Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
June 07, 2005
State seeks draft copy of Yucca license application
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawyers have filed a petition to obtain a draft copy of the Yucca Mountain license application, which Energy Department officials have declined to make public.
The document is a massive compilation of research on the mountain site and seeks permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin construction of a national high-level nuclear waste repository.
The draft was delivered to the department by its top Yucca contractor, Bechtel, in late July 2004. Nevada officials are eager to begin poring over it as they compile a comprehensive catalog of what they consider flaws in the proposed project.
The department aims to file the license application early next year. Nevada officials want an early look at the document because they plan to mount a massive challenge to the project during a three- to four-year NRC licensing process.
"It's been sitting now for more than 10 months, and there is no good reason not to allow Nevada to see it, other than to obstruct Nevada's ability to prepare for the licensing proceeding," said Charles Fitzpatrick, one of the lawyers from a Virginia-based firm hired by the state to manage Yucca legal work.
But Energy Department officials have refused to make the document public, denying a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the state, and brushing aside a February letter from Gov. Kenny Guinn to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
On Monday the state tried another approach, requesting the document in a brief filed with a three-member, pre-licensing board of the NRC. The department has until June 20 to respond, and Nevada will have until June 28 to reply in turn. The board is expected to rule shortly after that whether Nevada has a right to obtain a draft copy of the license application.
Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson declined to comment on the brief. The license application is still subject to minor revisions, he said. It's not appropriate to release the license application until it is final, Benson said. 6
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Las Vegas SUN
June 07, 2005
Despite DOE e-mails, Yucca research deemed legitimate
By Mary Manning
<manning@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
PAHRUMP -- Investigations by the Energy Department so far have found that scientific research into how water flows at Yucca Mountain is solid, despite e-mails by U.S. Geological Survey workers that suggest they falsified quality assurance documents designed to support the work's validity.
In the e-mails, which the Energy Department disclosed in March and were written by "a few" -- likely two or three -- scientists between 1998 and 2000, the workers suggested that they falsified quality assurance documents. The scientists were conducting vital research on how water would infiltrate the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository. The issue is important because it could help determine whether the site can safely isolate waste.
The Energy Department and USGS inspectors general are investigating, and the department is also conducting an internal review. But early findings suggest no cause for alarm, Yucca deputy director John Arthur told Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials on Monday during a teleconference meeting regarding the project's status. The commission is responsible for licensing and regulating Yucca.
"The quality assurance controls provided some assurance that the USGS technical products substantively complied with program requirements," according to one slide in Arthur's presentation. "The net infiltration estimates are technically defensible, being consistent with independently derived results and acknowledged as valid by a diverse technical community."
It's possible the department may have to re-do some of the work conducted by the USGS scientists if it is deemed necessary, but no decisions about that have been made, Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson said Monday.
Further, the e-mails offer no "objective technical reason" to question the fact that the Energy Department recommended Yucca in 2002 as the safest place to construct a national repository, according to Arthur's presentation. President Bush approved the site based on that recommendation.
Also, there is no technical reason to question an application for a license to construct Yucca, which the department plans to submit to the NRC early next year, according to Arthur's presentation. The application includes scientific research supporting Yucca as a safe repository site, including water flow data.
Nevada officials say the Energy Department officials have downplayed a significant problem. They say the integrity of the whole Yucca quality assurance program has been called into question, along with the science that the department claims proves the site safe.
In other Yucca news, Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission scientists appeared to disagree Monday about how fast water would flow through the Mountain.
Budhi Sagar, a hydrologist working for the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analysis in San Antonio as a consultant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said his estimates indicate water would enter the repository more quickly than Energy Department estimates.
"We (his company's estimates) are slightly faster," Sagar said, but noted that the numbers are changing as scientific teams use different computer models for running water through the mountain.
Nye County Commission consultants also are testing the limits of barriers other than the mountain itself, such as nuclear waste containers, shields to protect the buried casks from dripping water and conditions within the repository, Sagar said.
The issue of "cool" versus "hot" repository designs also surfaced at Monday's meeting.
Nye County is asking the Energy Department to space nuclear waste containers in any future repository so that air can circulate around them and cool them off, rather than bunch them close together, which would raise the heat level in a repository, Nye County Commission Candice Trummell said.
The design of a "cool" repository, instead of a "hot" repository, is one of the issues under debate by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before the Energy Department can receive a license to build a repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas but about 40 miles closer to this Nye County town.
During a public input session, Jim Petell, an 11-year Pahrump resident, said he is concerned about safety in the future and whether casks transporting and containing the spent fuel from nuclear reactors will last.
"Transportation routes will not only go through Nye County, but all cities and towns across the country," Petell said.
Walt Kurver, who volunteers to serve on a committee overseeing a plan for the Southern Nevada Water Authority to tap rural water resources, said that ground water supplies are a major concern.
Rural counties such as Nye are not prepared for the influx of people, he said.
"Whatever happens with the water, there's lots going on on a regional scale," Kurver said.
Safety is a national issue, 25-year Pahrump resident Kitty Longhowser said.
Ten years ago Longhowser said she went to work with Bechtel-SAIC, the company that is managing the Yucca Mountain Project, as an administrator.
"It's always been about safety for the country," Longhowser said. "If Nevada has to help the country, then why not help the country?"
Nuclear power offers cleaner energy without acid rain, an end product produced by fossil fuels burning, she said.
"You're not afraid of a light bulb, but electricity can kill you," Longhowser said.
Longhowser said she wishes that state officials would negotiate for benefits for Nye County.
Dury Thompson, a retired head of an electronics company that chemically etched circuit boards, favors wind and solar energy, but sees a Yucca Mountain repository as "our niche" to launch an energy revolution from Pahrump.
Thompson moved to Pahrump from Minneapolis.
"I listened to Art Bell and thought, 'This must be the promised land,' " Thompson said of the talk radio personality broadcasting from Pahrump, who delves into UFOs, secrets at Area 51 and alien abductions.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 07, 2005
NRC staff told data cited in Yucca Mountain e-mails is sound
Associated Press
PAHRUMP, Nev. (AP) - The Energy Department has not found that Yucca Mountain water flow studies were tainted by scientists who discussed falsifying quality control documents, a project administrator said.
John Arthur, Yucca Mountain project deputy director, told Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff members in a meeting Monday in Pahrump that the USGS scientists' findings about how surface water might infiltrate cracks toward nuclear waste tunnels were consistent with other research conducted at the mountain.
"The net infiltration estimates are technically defensible," Arthur said.
The issue of water infiltration is important because it could help determine whether the site can safely contain the nation's most radioactive waste.
Arthur said the data in question will not be used in an upcoming Energy Department request for an NRC license to open and operate a nuclear waste repository at the Yucca site. Other information might be "replaced, redone or remediated" for the license application, he said.
The application had been expected last December, after Congress and President Bush in 2002 approved the department plan to entomb 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste at the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The Energy Department wanted to open the Yucca project in 2010. That timeline has been set back at least two years following a federal court ruling that an Environmental Protection Agency radiation standard was insufficient, congressional budget cuts, and revelations made public in March that scientists exchanged e-mails discussing falsifying data.
The e-mails, written between 1998 and 2000, show two or three USGS scientists saying dates and names had been made up and that "fudge factors" were used to satisfy quality assurance requirements for their research.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said last month that work would continue on the Yucca project while he awaited results of a department scientific inquiry and criminal investigations by the inspectors general of the Energy and Interior departments. The probe was being assisted by the FBI.
Nevada officials have called for an independent probe of the e-mails, and Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., has assigned staff members from his federal work force subcommittee to investigate the messages.
---On the Net:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
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Las Vegas SUN
June 07, 2005
Letter: Hydrogen power should be free of nuclear energy
This is in reference to your May 26 editorial, in which you embraced a hydrogen economy but warned against using nuclear power to produce that hydrogen. The hydrogen economy holds promise for nonpolluting automobile fuel and other applications, but, you are right, it must not be based on nuclear power.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration has proposed a $1.1 billion experimental nuclear reactor targeted for Idaho. The hydrogen fuel generator would be built, entirely with federal taxpayer money, as a showcase for Bush's "Freedom Car Initiative," first announced in his 2003 State of the Union speech.
Of course, basing the hydrogen economy on nuclear power would generate vast quantities of high-level radioactive waste, which would dramatically increase the pressure to build Yucca Mountain. Fortunately, as you stated, hydrogen can -- and should -- be generated in genuinely clean and green ways, as through solar and wind power. Nevada happens to be blessed with an abundance of both those natural resources.
The Energy Department at one time proposed running the Yucca dump's ventilation systems with a mountainside of solar panels and a wind turbine farm. If this were possible, then why couldn't the electricity have been generated in the first place by clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, rather than dangerous atomic power with its forever deadly high-level radioactive wastes? We need to keep nuclear power completely out of the promising hydrogen future.
Kevin Kamps
Washington, D.C.
Editor's note: The writer works for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a center for citizens and environmental organizations concerned about nuclear power and sustainable energy issues.
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Las Vegas Review Journal
June 07, 2005
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: DOE: Water flow studies sound
Accuracy of information called into question by e-mails in which scientists discussed falsifying documents
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department has tentatively concluded that Yucca Mountain water flow studies were technically sound, even though scientists who conducted them had discussed falsifying quality control documents, a DOE executive said Monday.
Auditors discovered "the majority -- about 80 percent" of the problems in 1999 and 2000, shortly after the research was completed by U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists, according to John Arthur, Yucca Mountain deputy director.
Further, the USGS scientists' findings about how surface water might infiltrate cracks toward nuclear waste tunnels were consistent with other research conducted on the mountain, Arthur said.
"The net infiltration estimates are technically defensible," Arthur said at a Yucca managers' meeting with officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Pahrump. The meeting was telecast to NRC headquarters outside Washington.
But even though the USGS work may be sound, Arthur told the NRC that the data will not be used in an upcoming DOE license request to establish a nuclear waste repository at the Yucca site.
"While the numbers look good, we also recognize they are only as good as the integrity of the individuals that prepared them," Arthur said. "Our action is to make sure we have other individuals and organizations look to make sure the information is either replaced, redone or remediated so it stands up in our license application."
The water infiltration studies were called into question by a cache of e-mails that were made public in March.
The messages, written between 1998 and 2000, include two or three USGS scientists saying that dates and names had been made up, and that "fudge factors" were used to satisfy quality assurance requirements for their research.
Investigations by inspectors general into possible criminal activity were convened. At the same time, DOE has undertaken multiple internal studies to determine whether project science was compromised and to dissect its quality assurance program for Yucca Mountain.
The allegations amounted to another embarrassment for the Yucca project that had been set back by a court ruling last summer and by budget shortfalls on Capitol Hill.
A Yucca Mountain critic said he was not surprised that the Energy Department is finding minimal impact from the e-mail messages.
"It was going to be a whitewash from square one," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "We predicted how this was going to look when they announced their investigation."
Nevada officials had called for an independent probe of the e-mails. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., has assigned staff members from his federal work force subcommittee to investigate the messages, but they have announced little progress.
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Las Vegas Review Journal
June 07, 2005
Wildfire on Nellis range escalates
Review-Journal
A lightning-sparked wildfire on the Nellis Air Force Range north of Yucca Mountain and 25 miles east of Beatty grew to 20,000 acres on Monday, authorities said.
A multiagency team of 136 firefighters and support personnel was battling the blaze, which began Friday. It was not under control late Monday after being fanned by strong winds over the weekend, said Forest Service spokeswoman Beth Short.
She said no structures were threatened, but two single-engine air tankers, three helicopters and six hot shot crews, in addition to fire engines and water tenders, had been called in to put out the fast-burning brush fire.
The attack was being led by the Bureau of Land Management, which has an arrangement with the Department of Defense to suppress fires on the Air Force range.
No injuries had been reported, Short said.
A spokesman for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration said the fire had spread Monday afternoon to the west-central edge of the Nevada Test Site, north of the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
Yucca Mountain sits along the test site's southwest boundary, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The spokesman, Kevin Rohrer, said the fire at one time was about one mile west of the north tunnel entrance to the Yucca Mountain Project.
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Nevada Appeal
June 7, 2005
Letters to the editor
Use Hawthorne base for nuclear storage
If in fact the Hawthorne storage depot is closed, it certainly will be tragic for those who lose their jobs and the town.
Whether the decision to tag the base for closure is unbiased or is, in fact, a political punishment for Sen. Reid's obstructionism or the state of Nevada's resistance to the Yucca Mountain project will never be disclosed by the people who know.
There is a course of action that could be taken to save the base. Gov. Guinn, with the concurrence of the people in Hawthorne, could propose to the federal government that the base be converted to a temporary nuclear waste storage depot.
During World War II, the people in our country demonstrated that they could work together to achieve a common goal.
Today, environmentalists, the politicians they support, trial lawyers, bigots and naysayers tend to polarize the population and contribute to the degradation of our economy and country.
Energy independence should be the present common goal of our country. The expanded use of nuclear energy should be a major part of the energy policy.
Natural gas is being depleted by electric power plants, even though our country has the largest coal reserves in the world.
If you are opposed to coal and nuclear energy, then you should stop carping about high gasoline and natural gas prices.
Donald W. Cunningham
Carson City
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Platts
June 07, 2005
DOE investigation says USGS studies of Yucca Mt. are sound
Washington (Platts)--6Jun2005
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) water infiltration studies of Yucca Mountain, Nev. are technically sound, according to preliminary results of a DOE investigation unveiled today. Still, John Arthur, deputy director of DOE's Yucca Mountain repository project, told NRC officials the department would not use those USGS studies, as is, during repository licensing proceedings. Instead, the information will be replaced, redone, or remediated by outside individuals and/or organizations, Arthur said during a quarterly NRC-DOE meeting on the repository project. The scientific integrity of the work was called into question in March after DOE and USGS revealed some USGS e-mails that indicated at least one USGS scientist may have falsified quality assurance documents associated with water infiltration studies at Yucca Mountain. If licensed, a Yucca Mountain repository would be used to dispose of 70,000 metric tons of utility spent fuel and defense high-level waste.
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Nuke Waste Watcher
June 07, 2005
Second to none
Congressman David Hobson (R-Ohio) has begun referring to the second-named national geologic repository as "Yucca Mountain Two." [see http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2005/may/13/518752628.html ]
Because Yucca Mountain One is down on the canvas nearing the end of the ten count, it could very well be that the second-named nuclear repository will be the first to open.
By law, the second geologic burial facility can be named by Congress the year after next. In view of the fact that nearly 25 years are required from naming to opening, it'll be 2030 before a repository opens.
When it was decided to develop only Yucca Mountain in 1987, several people felt that one of the other two sites on the list of first repositories (Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, and a site in Deaf Smith County, Texas) should be developed as a backup in case Yucca Mountain didn't meet muster. Had an alternate site been built, we'd be opening a repository in 2010. It's doubtful Congress will make that mistake again.
In 2007, look for Congress to name not only a second site but also a backup site. On the list for the second repository and alternate site are the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
Ron Bourgoin
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Toledo Blade
June 6, 2005
Davis-Besse targets Utah as waste site
Utilities wait for NRC nod on disposal
By Tom Henry
Blade Staff Writer
A consortium of eight utilities that includes FirstEnergy Corp. believes it has cleared one of the biggest hurdles for storing spent reactor fuel from Davis-Besse and other nuclear plants on tribal land in Utah for up to 40 years.
The issue centers around whether the public stands an unreasonable risk of being exposed to radiation if 40,000 metric tons of the spent fuel gets stored outside in bunkers on a reservation owned by the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians.
The reservation is 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, but only 11 miles from one of the nation's largest military test and bombing ranges where pilots at Hill Air Force Base are trained to fly F-16 fighter jets.
Critics, including the state of Utah, claim the odds are too great of jets crashing into the concrete and steel bunkers. There would be up to 4,000 such vaults, each holding an individual canister of spent reactor fuel.
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission atomic safety and licensing board has upheld a Feb. 24 decision that favored utilities promoting the Utah land for a disposal site. That board agreed in February - after a 16-day hearing closed to the public because of security concerns - that the odds of a crash exceeded the NRC's one-in-a-million probability threshold.
But that board also concluded the chances of an impact direct and hard enough to break open a container were inconsequential.
The issue over potential F-16 crashes and all other remaining ones are now before the NRC's five commissioners, who have the final say over a nearly eight-year-old request for a license to build and operate the Utah site, according to Jay Silberg, the consortium's Washington-based attorney.
The consortium, called Private Fuel Storage LLC, represents FirstEnergy and seven other power companies: Entergy Corp., Xcel Energy, Southern Nuclear, Florida Power & Light, Southern California Edison, Dairyland Power Co., and Indiana Michigan Power Co.
With nothing else left on the NRC hearing board's docket, a decision on the project's fate could be made by agency commissioners within a few months. The consortium is seeking a 20-year license from the government and a 25-year lease from the Goshute tribe, both with options to renew.
Utilities are negotiating with the Goshutes for use of their domestic sovereign land, the second time in recent years that utilities have undertaken formal discussions with a tribe to send radioactive nuclear waste off to Native American soil.
In the 1990s, FirstEnergy was part of a different consortium that was unsuccessful in finalizing a deal with the Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico.
Spent reactor fuel is the only material in civilian hands classified as high-level radioactive waste.
The government for years has focused its efforts for a national dump on Nevada's Yucca Mountain - a dry and isolated mountain between Las Vegas and California's Death Valley that is under heavy military surveillance.
Under the Nuclear Energy Policy Act that Congress passed in 1982, the federal government was to start taking spent reactor fuel away from nuclear plants by Jan. 31, 1998. That didn't happen and there is no national dump site.
Consequently, many utilities have been forced to spend millions to create their own temporary storage. In the 1990s, Toledo Edison Co. - now a FirstEnergy Corp. subsidiary - spent more than $5 million to move some of Davis-Besse's spent reactor fuel into sealed outdoor storage casks. That was done to free up room inside the plant's high-security containment pool, where spent fuel goes to decay for years after being removed from the reactor.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed the government had a contractual obligation to start taking spent reactor fuel from utilities in 1998 and has given utilities the right to pursue government compensation for their additional storage costs.
A deal with the Goshutes means that spent fuel could be on its way to Utah in two to four years, depending on how long it takes to obtain the license and get contractors lined up to do the work, Mr. Silberg said.
Most waste would come from older nuclear plants in the Northeast and would travel by truck or by rail through northwest Ohio in sealed containers, the federal Energy Department has said.
The Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that 78 of the nation's 103 nuclear plants could fill their spent fuel pools by the end of the decade, forcing them to either store waste outside or shut down. The industry group says the best solution is to have the government live up to its obligation for a national dump at Yucca Mountain or elsewhere.
Detroit Edison Co.'s Fermi II nuclear plant near Monroe, Mich., will likely join Davis-Besse in that group of 78 unless something happens to get the Yucca Mountain project moving faster.
Fermi II is 10 years younger than Davis-Besse and has just enough room in its spent fuel pool to keep storing waste indoors until 2010. But one of its top executives, Douglas Gipson, has warned there is the potential for moving waste outdoors for at least a few years.
Richard Wilkins, FirstEnergy spokesman, said his utility has been a part of industry groups negotiating with the Mescaleros and Goshutes "as a contigency in case it looks like Yucca Mountain's not going forward."
"Our first choice is to ship to Yucca Mountain," he said.
Uncertainty over nuclear waste disposal has been one of the industry's greatest impediments toward expansion for years.
President Bush, who has made nuclear power a cornerstone of his national energy proposals, wants government officials to resolve the uncertainty over Yucca Mountain to help stimulate construction of more nuclear plants. No new plants have been approved for construction since the late 1970s.
Utah's opposition stems largely from the belief that storage on the Goshute land would become more than a temporary solution. Opponents have included that state's former governor, Mike Leavitt, who serves as Mr. Bush's Department of Health and Human Services secretary and was previously U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
Dianne Nielson, Utah Department of Environmental Quality executive director, told The Blade that officials in her state "think clearly there would be a release of radioactivity" if an F-16 ever crashed into a storage vault.
She also fears Utah storage would become permanent, based on Yucca Mountain's anticipated capacity and the projected volume of nuclear waste being generated.
"We realize there needs to be permanent solutions in managing spent fuel," Ms. Nielson said. "We just don't believe this is a wise decision."
Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079.
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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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