Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, June 12, 2005
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Los Angeles Times
June 12, 2005
Nuclear Waste Outpaces Solutions
Plants use outdoor storage casks while waiting for the government to find a longer-term solution. Some fear it won't.
By Ralph Vartabedian
Times Staff Writer
MORRIS, Ill. — Along the headwaters of the Illinois River, engineers at the Dresden nuclear power station have erected two dozen steel and concrete silos that rise 20 feet above the Midwest plain.
The gray structures are unremarkable except for what is loaded inside: Each contains roughly 13 tons of high-level nuclear waste that has been accumulating at the plant since the Eisenhower administration. With nowhere to go, the waste will most likely remain in place for decades.
Dresden's reactors have produced one of the largest stockpiles — 1,347 tons — of civilian nuclear waste in the nation. With the plant churning out nearly 48 tons more waste each year, engineers are preparing to double the size of the outdoor storage pad this summer.
The plant has the same problem as nearly all of the nation's 103 commercial reactors: They were never designed to store waste long-term and are now forced to deal with large quantities of spent uranium fuel rods that produce high levels of radiation.
The problem reflects decades of miscalculations and missteps by the federal government, which promised at the dawn of the nuclear age to accept ownership of the waste. The plan to build a waste repository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert has faced so many political, legal and technical problems that it's impossible to project when — or even if — it will be built.
As a result, the most lethal waste product of industrial society is being handled outside any federal policy and without any roadmap for how it will be managed in the future, according to industry officials, nuclear waste experts, lawyers and academicians.
"It is a statement of reality," acknowledges Clay Sell, deputy secretary of Energy. "Is it the right policy? No."
The deep storage pools traditionally used to safely keep nuclear waste are filling up at most plants. Utilities have turned to outdoor storage in so-called dry casks as the de facto standard for dealing with waste.
From California to South Carolina, utilities have loaded 700 of the steel and concrete casks, and scores of additional casks are scheduled to be filled this year.
It is a stopgap measure that has averted a shutdown of the nuclear power industry. But it means leaving all of the roughly 50,000 tons of civilian nuclear waste spread across the nation for the next half-century or more. And storing the waste at power plant sites is creating significant economic, environmental, legal and security challenges — including the potential for it to become a terrorist target.
A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences found that the waste stored in pools was most vulnerable, but the outdoor casks also were potential targets. Such an attack could trigger an environmental catastrophe.
"These are the ultimate dirty bombs," said Bob Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former Energy Department official. "Let's not pretend the way we are storing this waste is safe and secure in an age of terrorism."
Utility executives and government officials sharply dispute such allegations, saying the plants have multiple layers of protection from any attack. Exelon Corp., the nation's largest nuclear utility, has erected heavy barriers and security towers at Dresden that are staffed around the clock by guards with automatic weapons.
Though the nuclear industry has a good record for preventing radiation leaks during normal operations and dry casks are widely regarded as safe, many outside experts say their biggest fear is that future generations may lack the willpower and financial capability to safeguard tons of radioactive waste dispersed across the nation. Waste is already stored in casks at five shuttered nuclear plant sites.
"We are muddling into an alternative plan by default," says Joe Egan, a longtime attorney for the nuclear industry who now represents Nevada in fighting Yucca Mountain.
Nuclear waste has also created a legal mess. The Energy Department is facing more than four dozen lawsuits by the utility industry for its failure to take the waste. Damages could reach $56 billion over the next three decades, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a powerful trade group for nuclear utilities.
At the Department of Energy, Sell argues that deep geologic storage of the waste at Yucca Mountain would be the best technical solution. He believes the project will eventually be completed. But the loss of a key court case last year and political resistance in Congress have put the dump at least 14 years behind schedule.
Without a dump, utilities have few options short of shutting down their reactors and eliminating 20% of the U.S. electricity supply that comes from nuclear power. And without a solution to waste, the proposal by President Bush to start a new era of nuclear plant construction could go nowhere.
Indefinite storage of nuclear waste at current reactor sites is a bitter pill for many politicians, particularly those from environmentally fragile areas such as Lake Michigan, which is ringed by nuclear plants.
"I want the waste off the shores of Lake Michigan," said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), whose district includes two nuclear plants built on the lake's eastern boundary. "Ultimately, there is a safety problem."
Nuclear waste at power plants will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. The fission of uranium inside reactors produces heat for electricity production. Afterward, the uranium fuel rods are far more radioactive than when they entered the reactor.
To maximize storage capacity for the spent fuel rods, the nuclear industry devised a way to pack them more closely in the 50-foot-deep storage pools than initially planned. Critics say this kind of dense packing poses a safety risk, however. If terrorists were to puncture the pool wall and drain the water, the rods could ignite and disperse lethal amounts of radiation, according to a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences.
Even with dense packing, the pools are running out of space. Twenty years ago, nuclear plants began removing the oldest fuel rods, which have radioactively decayed somewhat, and started storing them in massive outdoor storage casks like the ones at Dresden.
Officials at Nuclear Regulatory Commission "anticipate that there will be an increase in the number of casks being loaded over the next few years," said E. William Brach, director of the commission's spent fuel project office.
The logistics of nuclear waste ensure it will be around a long time. Even if the federal government gets a license to operate Yucca Mountain, the earliest it could accept waste shipments would be 2012. By that year, more than 60,000 tons of civilian nuclear waste would be spread across about three dozen states.
It would take about 50 years to work down the backlog, according to Frank von Hippel, a nuclear expert at Princeton University and former White House national security advisor. That's because under current plans Yucca could process a maximum of 3,000 tons of waste annually, while nuclear power plants would be generating 2,000 new tons of waste each year. That means a net reduction of just 1,000 tons each year, he said.
"We have to assume that these casks will be around for a very long time," Von Hippel said. "It will take quite a while to move them, even if we had someplace to send them today."
In any case, "on the day Yucca Mountain opens" it would be too small to handle all the waste, acknowledges Sell, the Energy Department official. There is no Plan B. Under federal law, the department can pursue only Yucca Mountain.
Further complicating matters are the divided lines of authority between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department. The commission regulates waste at plant sites and authorizes dry cask storage but has no role in national policy for disposing of nuclear waste. That policy responsibility rests with the Energy Department, which has no voice or authority in the use of dry casks.
In the vacuum, a private consortium is planning to build an above-ground storage site for hundreds of casks on an Indian reservation in Utah. Despite state opposition, it is getting approval from the nuclear commission.
Meanwhile, utilities see dry cask storage as a cheap and safe, if not permanent, solution.
Holtec International, one of the leading suppliers, says its casks can safely store waste for at least 100 years without leaking, according to company marketing manager Joy Russell.
The regulatory commission typically licenses the casks for 20 years but last year renewed Dominion Electric's license for 40 years, another signal that the waste would remain in place for a long time.
Holtec's casks are constructed of two concentric rings of 1-inch-thick steel, separated by 27 inches of concrete that is poured at the power plant site. The casks sit on 2-foot-thick concrete pads, requiring no electricity, water or instrumentation. Inside, the spent fuel continues to radioactively decay, generating heat that is vented out the sides.
The only maintenance involves periodic painting and keeping up the radioactive warning labels on the steel shells.
On the inside of the casks, the waste is so radioactive it would deliver a fatal dose in minutes, but the outside can be touched.
"An individual can stand right next to the cask," Brach said. "There is a dose, but it is a minimal dose."
There have been some relatively minor accidents around the nation involving the casks, including one case in which a welding spark ignited hydrogen gas inside a cask. The ignition dislodged the cask's lid but did not cause other damage.
Antinuclear groups, such as the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service and the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, say the casks should be better protected. In Germany, for example, the casks are inside hardened buildings.
Government tests at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland showed that a shoulder-fired missile could penetrate a cask wall, causing some radioactive fuel to disperse.
"We don't want this 10-pin bowling alley out in the open," said Dave Kraft, an antinuclear activist for more than 20 years. "Anybody with a shoulder-fired missile could hit one of these things from outside the plant."
Though utilities defend the safety of the casks, they also are demanding that the federal government take the waste.
Exelon, formerly Commonwealth Edison, filed one of the 56 suits against the Energy Department when the agency failed to meet its legal commitment to open Yucca Mountain by 1998. It is the only company to settle so far, accepting $600 million for its costs over the next 10 years, according to Adam H. Levin, Exelon director of spent fuel.
"We expect at some time that the Energy Department will perform," he said.
Across the river from the Dresden plant in the Village of Channahon, a residential building boom is occurring, attracting people who make the hour-and-a-half commute to jobs in Chicago.
"You can see the nuclear waste right across the river," said Joe Petrovic, who lives in a subdivision near the plant and builds homes in the area for a living. "The plant hasn't scared anyone from buying a home there."
The plant is in Grundy County, which has three nuclear power plants as well as a large independent waste storage pool operated by General Electric Co. It probably has more nuclear waste than any county in the nation, though such statistics are not kept by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"I don't see the casks as a problem," said Grundy County Administrator Alfred Bourdelais. "Maybe in 200 or 300 years, but today there isn't any more risk from those casks than there is from the plant, and it has a really low risk."
Such local acceptance of cask storage worries experts who say that in the future the casks will become a poor permanent solution.
Kevin Crowley, a nuclear expert at the National Academy of Sciences who helped guide an investigation into the vulnerability of spent fuel storage, said the casks would become a risky legacy if left in place too long.
"The major uncertainty," he said, "is in the confidence that future societies will continue to monitor and maintain such facilities."
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Reno Gazette-Journal
June 10, 2005
Chief of U.S. Geological Survey resigning amid flap over Yucca Mtn. documents
LAS VEGAS — The U.S. Geological Survey director criticized since the disclosure that several agency scientists might have falsified documents about a planned Nevada nuclear waste repository is stepping down.
Charles G. Groat´s resignation, announced Thursday in Washington, D.C., was not connected with the Yucca Mountain project, survey spokeswoman A.B. Wade said.
Groat will return effective June 17 to the University of Texas at Austin, where he once served as an associate geology professor and acting director of the Bureau of Economic Geology.
Interior Gale A. Norton praised Groat, who has headed the USGS since November 1998, for applying USGS science “to supporting important decisions regarding resource and environmental management and policy.’
Groat has been under fire since he and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced in March the discovery of e-mail messages written by USGS hydrologists between 1998 and 2000 discussing possible falsification of quality assurance documents on water infiltration research they did for the Yucca Mountain project.
The disclosures sparked ongoing investigations by Energy Department and Interior Department inspectors general, aided by the FBI, and by a U.S. House subcommittee headed by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.
Nevada lawmakers have criticized Groat for not taking immediate disciplinary action against the hydrologists, who remain at the agency, and for not turning over requested documents.
Groat expressed support for investigations to clear the USGS, which he said had a 125-year reputation for sound, unbiased science.
The Energy Department plans to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to entomb 77,000 tons of the nation´s most radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain. Congress in 2002 approved putting the repository at the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
A date for opening the repository has been pushed back from 2010 to 2012 or later following a federal court ruling that an Environmental Protection Agency radiation standard was insufficient, congressional budget cuts and the e-mail revelations.
John Arthur, a top Yucca Mountain project official, reported this week that the Energy Department has tentatively concluded that repository science was not compromised by the USGS scientists.
Groat will be the Jackson Chair in Energy and Mineral Resources in the School of Geosciences at the University of Texas, the Interior Department said. He also will direct the school´s new Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy.
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The State
June 11, 2005
Utilities show interest in new nuke plants
H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - For two months, Ray Ganthner took to the road, visiting a dozen power companies to find out if his bosses should take a $100 million gamble. Asking executives "eyeball-to-eyeball" about their future generating capacity needs, he wanted to know just how serious utilities were about building a new nuclear power plant in the United States for the first time in three decades.
"I was surprised at the consistency of the answers," Ganthner, a Lynchburg, Va.-based senior executive for the French reactor manufacturer, Framatome, said in an interview.
Based on what he found, AREVA, Framatome's parent company, is now investing $100 million on U.S. marketing and to get a design certificate from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its newest reactor, one already being built in Finland.
It may be a long shot. Two other manufacturers, Westinghouse and General Electric, have a head start. But the French company's decision to make it a three-way race demonstrates the resurgent interest in nuclear power in the United States, where no new reactor has been ordered since 1973.
The 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, followed by the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine ended any U.S. interest in more reactors beyond those already under construction.
Recently a consortium of eight U.S. utilities, called NuStart, announced potential sites where one or more of its members might put a new reactor. Two other American utilities are pursuing separate licensing efforts.
While no one has yet committed to construction, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman recently told an industry group, "If all goes well, we could see new plants on line by 2014."
Westinghouse Electric Co., a subsidiary of the British company BNFL, already has approval from the NRC for its new 1,000 megawatt AP1000 reactor design and General Electric will submit an application for its 1,500 megawatt ESBWR reactor later this year.
Both companies are working hard to line up customers, convinced that electricity demand a decade from now will require more large power plants, and that some will be nuclear.
"We think everything is heading in absolutely the right direction," says Vaughn Gilbert, a Westinghouse spokesman. "Nuclear has to be part of the energy picture. We expect the U.S. market will come back and eventually be robust."
The new reactors are described as "evolutionary" advancements over the 103 now in operation in 31 states. They basically use the same technology, but with fewer valves, pipes and pumps, and - in the case of Westinghouse and GE - passive safety systems that, if needed, can shut the reactor down and pour in cooling water without human intervention. Other modifications such as setting the radioactive fuel lower into the ground were added in response to post-Sept. 11 worries about terrorism.
President Bush has pushed nuclear power as a way to take the pressure off fossil fuels - oil, natural gas and coal. While the United States gets 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear reactors, France meets 78 percent of its electricity needs with nuclear power.
Even some environmentalists have abandoned their opposition to nuclear power, arguing it is needed to address climate change because reactors do not produce so-called "greenhouse" gases as do fossil fuels. Other environmentalists are not convinced, citing worries about reactor waste and safety.
At the heart of the resurgent interest in nuclear power are the high cost of competing energy sources and improved reactor efficiency. A University of Chicago study concluded that a new fleet of reactors can be expected to produce power as cheaply as coal and natural gas, given's today's prices.
"People are getting comfortable with nuclear," Paul Dabber, a vice president for mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan, told a conference on new reactor technology in February. One reason is that existing nuclear power plants have been making profits, he said.
Wall Street has long been skeptical about committing $2 billion or more to a new nuclear reactor and investors still consider such a venture risky unless the government provides tax breaks or other incentives to get the first group of reactors started.
Without some government help, no new reactors are likely to be built before 2025, says the Energy Information Agency, the government's energy statistical agency.
Congress is considering loan guarantees for new-design reactors, and lawmakers are expected to come up with other tax breaks to stoke investor interest. But a Bush proposal to provide "risk insurance" to protect the industry against licensing or legal delays has attracted little interest on Capitol Hill.
No one has yet committed to building a new reactor and despite the optimistic rhetoric, utilities are moving toward that decision cautiously.
A premature pronouncement about a new reactor could rattle investors and depress a utility's stock, industry experts say. Utilities and investors still remember the pitfalls of long licensing delays that doubled and tripled the cost of many reactors in the 1980s. In one of the biggest cost overruns, the proposed twin-reactor Seabrook plant in New Hampshire was projected to cost $850 million in 1976 and be finished in six years, but ended up costing $7 billion when completed in 1990 even though the second reactor was canceled.
"My company lost $5 billion to $10 billion on the last round of nuclear construction," Exelon chairman John Rowe said in a recent speech, explaining why he is approaching new reactor investments with caution.
Rowe, whose Chicago-based utility company owns 17 nuclear reactors, more plants than any other utility, also says his company won't invest in a new plant until there is more progress in dealing with reactor waste. A proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has had a string of setbacks and the date for its completion is optimistically put at 2012.
Still, Exelon and two other utilities, Dominion and Entergy, have separately applied to the NRC for early site permits for reactors with the idea of shortening the licensing process if a decision is made to go ahead with one.
"There is a growing recognition that if we are going to meet our future need for electric energy and also reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases ... we simply must build the next generation of advanced nuclear energy plants," said Marilyn Kray, an Exelon vice president and head of the NuStart consortium.
In an interview, she said the goal is to preserve the nuclear option by testing the NRC's streamlined licensing process.
Also testing the water is Duke Energy, based in Charlotte, N.C., which, moving on its own, is talking about possibly having a new reactor operating by 2014. Dominion, based in Virginia, also is making plans to seek an NRC reactor construction permit. Neither company has made a final decision.
The Energy Department is paying half the cost of the various initial licensing efforts, including an expected $46 million next year.
"Adding nuclear capacity ... makes a lot of sense," says Henry "Brew" Barron, in charge of nuclear operations at Duke Power, a subsidiary of Duke Energy that serves 2 million customers in the Carolinas. By 2014, Duke will need at least one more large power plant to meet demand in one of the country's fastest growing regions. Many other utilities around the country are facing similar electricity demands.
Once the logjam is broken with the first orders, the U.S. reactor market could become the world's second largest, after China, given expected growth in U.S. electricity demand and environmental and cost concerns about rival fossil fuels, says Andy White, president of GE Energy's nuclear business.
"We've probably never had a better situation," White said in an interview, predicting that 60 or more new reactors may be built in the United States over the next 20 to 30 years with several designs finding customers.
ON THE NET
Energy Department: http://www.ne.doe.gov/
NuStart: http://www.nustartenergy.com/
Westinghouse: http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/
General Electric: http://www.gepower.com/businesses/ge_nuclear/en/index.htm
Framatome: http://www.framatome.com/
Areva: http://www.areva.com
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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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