Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 15, 2005
Senators reject stopgap nuclear waste storage
Reid calls House directive to move spent fuel 'half-baked'
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Two senators on Tuesday rejected the idea of storing nuclear waste at stopgap government sites while work continues to develop a repository at Yucca Mountain.
With the Nevada project facing undetermined delays, the House passed an annual Energy Department spending bill three weeks ago directing the department to start moving spent nuclear fuel from commercial utilities to one or two federally managed locations by 2007.
But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the House proposal "half-baked," and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said it was "totally inadequate."
Domenici is chairman of the Senate's energy and water subcommittee, while Reid is the top Democrat. They laid out their positions as the subcommittee approved a $31.2 billion spending bill covering energy programs, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and an assortment of smaller agencies.
With Reid as an author, the energy and water bill customarily contains millions of dollars in spending targeted to Nevada. The latest earmarks $333.2 million to the state. The list includes $45 million for geothermal, solar and hydrogen energy research conducted at Nevada universities.
For Yucca Mountain, the Senate panel allocated $577 million to continue the project in 2006. That is the same amount Congress passed for this year and $64 million less than President Bush requested for next year.
The state of Nevada would be given $3.5 million to monitor DOE activity on Yucca, while Nevada counties and Inyo County in California would share $8.5 million. Nye County would get an additional $500,000 as the repository host county.
With Domenici and Reid opposed, aides said the Senate bill does not address interim nuclear waste storage. That means a House-Senate conference committee will need to negotiate the issue later this year.
But the senators said they are strongly opposed the approach taken by House lawmakers.
The House allocated $10 million extra and told the energy department to spend another $10 million from a transportation account to begin work on interim storage.
The bill directed Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to identify candidate sites within four months, a prospect that alarmed states containing possible targets like former nuclear weapons plants and closed military bases.
Domenici said he was open to considering changes to U.S. nuclear waste policy that could include interim nuclear waste storage, but "you can't start a program of that importance with $10 million and a paragraph."
Reid said changes are "going to be hard work and involve a lot of give and take and consensus building. All the House has done has been to stir up members in highly unproductive ways."
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Reno Gazette-Journal
June 14, 2005
House panel subpoenas Yucca worker
Doug Abrahms
WASHINGTON — A House committee subpoenaed a government scientist on Tuesday for failing to cooperate with an investigation into whether documents have been falsified relating to work in building a nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
The House Government Reform Committee subpoenaed Joseph Hevesi, an employee of the U.S. Geological Survey who worked on the Yucca Mountain project in the late 1990s, to testify at a June 29 hearing.
“He chose not to cooperate,’ said Chad Bungard, a committee spokesman. “We were left with no choice but to issue a subpoena.’
U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Henderson, heads a Government Reform subcommittee looking into whether the Energy Department or other government agencies falsified documents to push the Yucca Mountain project forward.
E-mail among employees talks about falsifying records, but it remains unclear whether that relates to quality-assurance work or whether the science surrounding the nuclear waste dump is suspect. The USGS inspector general also is investigating.
Hevesi, who works in Sacramento, could not be reached for comment.
The USGS will not provide a lawyer to Hevesi or other staff members summoned to testify before Porter´s subcommittee, spokesman A.B. Wade said. Hevesi still works for USGS while the inspector general´s office finishes a criminal probe of the situation.
The agency already has provided 2,878 pages to Porter´s subcommittee, including a 4-inch-thick stack from Hevesi, Wade said.
“There is a huge desire (by USGS) to have the facts out there about the validity of the science,’ Wade said.
Nevada lawmakers have been hoping this investigation would lead to the end of the Energy Department´s quest to build Yucca Mountain. The project has hit other setbacks, including an adverse ruling by a federal appeals court and limited funding from Congress.
But Porter has had a hard time scheduling a hearing on Yucca Mountain because USGS employees won´t testify. When Hevesi testifies, he could invoke his right to not incriminate himself.
“We´re just trying to get the information, and we´re having a hard time,’ the government reform committee´s Bungard said.
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 15, 2005
Yucca officials meet in Pahrump for railroad talk
By Phillip Gomez
PVT
Some 40 people - including the United States Department of Energy's top officials for the Yucca Mountain project, vice presidents of engineering and construction firms hoping to receive federal contracts, Nevada Assemblyman Rod Sherer and a dozen members of the United States Transportation Council - quietly met in Pahrump last week to discuss future economic developments at Yucca Mountain.
The workshop at the Community College of Southern Nevada was to share information about the practical implications of building the Yucca Mountain Repository, scheduled for opening around 2010 if approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In its first face-to-face meeting, the group addressed business opportunities connected with the prospective shipments of radioactive waste in high volumes over 40 years from 80 sites in 39 states.
At the center of the discussion was the National Transportation Project through the Caliente corridor - otherwise known as the Caliente Railroad through Lincoln, Nye and Esmeralda counties.
Follow-up meetings, beginning next month, will take place over the course of the next five to seven years as government and industry work together laying the infrastructure for the Yucca rail line, a nuclear cask transportation tracking ("nerve") center, receiving facilities and a cask-storage and transportation fleet management facility.
There is even talk of a manufacturing plant being constructed in central Nevada to build the large storage concrete and stainless steel casks to transport the nuclear waste. Mention was also made of a Nevada corporation with experience in rail transport possibly coming forward to manage and operate the Caliente Railroad.
The 320-mile railroad, if authorized for construction, would be the first rail line of its size to be built in the nation in 70 years. Even if the railroad is not constructed as the Energy Department's dedicated means of transporting spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, expansive facilities for receiving, tracking and storing trucked-in nuclear waste casks would still have to be constructed.
Nye County Commission Chairwoman Candice Trummell, who also moderated the meeting's agenda, called the daylong meeting to order at 8 a.m.. Among those speaking was John Arthur, the Energy Department's chief project manager for Yucca Mountain. Arthur provided an update on the project. Other speakers at the workshop discussed technical issues related to surface receiving facilities for the nuclear waste, cask storage technology and maintenance, and rail and truck transport operations.
The meeting was sponsored by the Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group in cooperation with the U.S. Transportation Council, the lead government agency responsible for informing the public on nuclear material transportation issues, policy and business issues, safety, emergency planning and security.
If the government decides to proceed with Yucca Mountain, 3,000 metric tons of radioactive materials would be transported to the Nevada Test Site each year. Getting congressional funding for the railroad, following that for construction of the nuclear repository itself, might prove difficult, conference participants allowed. The earliest that construction of the rail line and receiving facilities would begin is tough to predict, but could start before the repository in order to supply the construction materials by rail, officials said.
Building the rail line would take about four years and 1,000 workers, according to Energy Department officials at the conference. Numerous subcontracting jobs for surveyors, bridge builders and other professions and trades are anticipated for section-line work that officials say would occur simultaneously along the corridor route.
The longest discussions centered on the Energy Department's willingness to go after skilled local subcontractors in filling the myriad of jobs necessary to the project's completion - not only for the railroad, but for ongoing operations of the receiving facilities, inter-modal trucking operations and for maintenance of the waste storage casks.
Affected county leaders wanted government officials to make a firm commitment for "set-asides" for small businesses within the central Nevada region, giving preferential treatment to tradesmen in the three counties along the rail line corridor. In the Energy Department's Requests for Qualifications, the means by which the big contractors bid on aspects of design and construction, county leaders wanted the department to target those stakeholders.
But the officials, while sympathetic to the idea, remained noncommittal, saying it was too early to make any promises without more firm data at hand.
"There's not an agenda to shut out the (local) community," said Karen Leigh Kimball, vice president of Parsons Corp., an engineering firm that wants to design and build the government's facilities in conjunction with Kiewit Federal Group Inc., also represented at the workshop by its vice president. "In fact," said Kimball, "it's the other way around. At this point in time, however, there's just not enough information about the schedule and funding profile to make commitments to the (local) community."
Surface facilities receiving truck and train transports of nuclear casks would be constructed outside the main Yucca Mountain Repository with its miles of underground storage tunnels. The surface compound on the Nevada Test Site would have a perimeter fence topped with barbed wire. As the concrete pads holding the casks containing low-level radioactive waste are filled up, new pads would be established and the fence-line expanded to include them.
The compound upon full build-out would include transfer facilities, warehouses, waste storage pads, canister and waste-package handling facilities, heavy equipment and light vehicle maintenance facilities, motor pool area, rail car switchyards and truck staging areas, security stations, fire-rescue and medical facilities, administration buildings, fuel depots, craft shops and equipment storage facilities, generator facilities, septic tank and leach fields, a utility facility, cooling tower and evaporation ponds and a visitor center.
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 15, 2005
Burning Issue
State of emergency
Nye County Commission to Dedicate $750,000 for Abatement, Community Outreach
By Doug McMurdo
PVT
The Nye County Board of Commissioners on Friday declared Pahrump in a state of emergency in response to the extreme wildfire risk in the valley - and set aside a maximum $750,000 to abate the danger caused by an overabundance of brush created as a result of a wetter than average winter.
The money in part will be used to purchase equipment needed by emergency responders from both the town and county. Nye County Emergency Services Director Brent Jones, who has and will continue to meet with local, state and federal agencies regarding the issue, is compiling a detailed list.
Jones should have a plan to present when the commissioners meet Tuesday in Pahrump, but County Manager Michael Maher was granted authority to appropriate specific funds prior to that date once Jones and top managers from other agencies consult and come up with a plan.
A portion of the funding will be set aside to launch a mass-media campaign designed to alert tourists and motorists on their way through town of the risk. Local media outlets will participate in the effort and road signs warning of the fire risk could be planted at the entrances to town.
Three major brushfires and roughly 100 minor blazes have kept Pahrump Valley Fire-Rescue, Bureau of Land Management and United States Forest Service crews busy for the past month.
With the valley poised to experience its first triple-digit temperatures this week, local officials are bracing for the worst - and not just in Pahrump.
All areas north of the valley, including Beatty, Tonopah, Ione, Smoky Valley and Gabbs, Sunnyside, Manhattan and Amargosa Valley will also become tinderboxes once the hotter weather reaches the higher elevations.
Commissioners discussed the need to declare an emergency since doing so comes with strings attached. When formal declarations of an emergency are made by political subdivisions, a process begins in which applications for aid could be made to state and federal agencies.
Chairwoman Candice Trummell and Commissioner Midge Carver were reluctant to make the declaration, but not because they don't believe the fire risk is real.
The funds could come from Payments Equal to Taxes the Department of Energy pays Nye County for its use of Yucca Mountain, the nation's proposed storage facility for its high-level radioactive waste.
Over the years the Energy Department has paid millions of dollars to Nye County, but there are strict guidelines as to where the money could be spent. According to Chief Civil Deputy District Attorney Ron Kent, PETT funds could be used to mitigate unforeseen disasters. Trummell argued against making the declaration, as did Carver, since this summer's fire risk was, to their minds, foreseeable. Trummell said the county should have put a plan in place earlier this spring, and said she, too, was remiss.
Carver was similarly concerned; both she and Trummell worried the declaration would set an unwanted precedent.
In the end commissioners voted 4-1 to make the formal declaration with Trummell voting nay.
Commissioner Patricia Cox called for Friday's special meeting, saying the county needed to be proactive rather than reactive. "We have a (potential) bonfire on our hands," she said in pushing for the emergency declaration. "I don't want to see lives or property lost."
Carver said there was a law on the books that puts the onus on property owners to clear their land of fire and other hazards. She noted the potential for fire hazards is greater in rural Nevada since fewer people landscape, and Carver wanted to know how involved everyday citizens would be in clearing their own land. Carver pointed out that people responsible for starting fires that impact their neighbors' would he held liable for any damages incurred.
Carver ultimately made the motion to formally declare Pahrump in a state of emergency. Following Commissioner Joni Eastley's second, Trummell voiced her concerns regarding the need to do so. "We're being reactive," she said, adding, "We've known about this but haven't done anything, the town hasn't done anything and certain property owners haven't done anything ... I know tragedies have occurred, but how does this constitute an emergency?"
Cox said the agencies involved in fire suppression and prevention believe the dry, hot conditions combined with thick vegetation pose an extreme fire risk in Pahrump - not to mention the fact fireworks can be heard exploding in all parts of the valley - all of which constitute a crisis. "If we don't take emergency action we'll have more loss of life and property," Cox said.
The comment prompted Trummell to question whether PETT funds could be used, saying the evidence of the risk has been plain to see. "This is not unforeseen circumstances; we knew of the potential hazards and we let that get out of control."
Emergency Services Director Jones said talk of having to use PETT was premature. Instead, he suggested the county tap into available state resources. Another concern of Jones' involved weed abatement and the difficulty the county would have accessing private property in need of redress. "We can't just go run tractors through their land," he said. "Once the declaration is made it comes to me to approach state emergency management to see what the state could provide. What they don't (give us) then we can come to the county."
Trummell wasn't willing to delay action and suggested the county use PETT funds, but Jones mirrored her own concerns when he questioned whether the fire risk constituted a "catastrophic, unforeseen incident."
Commissioner Gary Hollis argued the fire risk was unforeseen. "I don't think this board realized we were going to get our annual rainfall in 45 days. We didn't know Mother Nature would do this. We could not foresee that weeds would be three and four times bigger than usual."
"I can't say we haven't watched the weeds grow," countered Trummell. "I'm not abdicating responsibility. I should have had this on an agenda a month ago. We could have been doing things (like) contacting absentee landowners."
Kent said his reading of the definition of an emergency - as it pertains to PETT funds - met the criteria; and he advised commissioners there was merit to the formal declaration of an emergency.
Resident Sally Devlin said the onus was on Nye County to remedy the problem. She said the county should "mow down the weeds and bill the owners."
Pahrump Town Board member Paul Willis addressed commissioners just moments after the town declared its own emergency. Speaking as a resident and not necessarily as an official, Willis said the county's failure to act earlier should not be the citizens' burden to bear. "The cows are out of the barn," he said. "Something needs to be done."
Town Manager Dave Richards also urged commissioners to make the declaration. Echoing Jones' sentiments, Richards said the emergency would set in motion funding, resources, and manpower from the state. More important, the declaration would pave the way for mitigation of private property and allow the local government to charge the homeowner.
Dan Simmons, a member of a regional conservation district said making the declaration would provide statutory authority to perform weed abatement, noting the $30,000 to $40,000 the Southern Nye County Conservation District has already spent on mitigation was "a drop in the bucket" compared to what is required today in Pahrump - and tomorrow in the remainder of the county.
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Nuke Waste Watcher
June 15, 2005
Eternity metal
Ron Bourgoin
Thanksgiving would be an appropriate time to open a repository: while Americans are stuffing turkeys, the DOE can be stuffing a mountain.
The DOE says the cans it'll stuff in mountains will hold waste for at least 10,000 years. The newest forever metal from which cans will be made was developed at Lehigh University. [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/lu-nav040405.php]
I don't have a problem with claims made about the lifetime of can metal. What I have a problem with is man working inside the mountain repository. Cans will be smashed into cans, and cans will be smashed against mountain walls. Cans will be put on top of cans, and the ones on the bottom will spill their contents. Before the final sealant's applied to close the mountain off for eternity, lethal uranium and plutonium will already be migrating outward to soil and ground water. Politicians can talk all they want to about how cans will simply be retrieved in case high levels of radiation are measured coming from the mountain, but the fact is no-one's going to do that. If it takes 30 years to fill a mountain, it'll certainly take no less to empty it, and by that time it'll be too late to save the area.
We have to remember that Yucca Mountain, for instance, is slated to be stuffed with 20,000 cans. That job's got to get very boring after a while, which is when problems will begin. We can all expect the first 100 cans will be entered in the mountain according to specs, especially with the public and smiling DOE, NRC, and EPA officials watching. But what worries me is what bored mountain stuffers will do with can numbers 101 to 20,000.
Whether Yucca opens or not doesn't erase the fact that this will happen in any repository.
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Common Voice
June 15, 2005
235 sites down to 12
Ron Bourgoin
Several people do not realize that the list of second national repositories is only in abeyance. That list was constructed by the Department of Energy over a period of 30 years, and no new list has been developed.
In 1957, the National Academies of Science decided that the best way to remove the danger of high-level nuclear waste in our midst was to deep bury it 1000 feet underground in rock. The Energy Department then began a study of all possible rock structures in America that could safely isolate nuclear wastes. The study produced 235 possible sites. In the 80s, the twelve best sites were moved to the top of the list as candidates for the nation's second nuclear repository. A report of those sites was presented to Congress on January 16, 1986. From that list, Congress is to pick five sites for further study, which means collection of geologic and environmental data and socioeconomic studies. In congressional parlance, this will occur when the final Area Recommendation Report is issued, which is expected as early as January, 2007.
Five southeastern sites are on the list of the final dozen. It is expected Congress will pick a site and an alternate. I expect the South will be selected for at least one of those.
There's talk that Yucca Mountain will be expanded to hold twice as much waste as was originally planned, but there's serious doubt right now that Yucca will even open. Even if it does, an additional repository's needed anyway for defense wastes from Savannah River Site and Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
I think it's smart to be vigilant, which is all I ask my readers to be. Just remember that the list of second repositories is merely on standby.
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ENS
June 15, 2005
Nuclear, Renewables Spending Up in Senate Budget Bill
The Senate Energy and Water Subcommittee today approved a $31 billion Energy & Water Development Appropriations bill. The bill funds the Department of Energy and the Corps of Engineers and will be considered by the full Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
The Senate bill would spend $1.49 billion more than President George W. Bush requested and more than the House has approved in its version of the budget bill. It exceeds the current year level by $1.4 billion.
Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, chairs the Subcommittee on Energy and Water of the Senate Appropriations Committee. (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator)
The bill provides an increase of $100 million above the President's request to support the Department of Energy Science facilities, $240 million above the President´s request for the Office of Science, and an increase of nearly a $1 billion above his request for the Army Corps of Engineers.
While the subcommittee raised funding for renewable energy, hydrogen technology and nuclear power above the President's request, the budget for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada was slashed.
Nevada Senator Harry Reid cut the Yucca Mountain budget to $577 million, half of what the Department of Energy said it would need to keep the project on track. As a senior member of the Appropriations Committee and the top Democrat on the Energy and Water Subcommittee, Reid writes the bill with his Republican counterpart every year.
Funding for Yucca Mountain in the bill is at the current year levels but is $64 million below the President´s request. No language has been included on interim storage of the nation's nuclear waste, now accumulating at the nation's 103 nuclear power plants and dozens of other facilities across the country.
For Nevada, this means Reid is able to cut the funding for the Yucca Mountain project and delay its opening. The entire Nevada Congressional delegation, the governor, and the mayor of Las Vegas are all opposed to the nuclear waste repository.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada is a longstanding opponent of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility. (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator)
“I don´t believe Yucca Mountain will ever open,’ said Reid. “Every year I cut the budget because it´s a project that´s fraught with fraud and mismanagement and the more time we have, the more the facts come to light. There is no way to safely open a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.’
For renewable energy research and development the Senate bill provides $1.25 billion, which is $53 million above the President´s request and $5 million above the current year level.
If the bill is enacted, hydrogen technology research would be funded at $182.69 million as requested. Biomass research is funded at $92 million, up $20 million above the request, and clean vehicle technologies is funded at $199 million.
The Senate bill provides $449 million for nuclear energy research and development, which is $60 million above the President´s request and $64.3 million above the current year level.
Of that nuclear research total, the Nuclear Power 2010 program was funded at $76 million.
When spent fuel is first removed from a reactor, it is placed in a pool of water contained in a steel-lined concrete basin. After it has cooled somewhat, some commercial power plants and government facilities move it to dry-storage containers. (Photo courtesy DOE)
The Nuclear Power 2010 program, introduced in 2002, is a joint government/industry cost-shared effort to identify sites for new nuclear power plants, as well as to develop and bring to market advanced nuclear plant technologies. The program also aims to evaluate the business case for building new nuclear power plants, and demonstrate untested regulatory processes.
It all leads to an industry decision in the next few years to seek Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval to build and operate at least one new advanced nuclear power plant in the United States.
The Energy & Water Development Appropriations bill earmarks $45 million for a Next Generation Nuclear Plant which would use advanced technology.
Generation IV nuclear, which would develop more advanced nuclear technology would receive $60 million if the bill becomes law, and the nuclear Advanced Fuel Concepts Initiative would receive $85 million.
National Nuclear Security Administration Nonproliferation activities are funded at $1.73 billion by the Senate bill, which is $91.8 million above the President´s request and $305 million above the current year level.
At $368 million, the bill fully funds construction of the country's first MOX nuclear fuel fabrication plant. Mixed plutonium and uranium oxide fuel (MOX) is used to power nuclear plants in Japan and in France, but has never been used in the United States.
The Energy Department plans to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium by turning it into MOX fuel for power generation, and plans a MOX fabrication plant at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a national laboratory.
The Energy Department is scheduled to begin testing the use of MOX fuel rod assemblies at Duke Energy´s Catawba reactor in South Carolina beginning later this spring.
Senator Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican, chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, which will hear the subcommittee's bill on Thursday. He also serves as member of the subcommittee. (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator)
If the tests are considered successful, a consortium including Duke and the French state-owned company Cogema is expected to ask federal regulators for approval to use MOX in its reactors starting in 2010.
But critics fear the use of fuel made from nuclear warheads in a U.S. commercial nuclear reactor poses security and environmental risks, and could spur U.S. nuclear weapons production.
“The world will be less safe if the U.S. government can get away with using plutonium, a strategic military material, in commercial nuclear power stations,’ according to Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Research Service in Washington, DC. Others worry that MOX fuel fabrication will worsen the nation's nuclear waste disposal problems.
The Senate bill provides a total budget of $734.3 million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an increase of $41 million over the President´s request and $41 million above the current year level. Funding will be used tos upport the licensing of next generation reactors.
The bill would require the Commission to undertake a security assessment of on-site pool storage of spent nuclear fuel.
The bill increases nuclear detection research and development funding by $20 million, and provides $10 million to address emerging threats.
Global Threat Reduction Initiative funding is up $11 million over current levels. This program removes or secures high-risk nuclear and radiological materials and equipment around the world that the government believes pose a threat to the United States and to the international community. One part of the program seeks to eliminate stockpiles of Russian-origin highly enriched uranium, that could be converted into nuclear weapons, by assisting eligible countries to convert their research reactors to low-enriched uranium that cannot be used in weapons.
For environmental cleanup at Department of Energy nuclear facilities, the Senate bill provides $7.3 billion, which is $324 million above the President´s request.
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Deseret News
June 15, 2005
Huntsman makes anti-nuke pitch
He gets ear of energy chief at conference for West's governors
By Lisa Riley Roche
Deseret Morning News
BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — Before leaving his first Western Governors' Association meeting, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. managed to make a private pitch against a high-level nuclear waste site in Utah to U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
"I'm not expecting any yes or no immediately, because I know how these things work," Huntsman said. "They take time to play out. . . . You work the process and you work the key decision-makers."
The chance to spend 15 minutes with Bodman was one of the main reasons Huntsman attended the three-day annual meeting of the WGA, which ended Tuesday. The governor also was able to have approved a resolution raising concerns about nuclear waste storage and transport.
Huntsman, who opposes a temporary high-level nuclear waste facility proposed on the Goshute Indian reservation in Tooele County, has raised a number of safety and security concerns about the project with various administration officials.
Tuesday, the governor said he was told by Bodman that the energy bill pending before Congress includes $10 million to study storing nuclear waste where it is produced. That's the solution preferred by Huntsman and by officials from Nevada, where a permanent storage site is proposed for Yucca Mountain.
Such a study, the governor said, "hasn't been done before. . . . It's a step in the direction from a public policy standpoint I think bodes well for perhaps a longer-term policy fix."
Legislation calling for on-site storage has already been introduced in Congress by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
During his meeting with Bodman, Huntsman said he "covered the on-site aspects that he knows I'm pushing. And, of course, he wanted to remind me there are two sides."
Also discussed was the potential danger of transporting nuclear waste from facilities around the country to be stored in Utah.
"I once again stated how outlandish I thought it was from a security standpoint, and from a long-term storage standpoint, to be putting 4,000 above-ground casks filled with that material downwind from 2 million people," the governor said. "It's not that a lot of people disagree with what I'm saying. It's just getting the process to work."
The resolution that he and Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn co-sponsored on nuclear waste should help, Huntsman said. There was no discussion Tuesday on that or any of the 27 resolutions that were approved by the governors.
But there were months of work on the language done behind the scenes. Huntsman's chief of staff, Jason Chaffetz, spent two days at this ski resort finalizing the resolution. While it's not an outright statement in support of on-site storage, it does suggest it as an option.
That's a big step, Huntsman said.
"It's important. We worked hard on it. We vetted it with all of the other governors. The fact that it survived, I think, says something very good about the momentum that this policy option is getting," he said.
Two governors attending the meeting — both Democrats — said they support Huntsman's stronger stand on the issue. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said the WGA statement could be revised at a future meeting to reflect that stance.
"I'm with Huntsman," Richardson said. "So we'll continue working on this. Maybe we'll propose another one at the November meeting."
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano said she, too, prefers on-site storage. But asked if some of the 18 governors who make up the WGA aren't ready to go that far, Napolitano said, "I think that's a fair statement."
The Arizona governor, who was named chairwoman of the WGA Tuesday, said concerns about transportation and homeland security need to be considered. She cited an accident in Arizona involving the transportation of low-level waste.
"The transportation issues are serious," Napolitano said.
The governors talked energy before ending their meeting, hearing from Bodman as well as a panel of experts. During that session, Huntsman asked the energy secretary about how states should look at renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power.
Bodman didn't have an answer for the Utah governor, suggesting that should be left for "the market to take its rightful role."
Huntsman said later he would like the state to pursue alternative energy sources.
"I'm very open-minded on this subject," he said. "My bias would be to take a very serious look at the renewable options. . . . I think the time is right as the United States, and indeed the region, are thinking through longer-term energy strategies to open this discussion."
Huntsman said he will direct his newly formed energy policy advisory group to study such sources, including geothermal. He said within a few weeks, a state energy adviser should be selected who will work for the governor's economic development office.
E-mail: lisa@desnews.com
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Salt Lake Tribune
June 15, 2005
Huntsman resolutions to guide power policies
By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune
BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. - Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. dove into his first trip to an annual meeting of the Western Governors' Association, co-sponsoring eight resolutions that will guide both the organization and gubernatorial policies during the coming year.
The resolutions covered the nation's economic competitiveness, regional electricity policy-making, transportation of spent nuclear fuel, air quality in the West, future management of national forests and public lands, cleanup of Energy Department facilities and coal-bed methane development.
Developing the resolutions takes months. "It is a very formal process," Huntsman said. "There is some emphasis on a unified voice coming out of the Western governors."
As it happened, all 27 resolutions proffered were accepted unanimously.
Huntsman teamed with Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn on the nuclear waste transportation resolution that included a provision that the federal government should not allow storage of the waste at interim sites in any state without the express consent of the governor.
Utah and Nevada's interests are inextricable on this issue. Against Nevada's will, Congress determined a permanent federal spent nuclear fuel repository should be located at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.
That facility has faced persistent obstacles. Supposed to open by 1998, its opening now has been pushed back to 2015, if it ever opens at all.
Meanwhile, a consortium of eight nuclear power utilities called Private Fuel Storage signed a lease with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes to build an interim facility on the reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City to store 44,000 tons of spent fuel rods. The state of Utah opposes the facility, especially as Yucca's viability diminishes.
The Huntsman-Guinn resolution supported establishing a permanent solution for management of spent nuclear fuel, but also urged federal agencies to look beyond finding a site to include coordinating with the states and tribes a safe transportation program.
The resolution also urges consideration of allowing the nuclear waste to remain at the reactor sites and says the Energy Department shouldn't be allowed to privatize any of the transportation or preparation.
"People at the highest level of government do take these [resolutions] seriously, so I'm encouraged," Huntsman said.
Huntsman, a Republican, co-sponsored three resolutions with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, covering economic competitiveness, Western air quality and open space.
Richardson said he would work with Huntsman on plans to hold a Western presidential primary in 2008.
"We would like to see the West not be a flyover region in presidential elections," said Richardson. "Several states are already teaming up."
Tammy Kikuchi, Huntman's spokeswoman, said the Utah governor "has been talking to Governor Richardson about this. I think it's pretty much in an idea state."
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Tri-City Herald
June 15, 2005
Senate would add to Hanford budget
By Annette Cary and Les Blumenthal,
Herald staff writers
A Senate appropriations subcommittee added $34 million back into the Hanford fiscal year 2006 budget Tuesday, but that still would leave the proposed budget more than $230 million below this year's spending.
"We had to work hard to get what we did," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of the Senate energy and water appropriations subcommittee.
It's unlikely legal cleanup deadlines for the Hanford nuclear reservation can be met at the level of the Senate budget, she said.
In February the president proposed cutting the Hanford budget of nearly $2.1 billion for 2005 by $267 million in fiscal year 2006.
But because security spending would be increased, the actual cut to cleanup dollars would be closer to $297 million.
The U.S. House took up the proposed budget this spring and restored about $200 million of the reduced funding under the leadership of Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.
The Senate subcommittee budget that would restore less money still must be approved by the full committee, then go before the Senate for a vote. If the Senate's Hanford budget remains the same, a conference committee then will have to reconcile the difference between the $34 million added back under the current Senate budget and the $200 million the House voted to restore.
In the meantime, Hanford contractors are preparing for layoffs under what's certain to be a reduced budget when the fiscal year starts Oct. 1.
CH2M Hill Hanford Group is prepared to cut 350 jobs if no money is restored to the Hanford budget.
Fluor Hanford, while not saying layoffs are tied to budget reductions, has announced that up to 1,000 jobs could be cut in September.
And Bechtel National will finish cutting nearly 1,000 jobs this month because of concerns about earthquake standards at the $5.8 billion vitrification plant under construction and other difficulties.
The House was able to restore more cleanup money for Hanford than the Senate because it agreed to cut money from science and water projects also included in the bill, Murray said.
Overall, DOE's environmental management programs received $128 million more from the Senate subcommittee than the president requested. The largest part of the Senate increase, a little over a quarter of it, would go to Hanford.
However, Hanford money accounted for almost half of the $550 million cut in the president's proposal for environmental management programs across the nation.
"This budget is very challenging," Murray said. "The president has made it very difficult."
State officials are concerned that as sites in more states are cleaned up, fewer states will have a stake in cleaning up nuclear weapons sites contaminated in World War II and the Cold War, said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the Washington State Department of Ecology.
"We expect to see attention to it by Congress diminish," she said.
The state has been encouraged to see the Washington congressional delegation pulling together to restore the administration cuts to the Hanford budget, she said, "But we know it's an uphill battle."
The $34 million restored by Murray would be used at the Hanford tank farms, where fields of huge underground tanks hold 53 million gallons of radioactive waste left from the production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. Hanford workers are emptying and preparing to close the oldest of the tanks, some of which date from World War II.
The president's budget cut tank farm spending by $89 million. The House version of the budget restored about $60 million of the cut.
The Senate bill would not restore any of the $64 million cut from the $690 million budget for construction of the vitrification plant to turn tank waste into a stable glass form for disposal.
That reduced budget amount will guarantee a delay in the start of vitrification of waste and is in violation of the legally binding Tri-Party Agreement, which regulates Hanford cleanup, Murray said. The construction schedule already is expected to be delayed by concerns over earthquake standards for key parts of the vitrification plant.
The Senate budget also would not restore any of the cuts to the budget for work now performed by contractor Fluor Hanford, including cleanup of soil and ground water in the central plateau and preparation of plutonium-tainted waste for disposal in a federal repository in New Mexico.
The House version provided limited restoration of funding for Fluor projects, including $15 million for ground water protection, $5 million for urgent infrastructure maintenance, $8 million for waste to be sent to New Mexico and $15.8 million for work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant.
The Senate bill also did not include a boost for cleanup along the Columbia River corridor under a new contract awarded to Washington Closure. The House version added $20 million for the project to allow minimum contract funding for 2006.
"The president's budget didn't meet the (Tri-Party Agreement)," Murray said. "I doubt the Senate's will or the House's will. The administration is making it very difficult to meet the milestones of the TPA."
Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill included no funding to study temporary storage of commercial spent nuclear fuel at DOE cleanup sites such as Hanford.
The House report asked that DOE begin considering storing the fuel temporarily at Hanford or other DOE cleanup sites until a permanent solution is found.
The fuel, along with high-level radioactive waste turned into glass at Hanford, is planned to be sent to Yucca Mountain, Nev., but the opening of the repository has been delayed until at least 2012.
More commercial waste already is being stored at 129 private and government sites across the nation than Yucca Mountain will be able to hold under its current configuration.
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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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