Yucca Mountain News Clips - Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 22, 2005

Nevada asks court to halt Yucca rail line plan

By Ken Ritter
The Associated Press

Nevada asked a federal court Tuesday to derail Energy Department plans for a rail line to ship radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain, claiming "abuses of authority" by the Bush administration and its "decide-first, analyze-later approach."

"We say they have to go back to the drawing board," said Joe Egan, a Vienna, Va.-based lawyer for the state.

Nevada wants the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to halt planning for the rail line and order the Energy Department to complete studies Nevada says are required before construction begins.

Energy Department spokeswoman Anne Womack Kolton declined comment, saying department lawyers were reviewing the filing and the matter was being litigated.

No rail line runs to the site the Bush administration and Congress picked in 2002 to entomb 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste stored at nuclear reactors and military facilities in 39 states.

The Energy Department announced in April 2004 that it intends to build a line from a railhead near Caliente, a small town 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas, to the Yucca Mountain site, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The state brief dismisses as "naked assumption" the Energy Department's assurances that the 319-mile rail line and nuclear waste cask transfer stations could be built within six years of opening the Yucca Mountain repository. The cost has been estimated at $880 million.

Nevada officials call the plan dangerously flawed. Egan said Nevada does not believe Yucca planners can ensure the safety of the tens of thousands of shipments they expect to make over 24 years through cities including Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and Salt Lake City.

The state also asks the court to order the government to fully analyze the risks of an interim plan to ship casks of spent nuclear fuel to Nevada by train, but complete the journey by truck while the Nevada rail line is being built.

"None of us has any doubt whatsoever that interim would become permanent," Egan said. "They save time and money. We end up with a mode of transport they themselves determined was the most dangerous."

Egan said the 34-page brief filed in Washington was the last of the state's written arguments in a lawsuit it filed against the Energy Department in September.

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Las Vegas SUN
June 22, 2005

Nevada files its final legal brief in attempt to stop nuclear waste

By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Nevada filed its final legal brief Tuesday in its quest to derail the Energy Department's plan to ship waste to Yucca Mountain via train.

The state's attorneys filed the document in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the same court that rebuked the government in an order that that has thrown the proposed nuclear waste repository project at Yucca off schedule. It is now up to the court to decide if oral arguments will take place.

Nevada argues that the department did not follow federal environmental policy and other laws when it settled on the proposed 319-mile railroad through through Lincoln County and it is shutting out important outside regulators on the project.

The department wants to build the railroad to move canisters of nuclear waste from commercial reactor sites and former nuclear weapons construction plants. It announced last year that it plans to use the "Caliente Corridor" route to move nuclear waste to Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada argues the department selected the route and applied for the land but only now is evaluating the environmental impact. It should have looked at the impact first and decided if the route was the best option, according to Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval. Caliente was one of five routes proposed for a railroad because no rail line exists in the state to move waste containers to the mountain.

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Las Vegas SUN
June 21, 2005

Nevada asks federal court to stop Yucca Mountain rail plan

By Ken Ritter
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada asked a federal court Tuesday to derail Energy Department plans for a rail line to ship radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain, claiming "abuses of authority" by the administration and its "decide-first, analyze-later approach."

"We say they have to go back to the drawing board," said Joe Egan, a Vienna, Va.-based lawyer for the state.

The state wants the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to halt planning for the rail line and order the Energy Department to complete studies Nevada says are required before construction begins.

Energy Department spokeswoman Anne Womack Kolton declined comment, saying department lawyers were reviewing the filing and the matter was being litigated.

The state also asks the court to order the government to fully analyze the risks of an interim plan to ship casks of spent nuclear fuel to the state by train, but complete the journey by truck while the Nevada rail line is being built.

"None of us has any doubt whatsoever that interim would become permanent," Egan said. "They save time and money. We end up with a mode of transport they themselves determined was the most dangerous."

Egan said the 34-page brief filed in Washington, D.C., was the last of the state's written arguments in a lawsuit it filed against the Energy Department last September. Womack said final briefs are due next month. The court has yet to schedule oral arguments.

The state claims the Energy Department violated the National Environmental Policy Act, a federal law that requires environmental studies before federal projects are finalized.

The state also claims the Energy Department usurped the jurisdiction of the government's railroad and land management agencies.

The lawsuit is one of several tactics Nevada is using to fight the Energy Department over the Yucca Mountain repository, recently beset by controversy, delays and budget shortages.

Last year, the same federal appeals court tossed out a key radiation standard for the repository. The Environmental Protection Agency has said it expects to issue a new standard by September.

The Energy Department also been delayed posting documents about the project to a database, a requirement for seeking an operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In March, officials revealed government workers may have falsified data concerning water infiltration and climate tests at the site. Several inquiries are under way.

Project officials have pushed back the opening date from 2010 to a least 2012.

---On the Net:

Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste

Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov

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Pahrump Valley Times
June 22, 2005

Oversight office to be overhauled

By Phillip Gomez
PVT

The Nye County Commissioners' truncated meeting last week concerned a lot of minor housekeeping matters, the most important of which was a decision to restructure the county department responsible for overseeing the Yucca Mountain project and aquifer contamination issues on the Nevada Test Site.

The county's nuclear waste repository oversight office came into existence in the late 1980s as plans for building Yucca Mountain were taking shape. Since then, the office was enlarged to include responsibility for other natural resources besides water, becoming the Nye County Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities around 1998.

On Tuesday the commissioners divided the natural resources function from concerns related to Yucca Mountain and the test site, thus reverting back to the entity's original focus on overseeing the federal government's responsibility for water contamination issues.

The new entity has nearly the same original name, nuclear waste repository project office. A director will be hired after a nationwide search to work under the county manager.

Before the retirement of administrator Les Bradshaw last fall, the independent department reported to the Nye County Board of Commissioners. Since then, Bradshaw's assistant, David Swanson, has been acting as project administrator and intends to submit his resume for the open position to direct the office.

"The stumbling block since Les Bradshaw left," says Swanson, "with all the oversight issues, including all the water issues, is that clearly it's an overwhelming task. In addition to the new manager, we need a dedicated person for water resource issues related to the Yucca Mountain project, and two, possibly three people for the oversight job."

Dr. James Marble, head of the natural resources division, will continue as director of the now independent office also reporting to Nye County Manager Michael Maher. Marble has responsibility for weed abatement issues, water resource issues, other than those connected to the Nevada Test Site, and issues related to endangered habitats and species in the county.

"The natural resource issues faced by Nye County are overwhelming," said Commissioner Joni Eastley, who represents Beatty's interests in the toad habitat recovery program.

The commission voted for the restructuring and the downgraded reclassification of the nuclear waste office administrator by a vote of 4-1, Commissioner Gary Hollis voted against.

In other news, the commission approved several appointments for vacant advisory board positions:

• For the Gabbs Town Advisory Board, where there were two vacancies, they appointed local fire chief Connie L. Stinson; Shirley Peters, who has two great grandchildren, 13 grandchildren and seven children, was also appointed. Peters has been a resident of Gabbs since 1968. For the vacancy on the Beatty Town Advisory Board, the commissioners appointed Sara Willis.

• For vacancies on the Federal Impacts Advisory Board the commission appointed Walt Kuver, currently the county's representative on the Southern Nevada Water Authority's advisory committee, and Bruce Crater of Amargosa Valley.

• For an expired term on the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission, incumbent Commissioner Charles Dupre was reappointed to a new term.

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Pahrump Valley Times
June 22, 2005

Yucca Mountain

Agencies hold first meeting in Pahrump

By Phillip Gomez
PVT

Yucca Mountain officials with the Department of Energy, meeting in Pahrump recently with officials from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, announced they were almost ready to submit their license application to the NRC for the proposed nuclear waste repository near Beatty and Amargosa Valley.

The Energy Department had planned to submit its application last December, but two public scandals related to missing or fabricated computer documents forced a postponement of its submission.

"They haven't said when, but they said that after the 'uncertainty' over a few items was cleared up they would be ready to apply by late July," said Jack R. Strosnider, director of the office of nuclear material safety and safeguards in Rockville, Md. "It should be about the middle of July," he said.

The "uncertainty" likely refers to the 3.5 million documents being transposed to an Internet Web site in support of the licensing application. The energy department attempted to get its database certified last summer, but it was rejected for being incomplete.

When the Energy Department is ready, the watchdog Nuclear Regulatory Commission will have 18 months to perform a licensing review before authorizing or not authorizing construction of the Yucca Mountain facility.

Then, another 18 months is scheduled for a public hearing in Las Vegas, with each side's lawyers making their case for and against the nuclear waste repository. Three Regulatory Commission judges will adjudicate and write separate opinions to a commission of five specially appointed commissioners, who will render a decision on the geologic repository under Yucca Mountain. If approved, construction could begin as early as 2009, but that is unlikely given the certain and intense opposition in Nevada.

A second phase of the licensing application concerns evaluation of the methods by which the repository plans to receive and process the high-level nuclear waste.

The meeting at the Pahrump Fire-Rescue office was the first quarterly management confab between the two federal agencies ever held in Pahrump. Open house meetings conducted by the Regulatory Commission have been held in Pahrump before, but this was the first "status of program" meeting with the Energy Department at the management level. Some 16 NRC officials from Rockville, Md., Arlington, Texas and Las Vegas were in attendance.

Normally, the independent regulatory agency's mission is to ensure that public health, safety and the environment are protected when nuclear materials are utilized in more than 100 nuclear power plants, as well as in other radioactive material uses, including militarily, around the country.

"Typically, the NRC regulates commercial nuclear power companies," said Strosnider. "But in this case DOE regulates the nuclear waste that's to come to Yucca Mountain." The agency performs an on-going peer review of the Energy Department's safety arguments, he said, in order to prepare for the application review.

Some 25 to 30 Pahrumpians visited the group on Monday evening asking questions about Yucca Mountain and the project's safety. The main question, according to Strosnider, concerned the transportation mode the waste will take and its route or routes.

The agency is responsible for licensing the design, construction, use and maintenance of any shipping casks that may be used to move commercial waste by truck or rail to Yucca Mountain.

"We really appreciate people coming out," Strosnider said. "They should never underestimate the importance of providing their input. It helps us to focus on what we need to do better to provide information to the public."

According to the NRC, it will only issue a license to the Energy Department if it "can demonstrate that it can construct and operate a repository safely and in compliance with NRC's regulations."

In addition to the NRC, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation are involved in establishing, enforcing and ensuring the Department's compliance with standards and regulations related to stored radioactive waste, its transport and handling by carriers and its transit routes.

The type of questions the licensing review will seek to answer include the following:

• Would the repository meet health and environmental safety standards?

• Would waste be kept secure from theft or sabotage, both before and after disposal?

• Would the repository be safe both before and after permanent closure?

• Does the DOE present credible plans for waste retrieval, should it be needed?

• Are the data supporting the repository's safety reliable?

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Los Angeles Times
June 22, 2005
The Nation

Nuclear Industry Lays Foundation for Comeback

By Ralph Vartabedian
Times Staff Writer

CLINTON, Ill. — Along the streets of this economically depressed farming town, optimism is running high that a proposed nuclear power plant could bring in new jobs, give a boost to local retailers and increase taxes for schools.

The U.S. has not started a reactor project for 29 years, but President Bush is calling for a new era of nuclear power, saying it would reduce air pollution and dependence on foreign energy. If new reactors are built, the first could go into Clinton or two other possible sites nationwide.

"It is the best option for power," says Stan Winterroth, a high school shop teacher in Clinton. "I don't agree with President Bush on anything else, but I think he is right on the issue of nuclear power."

To promote his program, Bush is to visit Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Maryland today. It will be the first time a president has stepped inside a nuclear plant since Jimmy Carter rushed to Three Mile Island in 1979 to calm public fears just after the reactor's partial meltdown, industry officials say.

The Senate, meanwhile, is preparing subsidies and incentives for utilities to build nuclear plants. The nuclear industry has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into new technology in recent years. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has hired scores of engineers to accommodate an atomic renaissance.

But the sober reality of nuclear power is that the U.S. will move slowly and cautiously, at best, because Wall Street financiers and the nation's utility industry still have vivid memories of the legal, financial and regulatory debacles that resulted from the building binge of the 1970s.

Even with subsidies and other incentives, few expect any construction to start within five years, and only a handful of plants are expected to begin during the next 10 years.

Most utilities will wait to see whether the new regulatory system works as advertised before they begin a more ambitious construction effort. It could be two decades before additional nuclear power plants have a significant effect on the U.S. energy supply.

"There is much more confidence in the new process, but not enough yet to make a new investment," acknowledges Marilyn Kray, president of the NuStart Energy Development, a consortium of nine utilities preparing an application for a nuclear construction license. "Financiers are saying they are not yet comfortable."

Still, the industry is taking preliminary steps under government sponsorship. Three consortiums of utilities are getting $539 million in taxpayer subsidies through the Energy Department to seek nuclear construction licenses under the new regulatory system. By going through the bureaucratic motions of applying for a license, the utilities hope to gain confidence in licensing rules intended to reduce delays and litigation.

Separately, three utilities have put in early site applications for reactors at existing plants, including ones in Illinois, Virginia and Mississippi. The early site approval system is another change meant to reduce risks that projects will become mired in delays.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), the Senate's powerful energy broker and a big force behind new nuclear power, argues in a recent book that it is the only major source of electricity that does not contribute to global warming by burning carbon-based fuels.

Largely unnoticed, existing nuclear plants have significantly increased their generating capacity in recent years, adding the equivalent of six plants of output, and have vastly improved their reliability. At the same time, natural gas prices have soared.

Existing nuclear plants already produce electricity more cheaply than coal or natural gas. A new nuclear plant would need to cost about $1.2 billion to compete effectively with coal, according to James K. Asselstine, a managing director of Lehman Bros. But the first wave of plants would cost an estimated $1.8 billion, assuming there were no legal or regulatory delays.

As a result, utilities and Wall Street want government guarantees and assistance, some of which are contained in a major energy bill now before the Senate. The legislation also includes a renewal of the Price-Anderson Act, which provides legal immunity in the case of a meltdown or other nuclear accident.

Utilities also need resolution of the nuclear waste problem. There are 50,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste spread across the nation, because the government's plan for an underground repository in Nevada is tied up in political and legal knots.

Another factor is electricity demand. In the 1970s, the Energy Department and utilities grossly overestimated electricity demand, expecting it to double every 10 years. The faulty estimates helped lead to massive overbuilding. Today, by contrast, they project that electricity demand will grow by 50% during the next 15 years.

The lower estimates mean there is not enough demand for basic generating capacity to justify new nuclear plants, Kray said.

No matter how hard the federal government tries to revamp regulations and encourage utilities, however, the events of the 1970s and 1980s are stark reminders that nuclear power is a politically and financially risky proposition, still opposed by many environmentalists.

"The industry is going to face just as much opposition to new reactors as it did in the 1970s," said Kevin Kamps, an antinuclear activist at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington. "Everywhere the industry has talked about new reactors, new groups to oppose them have sprung up. There are going to be large numbers of people committing civil disobedience."

Though such protests hurt nuclear energy in the 1970s, the real problem was economic.

After the Three Mile Island accident, the NRC demanded new safety measures, stopping construction for years and triggering cost overruns that drove up plant costs fivefold in some cases. As the debt mounted, interest rates also soared to record levels. The industry had $18 billion in cost overruns that state regulatory commissions refused to pass on to customers.

"It was a confluence of the worst imaginable conditions," recalls Richard J. Myers, senior director for business and environmental policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute, a powerful trade group for nuclear utilities.

By 1985, 28 nuclear plants under construction were canceled, according to Sam Walker, the regulatory commission's historian. The Shoreham plant on Long Island completed construction but never generated a single watt of commercial electricity. The Watts Bar plant in Tennessee was under construction for 23 years.

"What has changed is our confidence in avoiding cost overruns," Myers said. "Today, we don't sink a spade without having all of our regulatory approvals in hand."

In 1992, Congress revised the nuclear plant licensing system. Under the old system, a nuclear utility first had to apply for a construction license and then seek a separate operating license after completing the plant. It gave protesters two chances to tie up a utility.

Now, a single license is granted at the beginning. But nobody is sure the new system will not get just as bogged down.

"You can always to go federal court, as you know," commission Chairman Nils Diaz told a Senate hearing in April on the future of nuclear power.

Joe Egan, a veteran nuclear lawyer in Washington, argues that the new licensing system is still untested in the courts. Under the new system, a utility must prove that a completed plant exactly conforms to the licensed design, a complex area of regulation that is likely to undergo legal challenges, Egan said.

One advantage held by the nuclear industry is its tremendous advance in technology.

The U.S. pioneered nuclear technology, building the first reactor at the University of Chicago in 1942, and it remains a leader internationally. General Electric Co. and Westinghouse Nuclear have sold or licensed plants in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Europe while the U.S. market was dead.

"You have to understand, this is not an industry that has stood still for three decades," said Andy White, president of GE's nuclear business.

GE and Westinghouse have new reactor designs that they promote as safer and cheaper to build. They require at least 25% fewer pipes, valves, pumps and cables than older generations. And they rely more on natural circulation of water through convection and less on emergency pumping systems.

"We will see new nuclear plants," said Ed Cummins, director of Westinghouse's new reactor programs. "It will take 10 years before the first one is operating. If it is a success, then you will see others."

A big question is whether the American public is ready. In Clinton, seat of DeWitt County, the giant blue containment dome at the Exelon Corp. plant looms on the horizon.

"It has been a long time since anybody has expressed concern to me about buying a home here because of the power plant," said Jan Utterback, a real estate broker in the town square. "The majority of people in town see it as a positive."

Exelon is one of the few major employers left in town, according to Mayor Roger Cyrulik. In recent years, three factories have closed, eliminating 1,000 jobs. When the regulatory commission held a meeting in Clinton this year to gauge sentiment, locals were strongly supportive of a new reactor. But antinuclear groups brought in busloads of Quakers, student activists and Unitarians. The meeting dragged on for hours.

"The industry is careful in choosing economically marginalized places for new reactors and making it a local issue," said Sandra Lindberg, a professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, who started the group No New Nukes. "This is much bigger than a local issue."

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Nuclear energy in America

About 100 nuclear reactors are operating at power plant sites in the United States, most of them east of the Mississippi River. There are no commercial nuclear reactors in Alaska or Hawaii.

Nuclear progress

The last successful application for a nuclear plant license was filed 29 years ago, but much has changed since then. Lawmakers and the nuclear industry think they have solutions to some, but not all, of the problems.

Problem: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had a two-step licensing system, one for construction and one for operation. Antinuclear activists used the system to cause delays, which added billions to the cost of plants.

Solution: Congress changed the system in 1992 and created a combined construction and operating license. Now environmentalists are supposed to get one shot at stopping a nuclear plant.

Problem: Safety issues and bad construction practices added to serious delays, as well as a loss of public confidence. The Three Mile Island accident cast doubts on nuclear safety.

Solution: Reactor manufacturers created standardized designs that improved chances of staying on schedule and within budget. New reactor technology is simpler and relies on passive safety systems that reduce chances of human error.

Problem: Utilities overestimated the growth in demand for electricity, and started more plants than were needed.

Solution: The Energy Department has sharply scaled back projected growth in demand, and now utilities are more cautious about starting new construction.

Problem: Storage for lethal nuclear waste is lacking.

Solution: The federal government has promised to take ownership of the waste, but about 50,000 tons remain spread across the nation. A proposed dump in Nevada is mired in legal and political disputes.

Sources: Nuclear Energy Institute, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Times reporting. Graphics reporting by Ralph Vartabedian

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 22, 2005

NRC rejects Utah's argument

The Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY-- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected another of Utah's arguments against licensing a nuclear waste storage area on the Goshutes' Skull Valley Indian reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

The argument turned down on Monday was that the storage, while billed as only temporary until a permanent repository is built elsewhere, could end up being permanent.

The state still is pursuing an argument that the possibility of a fighter jet crash at the site was too great a risk.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s general counsel, Mike Lee, told The Salt Lake Tribune that 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," he said.

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LaCrosse Tribune
June 22, 2005

Your views

Nuclear waste plan raises concerns

Gail Vaughn
Ferryville, Wis.

Our local utilities, Xcel and Dairyland Power, are part of a consortium named Private Fuel Storage that wants to send many shipments of highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods via railroad out West.

They want to ship them to the Indian reservation of a tiny Utah tribe, the Skull Valley Goshute. These 124 American Indians are supposed to caretake thousands of tons of these dangerous fuel rods.

The PFS plan is to park the waste there "temporarily" until the Yucca Mountain Repository can be opened. But this repository may never open.

They plan to put millions of people at risk by shipping 4,000 waste casks down the train tracks, right through our neighborhoods. How can they protect the public from a horrific rail accident?

And what if the Yucca Mountain repository doesn't open and they have to find another place to ship it?

Wisconsin is on the short list for that site. In that case, will they pay to have the rods shipped right back here?

Why is PFS proposing to do all this? So their reactors can generate more waste just like it.

The state of Utah, which has no nuclear reactors, is adamantly opposed to this scheme and is using every legal means possible to fight it.

Please contact your utilities and tell them you want our radioactive waste handled in a more responsible manner than what they are planning.

Please also thank Dairyland Power for closing its reactor years ago. If only Xcel would do the same.

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Detroit Free Press
June 22, 2005

Remember nuclear power? It's getting popular again

James Kuhnhenn and Seth Borenstein
Free Press Washington Staff

WASHINGTON -- Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Yucca Mountain. For the past 25 years, a nuclear industry already saddled with prohibitive costs and radioactive waste struggled in the face of fears about nuclear power.

But the atom is rebounding.

President George W. Bush plans to tout the benefits of nuclear power today when he visits a nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs, Md. He also will promote energy legislation that the Senate is debating this week. It includes tax incentives, loan guarantees and federal liability protection for new reactors.

The Senate bill also would authorize $1.3 billion for cutting-edge nuclear-hydrogen projects.

An industry burdened with high reactor-construction costs and expensive disposal of nuclear waste is inching toward competitiveness as a cleaner, though still distrusted, alternative to coal as the electric-power source of the future.

No less a skeptic than Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., recently touted the pro-nuke provisions before Congress.

"You're going to see a movement toward nuclear power," he said. "If it's done right, we believe it will protect the environment."

Even a handful of environmentalists -- a group that long viewed fission with suspicion -- say they could tolerate new nuclear power because it doesn't cause global warming, the top environmental problem to many. "Climate change is such a serious issue . . . that we have to examine all low-carbon and especially zero-carbon solutions," said Judi Greenwald of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, an environmentalist think tank.

104 plants running

No electrical utility has built a nuclear plant in the United States since the 1970s. Right now, 104 plants operate at near full capacity, including DTE Energy Co.'s Fermi 2 plant in Monroe.

But after almost 30 years of cooling interest, nuclear is getting hot. Yet it may never reach critical mass.

Wall Street, which has to finance new multibillion-dollar reactors, hasn't joined the nuclear chorus.

Bankers and investors want to see something built first, creating a chicken-and-an-egg scenario, says one top economist who studies nuclear-power finance.

"There's a lot of focus on Congress and what Congress wants to do and the subsidies," said Geoff Rothwell, an economist at Stanford University who has advised the Department of Energy on nuclear-power economics. "But it all depends on Wall Street and whether or not Wall Street wants to be involved in financing nuclear power. At this point they're not interested."

Or, as Jason Grumet, the executive director of the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy, said: "The interest in nuclear power is necessary, but not sufficient to rejuvenate the industry."

Still, "the momentum gained in the past six or eight months is palpable," said Mike Wallace, the president of Constellation Generation, which has 34 power plants, including five nuclear ones. The industry's spending in new nuclear planning "is at a level we haven't seen in 25 years."

Wallace acknowledged that Wall Street isn't willing to risk financing nuclear projects that could be caught up in regulatory delays. That's why federal aid is needed to build the first three or four plants to demonstrate nuclear's new feasibility.

Partial meltdown

The partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 resulted in tighter government regulations but transformed the public's abstract apprehension into real fear. The 1986 accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine, which killed 30 people, forced massive evacuations and left a legacy of thyroid cancer among its survivors, turned fear of nuclear-plant disasters into horror.

Over the past two decades, however, reactor technology has improved, global warming has emerged as the most profound environmental worry and the energy industry has realized that coal, which accounts for 52 percent of electricity production in this country, would require expensive technology to reduce pollution.

Contact James Kuhnhenn at jkuhnhenn@krwashington.com

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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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