Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, July 7, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
July 07, 2005

New pro-Yucca group to lobby rural residents

By Benjamin Grove <grove@lasvegassun.com>

Sun Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A fledgling pro-Yucca Mountain group plans to visit Nye County later this month to try to bolster support for the repository project among rural Nevada residents.

The Yucca Mountain Task Force, formed in April to re-energize support for the Energy Department program and lobby Congress on Yucca budget issues, also aims to secure allies in Nye County.

Task force members plan an informal meeting on July 27 in Pahrump with several county officials, with a scheduled trip to Yucca Mountain the following day.

A number of Nye residents already support the plan to construct a national high-level nuclear waste repository in their county. County officials have said that if Yucca is inevitable they plan to negotiate for federal benefits.

The task force, a coalition of state utility officials and nuclear power industry groups led by the Nuclear Energy Institute, wants to further open a dialogue with local residents, said task force co-chairman Charles Pray, Maine's state nuclear safety adviser and a former Maine state senator and Energy Department official.

"My dealings in government have proven that it is always best to be open and candid and to have a fair discussion about it," Pray said.

The task force wants to work with county leaders in their efforts to win compensation for Yucca and to assure that the repository meets all technical requirements and is safe, Pray said.

The group does not intend to "force" Yucca Mountain on local residents who do not support it, he said. He said he suspects there are a number of Nye County residents who "quietly" support Yucca, and others who oppose it but believe the county should reap federal benefits if the project can't be stopped.

Most Nevada elected officials, including its five-member congressional delegation and Gov. Kenny Guinn, are united in opposition to Yucca.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said the repository will never become a reality. The project for years has been plagued by delays, budget shortfalls and controversy over scientific studies at the site.

But Nye County officials would be "remiss in their duties" if they did not negotiate with the federal government for financial benefits and safety assurances, said David Swanson, interim manager of Nye County's nuclear waste repository office. He said industry officials from the task force group have unique insight into nuclear waste issues, such as storage and shipping.

"What I'm hoping to do is glean as much information as we can can from these folks," Swanson said.

Swanson said his personal skepticism about Yucca has faded in the last two and a half years.

"I feel really comfortable with bringing the repository here," he said. "I feel it's more or less inevitable."

Task force members plan continued meetings with locals in Nye County. Another task force organizer, David Blee, in his capacity as director of the U.S. Transport Council, made a presentation to the Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group on June 9. The council is another pro-Yucca group, aimed at educating the public about nuclear waste transportation.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 07, 2005

Shoshone Nation files motion in Yucca case

Las Vegas Sun

The Western Shoshone Nation on Wednesday filed an opposition to a government motion to dismiss their case that seeks to stop work at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Last May a federal judge denied the Western Shoshone Nation's preliminary injunction request seeking to stop work at the site. In the ruling, the judge requested that the government file a motion to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds, according to Wednesday's motion.

The government filed a motion to dismiss.

In its opposition to that motion, the Western Shoshone argued that the U.S. has never lawfully divested the tribe of its land or its rights under previously held treaties.

It also argued that it has standing to assert the collective rights of the Western Shoshone Nation and its people, "including the right to prohibit the use of Western Shoshone Territory for the storage of high level nuclear waste," according to the motion.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 07, 2005

Yucca backers rallying

Visit to Nye County planned for July 29

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Leaders of a national lobbying group that formed this spring to promote Yucca Mountain plan to visit Nye County this month to begin building ties in Nevada, an organizer said.

A meeting tentatively set for July 29 in Pahrump illustrates a growing relationship between rural Nevadans and interests that support the proposed nuclear waste repository.

The Yucca Mountain Task Force was formed in April to revive political support in Congress and in various states for the Energy Department effort, which has been hit by delays. The task force consists of state utility regulators and nuclear industry executives, including the Nuclear Energy Institute trade association.

Five task force members plan to meet with Nye County officials, according to organizer David Blee. He is executive director of the U.S. Transport Council, an organization of nuclear waste shipping firms and equipment manufacturers that plan to seek Yucca contracts.

The visitors are scheduled to tour Yucca Mountain the next day, possibly to be joined by local government representatives, according to Blee and a Nye County spokesman.

Blee said the purpose "is to open up a dialogue between the task force and county leaders who have expressed support for the project, in terms of a coalition." Officials from neighboring Lincoln and Esmerelda counties also might be invited, he said.

Nye County leaders welcomed the effort, according to Dave Swanson, interim director of Nye County's nuclear waste repository office. Two county commissioners, Candice Trummell and Gary Hollis, probably will take part in the session, Swanson said.

"The folks (Blee) would be bringing out here, it sounds like we could learn something from them," Swanson said. "The more we can learn about issues associated with the repository, pro or con, the better we will be in our decision-making process."

State and Clark County leaders have adopted a hard-line stance on Yucca Mountain, maintaining that a nuclear waste repository would be flawed and unsafe. They argue that there is a good chance the project can be killed in the courts or by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

While there is some Yucca Mountain opposition in rural Nevada, there also are some county leaders who say that a nuclear waste site might become a reality whether they like it or not, and that they need to prepare for the possibility by recruiting jobs and other economic benefits associated with the project.

"The attitude among folks is that the repository is probably inevitable, and it seems that way," Sanders said from Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located. "The Department of Energy is anxious to work with the county and making it a success, and I truly believe that."

Bob Loux, coordinator of the state's official opposition to Yucca Mountain, said local county officials "can talk to who they want," but the visitors are selling a bad idea.

"They are trying to get the local governments pumped up on this thing," said Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "They are trying to show the project is not dead, that it really is moving."

Despite Yucca Mountain support from some rural leaders, "there still is a good deal of opposition" in those counties, Loux said.

NEI already has a consultant in Nevada, former governor Robert List. Additionally, Blee and other nuclear waste transportation executives took part in a June 9 workshop in Pahrump before the Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group, a forum for rural leaders to work on repository issues.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
July 07, 2005

Senator urges moderate pick for high court

Ray Hagar

U.S. senators should be considered by President Bush to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday.

Reid, D-Nev., also said he and Bush have talked privately to ensure that the appointment of the successor for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O´Connor does not reach the level of partisan squabbling that has epitomized the debate over recent judicial nominations.

“I know that I won´t get someone who I will jump up and down and cheer for,’ Reid told a group of employees at the Reno Gazette-Journal. “But there are many fine and conservative jurists out there.

“I had lunch at the Supreme Court 10 days ago and at my table were (associate justices) Sandra Day O´Connor, (Antonin) Scalia and (Stephen) Breyer,’ Reid said. “They said what they would like to see is the president pick someone who has not been a judge. And what I have said to anyone who will listen is what I think he should do is pick one of the senators.’

Reid´s suggestions drew tepid responses from some leading Nevada lawyers and judges.

“I believe that an appellate judge needs to be a trial judge first,’ Reno appellate lawyer Robert Eisenberg said. “The only thing an appellate judge does is review the work of the trial judge to determine if the trial judge has made an error. For an appellate judge to do that, he has to have some experience as a trial judge.’

Other issues

Reid also said in an hourlong interview that:

* Bush probably will bypass the Senate and make a recess appointment to John Bolton as the ambassador to the United Nations;

* U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is the front-runner to win the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination but may not be the best choice, and;

* He is against a timetable for pulling out of the war in Iraq but urged Bush to set some benchmark dates for turning over the defense of Iraq to the Iraqis.

“It would be very damaging to us to cut and run now,’ Reid said. “But the president has to announce publicly some benchmarks that we could look to. The speech he gave (last week) was to stay the course. American people deserve more than that. We need some benchmarks. What is he looking for with the Iraqi people?’

Reid cited Justice Hugo Black of Alabama as a former senator who was appointed to the Supreme Court. Black, a member of the Ku Klux Klan in his youth, was appointed to the court by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1937.

“I think it is a great idea,’ Reid said about the possibility of appointing a senator to the Supreme Court. “Some outstanding people have come from the Senate. The last was an ex-Ku Klux Klansman who turned out to be one of the greatest civil-rights jurists of all time.’

Experience in a lower court is important for justices on the Nevada Supreme Court and that probably holds true on the U.S. Supreme Court, Nevada Supreme Court Justice Jim Hardesty said.

“In the short time that I have been on the Nevada Supreme Court, I am very glad that I have had the opportunity to serve as a district court judge,’ Hardesty said. “There are any number of issues that we deal with in front of the Nevada Supreme Court where having experience as a trial court judge is of enormous benefit.’

Reid said it would be a mistake for Bush to temporarily appoint Bolton as U.N. ambassador.

“I don´t know how well you know this guy but he is a little unusual to say the least,’ Reid said of Bolton. “The situation is that Bolton is just a flawed candidate. But he is the vice president´s man and the vice president has been doing everything he can to get him in that job. That being the case, you will probably see a recess appointment because the vice president is so locked into this man.

“If he does that, I´m not sure it is the right thing for the country to send someone to the United Nations who can´t get confirmed by the Senate.’

Reid is wary of Clinton´s bid for president, saying there are other Democratic senators and governors who might be better candidates.

“It is a wide-open field,’ Reid said. “The person who is leading at this stage is Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton, of course, has lots of money. She comes from a state with lots of people in it, but she still has a few ties to Arkansas. I think she is the person to beat, but that doesn´t necessarily mean she is the best candidate.’

Yucca Mountain

Regarding a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, Reid said: “Yucca Mountain is not dead, but it is breathing real hard. There have been some significant blows to the program, the court decision being one and then these memos that the science has been doctored also hurts the program a lot.

“I think there will be efforts to do other things with nuclear waste. The solution is the leave it where it is, in dry-cast storage containment and that is being done at facilities around America. It would save billions of dollars and we would no longer have to worry about transporting these poisonous substances.’

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MSNBC
July 06, 2005

Hot idea: Fight warming with nuclear power

Bush takes message to Group of 8; some activists listening

By Miguel Llanos
Reporter
MSNBC

When it comes to global warming, President Bush's refusal to endorse mandatory action means he is largely isolated on the world stage. But when the curtain rose at the Group of Eight summit on Wednesday, he was poised to tout a climate strategy shared by some peers, and more surprisingly, by a few environmentalists: nuclear power.

Nuclear power's downsides are well known: the potential for meltdowns, the question of how to safely store radioactive waste and the dangers of  plutonium reaching terrorists' hands.

But Bush, as well as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, host of the G8 summit, has been stressing a positive quality of nuclear power: the fact that it doesn't burn fossil fuel and therefore produces no carbon dioxide emissions, a key greenhouse gas that many scientists tie to global warming.

"It's time for this country to start building nuclear power plants again," the president said in a televised appearance in June at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland. Nuclear power still produces 20 percent of the total U.S. electricity, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates that 100 new reactors would be needed over 20 years just to maintain that share.

"Nuclear power is one of America's safest sources of energy," Bush added, all "without producing a single pound of air pollution and greenhouse gases.

The president has made similar pitches in recent months, and the message appears to be getting some traction.

"The growing pressure to confront global warming and reduce greenhouse gas emissions has breathed new life into zero-emissions nuclear power like nothing else," says Dan Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, which commissions an annual survey on Americans' energy attitudes.

Now, even some environmentalists are breaking the ranks that formed after the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. They say that the warming threat is so serious and so widespread that nuclear power should be reconsidered.

A few venture even further, saying it's time to ramp up nuclear power.

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Pahrump Valley Times
July 6, 2005

Pahrump could be the death of Death Valley

Spillover Growth From Folks Fleeing Vegas Cited

By Phillip Gomez
PVT

However hazy the future picture of the built environment in the deserts of southern Nevada and across the state line in California, the prognosis for Death Valley National Park details as sharp as a newly-formed crescent-shaped sand dune on a calm day.

Still-nebulous development plans for the California side of the Amargosa Desert but more certain population projections for the growth of Pahrump indicate clear threats to the water and air quality of Death Valley - as well as the downturn in the numbers of tourists likely to be drawn to the region. The consequent impacts to the economies of surrounding communities could spell trouble, according to two new reports commissioned by a leading conservation organization.

The National Parks Conservation Association, the premier watchdog organization over the nation's national parks, issued the reports last month assessing how well equipped the Park Service is to protect the parks and fulfill its stewardship responsibilities in light of the looming dangers.

Just 11 years since the passage of the California Desert Protection Act - which enlarged and named all three areas national parks or preserves in order to provide them with stronger protections - "the rich heritage of the California desert is in jeopardy," said Howard Gross, the conservation organization's desert program manager.

"Because of insufficient funding and staffing limitations, the parks are able to do only a fraction of what is needed to understand, preserve, interpret resources for visitors and protect cultural artifacts and historic structures, leaving desert artifacts susceptible to theft and vandalism," Gross said.

In the second report, a poll conducted by Zogby International, the results said that while close to half (45 percent) of likely voters plan on visiting a national park or historic site this summer, 62 percent said they would be unlikely to visit a park clouded by haze or smog - sure evidence of the encroachment of civilization.

Last year, the NPCA and two other conservation groups named five highly visited national parks as the most polluted in the nation. Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, just west of Death Valley National Park across the Owens Valley, together came in fifth on the list.

The root causes of the parks' problems, according to the initial report, are "the rapid regional population growth, development of surrounding lands and insufficient park funding."

The California desert parks lie between two major metropolitan regions - southern California and southern Nevada, both of which have experienced considerable growth in recent decades. Two of the fastest growing counties in the nation, Riverside and San Bernardino, encompass Joshua Tree National Park. Clark County, with a population of 1.7 million and home of world-famous Las Vegas, grows by 5,000 each month.

Neighboring Nye and Inyo counties, straddling the California-Nevada state lines, are witnessing the spillover effect of Las Vegas' recent growth. Pahrump's growth since the 1990s has been legendary, but the real building boom may be yet to come.

Nye County's Pahrump planning department already has received submitted plans for a total of approximately 12,500 new lot developments in the Pahrump Valley, including one by a local brothel. According to calculations, if all those lots were sold, they would bring in some 31,250 new residents, adding to the already 34,000 current residents.

A recent, more conservative study, perhaps more realistically forecasts the population of Pahrump to reach 54,879 by 2015, just 10 year away.

Recently, California developers made Page One headlines in proposing a new desert "city" - actually a single subdivision of 65,000 homes east of Tecopa, California - called Charleston View. Within sight of Nevada's 12,000-foot Charleston Peak, such a development would bring in over 160,000 people. It could signal the start of in-filling suburban sprawl between Blue Diamond, just west of Las Vegas, and Pahrump, already beginning to sprawl southward with 3,200 homes planned for the Mountain Falls subdivision over the next decade.

"Skyrocketing population growth in and around the desert region has meant increased demands on the region's most precious commodity - water," says Gross. "More people have also meant more cars and trucks. This growth is a leading threat to the parks' water resources and air quality."

In addition to more traffic, there is the problem of more garbage, creating the need for new landfills. Nye County already is looking for land in the Pahrump Valley on which to locate a new landfill in just a few years time, when the current one is due to be closed.

And already the site proposed has raised objections due to its proximity to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, a water-sensitive preserve west of Pahrump.

Yucca Mountain Repository, the proposed nuclear waste dump site 50 miles east of Death Valley's boundary, if eventually built would create many potential threats, mainly in further depleting and possibly contaminating the underground water flows that empty into the park.

"Parks are not islands unto themselves," noted National Parks Conservation Association vice president Jim Nations in the organization's news release. "The developments and activities adjacent to them often impact the resources within them."

And likewise, the regional economies without. In 2001, a Michigan State University economic model deemed conservative said that nearly 300 million nation park visitors generate approximately $11 billion for state and local economies, supporting more than 250,000 jobs.

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Science Daily
July 06, 2005

Mountain-building Process Much Faster -- And Cooler -- Than Previously Thought, Say Queen's Geologists

Source:   Queen's University

Kingston, ON -- Geologists at Queen's University have discovered that the time it takes for mountain ranges to form is millions of years shorter than previously thought.

This controversial finding could have implications for our understanding of other geological processes that shaped the Earth, says Professor James Lee and postdoctoral fellow Alfredo Camacho of Queen's Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering Department.

The study will appear in the June 30 edition of the international journal Nature.

Other members of the team are Bastiaan J. Hensen from University of New South Wales, and Jean Braun from Universit-- de Rennes, France.

Using state-of-the-art techniques to measure the age of rocks, the researchers deciphered a pattern of ages within single crystals from rock remnants that survived continental collision. Their measurements show a 13-million-year cycle in which rocks are buried to 60 km depth, then returned to the surface. This occurred 425 million years ago during a large-scale mountain-building event called the Caledonian Orogeny.

"We were excited to be able to show, for the first time, that the duration of an orogenic' cycle [burying, then bringing rocks to the surface] is much shorter than was previously believed -- only 13 million years in this case," say Drs. Camacho and Lee. "Geologically speaking, that is a very short period indeed -- a mere drop in the bucket of the Earth's history." The duration of many geological processes that shape the Earth has been thought to last for hundreds of millions of years.

The study also suggests that the buildup of heat previously thought to be widespread during mountain building may instead be related to short-term events caused by either pulsed injection of hot fluids and/or friction on faults, with the overall crust remaining relatively cool. The study focused on the Caledonian Orogeny in Norway, where injections of hot fluids caused rapid fracturing of this cool crust, producing deep-seated continental earthquakes.

"By coupling geochronology with fundamental physical and mathematical principles and computer modeling, we can assess the durations of a variety of geological processes for the very first time," says Dr. Lee. "The new quantitative technique that we developed allows us to measure the duration of thermal disturbances at all scales, from small-scale intrusions of molten rocks into the crust (e.g. volcanoes) to large-scale orogenic cycles."

This unique "cold-crust" model stems from a new quantitative technique integrating geo-chronology, mathematics, physics, and basic geological principles. "It neatly explains many previously puzzling geological observations and may be relevant to other mountain-building events around the world," says Dr. Lee.

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Las Vegas SUN
July 05, 2005

Scientist's testimony in Yucca e-mail probe raises questions

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

WASHINGTON -- Testimony last week from a Yucca Mountain scientist at the center of the investigation into the alleged falsification of documents did little to help resolve the issue.

"We have really just begun," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., chairman of the House subcommittee looking into the allegations. "I still think there are a lot of questions to be answered."

Last Wednesday's congressional hearing seemed to further entrench the proponents of the planned nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and the project's opponents.

Porter and other Nevada officials say a series of e-mails sent between project scientists as much as 10 years ago raise serious questions about the scientific integrity of the project.

Scientists wrote about "fudging" work and made disparaging remarks about quality assurance. One e-mail suggested keeping two sets of documents -- one for inspectors the other with the real data.

Project supporters, though, dismiss the e-mails and say any questions about the science will be answered when the Energy Department applies to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build the repository.

"We don't lay out our safety case in e-mails," Yucca Mountain project spokesman Allen Benson said.

He said technical documents supporting the Energy Department's work on Yucca will be evaluated by the commission, not the e-mails.

Still, the e-mails paint a troubling picture. U.S. Geological Survey scientist Joe Hevesi wrote of being able to poke holes in the scientific work.

Hevesi had to be subpoenaed to testify Wednesday before the House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee.

But he provided few answers.

He dismissed his remarks as "poor wording" or emotional responses. He and the Energy Department have described the e-mails as "water cooler chatter."

Porter said Hevesi's statements "absolutely" do not take away any of the e-mail's value in the fight against Yucca Mountain. He said the testimony will open the door for other aspects of his investigation.

Porter said Hevesi has agreed to meet with the subcommittee staff to answer at least 50 to 100 more questions. Two other scientists have also met with staff members. Porter said he would continue to put and would not hesitate to subpoena Energy Department documents or others involved with the e-mails to testify.

Nevada officials have long criticized project management and the science supporting the work. Porter said he is concerned by the frustration Hevesi seemed to have with the department management and Hevesi's inability to recall why he would write "Live by the sword, Die by the sword" in one message. Porter also found it hard to believe that Hevesi did not know anything about the "Tiger Teams" he referred to in several e-mails beyond that they were part of a review process.

"I am hoping for his sake he is telling us the truth," Porter said.

Joe Egan, a Washington attorney who handles Yucca issues for Nevada, said the full story will come out when the state challenges the Energy Department's license application. State officials expect to depose scientists and others involved during their challenge.

"This guy's deposition will be a lot more interesting," Egan said. "Clinton said he didn't have sex either."

Egan said a deposition is different than testifying before a congressional subcommittee. They are likely to go document by document and line by line asking what he may have falsified or changed. Egan noted that Porter does not have all the documents yet so it was hard to ask specific questions.

"We never got to the uncomfortable questions," Egan said. "We're lawyers, we're litigators, we can cross examine. We have much more time."

Until then, Porter will use his subcommittee's jurisdiction over all federal agencies and their employees to investigate the problem, which includes looking at data that was allegedly changed to support the Energy Department's position.

"The real question is, did in fact those findings that were changed, give the tools to DOE (the Energy Department), the Congress and the White House to make a decision that it was safe and based on sound science," Porter said in an interview. "I think those e-mails go to the genesis of the whole project and that is the mountain leaks, and it was chosen as the site because it didn't."

Porter continues to battle with the Energy Department over getting documents.

W. John Arthur, deputy director of the department's Office of Repository Development, said during the hearing that his appearance is part of the department's cooperation with the investigation and the department sent an e-mail to Porter last week. The e-mail told Porter that he can go to the department headquarters to view certain documents.

Arthur said he wanted to put the matter "into perspective."

"Out of more than 10 million e-mails, the object of this hearing is a handful of e-mails that indicate a possible intentional circumvention or misrepresentation of compliance with Yucca Mountain Project quality assurance requirements by these same U.S.G.S. employees," Arthur said.

Porter called Arthur's answers to his questions the "classic bureaucratic response" and said that going to the library to view documents was "unacceptable."

Even when the department has turned over documents, they have been incomplete, he said. He asked for an organizational chart of employees from 1995 to today, and it was sent without names.

"I believe part of it is arrogance on the part of the Department of Energy because they have never really been questioned," Porter said. "I don't believe they have ever been questioned by Congress to this degree. I don't believe that they can find part of the documents that we've asked for, which is part of the management culture, but I think the bulk of it is arrogance."

He said he would like to see that information in the next two weeks or he may request another subpoena.

But site supporters say these issues should be dealt with in the licensing process.

Rod McCullum, senior project manager for waste at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry's trade group, said the e-mails are just a tiny portion of thousands of pages of documents related to the Yucca project.

He said there's nothing to support Porter's idea that the e-mails signify widespread problems with the project.

"Mr. Porter wants to get to the truth, the vehicle that takes us to the truth will be the licensing process," McCullum said. "The ultimate test if the science is correct is the licensing process."

McCullum said since 2000, the department has gone through and looked at quality assurance problems.

"We knew there were scientists venting about QA (quality assurance)," he said.

McCullum said all types of documents, even beyond what Porter is requesting, will be available once the department finalizes its document collection for the NRC's database.

"You have to ask yourself what they did about it (issues raised in the e-mails)," McCullum said. "We have that in the licensing process. These are statements made by individuals. What about e-mails after that? They didn't just ignore these things."

Porter, however, said there "is still the underlying question of falsifying data on the very genesis of Yucca Mountain and that is whether the mountain leaks."

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Los Alamos Monitor
July 05, 2005

Lab refines nuclear fuels as LANL is in forefront

Roger Snodgrass
roger@lamonitor.com
Monitor Assistant Editor

There are many signs that nuclear energy is making a comeback in the United States, although no new nuclear power plants have been ordered since 1978.

Peter Lyons, former nuclear policy aide to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and recently appointed commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, visited Los Alamos and Sandia National laboratories two weeks ago, where he was briefed on several ongoing nuclear energy issues.

Among them, he said, were safety and security, computational capabilities, and specific engineering questions, including a long-standing concern related to nuclear reactor sumps, that have been studied collaboratively by LANL and the University of New Mexico, among other institutions.

"We continue to be the regulator of issues in the safety and security arena, where both labs have very unique capabilities," said Lyons, mentioning LANL's accident analysis codes.

At LANL, where nuclear science, safety and safeguards are a national specialty, nuclear energy research increasingly overlaps many other areas of the laboratory's primary national security mission.

Energy dependence, the nation's growing reliance on imported fuels, the high price of gas - have fundamental economic consequences and, therefore, fundamental national security implications.

The sensitive association between hazardous nuclear fuels and potentially catastrophic nuclear weapons materials, the geophysics and hydrology of nuclear storage, and the character and behavior of radiological materials under neutron bombardment and lifecycle decay - are among key volumes in the knowledge equity the laboratory has developed in its six decades of research and experiment.

Dana Christensen, office director for nuclear technology, touched on some of these issues by way of introducing LANL's part of the Department of Energy's roadmap for constructing new nuclear power plants in the next decade.

"My role is to look at where this nexus of the nuclear energy aspect stands with respect to national security," he said. "The overall goal is to be able to deploy powerful applications of energy and avoid the misuse of that energy for weapons' purposes."

Among the problems facing the nuclear revival is the question of storing vast amounts of radioactive materials that will remain deadly for thousands of years.

Legal and political roadblocks continue to delay DOE's application for licenses to go forward with a deep geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, with no resolution in sight, as Domenici, has detailed in his book, "A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy."

"I am very concerned that the progress on licensing this first waste repository will be hamstrung by court challenges," he wrote.

"While I support progress in developing an underground nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, I believe that our single-minded focus on the permanent disposition of spent nuclear fuel rods does not serve our nation."

By about 2010, even before the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada can be expected to begin receiving spent fuel rods from existing power plants, it will be theoretically reserved to capacity and unable to hold any more.

The DOE's nuclear roadmap, taking into account accelerating energy demand, foresees a need for 393,000 megawatts of new electricity by the year 2020.

"This growth would require the United States to build between 1,300 and 1,900 new power plants over the next two decades," the plan stated. That might mean building a couple of hundred power plants a year, by the time new licenses are permitted.

Since there are currently 103 nuclear power plants operating in the United States, the burden of storing waste from many times that number becomes obvious.

This is where LANL's expertise in radioactive chemistry and chemical engineering has been called upon to develop what is known as the "advanced fuel cycle" or "transmutation of nuclear waste."

The laboratory's task is to take nuclear fuel and extract the one percent of the material - the plutonium, neptunium, americium, curium iodine and technetium that poses long-term hazards and contains enormous energy potential - while leaving the 99 percent of the material that would be far less harmful in the long run.

The plutonium and other transuranic elements would be used as fuel in the next generation of nuclear power reactors and the whole process would reduce the volume and danger of the waste that needs to be stored for the long term.

"What are the options? More and more greenhouse gasses?" asked Christensen. "That's something we have the responsibility to help avoid."

Christensen said the longer-term solution now rests with the hopes for nuclear fusion, which can provide energy from ocean water, leaving only short-term radioactive products and no waste.

"Do we have enough capacity in nuclear power to bridge to fusion? And can we convince the world of that?" Christensen asked. "I can't answer that."

Pressing climate concerns, the threat of global warming from carbon emissions from over-reliance on fossil fuels for generating electricity, have brought some well-known environmentalist into the nuclear fold.

James Lovelock, who propounded the Gaia theory of a "living earth," made an urgent statement last year on behalf of nuclear energy as the only "green" solution to reduce the impact of greenhouse gasses in the earth's atmosphere.

He was joined this year by Stuart Brand, best known for publishing The Whole Earth Catalogue, whose article in Technology Review listed nuclear power as one of a handful of "environmental heresies," that he predicted would be have to be reversed to avoid the "permanent disaster" of climate change.

But Lovelock and Brand remain exceptions to the rule.

"They correctly deduce that greenhouse gas emissions are a clear and present danger, so I salute them for that," said Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. "But they are reaching or wavering towards a wrong solution to the ever-increasing problem."

Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, whose books include Nuclear Wastelands and Mending the Ozone Hole, has many arguments with the laboratory's transmutation project.

Along with many other environmentalists, he believes that renewable energy sources should have priority for future investments

"Nuclear energy is not alone in allowing us to address the carbon dioxide problem, but it is alone in causing proliferation problems, requiring a vast amount of money up front without solving the waste problem, and leaving us with the risk of accidents," he said. "We don't need it."

A bill approved by the Senate last week earmarked $85 million to DOE's Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, an increase of $15 million over the budget request. The bill includes $7 million for Material Test Station at Los Alamos Neutron Scattering Center to support material science research.

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PrimeZone
July 05, 2005

Braintech to Launch eVisionFactory as a 3D-Machine Vision Software Studio at the 2005 International Robots and Vision Show

Idaho National Laboratory to co-present an eVF(TM) built solution at show conference

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 5, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Braintech, Inc. (OTCBB:BRHI), a leading provider of vision guided robotic, ("VGR") software solutions, announced today that it will be exhibiting at the 2005 International Robots & Vision Show, September 27-29th at the Rosemont Convention Centre in Rosemont, Illinois.

Braintech will showcase its product "eVisionFactory"(tm), ("eVF")(tm). Featuring patented SC3D(tm), (single camera 3D) technology, eVF is the only software studio platform that allows project teams to build complete, production grade, 3D location, inspection and guidance systems without writing a single line of code.

Included as parts of eVF are time-saving software components; Autocal(tm), Autotrain(tm) and Autotest(tm). Using eVF automated functions, developers can build, integrate and install fully-functional, reliable systems at an unprecedented speed.

Demonstrations on how to build a 3D location, inspection or guidance software solution using eVF, will be located at the Braintech booth #1912, in the trade show's Vision Section. To view a complete Trueview(tm) 3D-VGR system, attendees can visit Braintech's exclusive automotive sector partner, global robotic manufacturer ABB, in the Robots Section at booth #719.

Commenting on the launch of eVF at the Robots & Vision Show, Owen Jones, CEO of Braintech Inc. states, "As an integral technology to ABB's Trueview VGR systems, eVF has emerged as a proven reliable software application for developing production level 3D- guidance solutions for a broad set of automotive manufacturing processes. Now, we're interested in exploring the use of eVF outside the automotive sector and welcome the interest of project teams involved in exploring the use of 3D machine vision. Key markets include government, medical, and semi-conductor."

Babak Habibi, President and COO of Braintech Inc. added, "eVF is designed for use by project engineers and technicians. With standard training, a project member is fully capable of developing a complete solution, ready for integration with any type of electro-mechanical device. By utilizing the 'auto' components, much of the time consuming and 'heavy-lifting' during installation is eliminated."

In addition to Braintech exhibiting at the show, Babak Habibi will be co-presenting with Rodney Shurtliff, Advisory Engineer of the Idaho National Laboratory, ("INL"), Battelle Energy Alliance, ("BEA"), at the show conference on Wednesday September 28th at 8:00AM. INL is currently developing and constructing a prototype Waste Package Closure System, for the Yucca Mountain repository for Spent Nuclear Fuel in Nevada. Habibi and Shurtliff's presentation at the workshop, entitled Vision Guided Robots, will highlight Braintech's VGR software application, which analyzes images from a radiation resistant camera mounted on the Remote Handling System to determine the exact 3D location of each tool and the waste package in the non-fixtured environment of the closure cell.

About Braintech (OTCBB:BRHI) -- For more information, visit www.braintech.com. For free tickets to the Robots and Vision show, visit www.roboticsonline.com

About ABB -- For more information, visit www.abb.com

About BEA -- BEA consists of Battelle Memorial Institute, BWXT Services Inc., Washington Group International, Electric Power Research Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. BEA was awarded a 10-year contract, (estimated value of $4.8 billion) to establish the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) as the Nation's premier laboratory for nuclear energy research, development, demonstration and education.

eVF, SC3D, Autocal, Autotrain and Autotest are trademarks of Braintech Inc. and its subsidiaries. Trueview is a trademark of ABB, Inc.

Statements in this document that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and reflect the current views of management with respect to future events and are subject certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. It is important to note that the Company's actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include risks and uncertainties such as technical difficulties in developing the products; competition from other suppliers of similar products; pricing that may not be acceptable to potential markets; and many other known and unknown factors. Readers should also refer to the risk disclosures outlined in the Company's 10-KSB and 10-QSB Forms filed from time to time with the SEC.

CONTACT:  Braintech Inc.
          Jennifer Summers
          (604) 988-6440 x 202
          jsummers@braintech.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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