Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
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Reno Gazette-Journal
Budget could mean ‘yes´ on Yucca project
Editorial
Reno Gazette-Journal
State representatives in Congress should look with a skeptical eye at the budget appropriations proposed for Nevada in the House and Senate. The funding budgeted for Nevada sounds like a windfall, but accepting some of it can imply that Nevadans also agree to accept the Yucca installation.
That is not the message Nevadans want to send anyone in Washington. The state´s congressional delegation has its work cut out to make certain that any allocations don´t come with strings attached.
The Yucca Mountain project has run into roadblocks, certainly. Among them is Senate Appropriations Committee approval for less than the administration requested. But it is clear the Energy Department intends to have its Nevada repository.
The Senate bill calls for more than $12 million for the state and counties to conduct oversight of Yucca Mountain. Additional funds would go to Nye County, where officials expect to build the facility and for laboratories and nearby roads. Oversight, laboratories and roads are non-issues, unless someone plans for the project to go forward. All those funds assume implementation of the project. Accepting them would assume the state´s consent.
Among the budget items that should keep our representatives alert to the administration´s intentions is an item in the House bill that would allocate millions of dollars for an interim storage site.That´s in addition to the repository funds. It´s a way to get around the roadblock that is holding up their plans for the short term.
It is interesting that the Senate committee also has approved more than $67 million for Army Corps of Engineer projects in Nevada. Truckee Meadows officials have tried for some time to get Corps support for the Truckee River flood control project. Finally allocations seem to be in the plan. But budget writers are not above attaching needed funding to undesired programs, such as Yucca Mountain, thus requiring lawmakers to vote for both measures or against them.
Nevadans saw that happen repeatedly during this state´s legislative session. It happens on an even grander scale in the Congress. It means our congressional delegation must stay alert. Political games related to Yucca Mountain are in full effect.
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Nuke Waste Watcher
June 20, 2005
Ron Bourgoin
'Safe' Scandanavian repositories
To get the American people to believe that burial of highly radioactive wastes in rock is a good idea, politicians every now and then will talk about the wonderful geologic repositories that are in operation in other parts of the world.
First of all, there are no rock repositories open anywhere.
Secondly, the first country to open a geologic repository more than likely will be Finland, due to open its granite site in 2020. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was supposed to be the world's first spent-fuel rod burial facility, but that is not on the horizon at this time.
I don't know why Scandanavians insist on building high-level nuclear waste sites on the sea, but Finland's is on the Gulf of Bothnia, in the town of Eurajoki, on the country's west coast. The nearest large city is Rauma.
The Finnish parliament voted in 2001 to develop the granite site, awarding the contract to the Posiva Company. Work is in progress now to study how well the rock can contain the wastes. If all looks good to parliament in 2010, thumbs-up will be given to proceed to dynamite and drill tunnels, which, of course, will change the ability of the site to safely store wastes.
As I reported not long ago, the Swedes are building their repository near the Baltic Sea, in the town of Oskarsham, on Sweden's southeast coast. That site is being dynamited and drilled also, creating what could be a nasty situation. The waste from Sweden could leak and migrate south to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Germany, whereas Finland's could make its way to Sweden. Not good!
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Salt Lake Tribune
June 21, 2005
Nuclear dump a step closer
NRC rejects another Utah attempt to block the facility
By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday denied Utah's latest bid to block a license for a nuclear waste storage area on the Skull Valley Indian reservation, rejecting the argument that the waste could be stuck at the site permanently.
The unanimous ruling leaves the state just one remaining avenue to challenge - over the risk of a fighter jet crash - and moves the commission a step closer to a decision on granting a license to Private Fuel Storage, a group of electric utilities seeking to store 44,000 tons of waste on the Skull Valley reservation until a permanent dump is opened.
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s general counsel, Mike Lee, said he expects the NRC's final determination by the end of the summer.
"We're profoundly disappointed, but we remain optimistic about our other arguments, including the remaining argument before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," Lee said. "We're still several steps away from any point we would deem even the beginning of construction on the project to be imminent."
State attorneys argued that Gary Lanthrum, director of the Department of Energy's transportation program, stated that, under the existing DOE waste storage contracts, the department would refuse to bury nuclear waste in a permanent dump if the storage casks are welded shut as planned.
"Our concern is, as it has always been, once the fuel gets here is it ever going to leave?" said Assistant Utah Attorney General Denise Chancellor.
The state argued, at the very least, the waste would have to be returned to the reactors and repackaged before being shipped to Yucca Mountain and that the NRC should have to redo its environmental impact studies to take that into account.
The commission disagreed, affirming an earlier decision by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that sided with PFS. Several letters provided by PFS from the Energy Department to various utility companies promised flexibility to accommodate waste stored in a variety of casks.
"In the face of this rather overwhelming written record, Utah offers only the unexplained [and apparently off-the-cuff] remarks of Lanthrum, and argues that his remarks require a rethinking of fundamental assumptions about the PFS project," the commission wrote. "The board sensibly thought differently."
The commission noted that Lanthrum was not in chain-of-command for such decisions and that the state was unable to offer any additional evidence that DOE policy had changed, or explain why the policy might have been altered.
"It was one of the last couple of hurdles we had to get through in this whole process, so we're pleased that the commission agreed with the licensing board and with our position," said PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin.
The state has one more challenge pending - its contention that the dangers of a fighter jet crash or errant cruise missile smashing into the site were not adequately considered. The state filed that appeal this month, shortly after the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected similar claims.
If the NRC grants the license - and every significant recent decision by the commission and licensing board has gone against the state - Utah will have other avenues remaining to challenge the PFS site.
The state could challenge the granting of its license in a federal appeals court, either in the 10th Circuit in Denver or in the District of Columbia.
It also is working to persuade the Interior Department not to grant a right of way for shipments to travel to the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation, or persuade Interior Secretary Gale Norton, as trustee for Indian issues, not to approve the tribe's contract with PFS.
Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, also has added language to a Defense Department bill that has passed the House that would create a wilderness area near the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation to prevent a rail line being built to the facility. It has yet to be considered in the Senate.
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Common Voice
June 20, 2005
Savannah River Site's wastes
Ron Bourgoin
These days, when petroleum-derived fuel consumption has to be considered, America perhaps cannot afford to burn millions of gallons of fuel to transport all the nation's high-level nuclear wastes to Nevada. By sheer force of necessity, the nation will no doubt have to examine the concept of regional underground repositories.
The southeast has not only a huge inventory of spent-fuel rods from its commercial nuclear reactors, but it has also weapons-processing wastes at Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, South Carolina, only 15 miles east of Augusta, Georgia.
The Energy Department says it will bury only 3.4 million gallons of its most lethal wastes at SRS in underground rock. But two gallons of molten glass has to be added to each gallon of this acid waste, which means that 10.2 million gallons of glassified waste has to be buried.
When you figure how much space that much waste will occupy, it's enough to fill an entire rock repository.
When the Department of Energy came South in 1984 to study the seven geologic sites here, we were told a southern repository would hold about 44,000 tons. The vitrified waste from Savannah River will weigh 40.8 thousand tons, enough to fill a southern site.
Someone might say that Yucca Mountain in Nevada is designed to hold some defense wastes, and that's true, but it'll come from Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, only 800 miles away. The Savannah River Site, on the other hand, is two thousand miles away from Yucca Mountain.
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Great Lakes Radio Consortium
June 20, 2005
Storing Nuke Waste On Above Ground Lots
Nuclear waste storage is an issue that concerns many. Some worry that if storage facilities at Yucca Mountain aren't completed soon enough, above-ground storage will have to be employed. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
Some federal officials say work on a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain isn't moving fast enough. So they want the government to start developing above-ground storage sites. But one private firm says above-ground storage is already available. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium's Sandra Harris reports:
Storing Nuke Waste On Above Ground Lots
Sandra Harris
Some federal officials say work on a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain isn't moving fast enough, so they want the government to start developing above-ground storage sites. But one private firm says above-ground storage is already available. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium's Sandra Harris reports:
House Energy and Water Development Committee Chair David Hobson has put ten million dollars in an appropriations bill to find interim above-ground waste storage sites.
But the CEO of private fuel storage says a temporary site his groups worked on for more than ten years will hold all the country's waste.
John Parkyn says Hobson may not be aware of it.
"I'm certainly communicating to him exactly where we are, but the idea that we would spend significant amounts of taxpayer money to replicate something that has already been funded with non-taxpayer money would certainly involve a lot of political scrutiny, as to why you would ever replicate it and add another six or seven years on."
Parkyn says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could soon approve or deny his company's license for its site on the Skull Valley Indian Reservation in Utah.
For the GLRC, I'm Sandra Harris.
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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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