Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, June 16, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
June 15, 2005
Lawmakers spar over nuke storage
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON -- The newly hatched House plan to begin storing the nation's high-level nuclear waste at temporary sites is on a collision course with the Senate, which could doom it for this year.
Two key senators on Tuesday said House legislation that offers the Energy Department $10 million to launch the plan was woefully short on funds and specifics.
A massive new interim program cannot be started with "$10 million and a paragraph" of legislation, said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water programs.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the House plan a "half-baked" proposal.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, had inserted the interim storage provisions in a House energy and water spending bill, saying that temporary sites were prudent given all the obstacles that have delayed Yucca Mountain, which Congress selected as the nation's permanent waste storage repository.
But Domenici said he doesn't want the legislation included in this year's energy and water bill.
Domenici's opposition will make it difficult for the interim plan to survive when a panel of House-Senate negotiators begin meeting to iron out differences on the broader spending bill.
Reid has said the nation should simply leave nuclear waste where it currently sits, on-site at nuclear plants nationwide. Nuclear utilities say that plan is not a long-term solution, and they have sued the government because Congress agreed to begin hauling waste away to a repository by 1998.
But Reid still plans to revive his legislation that would allow the Energy Department to "take title" -- ownership -- of nuclear waste at the plants. Reid on Tuesday said he had not decided how to best re-introduce the legislation this year.
The energy and water spending bill also included $577 million for Yucca Mountain in the next fiscal year, beginning Oct. 1. President Bush had requested $651 million and the House approved $661, which included the extra $10 million for the interim program. The differences set up an annual tussle over the Yucca budget, which usually plays out behind closed doors where Reid negotiates to slash Yucca funds.
"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," Reid said in a statement. "There is no way to safely open a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain."
The Senate bill also includes more than $300 million for Nevada projects, including money for flood control and environmental programs, as well as increased funding for homeland security training at the Nevada Test Site, Reid aides said. Included in the bill:
•••Yucca program oversight money -- $3.5 million for Nevada, $8.5 million for eight Nevada counties affected by Yucca to split, plus a special $500,000 pot for Nye County.
•••Roughly $45 million for Test Site programs, including money for subcritical nuclear weapons experiments, bio-terrorism first-responders programs, and general upgrades, including road maintenance.
•••Research at UNLV, including: $4 million for a solar-produced hydrogen program; $4 million for hydrogen fuel cell research and development; $4 million for a renewable hydrogen refueling station system; $3 million for photoelectric chemical production of hydrogen; and $4 million for biofuels development.
•••$2.5 million for UNLV's Institute for Security Studies, which offers a master's degree in homeland security.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 16, 2005
Editorial: 'Solutions' spell danger
Las Vegas Sun
What to do with lethal nuclear waste is a question whose answer continues to elude and divide members of Congress. The House last month inserted a provision in a spending bill that would commit $10 million for the Energy Department to start a temporary, aboveground storage program by 2006. The provision was the idea of Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations energy subcommittee. It would settle the waste on federal sites in Idaho, Washington and perhaps in other states.
Hobson argued that the proposed permanent solution -- burial at Southern Nevada's Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- is so mired in legal and scientific obstacles that temporary sites are needed. He is wrong to believe that temporary storage is an interim solution, for some of the same reasons that permanent burial at Yucca is wrong. Transporting the waste to the sites, for example, would endanger every community along the routes. The risk of an accident is a risk the nation cannot afford to take.
Fortunately, a Senate Appropriations subcommittee dropped Hobson's provision from the larger spending bill. The action leaves the House and Senate divided on what to do with the waste that is accumulating at nuclear power plants. In our view, underground, permanent storage at Yucca Mountain is an invitation to catastrophe, as is aboveground, temporary storage at federal sites.
Until an intelligent solution for disposal is found, we say leave the waste at the power plants, where it has been safely stored for decades.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 16, 2005
Gibbons demands administration account for fed funding shortfalls
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., on Wednesday prodded Bush administration officials to account for shortfalls in payments made by the federal government to states that are largely federally owned.
The PILT money is designed to help large swaths of Western states like Nevada where the federal government owns land and there is little tax base to support local services for the people who live there.
President Bush in his budget for the next fiscal year proposed about $200 million for the program known as Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILT, roughly a $26.8 million cut from last year. Interior Department officials have said that far more -- roughly $343 million -- would be needed to "fully fund" the program adequately.
The proposed Bush cuts would equal about a 12 percent cut for Nevada from last year, amounting to roughly $1.6 million less than the $13.5 it received last year.
Nevada lawmakers, and allies in other Western states with federal in-holdings, vowed to restore at least some of the money. The House has approved an Interior spending bill that allocates $242 million. The Senate version allocates $235 million, although the full Senate has not voted on it yet.
Nevada lawmakers have long made the case that PILT payments were falling short.
But in a congressional committee hearing Tuesday, Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary of Natural Resources and Environment said that "in a tight budget environment we make tough decisions about priorities."
Gibbons on Tuesday argued that PILT money is important to rural counties that cannot pay for schools, hospitals and other public services due to a low tax base.
At a meeting of the House Resources subcommittee on forests and forest health, Gibbons pointed to Nevada on a map. The map showed 85 percent of Nevada shaded red, depicting the percentage owned by the federal government.
"It's almost impossible to find the white, which is the private land," Gibbons said. "We have counties up there bigger than some states."
Gibbons sits on the Resources Committee. He is not a member of the forests subcommittee but was allowed to sit in on the meeting to plead his case.
"Nevada has been shortchanged by the federal government long enough," Gibbons said outside the hearing.
Nevada lawmakers have long sought other legislative remedies in Congress to make up for the fact that the federal government owns so much of the state. One of those laws, the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, allows for auctions of federal land in Clark County. Profits remain in Nevada and are used for land programs, as well as school and water programs.
That program has been the subject of controversy lately as profits from the land sales swell into the billions of dollars. The Bush administration has proposed funneling some of the proceeds into federal coffers, while Nevada lawmakers seek to keep the money in the state. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 16, 2005
Environmentalists give Nevada lawmakers mixed reviews
By Kathleen Hennessey
Associated Press
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Environmentalists call the 2005 Legislature's record on wildlife and conservation issues a mixed bag - praising water planning and energy initiatives, and bemoaning restrictions on land deals that could curb preservation efforts.
A bill giving Nevadans substantial tax incentives to use renewable energy and build "greener" buildings was a "wonderful step," said Tina Nappe, chairwoman of the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club. Nappe and others also praised a handful of water management initiatives as a sign the state is serious about long-term water planning.
But lawmakers received low marks for a new law restricting local governments from using eminent domain powers to preserve open space. The issue sparked a debate when Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, amended the bill to apply retroactively, jeopardizing the preservation of a 1,000-acres ranch south of Reno.
Environmental groups and local activists fought to remove the provision, but the final bill contained strict criteria for governments wanting to seize land for preservation.
"What it will prevent is using the powers of eminent domain to protect something like the Ballardini Ranch in the future," said Kaitlin Backlund, political director for the Nevada Conservation League.
Backlund also took issue with a new policy on all-terrain vehicles. Her group and others have been pushing state lawmakers to create a registration system for ATVs, which they say tear up fragile landscape when used recklessly.
Nevada is one of the few Western states that doesn't require ATVs to be registered. In a late-session compromise, lawmakers passed AB400 asking owners to display a sticker on the off-road vehicles proving they've paid sales tax.
Assemblyman Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, said the bill is step toward tracking ATV users and will help recapture millions of dollars in lost sales tax revenue.
Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, R-Reno, called the bill toothless, noting that there's no enforcement authority to oversee the program. She blamed the governor, who vowed not to raise taxes or fees, for a weak compromise.
"We should have imposed a fee and done it correctly," Leslie said. "Instead, we have a hybrid program that doesn't accomplish very much."
Environmental activists said lawmakers took incremental steps toward water planning and conservation.
Leslie's water planning bill, which would have required the state engineer to have a conservation plan for each county, died in committee. But it was replaced by a study exploring the effects of pumping water from rural counties to Las Vegas. SB62 also created a $1 million fund for rural counties wanting to hire experts to weigh in on the issue.
"It evens the playing field a little bit," she said. "It's still not even, but in sparsely populated counties, they just can't compete with the Southern Nevada Water Authority or private water companies."
Lawmakers approved funding for additional employees in the state water engineer's office and backed a bill from Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, that moves the now defunct division of water planning into that office.
Nappe said she hopes the move marks the beginning of a renewed focus on long-term water management.
"There's was no budget allocated with the division, but we'll be watching," she said.
On the state's most high-profile environmental issue, the Legislature made small cutbacks to a Yucca Mountain legal defense fund. But lawmakers insist they remain united with the governor in opposing the proposed nuclear waste dump, and a resolution voicing opposition passed easily through both houses.
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eMediaWire
June 16, 2005
Proposed Alternative to Yucca Mountain Project
Before Chernobyl, Soviet scientific officials were optimistic about the safety of building a reactor in Moscow´s Red Square. We now know the results of that tragic mistake. Despite this, the U.S. administration continues to support the claim that the Yucca Mountain storage is safe for 10,000 years! We must get the legislators to stop the Yucca Mountain Project. It's time to consider safer, less expensive alternatives. Take action and call your representatives now!
(PRWEB) June 16, 2005 -- As a former Ukrainian nuclear physicist, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, I have developed a process (patent pending) to safely convert about 95% of the nuclear waste into a usable fuel source. The process, involving a subcritical power module and a proliferation-resistant fuel cycle, would also eliminate the possibility of fuel meltdown and nuclear reactor explosions (please see some details at http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0401010).
Such a power module might be developed in 10 years at a cost of less than 15 billion dollars. This is minuscule compared with the cost of maintaining the safety and security of nuclear waste storage facilities for 10,000 years. A compact subcritical module, which is not radioactive when it is launched, could also serve as a vital component in NASA's deep space missions.
Public support is essential for us. You can help in two ways: first, by making your research facilities available for concept modeling or feasibility studies, and second, by contacting your representatives, so that these ideas may find a way to the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission headquarters.
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NPR (audio)
June 16, 2005
Plan Could Reduce Waste Sent to Yucca Mountain
by David Kestenbaum
Morning Edition, June 16, 2005 · There is new interest in a plan to recycle nuclear waste, which could then be used again in a reactor to make electricity. Reprocessing could also reduce the amount of material destined for Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
Japan and France reprocess their waste, and the United States used to. In the early 1970s there was a reprocessing plant in West Valley, N.Y. It took waste from nuclear plants, extracted the plutonium and shipped it back to a reactor that produced electricity.
Detractors say reprocessing would be prohibitively expensive and presents an unacceptable risk that the technology could be used by terrorists to extract plutonium for bombs.
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Forward
June 16, 2005
Forward Forum
'Green' Nuclear Energy, in Black and White
By Lawrence Bush
As the Senate debates its bipartisan energy bill, it is obvious that nuclear power is slated to make a comeback in America. The bill includes an extension to 2025 of the Price Anderson liability protection law, which caps the damages for which the nuclear industry can be held liable in the event of a catastrophe such as a core meltdown.
This is the key economic stepping stone to the nuclear revival that the Bush administration has been advocating with a marketing campaign that portrays nuclear power as "green." To hear Washington tell it, nuclear power should be an energy of choice because it generates none of the greenhouse gases that are driving global warming, it improves national security by lessening our dependence on Mideastern oil, and it's good for the economy because it will generate jobs and cheap power.
Each of these assertions is debatable, but such debates are actually mooted by the one overriding fact about nuclear power that should make it unacceptable: Nuclear fission generates radioactive wastes, including plutonium, which persists as a deadly poison in the environment for tens of thousands of years. Given these lengths of time, it is simply arrogant for scientists to promise a foolproof waste disposal system unless that system can be absolutely independent of human monitoring and governance for all time.
God only knows what can happen politically, economically and even climatically over the course of plutonium's 25,000-year half-life. Yet without such a foolproof disposal system, splitting atoms to generate electricity is like flushing a toilet that has no septic system — only a drainage pipe that spills into the nursery.
More than 20 years ago, during the massive protests and civil disobedience campaigns against nuclear power in the United States, the Jewish community was unable to coalesce around a "no nukes" position because of a version of the national security argument that linked Israel's security to America's energy independence from the Arab world. The same argument seems to be compelling silence within Jewish organizations today.
There is not a single mainstream Jewish organization — not even among Jewish organizations dedicated to environmental guardianship — willing to take a firm anti-nuclear stand. The Jewish community is thus sacrificing its religious values to the gods of realpolitik, and may be subverting its capacity to be a source of religious and moral authority on environmental issues for years to come.
Judaism, after all, bids us to build "a fence around the Torah" — to err on the side of caution when it comes to protecting life, limb and spiritual wholeness. This mitzvah has mostly been applied by observant Jews to matters of personal and ritual conduct.
Its origin, however, is in talmudic stories about physical safety, and its potency in application to environmental problems and new technologies should not be buried at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Neither should such classic Jewish values as protection of our own bodies and the commandment to protect life at nearly any cost be sacrificed in order to minimally ease Israel's security.
In fact, the past two decades have shown that nuclear power, as a crucial component of nuclear weapons proliferation, represents a far more potent security risk for Israel — and for the United States — than the OPEC nations could ever hope to mount through oil-supply manipulations. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, then-president of the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations, presciently warned in 1991 that "the spur to nuclear proliferation that nuclear power provides makes it a kind of golem run amok.... To entertain such a technology as viable, whether for economic or political reasons, is an arrogant blunder." Why, then, do Jewish policymakers remain mired in the thinking of the 1980s, when the hideousness of nuclear power was obscured by the nightmarish image of an Israel held hostage to Arab oil?
The Torah extends God's curses to the fourth generation while blessings reach to the thousandth (Deuteronomy 5: 9-10). For short-term interests — and without even first pursuing strict energy conservation policies that might obviate the need for nuclear power altogether — the Bush administraton is seeking to reverse the pattern, extending an energy blessing to the fourth generation and a radioactive curse to the thousandth.
Jewish environmental teachings stand in opposition to this reversal and command us to be the stewards of all creation — not only of our own backyards or of our own generation. Where are the Jewish leaders willing to proclaim and uphold these teachings?
Lawrence Bush is editor of Jewish Currents, a bimonthly magazine.
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Baltimore Chronicle
June 16, 2005
Economic Analysis:
US Energy Policy: The Devil Is in the Details
by Fred Cederholm
I´ve been thinking about energy. Actually I´ve been thinking about Jimmy Carter, national policy, Alaska, Yucca Mountain, base recycling, and legacies. In a speech given on April 18th, 1977, then-President Carter identified the crisis we now face. His ten points of actions/considerations are just as relevant (if not more so) today, but few if any were implemented.
You see, even though 28+ years have transpired, this nation still lacks a comprehensive national energy policy. While President Bush has identified it as a priority of his second term, so too had Carter, but not much materialized. Carter´s Middle Eastern triumph of Camp David was more than eclipsed by the gas rationing/lines when Uncle $ugar domestically produced 70% of our energy needs and 30% was imported, and America was held hostage in Iran. What could/should we expect now that those percentages are reversed, and America is held hostage in Iraq?
There are rumblings from Capitol Hill and the Rose Garden that there must be action on an energy plan before this Congress returns home for the July recess, but I fear there will be little substance and any action will be far from comprehensive. At the least we can expect a rubber-stamping/lip service to the Bush proposals that have surfaced thus far. Remember: a chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and the devil is always in the details.
This nation has an untapped/non-accessed repository of natural resources--oil, gas, coal, oil shale, timber and minerals. Many rest undisturbed on Federal lands protected by Executive Orders of numerous Presidents. But... what one presidential order has "protected," a later one can place on the auction block. In responding to why he had so acted on another (unrelated to energy) matter, Lyndon Johnson responded " Because I´m the President, and I can!"
Months back, we learned how Bush intends to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for energy exploration. We´re told the oil and gas are there, and we need them. Will its implementation (which is years away) solve our problems? And while we're thinking about that, we need to ask if the proposed pipeline(s) to the "lower 48" will pass through recently hyperactive earthquake sectors of South and Central Alaska.
Consider this: We can´t process/refine the oil that we already have! Since 1981, US refineries have decreased from 324 to 153--a reduction of 52%. We haven´t opened a new refinery capable of processing 200,000 barrels per day in almost 25 years. There's still an oil glut from Prudhoe Bay, but there's no ready infrastructure to share it with the Heartland, East, and South.
The President has suggested increasing our nuclear power generating capabilities. My electricity comes from a nuclear plant less than 30 miles from my home. There are presently 103 such plants operating in the continental US (11 in Illinois alone). The problem with such generation rests with what to do with the radioactive by-products/waste. The promised national storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, has been debated for almost two decades. Despite what has already been done/spent, it would be 2010 (at the earliest) before it could accept any such multi-millennial refuse. Radioactive materials are now "temporarily" stored at the 103 reactor sites. Add to those the "temporary" storage locations for similar materials from labs, medical facilities, and military sites... the solution to the radioactive pollution of these hazardous materials is NOT dilution. We need the national storage sitefirst.
Also on the table: Recycling closed military facilities for "energy independence" and using them for additional refineries, liquid natural gas (LNG) portals, and nuclear power facilities. The conversion of such Federal sites will surely cut through a lot of red tape. But... who will hold title to the real estate? What price would be paid? Would Federal exemption from property tax levies flow to the new occupants, thereby costing local government units (and schools) millions in foregone tax revenues?
President Bush and VP Cheney have a unique opportunity here for building a lasting legacy. No predecessors shared their first-hand knowledge of (and connections to) the energy industry. Will the American people be the beneficiaries this time, or will this prove yet another twisted opportunity in Uncle $ugar´s long history of rewarding insiders, friends, and contributors in our times of need?
I´m Fred Cederholm and I´ve been thinking. You should be thinking, too.
Fred Cederholm is a CPA/CFE and a forensic accountant. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois (B.A., M.A. and M.A.S.). He can be reached at asklet@rochelle.net.
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Boston Globe
June 16, 2005
Carbon-Free Kilowatts
Globe Editorial
Nuclear reconsidered
Fourth in a series
The Bush administration still denies that manmade greenhouse gases are changing the planet's climate. But one sign of how serious environmentalists consider the threat of global warming is that some are calling for a new look at nuclear power, which emits no carbon dioxide in generating electricity.
The electric power industry is also testing the waters. Three consortiums of energy companies are proposing to try out a new, more streamlined licensing process of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nuclear power's most committed supporters see it not only as a carbon-free source of electricity but, down the road, as instrumental in the production of hydrogen to fuel the nation's cars and trucks without CO{-2} emissions.
Against these lofty aspirations for nuclear, however, is the simple fact that -- while nuclear power provides 20 percent of US electricity -- no US utility has ordered and built a nuclear power plant since the 1970s. The chief reason for this is economic.
Since the widespread deregulation of power generation and distribution in the 1990s, it has been power-company investors, not ratepayers, who have borne the financial risk if a new plant proves uncompetitive in the market or, worse, suffers a severe accident. Power producers have looked at the numbers, including those caused by the uncertainties of the nuclear licensing process, and opted for plants fueled by natural gas or coal.
Carbon-Free Kilowatts Series::
Powerful wind
The horizon in Denmark
Adding by subtracting
Nuclear reconsidered
The financial case for existing nuclear plants has been enhanced by the improved productivity of the plants in recent years and by many owners' success in getting their licenses renewed for an extra 20 years. Also, recent steep increases in the cost of natural gas have somewhat improved the prospects of new nuclear power in competition with that fuel, but it is difficult to imagine a resurgence of nuclear energy unless Congress and the Bush administration get religion on climate change and sharply penalize -- through a carbon tax or a cap on carbon emissions -- the production of electricity with fossil fuels.
But not just cost has kept nuclear power from playing a greater role. There is also the danger of an operating accident, a serious waste disposal problem, the risk that countries or individuals will misuse civilian reactors to produce material for nuclear weapons, and the threat of terrorist sabotage. Two years ago, a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard professors led by John Deutch and Ernest Moniz studied nuclear energy's future. The professors found that ''the nuclear option should be retained precisely because it is an important carbon-free source of power," but they also acknowledged the unresolved problems of the technology.
Moniz said this week that the 2003 study has had its intended effect of opening a ''healthy" new dialogue on nuclear energy. But he said he would liked to have seen more progress since 2003 on the resolution of the waste disposal issue.
Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Clinton administration, believes that progress has been made in developing new reactor designs that reduce the hazard of operating accidents. She is also encouraged by international cooperation among plant operators and nuclear regulators to share best practices and prevent a new Chernobyl that would undercut support for nuclear power globally.
Still, Jackson called waste disposal the industry's ''Achilles' heel." Innovative techniques can ''reduce the volume and nastiness of what you have," she said in an interview, but she believes a central solution, such as the proposed Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, is also needed. In the meantime, plants have begun to take spent fuel from storage in water pools, which in many cases have reached their capacity, and moved them into on-site dry steel and concrete casks, which are less vulnerable to terrorist attack.
As for the threat of nuclear proliferation, the Deutch-Moniz study calls for the United States and other nations with major nuclear power programs to offer guaranteed supplies of fuel and waste-management services to countries that forgo enrichment and reprocessing activities, which create the greatest potential for weapons production. This policy and aggressive antiproliferation enforcement by the International Atomic Energy Agency are needed whether or not new nuclear power plants are built in America or elsewhere.
If new reactor designs prove as safe as hoped and if progress is made on waste disposal, proliferation prevention, and protection against terrorism, nuclear power will deserve a chance to compete in the market against other sources of power that do not emit CO{-2}. But the market for any alternatives to fossil-fuel power will open up only after the United States decides to cap or tax the carbon emissions that fossil-fuel plants contribute to the atmosphere's greenhouse.
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Tri-City Herald
June 16, 2005
Public sounds off on worries
By Annette Cary
Herald staff writer
The contractor that administers Hanford claims for workers' compensation has caused Bob Immele more grief than his incurable lung illness, he said at Hanford's annual State of the Site meeting Wednesday night in Richland.
Worker after worker stood up to complain to the Department of Energy about Contract Claims Services Inc.
"You guys got a problem there," said Steve Lewis, who was exposed to chemical vapors from Hanford's underground tanks of radioactive waste.
Too often workers are left with no resort but to hire attorneys to fight claim denials by CCSI, they said.
The state of Washington has twice issued orders to pay medical claims made by Thomas Peterson, who has the same illness as Immele, chronic beryllium disease, said Peterson's wife, Janet. The illness is caused by an allergylike reaction to the metal beryllium, which is used in the nuclear industry.
But CCSI continued to refuse to cover her husband's claims for medical expenses incurred before a correct diagnosis of the rare disease had been made, Janet Peterson said.
"It's CCSI's mode to deny claims," she said. "They're making this adversarial. This is nothing but harassment of sick or injured workers."
DOE was caught unprepared for the complaints and had no one at the meeting who worked directly with the contractor, and no representative of the contractor was there to defend its decisions.
The annual meeting is a chance for workers and the community to hear an update on work at Hanford, where $2 billion is being spent each year on cleaning up contamination from the past production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
It's also a chance for workers and the public to ask questions of DOE officials and leaders of the site's regulators, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology.
"I've heard things that make me want to ask tough questions," said Keith Klein, manager of DOE's Richland Operations Office for Hanford. "Believe me, you've gotten my attention."
Klein said he had heard few complaints about CCSI before the meeting, and studies indicated the contractor acted responsibly and within the law. But he will be talking to John Shaw, DOE's assistant secretary for environment, safety and health, to see if an independent look at the program can be done, he said.
DOE's intent is not to burden sick workers with bureaucracy, said Doug Shoop, assistant manager for safety and engineering for the Richland Operations Office.
"I apologize for all the difficulty you as sick workers have gone through," he said.
CCSI is a state problem as well, because the state Department of Labor and Industry agreed to turn the worker compensation program over to DOE, said Gerald Pollet of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group.
The state can investigate, he said.
"I would like CCSI removed and to revert back to Labor and Industry," Immele said.
He's had to wait 14 to 18 months for claims to be paid and has had to hire an attorney, even though DOE said that hiring CCSI would make filing claims easier for workers, he said.
Janet Peterson said she and her husband have spent about $2,000 on attorney fees with no way to recoup the money. But CCSI's attorney fees are reimbursed by DOE, she said.
"Workers deserve better," she said.
More than 100 people attended the meeting, although several dozen represented Hanford contractors and government agencies with responsibilities at Hanford. Topics raised included retirement benefits, how cleanup standards will be set at Hanford and saving B Reactor, the world's first production-scale reactor, as a museum.
But about half the people who stood in line to take the microphone raised issues about CCSI.
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Albuquerque Tribune
June 16, 2005
Man of many hats
Varied background and ability to juggle duties makes director cut out for Sandia Labs' role
By Sue Vorenberg
Tribune Reporter
Tom Hunter knows in detail what it takes to be a chicken catcher.
It was his first job as a teenager in Florida, well before the start of his 38-year career at Sandia National Laboratories, which culminated last month when he took over as the lab's director.
"If you're really good, you can grab five chickens in each hand," laughed Hunter, 59. "What happens in that job is when chicken farms load chickens onto trucks - that's the last place chickens want to go. So they usually hire teenagers to come out at 3:30 a.m. and catch the strays."
Hunter replaced former Director C. Paul Robinson, who left Sandia to head the Lockheed Martin team bidding for the contract to operate Los Alamos National Laboratory. Robinson would become director of Los Alamos if the team won the bid.
Robinson says he's impressed with Hunter's ability to - like chicken catching - handle several issues at a time. It's why the former director placed Hunter as head of Nuclear Weapons programs at the labs in 1999 and why he put in the good word for him as a replacement, Robinson said.
"He's one of those people who's done a huge variety of things and is successful in all of them," Robinson said. "I'm amazed at how many things he can take on at the same time."
Hunter will need those skills in the future. His priorities for the labs include increasing the staff's ability to work across a variety of fields, keeping the country competitive in a changing global science and technology marketplace and capitalizing on key technologies like microtech and nanotech, he said.
"The big questions for Sandia's future revolve around high-performance computing, pulsed power and putting (microtech and nanotech) facilities together," Hunter said. "You should also expect to see us heavily supporting the National Nuclear Security Administration."
Behind the fast-thinking manager, hints of blue collar background still linger. Hunter, a nuclear engineer, started his life with a motley collection of odd jobs that still influence him, he said.
Two of those were as a construction worker and a roustabout cleaning pipes and building pumping stations in an oil field in Louisiana, he said.
"I ran bulldozers, dump trucks, worked as a carpenter," Hunter said. "I still like to work with my hands, actually. It might not sound like it, but every experience helps with this job. It's important to have a spectrum of knowledge of everyone's worth and work."
Hunter also sheepishly admitted one of his favorite hobbies, which he no longer has time for, is working on muscle cars.
"Oh, my favorite is probably a HEMI-powered MOPAR - That's M-O-P-A-R," he said, swinging his finger in the air at each letter. "It's got to be a Chrysler, Plymouth, that sort of car. Unfortunately, everyone else wants those as well."
For now, though, Hunter satisfies himself by driving big American pickups - the type he can use to work the land he owns in Florida.
"You know, Tom has owned the oddest assortment of pickups of anyone in senior management," Robinson laughed. "Every time he picks me up, it seems he's driving a different one."
Beyond the blue collar, Hunter also has the standard background required to manage one of the country's biggest engineering think tanks, including a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of New Mexico and a doctorate in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin.
"And being from Florida, I started out getting my bachelor's from the University of Florida - that makes me a Gator-Lobo-Badger," he said, adding that he roots for all three schools' sports teams.
He also has gotten around quite a bit in his Sandia career. He managed Sandia's California laboratory of about 900 people - "think of it as a mini Sandia, about one-tenth the size of the Albuquerque labs," he said.
He managed the Yucca Mountain Project proposed to store nuclear waste in Nevada, led the research and development team on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico and for the past five years has run the Strategic Management Unit in Defense Programs, also known as the Nuclear Weapons division - which makes up about 60 percent of Sandia's $2.2 billion annual budget.
"I was also very fortunate in the early 1990s. I got to go into Russia to some of the Russian secret cities when I was working in international cooperation and development," Hunter said, of the cities that housed labs from Russia's version of the Manhattan Project. "That was a truly life-changing experience - forging international cooperative partnerships and the whole Russian experience. The history of the labs in that country is just astonishing."
Despite his unusual collection of experiences, Hunter is mostly known as a quiet, private, detail-oriented person at the labs, said Art Ratzel, the labs' director of Engineering Services.
"He keeps his personal life very much to himself," Ratzel said. "He's also one of the most strategic leaders I've ever worked with, and he's very serious about getting all the details right."
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Columbia Daily Tribune
June 16, 2005
Waste shipments no big deal, local authorities claim
By Katie Fretland
Tribune´s staff
Emergency responders in Boone County are not alarmed about truckloads of radioactive waste planned for shipment through Columbia this summer along Interstate 70.
Officials with the Columbia Fire Department and the Boone County Fire Protection District said they would react to a highway emergency involving the waste in the same way they have been trained for years.
That would involve activating a hazardous materials response team, identifying the product, isolating the area and calling in additional resources for cleanup.
The state Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Energy and state and federal departments of transportation would combine efforts to ensure safety after an accident.
Columbia Fire Department Battalion Chief Steve Sapp said he sees more risk with tanker trucks of gasoline on the highway than the tractor-trailers carrying sacks of cold metal oxide that have begun traveling through Missouri.
A former Cold War uranium refinery in Fernald, Ohio, is sending about 275 shipments of cold metal oxide in a dry, crumbly form through Columbia en route to an Envirocare disposal facility in Clive, Utah. The material is a by-product of uranium processing, marked Radioactive Class 7.
From 1952 to 1989, the Fernald federal refinery produced high-purity uranium metal fuel cores for weapons production. The refinery supplied the products to defense-related U.S. Department of Energy facilities. The Fernald site is closed and being cleaned up.
"This is an interesting shipment, but I don´t think it´s a huge concern," Sapp said. "The packaging alone is designed to protect for leakage or spilling, even in the event of a crash."
Fluor Fernald, the private contractor in charge of the cleanup project, had to prove before shipment that a person who touched the surface of the waste containers could get no more than 200 millirems per hour of radiation. The shipments traveling through Columbia emit a tiny fraction of that.
A normal dose of radiation in Mid-Missouri for one year is the equivalent of about 10 chest X-rays, said Keith Henke, the radiological emergency response planner with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. A chest X-ray produces 10 to 36 millirems, and a dental X-ray produces about 25 millirems.
The sun and certain man-made products give off radiation, and the Earth has radioactivity of its own, said Gale Carlson, hazardous substance assessment chief with the health department.
"There are naturally occurring radiation forms everywhere," Carlson said. "A transcontinental flight gives you around 7 millirems, and we don´t consider that a greater risk."
Theoretically, Carlson said, one X-ray could hit a cell and cause cancer, but usually the cell simply dies instead of becoming malignant.
"Radiation does its damage by entering a living cell, scrambling up your DNA and causing your DNA to become abnormal," Carlson said.
If a person stands close enough to touch the waste containers for one hour, that person will receive from 5 to 8 millirems of radiation, said Jeff Wagner, spokesman for Fluor Fernald. If a person drives for one hour 2 meters away from a truck carrying the waste, that person will receive .8 to 1.2 millirems of radiation.
"You´d have to stand up against the container for an hour to get less than one chest X-ray," Henke said.
Shipments started in May and will end at the end of August. On June 12, five shipments went out and arrived safely in Utah on Tuesday, Wagner said. Fluor Fernald will send six trucks on Saturday. "There has been no type of unusual occurrence or anything warranting a report since the program started," Wagner said.
The type of waste Fluor Fernald ships is lower in radioactivity than what would go to a high-level radioactive waste depository such as the proposed Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
Reach Katie Fretland at (573) 815-1731 or kfretland@tribmail.com.
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NY Newsday
June 16, 2005
Decision will step up waste shipments from nuclear site
By Carolyn Thompson
Associated Press Writer
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Out-of-state shipments of low-level nuclear waste from the West Valley Demonstration Project will be stepped up under a Department of Energy decision that will keep the most dangerous waste on site for several more years.
The Energy Department has been weighing how to handle waste generated during cleanup of the site 30 miles south of Buffalo, which once housed the nation's only commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing operation.
Under the decision released this week, low-level waste will be removed by truck or train over the next 10 years. The shipments are expected to number about 1,966 if made by truck or 608 if by rail.
"We have shipped waste in the past," said Dan Sullivan, a DOE officer at West Valley. "The difference here is we're going to do it a little more often at the site."
About 300 canisters of high-level waste are eventually destined for Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, but would remain at West Valley until the permanent dump site is completed. The Yucca Mountain site, the planned repository for 77,000 tons of defense and commercial nuclear waste to be buried for 10,000 years and beyond, has run into setbacks and is not expected to be finished until at least 2012.
About 600,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste has been solidified and is currently stored in specially designed stainless-steel canisters behind thick concrete walls at West Valley.
The DOE considered shipping the high-level waste to an interim site while awaiting completion of Yucca Mountain, but ruled against moving the waste twice and potentially doubling the risk of accidents.
Authorities also considered storing most low-level waste, along with the high-level waste, on site for the immediate future but determined that removing it more quickly would hasten the cleanup.
None of the alternatives would have had an effect on public safety, an environmental impact statement concluded.
"Waste management activities under each alternative would result in the limited exposure of workers to small amounts of radiation and contaminated material, and exposure of the public to very small quantities of radioactive materials," the DOE decision said.
From 1966 to 1972, spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and DOE sites was chopped, dissolved and its uranium and plutonium extracted at West Valley. The operation shut down for upgrades in 1972 but remained closed after stricter regulatory requirements passed during the closure made the prospect of reopening too expensive.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority now holds title to the 3,300-acre site. The 1980 West Valley Demonstration Project Act passed by Congress made the state and Department of Energy partners in its decontamination and decommissioning.
A separate environmental impact statement expected in 2007 will address the thorny issue of which agency should be responsible for long-term stewardship of the site.
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Vermont Guardian
June 16, 2005
Environmental groups oppose U.S. subsidies to nuclear power
By Maryann Ullmann
Special to the Vermont Guardian
BRATTLEBORO — More than 300 environmental organizations, local officials and small businesses have signed a statement opposing a move by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman to subsidize the nuclear industry as a way to combat global warming.
“Nuclear power is too dangerous and expensive, and should not be used,’ said Anna Aurilio, legislative director of U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which spearheaded the statement. Aurilio and representatives from other groups including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and Public Citizen, announced their effort in a national teleconference on Thursday.
Aurilio said she supported the original version of the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, which includes mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions with a credit-trading system modeled after the Clean Air Act. But that bill failed in a close vote 19 months ago.
In the hopes of winning more votes, the measure was reintroduced with billions of dollars of incentives. The House version, which has passed, included $6.1 billion in nuclear incentives. The Senate version, to which the groups were responding Thursday, includes $4.3 billion in incentives for nuclear power development. The provisions would encourage the first construction of new nuclear reactors in more than 30 years.
“We haven´t seen a single senator who supported the original version come out in support of the nuclear version,’ said Aurilio. “We think this takes us backward politically.’
Lieberman, D-CT, said the nuclear support was included in the revised bill to create a range of options that would be prioritized by the market. “Every technology, every innovation has to be on the table so that the market can choose the best ideas and inventions,’ Lieberman, said in a statement explaining the new provisions.
“Sen. McCain and I have developed a bill that shuns picking winners and losers between and among different technologies — we want the market to do that. Instead, our bill would create a system that puts every technological option on the menu to ensure that there will be viable low greenhouse gas emitting products and energy services available to face the challenge of climate change.’ Lieberman said.
“Just to be clear, there are no environmental groups promoting or supporting nuclear power. You can´t be an environmentalist and support this,’ says Aurilio.
The USPIRG statement outlines five provisions that signatories hope senators will consider in the Energy Bill: a 10 percent renewable energy standard; a goal of saving at least 1 million barrels of oil per day by 2015; mandatory electricity reliability standards; energy efficiency standards and incentives; and a mandatory cap on carbon dioxide global warming pollution that reduces emissions to 2000 levels by 2010.
Signatories include a wide range of groups and individuals including mayors from Colorado, state senators from Pennsylvania, the Wisconsin Agribusiness Council, Yoga Living Magazine, the Indigenous Environmental Network, labor unions, faith-based groups and renewable energy companies.
“A few nuclear reactors wouldn´t stop climate change,’ said Michael Mariotte of the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which signed the statement. “It would take hundreds, thousands around the world at a cost of thousands of dollars.’
There are currently 440 nuclear power plants worldwide, according to Mariotte, and 1,500 would be needed to make any difference. “It´s absurd to think the world could even build these in time to do anything to stop global warming.’
On the issue of waste disposal, he added, “We would need a Yucca Mountain every three or four years.’
Yucca Mountain, the proposed site for a permanent national nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada, is also an unsettled issue.
“Scientists and engineers have lied about the safety of storage,’ said Tara Smith, Southern Nevada Conservation organizer for the Sierra Club. “Even the simple hint of an accident will destroy Las Vegas.’
Smith pointed out the dangers of transporting nuclear waste across the country to Yucca Mountain as well. “There is not a safe way to transport it, and there is not a safe way to store it,’ she said. “Any measure that increases nuclear power produces nuclear waste.’
Mariotte said energy efficiency standards are the most common-sense approach. “It´s the cheapest source of electricity at this point.’
Aurilio agreed. “You can replace growth with efficiency for sure,’ she says. “We´re half as efficient as Germany and Japan.’
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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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