Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
July 13, 2005
Key House lawmaker's bill aims to speed Yucca
Barton's proposal could force 10,000-year radiation standard
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON -- A key House lawmaker said he plans to introduce a bill that could mandate a 10,000-year radiation standard for Yucca Mountain.
The bill, to be unveiled by House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, could include a number of other changes that would amount to an overhaul of the nation's nuclear waste policy, which since 1987 has focused on developing an underground repository at Yucca Mountain for the nation's most radioactive waste.
Barton intends to pursue a comprehensive nuclear waste bill in the fall, he told the Sun on Tuesday. In addition to the radiation standard provision, Barton said he may include several other provisions designed to speed the completion of Yucca Mountain -- proposals that have drawn strong opposition from Nevada lawmakers.
Barton, a leading advocate of nuclear power and Yucca Mountain in Congress, said his bill also could:
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Las Vegas SUN
July 13, 2005
Three-judge panel to rule on license application release
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- A three-judge panel will decide if the Energy Department has to release the draft license application for the Yucca Mountain project after hearing largely semantic arguments made Tuesday.
Nevada wants the draft to learn more about the department's plans for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The department does not believe the draft application qualifies as a document that has to be released.
Attorneys for the state and the Energy Department argued before Atomic Safety Licensing Board, an administrative court within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nevada lawyers argued that once Bechtel, the project's main contractor, finished the draft and department management began reviewing it last year, it qualifies under commission rules as a document that should be made public.
But Attorney Michael Shebelskie of the law firm Hunton & Williams, which represents the Energy Department, argued that what Bechtel delivered was not a final document and is still in various stages of review. He said official review, which would qualify the document be made public under commission rules, did not take place. Instead, department officials just took "sneak previews" of the draft or were asked for feedback.
Attorney Charles Fitzpatrick, a partner of the Virginia firm that represents the state on Yucca issues, noted that the department was going to file its license application in December, but former Yucca chief Margaret Chu said in late November that the application would not be turned in on that schedule. Chu and other project officials had noted the application progress and their reviews of the draft prior to the department's announcement it would not meet its deadline.
"To suggest this was just a mere glance when a monumental tome was going to be delivered in December it not credible," Fitzpatrick said.
During the arguments, Fitzpatrick called the draft "the most desirable document."
Nevada wants the draft license application to see what final decision the department had prepared for the final version. Decisions on the repository's exact design, safety features and other issues would only be made in the application, so a draft would hold a least clues to where the department was going with the project.
"We want to know how they treated (the time) post 10,000 years," said attorney Joe Egan, Fitzpatrick's partner. "This was done at a time when post 10,000 years was not legally important."
Last year, a federal court said the Environmental Protection Agency has to redo the project's 10,000-year radiation protection standard. Bechtel, the project's main contractor, completed the draft application the state wants while the 10,000-year standard was still in place. The EPA estimates it will have a proposed new standard in September.
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Las Vegas SUN
July 13, 2005
Porter sets final deadline for release of Yucca documents
By Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Rep. Jon Porter set a new deadline Wednesday for the Energy Department to release documents related to potential paperwork fraud on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.
If the department doesn't produce the documents by Monday - the date specified in a letter Porter sent to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman - the congressman will seek to subpoena them, said Chad Bungard, deputy staff director and chief counsel for the congressional subcommittee Porter chairs.
Porter's panel, a subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, has been investigating e-mails suggesting government scientists on the dump project falsified documents and fudged numbers. He has been pressing the Energy Department to release various documents that could assist in the probe, but the department has resisted.
In a June 24 letter, the department's acting general counsel, Eric Fygi, proposed making the documents available for committee staff to look at but not remove. He said the department was concerned about Porter's subcommittee releasing the documents to the public.
At a hearing late last month, Porter said he would give the Energy Department two more weeks to comply with the document request - a deadline that passed Wednesday. The congressman decided to move the deadline back a few more days.
Porter, R-Nev., also indicated he was willing to work with the department regarding concerns about the documents being released.
Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson said the agency received the letter and was reviewing it.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 13, 2005
DOE, Nevada attorneys spar over Yucca draft
State wants access; Energy Department officials say document legally shielded
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Attorneys for Nevada and the Energy Department sparred Tuesday over the availability of a Yucca Mountain draft application, a 5,800-page packet that could provide early clues about the government's bid to license a nuclear waste site.
The state wants to get access to the draft, which was completed in July 2004 and reflected in more than 70 chapters much of the government's research to establish a spent fuel repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Charles Fitzpatrick, an attorney for Nevada, said Tuesday the preliminary document would contain valuable information about how DOE was planning to design the repository and how it expected to address key radiation protection standards before they were thrown out by a federal court last summer.
"It is the most desirable document for Nevada and others to see to begin work on contentions," Fitzpatrick said. "We are champing at the bit to see it."
But during three hours of arguments before a three-judge administrative panel Tuesday, Energy Department lawyer Michael Shebelskie said the draft application was a legally shielded document and DOE is not required to hand it over.
Shebelskie said the year-old document was "stale," and would not reflect the department's thinking on key points when it finalizes its license application. That date has not yet been set.
The draft license application has become the latest flash point in the legal fight between the state and the federal government over Yucca Mountain.
Fitzpatrick said access to the draft would allow the state to get a head start on preparing detailed legal objections to be aired during Nuclear Regulatory Commission license hearings for the proposed repository.
Fitzpatrick said Nevada experts want to compare the draft application with the final version, looking for changes they could probe during licensing hearings.
"The differences would reveal the differences that scientists had in the program, or that the scientists had with the politicians, and how they were resolved," he said.
The three-judge panel, assembled by the NRC to resolve early disputes over Yucca licensing, is expected to rule in the coming weeks.
At least one of the judges made clear he questioned DOE's stance. In the interest of avoiding licensing delays, Judge Alan Rosenthal said the Energy Department should consider sharing the document. Otherwise, Nevada would have little time to prepare its objections and would likely ask the NRC for time extensions, he said.
"What practical advantage other than litigation strategy is there in not giving them the document at this point?" Rosenthal said. "It would take a lot of wind out of (Nevada) sails to give them the application."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 13, 2005
Nuclear fuel reprocessing plan opposed
Scientist says increasing Yucca Mountain storage would cost less
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Experts on Tuesday threw more cold water on desires by Congress to expedite nuclear fuel reprocessing, with one saying it might be just as economical to carve more burial space within Yucca Mountain as to deploy costly technology to manage radioactive waste.
Lawmakers looking to secure a growing role for nuclear energy have focused on reprocessing technologies that hold promise to reduce volumes of fuel waste and its radioactivity.
A bill passed by the House earlier this year directs the Energy Department to settle on a specific reprocessing strategy by 2007.
But at the second hearing in a month, science and industry experts warned members of a House subcommittee that reprocessing was not yet positioned for fast leaps forward.
Richard Lester, a nuclear science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the expense of reprocessed fuel would triple the fuel costs of a nuclear plant and increase the cost of generating electricity by about 20 percent.
Uranium fuel delivered to power plants today for about $43 a kilogram would have to increase to almost $400 per kilogram for reprocessing to become competitive, Lester said.
An MIT study concluded that reprocessing "is not an attractive option for nuclear energy for at least the next 50 years," Lester said.
Reprocessing in a new U.S. plant would cost more than $2,000 per kilogram, said Steve Fetter, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.
Fetters said there was no economic downside for the government to delay a commitment to reprocessing. "I would think one could easily expand Yucca Mountain or open a new facility for the same fee," Fetters said.
The proposed repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be limited by law to holding 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. But scientists say the repository could be expanded to hold 120,000 tons or more.
The nuclear energy industry would resist actions that could raise costs to electricity consumers, said Marvin Fertel, senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute.
"The consensus in the nuclear energy industry is that nuclear fuel costs should be kept as low as possible," Fertel said.
He said developing nuclear fuel reprocessing plants would be a complex and lengthy undertaking. "You're into a couple of decades to employ the facilities you want, even if the economics are what you want."
Subcommittee chairwoman Judy Biggert, R-Ill., said she would not rule out federal subsidies for reprocessing. She pointed to tax credits that are offered to developers of wind and solar power.
"Let's face it, the federal government does a lot that isn't economical, often because doing so is in the best interest of the nation for other reasons," Biggert said.
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Pahrump Valley Times
July 13, 2005
Yucca lobbyists on way to Nye County
Meetings Slated for July 27-29 Designed to Begin 'Building Ties' with Local Government
By Steve Tetreault
PVT 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.
Meetings tentatively set for July 27-29 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 also are scheduled to tour Yucca Mountain, 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 Esmeralda 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," Swanson said from Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located.
"The Department of Energy is anxious to work with the county and make 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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Pahrump Valley Times
July 13, 2005
Bechtel SAIC changes Yucca's top leadership
By Steve Tetreault
PVT Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Bechtel SAIC, the company that operates the Yucca Mountain Project for the federal government, disclosed a change in top leadership on Thursday.
John Mitchell will leave as president and general manager on Aug. 12, a company spokesman confirmed. Ted Feigenbaum, who most recently headed the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co., will succeed him.
In an e-mail to employees last week, Mitchell said he would receive a new assignment from parent company Bechtel National Inc. Platts Nuclear Publications, an energy newsletter group, first reported his departure from the nuclear waste program.
Mitchell's departure was not related to delays that caused the Department of Energy to postpone its license application to build a spent nuclear fuel repository at the Nevada site, in Nye County approximately 20 miles from Beatty and Amargosa Valley, and roughly 50 miles from Pahrump, the county's population center, Bechtel SAIC spokesman Jason Bohne said.
Bechtel National customarily moves its managers every two or three years, Bohne said. Mitchell was appointed head of the Yucca Mountain contract in December of 2002, when the program shifted focus to preparing a comprehensive license application.
"That puts him in the time span to move," Bohne said. "John accomplished what Bechtel wanted to accomplish."
Besides heading Maine Yankee, Feigenbaum oversaw operations at the nuclear plant in Seabrook, N.H., from 1992 to 2002. He also held senior positions at the New Hampshire Yankee nuclear utility.
Feigenbaum, who was in Las Vegas for meetings last week, was hired because of his experience running nuclear facilities that are regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Bohne said. The Yucca project is headed into similar waters when its license application is judged at the NRC.
Bechtel SAIC employs about 1,300 workers on the Energy Department program, most of them based in Las Vegas. The company began work under a $3.1 billion Yucca Mountain management contract in February 2001. The contract covered five years, with options totaling another five years.
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KLTV
July 13, 2005
Texan measure to speed opening Nevada nuclear dump
LAS VEGAS A Texas congressman says he'll sponsor a bill that could speed the opening of a national nuclear waste repository in Nevada.
U-S House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton told the Las Vegas Sun that his measure could mandate a ten-thousand radiation standard for the Yucca Mountain project.
Barton says he could include a plan for storing radioactive waste at temporary storage sites while Yucca Mountain is being developed.
He might also give the Energy Department more access to funds outside spending constraints of its annual budget.
Similar proposals have drawn strong opposition from Nevada lawmakers -- who vow to again oppose Barton's plans.
The Yucca program has been slowed by budget shortfalls, controversy about scientific research and a court ruling that said the radiation standard should be set for a longer time.
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Platts
July 13, 2005
NRC judge: DOE's refusal to give draft LA to Nevada lacks merit
Washington (Platts)--12Jul2005
DOE's insistence that Nevada should not receive a copy of its draft repository license application (LA) lacks merit, an NRC administrative judge said today. Judge Alan Rosenthal told DOE attorney Michael Shebelskie that he didn't understand what the department could gain by withholding the document from the state and that DOE's refusal to release it would likely delay licensing. Rosenthal's comment came during a hearing of a special NRC licensing board panel today on a Nevada motion asking the board to order DOE to release the draft LA. Nevada, which opposes DOE's planned repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., wants the draft LA given by waste program contractor Bechtel SAIC Co. to DOE last July, so the state can begin work on contentions it will file during licensing. DOE's refusal to release the document now likely will produce several applications for "substantial extensions" on the basis that DOE had 20 years to file a document 10,000 pages long and Nevada had only a few months to review it, Rosenthal said. The three-judge panel gave no indication on when it might rule on the Nevada motion.
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Nuclear Engineering
July 13, 2005
US DoE has no reason to deny access to draft Yucca application says NRC
A US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) administrative judge has ruled that the Department of Energy (DoE) insistence that the state of Nevada should not have access to its draft repository license application for Yucca Mountain is without merit.
Judge Alan Rosenthal told the DoE that he didn't understand what the department could gain by withholding the document and that refusal to release it would be likely to delay licensing.
Nevada opposes the planned repository and wants the draft application in order to begin work on objections it will file during the licensing.
The three-judge NRC panel gave no indication on when it might rule on the Nevada motion.
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Bangor Daily News
July 13, 2005
Viewpoints
No future in nuclear
At long last, the energy industry's gravy train (aka The Energy Bill) has lumbered through the Senate, hauling more than $4 billion in direct subsidies and, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, $5.7 in production tax credits for nuclear power. Touting reactors as the "clean energy" solution to global warming, its backers also helped to load on unlimited taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for up to 80 percent of the cost of nuclear and other energy plants.
However, the reality of this technology is precarious at best; it is always just a couple of pipe breaks or operator errors away from disaster. Despite the slick "greenhouse-gas-free" hype, nuclear power fails the more sober economic and national security litmus tests.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a three-fold increase in worldwide carbon emissions between 1997 and 2100, even with an eight-fold increase in nuclear generation. If nuclear power replaced all coal in that scenario, emissions still climb by more than 2.5 times. To achieve that goal, the world would have to build at least 85 large (1,000-megawatt) nuclear reactors every year for the next century.
At $4 billion each (the average price of large reactors coming on line in the 1980s and 1990s) such an undertaking would cost trillions of dollars. The Energy Information Administration stated in its 2005 Annual Energy Outlook that "new [nuclear] plants are not expected to be economical."
At least one utility leader, Dominion CEO Thomas Capps, agrees: "If you announced you were going to build a new nuclear plant, Moody's and Standard & Poor's would assuredly drop your bonds to junk status, hedge funds would be bumping into each other trying to short your stock."
Indeed, last year, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services found that "an electric utility with a nuclear exposure has weaker credit than one without and can expect to pay more on the margin for credit. Federal support of construction costs will do little to change that reality. Therefore, were a utility to embark on a new or expanded nuclear endeavor, Standard & Poor's would likely revisit its rating on the utility."
On the other hand, prospects for combating climate change via energy efficiency improvements and sustainable energy resources are impressive. A 2004 study by Synapse Energy Economics found that the United States could reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by more than 47 percent by 2025 compared to business as usual and meet projected electricity demand, while saving consumers $36 billion annually.
Reactor technology is replete with historic red flags. More than five out of every 10 federal energy research and development dollars have fueled the nuclear power behemoth since World War II. For that investment, we now get about 20 percent of our electricity or 6 percent of our overall energy. Compare that with energy conservation which received less than two of every 10 dollars but eliminates about 25 percent of our energy needs each year and has the capacity to back out anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent or more depending on whose numbers one believes.
Even with the taxpayers' largess, the nuclear industry has been bailed out at least twice by utility customers and shareholders (first with the cancellation of more than 100 reactors in the early 1980s and then again with more than $100 billion when deregulation fever swept through the utility sector in the 1990s).
Regardless, the tracks have been greased for the industry's revival by repeated renewal of the Price-Anderson Act (limited liability for this touted "safe" technology); one-step licensing (virtual elimination of citizen and state oversight); federal acceptance of the liability for nuclear waste (Yucca Mountain is a technically flawed site and made further suspect by falsified data); and more tax breaks and rule-making favoritism than can be listed.
To curb global warming, viable technologies must be comparatively quickly and easily installed, and not require massive, centralized infrastructures. Reactors coming online since 1980 took an average of eight to 10 years to build (normally with massive cost overruns). Worldwide, security lapses, proliferation threats and terrorist strikes also shadow this technology as ominous wild cards.
Consequently, as a global warming solution, nuclear power is on a dead- end track. Before nuclear power gets its third or fourth chance, Congress and President Bush should give a first, real chance to a hybrid, distributed network of appropriate energy efficiency programs and renewable energy sources (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal). It's an energy future we can afford and our children (and the planet) can live with.
Scott Denman is the former executive director of the Safe Energy Communication Council. He is currently co-director of Collaborations, a conservation and communications consulting and training firm based in Virginia. He spends his summers in Seal Cove. He can be reached at sdenman@earthlink.net.
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NWTRB
July 13, 2005
Report to Congress and the Secretary of Energy.
May 2005.
In this report, the Board summarizes its major activities from January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2004. During that period, the Board focused on the Department of Energy's effors to develop a system for accepting, transporting, and handling high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel before disposal in the repository proposed for Yucca Mountain. Correspondence and related materials are included in the appendices to the report along with the Board's strategic plan for fiscal years 2004-2009, its performance plans for 2005, and its performance evaluation for 2004.
Available as:
Transmittal Letter, Table of Contents & Report (386KB)
Appendicies A thru D (196 KB)
Appendix E (6,312KB)
Appendix F (316KB)
Entire Report (7,033 KB)
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Las Vegas SUN
July 12, 2005
Yucca problems cited in court
Nevada argues that nuke ratepayers' money be refunded
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Nevada's lawyers are listing numerous problems with the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump as part of their effort to get the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to cancel the Energy Department's contract to take nuclear waste.
Nevada wants the court to order that utility ratepayer money that had been set aside to pay for a final storage site be refunded.
The lawyers call the department's schedule to finish the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain by 2012 or even later"sheer fantasy" and returning the money would allow nuclear utilities to pursue other storage options.
But the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's main lobbying group, wants the court to keep the contract in place and allow the ratepayer money to continue to be put toward the project.
"Since the passage of the NWPA (Nuclear Waste Policy Act), the federal government has expended substantial resources and has been making steady, albeit sometimes slow, progress toward establishing a repository," NEI lawyers Ellen C. Ginsberg and Michael A. Bauser wrote in the lobbying group's brief. "There has never been a determination that the Yucca Mountain site is not scientifically or technically viable or cannot be licensed by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission)."
In April, Judge Susan Braden said, "There is no evidence in the record that the government had reason to believe in 1983, 1989, or at present that: Yucca Mountain ever will be licensed to store spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste ..."
She asked the Justice Department and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, along with anyone interested in the issue, to show why the court should not "void" the department's contract with the utility to take its nuclear waste and order the government to pay back the $40 million it put into the Nuclear Waste Fund because there is still no nuclear waste repository.
Nuclear power users pay a per-kilowatt-hour fee into the fund for the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. At least 66 lawsuits have been filed like the one from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. They all point out that the department is seven years behind schedule for taking the waste from the nuclear reactor sites.
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval and other attorneys working for the state say in a 17-page document sent to the court on Thursday that "the repository in unlikely ever to open," based on the department's poor performance so far as a potential Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensee.
The document points to the lack of a complete license application, the incomplete document database, the unfinished new radiation standard to replace the one thrown out by a federal court a year ago, and the current investigations into possibly falsified scientific information based on e-mail exchanges by federal employees.
"At this point, however, any projection of when the repository might ever be open for business is pure conjecture, since numerous obstacles could either delay the project or altogether terminate it," Nevada's lawyers note in their court filing.
The attorneys also remind the court that Nevada will file more challenges if it feels the department's document collection, once finalized, does not meet the commission's rules, or if a new radiation standard does not meet requirements set by the National Academy of Sciences. The state also plans to challenge the license as soon as it is filed with the commission.
The Nuclear Energy Institute argues that only Congress could reset the Nuclear Waste Fund or cancel the department's contract to take waste.
To do otherwise "would call into question the overall plan for long-term disposal of used fuel and high level waste, which is the premise for licensing of existing and future plants," Ginsberg and Bauser wrote.
The industry, which strongly supports the Yucca project, says Congress wants a geologic repository and returning money to the fund "would have the effect of depriving the high-level waste program of appropriate funding, contrary to the clear intent of Congress."
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KRNV
July 12, 2005
Nevada calls federal date for Yucca Mountain opening 'fantasy'
Utilities with nuclear power reactors have been waiting for years for a place to send their radioactive waste.
Now, the state of Nevada's telling a court that plans to open the proposed repository by 2012 or later are, "sheer fantasy."
It's arguing in recent documents before the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington that it could take so long for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository to open that the court might as well pull the plug. That way, it says nuclear power utilities could start looking at other storage options.
The Nuclear Energy Institute tells the court that while progress is slow, the government's on the road to establishing the Yucca repository. The NEI is the nuclear industry's main lobbying group.
Yucca Mountain's the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas that President Bush and Congress in 2002 designated as the nation's nuclear waste dump.
The plan's been stalled in recent months by a series of setbacks leading to a planned license application.
Information from: Las Vegas Sun, http://www.lasvegassun.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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