Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, June 26, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
June 24, 2005

Editorial: A matter of principle

Las Vegas Sun
Weekend Edition
June 25-26, 2005

Last week Nevada received some help -- of sorts -- in its fight against the federal government's plan to permanently bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, who in 2002 voted to send nuclear waste to Nevada, said he is working on legislation that would require the government to study two alternatives to Yucca Mountain -- leaving the waste at nuclear power plants or temporarily storing it at government sites.

Hatch said he still supports Yucca Mountain for the long-term storage of nuclear waste, but Utah officials are concerned that if Yucca Mountain doesn't get approved by federal regulators, then their state might by default become the nation's home for nuclear waste. Their concern is well-founded.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is getting closer to approving a plan by a coalition of nuclear power plants, unhappy with the delays on Yucca Mountain, to temporarily store 44,000 tons of nuclear waste on an Indian reservation in Utah. So if Yucca Mountain's application does get turned down, as we believe it eventually will, then pressure will grow on the government to leave the nuclear waste in Utah -- no matter how much evidence exists that doing so is unsafe. "I understand why our colleagues from Nevada oppose the Yucca Mountain site," Hatch said on the Senate floor last week. "I am getting more and more understanding of that as I go along."

Prior to Congress' vote on Yucca Mountain in 2002, Hatch and Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, agreed to go along with President Bush's plan to send nuclear waste to Nevada. In return, the White House assured them that the administration wouldn't back efforts by some nuclear power plant operators to temporarily store nuclear waste in Utah. Obviously that promise meant nothing. Utah's senators very well may come to rue their 2002 decision not to join with Nevada and, on principle, fight the federal government's dangerous plan to send nuclear waste to Nevada. The failure to stand together, and declare that the West isn't a dumping ground for the government, very well could come back to haunt Utah.

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Provo Daily Herald
June 26, 2005

Reid's plan best way to stop PFS

The Daily Herald

Apparently, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has finally shaken Utah's senior senator into action on nuclear waste.

Republican Sen. Orrin G. Hatch delivered a blistering attack on Private Fuel Storage, whom he accused of hijacking federal energy policy by attempting to create a private nuclear waste storage facility on the Goshute reservation in Skull Valley.

"Is our nuclear waste policy going to be dictated by the federal government, or should policy-making rest with a couple of companies driven by profit?" Hatch asked in his floor speech Thursday.

Hatch's attack on PFS comes after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected one of our last arguments against the nuclear waste facility. Utah had argued that welded casks, which PFS would use to house spent fuel rods, were not likely to be accepted at Yucca Mountain. Skull Valley thus becomes a permanent repository instead of a mere "temporary" depot on the road to a repository in Nevada.

The only remaining argument Utah has before the NRC is the chance a fighter jet over the Air Force target range could crash into the site, presenting too great a risk to allow PFS to operate. It's not a promising argument: The Atomic Safety Licensing Board has already said the risk of a jet crashing into the casks is too low to justify killing the project.

Hatch obviously realizes that things aren't looking so good for Utah, and now he's proposing legislation to try to short-circuit the plan. Hatch and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., are planning to sponsor legislation that will restrict nuclear waste to either federally run facilities or to storage at reactor sites.

Hatch's bill has merit, but it may be a bit redundant. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has already proposed legislation that would require nuclear waste to be stored at the reactor sites where it is created rather than be shipped to Yucca Mountain or any other centralized repository. Reid's proposal tackles the question of fairness: Neither Utah nor Nevada directly benefit from nuclear waste and, therefore, should not bear the responsibility of storing the waste products.

The Nevada Democrat is trying to keep Yucca Mountain from coming on line. Hatch supports Yucca Mountain, when Utah might be better served by joining Reid in ending the Yucca project once and for all.

Despite what Hatch and Sen. Bob Bennett have said in the past, it is not good to let nuclear waste roll through Utah. While we don't want it stored here for fear of environmental contamination decades or years from now, the waste is directly vulnerable while it's in transit. And nine out of 10 waste shipments bound for Yucca Mountain will pass right through Utah, coming perilously close to major population centers.

While the nuclear energy industry maintains that there hasn't been an accident yet in which a nuclear waste shipment has released radiation, it's just a matter of time. The risk of such a release, either by an accident or terrorist attack, is too high to justify shipping this stuff thousands of miles by truck or rail.

On-site storage would be safer. The material has already being stored there until it cools down enough for shipment. It would be cheaper to expand those facilities than to construct new ones at Yucca Mountain or Skull Valley.

If science someday comes up with a way to reprocess nuclear waste, it will be easier to get it from a storage site near the reactor than to dig it out from under a mountain and ship it back across the country.

We're grateful that Hatch is jumping into the fray, even if he's a bit late. But if he wants to stop Skull Valley in its tracks, he'll cooperate with the Nevada delegation rather than work at cross purposes with our neighbors.

If we can all pull together, we may keep both our states from becoming dumping grounds for some of the worst poisons known to man.

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OCRegister
June 26, 2005

'Solar subsidy' levels the playing field

By Richard Henrikson

The Laguna Beach resident is an energy engineer & a principal at an Irvine engineering firm.

The logic of Assemblyman Chuck DeVore's diatribe against solar power is full of holes ["Solar-power subsidies a costly folly," Opinion, June 16].

After lambasting his fellow Republican, Gov. Schwarzenegger, for his "Million Solar Roofs Initiative," DeVore lays out three "facts": 1) "[photovoltaic solar]systems are costly"; 2) "they rarely produce the electricity claimed"; and 3) "even with subsidies PV does not pay for itself." Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

DeVore's installation cost figures for a three-kilowatt photovoltaic solar system are on the high side, but close enough for government work.

However, his $371 annual savings figure is a joke. I have a three-kW PV solar system, located in one of the more fog-shrouded areas of Orange County, and it is saving about $1,300 per year in electricity costs. That's a seven-year payback at today's electricity rates - a 14 percent return, not DeVore's theoretical 2.2 percent. Does it pay for itself? You bet! Does it produce the electricity claimed? Indeed it does. There are no moving parts, no maintenance, no fuel needed and no foreign oil fields to defend. It just sits there and cranks out electricity, day after day.

DeVore cites fossil fuels and nuclear energy as free-market energy sources he claims are far less costly than solar.

Let's look at that. Don't kid yourself that oil and gas aren't subsidized. Oil and gas interests receive huge depletion tax credits and other subsidization goodies. And that isn't even to mention the enormous economic externalities they enjoy - like not having to shoulder the real costs of air pollution-related health problems, global warming and, of course, defending our oil interests in the Persian Gulf. So DeVore shouldn't even think of bringing up the photovoltaic solar subsidy issue. It is a big loser for his argument. Schwarzenegger's PV solar subsidy merely helps in starting to level the economic playing field.

Where the true costs of oil are more accurately represented in the marketplace, as in Japan and Europe, for example, photovoltaic solar is being installed at a rapid pace. California should be leading the world in PV solar, but it is missing out. Gov. Schwarzenegger knows this and is acting on it. Good for him.

DeVore cites the French experience with economic nuclear energy. Well, let's look at another example where nuclear energy is an economic disaster. Just ask the Ukrainians. The Chernobyl disaster far more than wiped out all the gains nuclear energy ever brought to the former Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is gone, but the Ukrainians are still paying the tab for "cost-effective" nuclear energy, and will continue to pay far into the future as a huge swath of their country has been turned into a vast uninhabitable radioactive ghost town for many generations to come.

And, oh yeah, then there's that nettlesome issue of nuclear waste that we haven't figured out how to pay for either. If those pesky Nevadans would just roll over and let us dump it there, all would be well. Even then, it will be an astronomical sum to construct the national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. DeVore's opinion harkens back to that time in the '50s when one nuclear "expert" with 20/400 foresight said, "One day nuclear energy will be so cheap, it won't be worth metering."

So, press on, Gov. Schwarzenegger. You've got the power! Assemblyman DeVore, please step aside.

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Pahrump Valley Times
June 24, 2005

Independence Day Celebration

Fireworks planned despite 'emergency'

By Phillip Gomez
PVT

Nye County commissioners on Tuesday approved a number of town advisory board applications for permits to set off fireworks on the Fourth of July, possibly for the last time.

The commission agenda also had scheduled discussion and possible action on a proposed ordinance to make fireworks sales illegal in the county. That brought out all the local fireworks dealers making the case for their inclusion in an upcoming workshop with the town of Pahrump that could restrict explosives more tightly and impose new taxes on their sale.

Commission Chairwoman Candice Trummell called the current ordinance "immoral" for permitting the retail sale of fireworks, and only to nonresidents, but outlawing their explosion within Nye County. She insisted that it was too late to modify the ordinance for the upcoming Fourth of July celebration; if passed, the ordinance wouldn't take effect until next year, she said.

"You just declared us a disaster area," said an unbelieving Sally Devlin. "One fire will burn up ... the Pahrump Valley," she said. Devlin wanted to outlaw fireworks completely for the approaching Fourth of July celebration.

Town Board member Paul Willis, recovering from his own "fireworks" over his proposed brothel ordinance last week, cautioned against any overreaction to the volatile fire conditions. "This is an extreme situation that's out of the normal for us," he said. "I'd rather see (fireworks store owners) pay taxes and help with the education of the community for safe use of fireworks."

Trummell explained her purpose in bringing the item to the table: "While this is at the forefront of everyone's mind, I thought it was a good time to discuss it," she said.

California State Fire Marshal Ruben Grijalva gave testimony that fireworks legally purchased in Nevada and smuggled into California were posing "a growing, serious problem." There, bulk purchases are resold individually. In the past two months, Grijalva said, California authorities have confiscated 75,000 pounds of fireworks. It costs California $6 per pound to dispose of confiscated fireworks, he said - nearly half a million dollars for a two-month season.

In the past two weeks, a 10-year-old boy playing with fireworks resulted in a death, Grijalva said. "The problem is growing and the risk is great." Millions of dollars in injuries, property damage and loss of life were the result of Nye County's open-door policy. "I'm not here to harm the economy of Pahrump," he said, adding that he would like to see the curtailment of "the larger shipments" of explosives through more effective regulation.

Local fireworks purveyors in attendance appeared in a compromising mood.

Kelly Bernard with Outlaw Pyro, which does a wholesale business, said that banning the sale of fireworks in Pahrump was not the answer to the problem. "People can go to Laughlin or the Moapa Indian Reservation to buy fireworks," she said. "It's not just us creating the problem."

Bernard said fireworks sales in Pahrump contributed $10,000 to $15,000 in sales tax revenue to the community. Additional revenue came from hotel and restaurant receipts on account of out-of-state visitors here to buy fireworks. She cited statistics that fireworks were the cause of 2,532 fires in 1997, while engine backfires were the cause of 10,984 fires. Only nine injuries that year resulted from fireworks use in 1,000 cases, she said.

Pahrump Town Manager Dave Richards asked that the commissioners take no action until the town advisory board made a formal recommendation.

Area 51 Fireworks Superstore owner Tim McCoy said he had "a lot of ideas" to assist in drafting an ordinance that would not put fireworks owners out of business in Pahrump.

Glen Fletcher, with Area 51 also, said, "The fireworks industry takes a lot of heat for the fires, but cigarettes are a bigger cause of fires."

Former county commissioner Red Copass, now a paid consultant for Phantom Fireworks in Pahrump, said, "I do not particularly care for fireworks, but I do care that as Americans we're allowed to do things that other people are not allowed to do."

Commissioner Trummell reiterated that the fire situation was not the reason for her raising the issue. "I wanted to find out if the (other) commissioners are serious about solving this problem. ... It is not an indictment of the fireworks industry. It's just that the current ordinance is not very effective and not very ethical."

Commissioner Gary Hollis was in no mood to do anything neighborly for California, since the commission as a whole is still smarting over Inyo County's alleged brusque dealings with Nye County over recent Yucca Mountain payments that Nye's commissioners felt shortchanged them.

"I don't have a very good relationship with Inyo County and I don't see that it's going to get any better," Hollis said. "They got their county and we got ours."

Commissioner Patricia Cox motioned to permit the Pahrump Town Board to bring forward a proposal that would impose a tax on retail and wholesale sales of fireworks and to designate a recipient of the revenue, i.e., Pahrump Fire-Rescue, the Nye County Sheriff's Office or the county's general fund. The motion passed unanimously. The ordinance Cox contemplated would allow detonation of fireworks in Nye County, unless prohibited by local town advisory boards.

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North Lake Tahoe Bonanza
June 24, 2005

Environmentalists give Nevada lawmakers mixed reviews

Kathleen Hennessey
The Associated Press

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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KIDK-TV

Idaho National Laboratory is Leading the Way for Future Nuclear Power

By Darlene Deacon
Idaho Falls, Idaho

President Bush tours a Nuclear Power Plant in Maryland pushing for the construction of more nuclear plants.

The growing demand for electricity, a call for less dependance on foreign oil and safer environmental energy is only part of the president's push for nuclear power.

"Over the past decade, America's energy consumption has been growing about 40-times faster than our energy production.It is time for this country to start building nuclear power plants again."

In a statement today, Senator Crapo is supporting efforts to alternative energy, especially here in Idaho.

"For Idaho, significant new opportunities in ethanol production, opportunities for growth in world class experimentation at our National Laboratory with the building of Generation Four nuclear and hydrogen technology."

The Snake River Alliance wants to prevent the construction of a plutonium production facility at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Program Director, Beatrice Brailsford, would only say that there are a lot of problems with nuclear power including cost to taxpayers and nuclear waste issues.

The INL is now developing new ways to handle the waste.

"You can take these fuels, you can recycle them back into rectors and as a result, only the process waste goes into a repository, so it's a very small amount of waste."

McCarthy also stressed the safety of nuclear power adding that President Bush's visit to Calvert Cliff's Nuclear Power Plant further shows his faith in the safety of nuclear energy.

President Bush is the first president to visit a nuclear power plant since President Carter in the late seventies.

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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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