it ever will.
In 1987 Congress selected Yucca Mountain as the sole national site for high-level nuclear waste. The site turned out to have complex geological and hydrological conditions, forcing the Energy Department into years of study. Last summer, licensing of Yucca Mountain was further delayed when the US Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency standards on Yucca Mountain violated federal law and must be rewritten.
To make things worse, the site became embroiled in allegations of scientific fraud in April when the US Geological Survey disclosed e-mail messages implying that scientists made up data to meet quality assurance requirements.
In the meantime, utility companies that owned nuclear power plants became angry that they were still paying to store the waste at reactor sites. When the 1998 deadline came and went, the utilities filed lawsuits against the federal government for breach of contract.
Hobson is attempting to resolve these issues by proposing temporary nuclear waste storage facilities at federal sites.
This is the wrong solution for four reasons.
First, many nuclear reactor sites already have their own temporary storage. After its life in the reactor core, used nuclear fuel is placed in deep pools adjacent to the reactor facility. Once the pools began to fill up, utility companies bought dry casks to store the overflow. These dry casks are concrete and steel structures that passively cool the fuel. About 25 reactor sites (out of about 70) already use such technology.
Second, plans already exist in the private sector for a large temporary spent fuel storage facility in Utah. Private Fuel Storage wants to open a 40,000-metric-ton site west of Salt Lake City on the Goshute Indian reservation. It is close to receiving a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Third, the facility envisioned by the current legislation would have to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- a lengthy process. It has taken Private Fuel Storage eight years to obtain a license.
Fourth, and most significant, the $10 million appropriated is a fraction of what such a plan would finally cost. The $10 million will perhaps buy a study of where such a facility should be sited, but it will not cover the costs of opening such a facility by 2006, as Hobson has requested.
At a reactor facility it costs at least $10 million just to pay for the concrete storage pads, licensing, security systems, cask welding systems, transfer casks, slings, tractor-trailers, and startup testing. This doesn't pay for the casks themselves, which run about $90 to $210 per kilogram of spent fuel. For a small, 5,000-metric-ton facility, the casks alone would cost $360 million to $840 million.
There may indeed be a need for a small amount of federally funded storage for nuclear waste. But, rather than dumping the waste on former military bases, the government should offer to pay for at-reactor dry cask storage and take title to the waste as well.
This proposal, already suggested by Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, would provide a cheaper alternative to developing an entirely new site.
What's most important though, is that Congress take the problem of nuclear waste seriously. Temporary storage facilities are just that: temporary. They do not solve the problem of what to do with this highly toxic material that will outlast many generations. We, as the producers of this material, have an obligation to develop and implement a solution. And so far, we have decided that the best solution is geologic disposal.
What Congress may have to grapple with is whether Yucca Mountain is the right site.
What New England needs is for the closing military bases to be cleaned up and put to good use, not to add to their already-large waste burden.
Allison M. Macfarlane is a researcher at MIT and editor of ''Uncertainty Underground," a forthcoming book on the technical uncertainties in nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain.
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New London Day
June 04, 2005
Nuclear Waste Bill Is Cause For Concern In Connecticut
Groton sub base, if closed by BRAC, could become a temporary disposal site
Judy Benson
Health/Science/Environment Reporter
The federal Department of Energy would have to look for sites for temporary disposal of nuclear waste, including closed military bases, under a provision included in an energy and water bill approved by the House of Representatives last week.
The provision is not expected to survive as the final version of the bill goes through the Senate, but it has nonetheless generated some concern among Connecticut officials because of its potential implications for the Naval Submarine Base in Groton.
While local and statewide efforts are focusing on making a strong case to remove the base from the Pentagon's list of recommended closures, base advocates also want to protect against the possibility of any worse-case-scenarios coming true, should the base close.
Edward Wilds, director of the Radiation Division of the state Department of Environmental Protection, said this week the state would do everything necessary to make sure the 687-acre base on the Thames River is never turned into a nuclear waste dump, temporary or otherwise.
“There's no way we would allow another spent-fuel site in Connecticut,’ he said, referring to sites for temporary storage at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford and Connecticut Yankee in Haddam. “I can't see it ever going there. It's in a populated area.’
The federal energy department is likewise uninterested in establishing new sites to temporarily store nuclear waste, either at closed military bases or elsewhere, according to Jacqueline Johnson, press officer.
“We believe a permanent geological repository for handling nuclear waste is what's needed,’ she said.
The department is focused on establishing that site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., she said, and does not intend on seeking any temporary sites.
The pertinent portion of the House bill was included by Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio. It calls for the energy department to investigate temporary waste storage at three federal facilities, including those in Harford, Wash., Savannah River, Ga., and Idaho. If those prove unsuitable, the department should look to other federal properties, including closed military bases.
Hobson's office did not return calls requesting comment. The Department of Defense declined to comment on the possibility, saying it is premature to talk about an ongoing legislative process.
Todd Mitchell, chief of staff for Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, said any concern that this provision opens to door for the Groton base to become a nuclear waste storage facility is unfounded. Simmons was among 416 representatives voting in favor of the bill. Thirteen voted against.
“There will not be a nuclear waste dump at the sub base, and that's not the intent of the legislation,’ Mitchell said. “The bill is not mandating anything.’
He added that the language of the provision needs to be clarified, and perhaps should make allowances for bases that are closed in communities that are interested in housing an interim nuclear waste facility.
Mitchell also emphasized that concerns about the Groton base should be focused on working to keep it open, not on what-if scenarios.
Similar remarks came from Connecticut's two senators.
“When it comes to sub base New London, I am focused on one thing and one thing only — keeping this critical military asset in operation,’ said Democratic Sen. Christopher J. Dodd in a written statement. “... We still have a great deal of work to do to save this base, for the sake of Connecticut, the Navy, and, most importantly, U.S. national security. Having said that, let me make one thing clear — the nuclear-waste provision on military bases just passed by the House of Representatives is misguided and reckless. Should the U.S. Senate take up a similar provision, I will strongly oppose it.’
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., provided this statement: “Turning any closed military base into a nuclear waste dump is completely unacceptable. It would be a slap in the face to any community to lose a valuable military base, and then have it replaced by a nuclear waste site, and I will do everything in my power to stop this from happening.’
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Reno News &Review
June 03, 2005
Find this waste a home
The U.S. House voted to send waste to other states, which then started acting like Nevada
By Dennis Myers
The story in a South Carolina newspaper is like many that have appeared in Nevada newspapers over the last quarter of a century: "Fearing South Carolina would become a dumping ground for tons of homeless nuclear waste, U.S. Rep. John Spratt won assurances this week that the federal government would not send the waste to the state without Congress's permission."
Around the nation, officials and lobbyists who have supported sending "homeless" nuclear waste to Nevada's Yucca Mountain were jarred when the House of Representatives voted to start storing it in other states. South Carolina and Washington were immediately named as prime candidates, though there are others.
The House's action came on a spending measure. With efforts to put a dump in Nevada bogged down in investigations and court cases, the House added language to the bill telling the Bush administration to start "temporarily" storing waste in other federal facilities. Heavily polluted nuclear facilities at Hanford, Wash., and Savannah, S.C., are likely prospects--which explains why the only votes against the measure came from 13 Washington and South Carolina congressmembers.
But others started circling the wagons, too. In Idaho, U.S. Rep. Clement "Butch" Otter, who voted for the bill, argued that a previous 1995 court order protected the state from having waste stored at a federal nuclear laboratory near Idaho Falls. But former Idaho Lt. Gov. David Leroy, who previously served as White House nuclear-waste director, told the Seattle Post Intelligencer, "There is a legislative history and policy agreements between the state and the Department of Energy which would discourage the use of Idaho for that purpose, but they don't constitute an insurmountable barrier if Congress chooses to rewrite that history."
He was describing a truth that has long since become familiar to Nevada officials--that members of Congress and federal officials shouldn't be relied on when the influence of the nuclear-power lobby and the desire of members of Congress to shield their own states are at issue. In 1985, the federal reservation at Hanford was one of three sites selected for suitability studies for a dump for high-level nuclear wastes. The other two were Deaf Smith, Texas, and Yucca Mountain. But Texas enjoyed a vice president (the first George Bush) and a House majority leader (Jim Wright), and Washington had an influential lawmaker who would later become House speaker (Tom Foley). In 1987, Congress voted to short-circuit the scientific-suitability process by arbitrarily removing Deaf Smith and Hanford from the study, thus solely targeting Nevada for the dump. (The measure became known as the Screw Nevada Bill.)
Both Spratt of South Carolina and Otter of Idaho are relying on promises from federal officials or their colleagues in Congress to keep waste out of their states. Spratt and Otter both got promises from House Energy Committee Chairman David Hobson of Ohio that waste could not be stored in their states without further congressional action. But Leroy warned, "The history of one set of elected or appointed officials in any branch of U.S. government absolutely binding their successors in office to their agreements is not one I would depend on in this case."
Uneasiness with the trustworthiness of Congress and federal energy officials is not the only consciousness raising previously experienced by Nevadans that officials in other states are now going through. Although the new legislation mentions "temporary storage," state officials reacted much the way Nevada officials did when an "interim" dump was proposed for southern Nevada. "The problem with interim storage is that it is not built to last forever, yet interim could very well become permanent," Spratt said. "When they say temporary, they could mean 30 or 40 years," former South Carolina governor Jim Hodges told the Greenville News.
The prospect of new storage at Hanford also generated alarm in adjoining Oregon, whose biggest newspaper, the Oregonian, editorialized that the supposed comeback of nuclear energy is unlikely while storage issues are subject to such turbulence and slapdash solutions:
"The legislation leaves it up the Energy Department to select...sites, but everyone knows where this stuff is going: to already polluted sites such as Hanford and the Savannah River weapons facility in South Carolina. The Idaho National [Environmental and Engineering] Laboratory would be another likely site, except Idaho won a 1995 settlement that forbids the federal government from shipping spent fuel from commercial nuclear plants there. The United States desperately needs a safe and permanent storage facility. In spite of a recent scandal about falsified analysis, the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository in Nevada remains the best alternative... But it's not clear when--or even whether--Yucca will open as a permanent repository."
Hanford was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project after the federal government gave all residents of the towns of White Bluff and Hanford 28 days to leave. Plutonium was produced there for the atomic bomb, and the reservation was later used for numerous other nuclear activities, including storage of waste--even though the land is nearly encircled by the Columbia and Yakima rivers.
The Savannah site was established in 1951 for the manufacture of atom bomb components. The Savannah River runs along 20 miles of the southern border of the reservation. It is now being used for separation of plutonium used in space probes and reloading nuclear warheads. It has 86 subsites that contain 400 cleanup areas.
Over the weekend, another storage possibility emerged. The Boston Globe reported that the House Appropriations Committee "suggests that mothballed military bases be considered as potential sites for the waste." That opens a whole array of states to becoming waste dumps, including those that actually generated the waste at power plants. Maine Yankee's now-decommissioned plant still has stored waste, and when Maine Gov. John Balducci heard the waste could be stored at the state's Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (now on the current base closing list), he said that '"to think that someone could put nuclear waste there ... is outrageous."
Support for the posture of those other states came from one surprising source--Nevada. State Nuclear Projects Agency chief Robert Loux said, "But as a practical matter, I think it's a bad policy idea. I mean, the stuff can be and is being safely stored at reactor sites and can be for centuries. ... That's where the real problem is, is this multiple handling and transport steps. You're just asking for accidents to happen."
Loux also said it is possible to make too much of the House vote, because it is underfunded. "You know, it's only 10 million bucks, and I don't think anyone really believes you're going to move any nuclear waste for $10 million." The real value of the vote, he said, is "perceptual"--it helped get the word out about how troubled the Yucca project is.
Idaho's Leroy said the same thing, that the congressional action is a recognition that the Yucca project has been badly wounded: "For the first time, you've got somebody truly admitting Yucca is not going to open 'til 2016 or later, saying every year it slips is another billion-dollar price tag and saying that interim storage at a government-run facility is essentially mandatory."
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Las Vegas SUN
June 03, 2005
Energy Department hopes to meet deadline for Yucca application
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is clinging to hope that by early next year it could submit an application for a license for Yucca Mountain, a key step in the department's goal of opening the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository by 2012.
That's according to the first monthly Yucca status report the department filed this week with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is responsible for licensing and regulating the waste dump.
Last month the agency ordered the department to file reports at the first of every month outlining a "best good faith estimate" of when it would finalize its Yucca document collection and when it expects to file a license application.
In the two-page status report filed with the NRC on Wednesday, the Energy Department asserts that it still aims to file completed Yucca documents "during August 2005." It intends to file the actual license application "some six months" later, according to the report, which was signed by Donald Irwin, a lawyer with the Richmond, Va., law firm Hunton & Williams hired by the Energy Department.
Budget, legal and regulatory delays have long plagued the repository project. Amid other setbacks, the Energy Department a year ago said that it had completed assembling and organizing Yucca Mountain documents, after years of scientific research.
But Nevada objected on the grounds that key documents were missing, and the NRC's three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board agreed.
Filing the documents with the NRC is an important step. Commission rules require that the documents are completed and in order six months prior to the department submitting the Yucca license application. The documents will be put into a Yucca document database known as the License Support Network.
Acting Yucca Mountain project chief Theodore Garrish, who retired May 13, said several times earlier this year that the department aimed to have the documents in order as soon as possible, and the application completed by the end of 2005. He made a distinction that this does not mean the department would necessarily file the application by the end of the year.
Once the Energy Department files its license application, the NRC could spend up to four years reviewing it, considering Nevada objections, and hosting public hearings. If the license is granted, repository construction could take two to three years, or more. Department officials have said they still aim to open the repository by 2012, although Yucca critics say it would be much later.
Sun Washington reporter Benjamin Grove contributed to this story.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 03, 2005
Yucca Mountain license efforts set for August
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department tentatively estimates it will take the next step toward licensing a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in August, according to a DOE report prepared this week.
That's when DOE officials expect to be ready to certify they have properly posted 3.5 million documents to an Internet database for the proposed waste repository.
Full operation of the Yucca Mountain "licensing support network" is a major requirement before DOE can ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build nuclear waste facilities on the site.
Attorneys for DOE said in the report that the August date still may be revised, depending on how fast technicians can black out portions of documents shielded for privacy and business propriety reasons.
The report was filed Wednesday with an NRC judicial board that is monitoring the assembly of the electronic licensing database.
The Energy Department attempted to certify the licensing database last summer.
It was rejected following complaints from Nevada state officials and other parties that the database was incomplete and poorly organized.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 03, 2005
Hazardous materials discussed
Mayor urges restrictions on shipping radioactive waste, other noxious materials
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman joined other local officials Thursday in bashing the Department of Energy's plans for transporting nuclear waste through Southern Nevada for disposal in Yucca Mountain, saying he would like state lawmakers to adopt a more compelling law against it.
Appearing on a six-member panel that was part of a transportation conference hosted by Clark County and UNLV, Goodman called for expanding the city's ordinance that prohibits highly radioactive waste truck shipments to include rail shipments.
Goodman said he also seeks prior notification of all noxious materials passing through Las Vegas.
He urged mayors of North Las Vegas, Boulder City, Henderson and Mesquite to join him in pressing state legislators to pass a similar measure.
"If it's unconstitutional, let the courts tell us," Goodman said, referring to a Washington, D.C., measure against rail shipments of hazardous materials near the Capitol.
A U.S. District Court judge upheld the law in April, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia temporarily barred enforcement of it.
Goodman and North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon said they view accidents involving spent nuclear fuel as more realistic than a terrorist attack aimed at nuclear waste shipments.
"While terrorism is always a threat, an accident is a far greater issue than a missile hitting one of those things," Montandon said.
Goodman said afterward, "I have never had any information deemed credible that Las Vegas is a (terrorist) target."
Goodman said the federal government's failure to make the rail industry give advance notice of shipments of chlorine and other noxious materials passing through the Las Vegas Valley is the biggest threat against local transportation systems.
"There is a certain arrogance on the part of the federal government. They refuse to tell us," he said.
A Department of Energy official who attended the conference at The Orleans, emergency management specialist Susan Dalton, deferred comments to DOE spokesman Allen Benson.
Reached late Thursday, Benson noted that the two-day conference was funded by the Yucca Mountain Project.
"The department, of course, is always pleased to get input on any proposals that the state of Nevada and local governments would have with respect to transportation and planning," he said.
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Seattle Times
June 03, 2005
Editorial: Finish Yucca Mountain
The Yucca Mountain Project, the long-term nuclear-waste repository in Nevada, must be finished.
Last week, the U.S. House created an irresponsible political distraction by approving a cockeyed plan to study Hanford and two other sites as interim nuclear-waste storage sites. Yucca won't be ready to take waste by 2012, as previously scheduled.
The move possibly is a cynical attempt to divide and conquer the constituencies pressing now for completion of the Nevada site. Ultimately, nuclear waste from 126 communities around the nation — commercial power plants and nuclear defense programs — is supposed to be delivered to Yucca Mountain for long-term storage.
Besides Hanford, the House's spending bill report suggests interim storage could be established in Idaho and South Carolina.
Together, those three states have six of 100 senators and only 17 of 435 congressmen.
The financial waste would be horrendous. Interim storage would have to be built at those three sites, the waste shipped from around the country and, presumably, shipped to Yucca once that facility is ready.
But at each step, mustering the money and political will to consolidate the waste at one long-term repository would become more difficult. By default, the three interim storage sites could become long-term storage sites.
That's not safe. Hanford watchers will remember in 1987 when the Energy Department, after extensive excavation and testing at Gable Mountain, ruled out Hanford for viable long-term storage. Selected instead? Yucca Mountain.
Fortunately, this latest idea faces obstacles. Congress' authority to establish interim storage expired in 1990 under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, so existing law would have to be changed.
Interim storage must not be an option. Better that Congress and the federal government focus on its ultimate responsibility — establishing one, long-term geological repository.
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SC Common Voice
June 3, 2005
Next repository coming south
Ron Bourgoin
As I look at the Energy Department´s (DOE) lists of geologic burial sites for the nation´s high-level nuclear waste repositories, I feel a great discomfort over the fact that there are so many southern sites. Georgia has two sites; North Carolina has two sites, and Virginia has three.
Yes, there are sites from other states, but nearly all of them are near the Great Lakes and the Canadian border, so I think it wise to conclude they will not be selected. That leaves the southern sites.
Where are the sites?
On the Department of Energy´s list of second repositories is a Georgia site that passes through Lamar, Monroe, and Upson counties. North Carolina has a site bridging Franklin, Johnson, and Wake counties and another crossing Buncombe, Haywood, and Madison counties. Virginia has one running through Halifax and Pittsylvania counties, and one in Bedford county.
On the list of supplementary, or backup, sites is a site in Georgia connecting Gwinnett and Walton counties and a site in Virginia where Goochland, Louis, and Hanover counties meet.
One of the mistakes Congress made in 1987 was not to develop a backup site. The Yucca Mountain site in Nevada is in trouble right now, and indications are the site will not open.
In 1987, Congress had three finalists: Yucca Mountain; a site in Deaf Smith County, Texas; and Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland, Washington. Had an alternate site been selected, a burial site for high-level nuclear waste would be opening before 2010. As matters stand now, it´ll take at least 20 years before a repository opens.
Southerners can expect the next site and a backup to come to two of the three states on the lists, and it appears to me, based on a demographics study of the region, that the site in Halifax and Pittsylvania counties, Virginia will be found by the DOE to be an attractive area for the preferred site.
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New London Day
June 03, 2005
Waste Realities, For Better Or Worse
Bethe Dufresne
General Assignment Reporter/Columnist
Remember back in February, when someone at the state Office of Emergency Management pushed the button — the wrong button — and television stations flashed a message telling us to evacuate the state?
I was en route from Westerly to New London that day when I stopped in Mystic to retrieve a kooky ring that had earlier fallen out of my shopping bag. Right about then the news was beginning to spread.
The first thing I heard was, “Is it Millstone?’
Of course it's absurd to even have a message to “evacuate the state.’ Anything that threatens us today has no regard for state lines.
But after the scare evaporated it stuck with me how quickly people fixed on the region's most obvious security risk, not to mention the most obvious long-term risk to environmental health. Which brings us to this week's news about base closings and spent-fuel storage at Millstone.
As we focus on saving the Naval Submarine Base, it's no small irony that our saving grace may be that it's so contaminated it would be too expensive to finish the clean-up required by law for the land to be turned over.
There's apparently no evidence at the site of radiological contamination above allowable levels, despite years of berthing nuclear-powered subs. But if the base is closed, the state will insist on a closer look.
The Groton base was put on the federal Superfund list of most polluted sites in 1990. Since then, much of the toxic chemical waste has been removed. Chances are, though, it's still a potentially dangerous dump.
Yippee! Aren't we a lucky bunch.
I'm reminded of Colin Powell's “You break it, you own it’ analogy about Iraq. You contaminate it, you clean it or else you keep it.
Last week the U.S. House of Representatives approved a provision that would allow turning closed military bases into nuclear waste dumps. Naturally that has alarmed a lot of people, although it seems unlikely to happen here.
All the consternation at least ought to remind us there's no quick, cheap and easy way to undo environmental damage of any kind once it piles up.
Think how long ago the state promised to clean up the Norwich Hospital property.
Think also how long we've been haggling over Yucca Mountain, the massive Nevada underground storage site touted as solving all our spent-fuel problems. Billions have been spent on it, but Nevada's fighting it, like anyone would. And no one wants the waste trucked through their neighborhood.
So here we are again haggling over how to store spent-fuel at Millstone, how much to allow and for how long, and how to protect it and us from accident or terrorist attack.
I'm not exactly sorry. The way to make people responsible for their actions is to make them live with the effects.
Scares should teach us something, whether it's a televised message to evacuate the state or finding the Naval Submarine Base on a closure list and remembering that waste is hard to erase.
What have we learned here?
Well, we can be pretty sure OEM ditched its “evacuate the state’ button.
This is the opinion of Bethe Dufresne.
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ENS
June 2, 2005
AmeriScan: Enviros Permitted to Access Classified Nuclear Information
WASHINGTON, DC, June 2, 2005 (ENS) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is changing its regulations to expand the categories of people who may seek access to classified information associated with NRC regulated activities to include environmental and public interest organizations.
The categories of facilities that may be authorized to store such information will also be expanded. The regulations will change on July 5, 2005.
An initial version of the revised regulations was published in the Federal Register on December 15, 2004, with an effective date of February 28, 2005. The NRC indicated that if significant adverse comments were received, the revisions would be withdrawn.
Since at least one significant comment was received, the agency withdrew the rule on February 24 to consider the comments, which were contained in a letter from a group of seven national environmental and public interest organizations.
The groups said they were concerned over how the rule would affect members of the public, including environmental and public interest organizations, that plan to seek to intervene in the expected Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding.
As explained in a Federal Register notice published today, the new regulations will allow potential intervenors, such as the environmental and public interest organizations that commented, to seek access authorizations and facility security clearances.
The revisions to the regulations do not affect how information is classified and do not expand the scope of information that can only be obtained by those with access authorizations.
The revisions will allow the agency to process any requests for security clearances from potential intervenors in a hearing for a potential high-level radioactive waste repository and from advanced reactor design vendors.
Before access authorization to classified information is granted, a satisfactory background investigation must be completed, and the individual will be informed that unauthorized disclosure of classified information could result in civil or criminal penalties.
A person seeking access to classified information must, in addition to having a security clearance, have a need to know the particular information being sought, the NRC said.
The amendments also extend the regulations on facility security clearances. Current regulations permit persons and companies associated with NRC-regulated reactors, fuel cycle facilities and independent spent fuel storage installations to seek a facility security clearance to use, store, reproduce, transmit, transport or handle NRC classified information.
The changes allow persons associated with other activities designated by the Commission - such as advanced reactor design vendors - to apply for a facility security clearance.
After considering the public comments, the NRC decided to adopt, without change, the initial version of the revised regulations that was published in the Federal Register on December 15, 2004.
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Salem News
How they voted
Thomas Voting Reports
WASHINGTON — Here's how area members of Congress were recorded on major roll call votes the week of May 23:
NUCLEAR REPROCESSING: Voting 110 for and 312 against, the House on May 24 refused to cut spending for the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel by $15.5 million and shift the savings to programs that promote energy efficiency. The vote occurred as the House passed a bill (HR 2419) appropriating $29.7 billion for the Department of Energy and other agencies in fiscal 2006. Overall, the bill provides $750 million for developing safer technologies for recycling nuclear waste.
Amendment backers said U.S. reprocessing of commercial nuclear waste would be unsafe at home and set the wrong example for countries such as North Korea and Iran. Opponents said that underground waste storage at Nevada's Yucca Mountain will face capacity limits, and that new technologies are making it safer and more economical to recycle spent fuel.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., defending the proposed cut in funding, said: "President Ford first put (a) ban on reprocessing in place. It gives us the high moral ground as we look at the North Koreans and Iranians to tell them not to do it. It only makes sense."
But David Hobson, R-Ohio, said: "After running through a nuclear reactor, spent nuclear fuel still contains 97 percent of its energy value, yet we continue to plan to bury the spent fuel underground rather than recycle it, as other countries do very successfully."
A yes vote was to cut spending for nuclear reprocessing.
Tierney — Yes
Meehan — Yes
Olver — Yes
Neal — Yes
McGovern — Yes
Frank — Yes
Markey — Yes
Capuano — Yes
Lynch — Yes
Delahunt — Yes
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NRC
June 2, 2005
NRC Invites Public to Informal Discussions June 6 in Pahrump, Nev., on Proposed Radioactive Waste Disposal at Yucca Mountain
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission´s staff will meet informally with members of the public June 6 in Pahrump, Nev., to discuss NRC´s role with regard to the proposed high-level radioactive waste disposal facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The informal gathering will be from 4 to 7 p.m. in the Pahrump Ambulance Building, 300 North Highway 160, Pahrump. It will follow the regularly scheduled quarterly management meeting with the Department of Energy. Light refreshments will be served.
NRC staff in attendance will include Jack R. Strosnider, Director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards; Bill Reamer, Director of the Division of High-Level Waste Repository Safety; and Elmo E. Collins, Director of the Licensing and Inspection Directorate. NRC representatives familiar with transportation and environmental issues will also be there for discussions, along with NRC local representatives who work in Las Vegas: Jack Parrott, Bob Latta and Vivian Mehrhoff.
The quarterly management meeting with DOE will be held at the same location from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The public is invited to observe this meeting and will have an opportunity to communicate with the NRC after the business portion of the meeting but before it is adjourned.
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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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