Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
August 16, 2005
DOE: Plan in the works to handle damaged Yucca waste containers
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Plans are being developed to handle damaged radioactive fuel assemblies at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, an Energy Department spokesman said.
"Over the next several weeks that's going to be closed and solved," said Allen Benson, a spokesman for the department's Office of Repository Development.
Benson was responding to questions raised about a March report by engineers hired to troubleshoot repository design. They found that some nuclear waste containers are expected to arrive at the Yucca site with undetected leaks and cracks, potentially exposing workers to high levels of radioactive contamination.
The contractors conducted the study so there wouldn't be any surprises when a license application is submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Benson said. The department plans to submit a formal application for a license to the NRC next year.
"We are in the process of refining the design to accommodate the issue identified in the report," Benson told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "It will be dealt with through refinement of design or operational techniques."
Plans currently call for fuel assemblies to be removed from rail and truck transportation casks in aboveground facilities, inspected and repackaged before being entombed in permanent storage tunnels 1,000 feet below the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The study said 4 percent, or about 8,880 assemblies are expected to have varying amounts of damage to the zirconium-alloy cladding surrounding spent fuel pellets.
Engineers believe that unless repackaging is conducted in an oxygen-free environment, the fuel could oxidize and release highly radioactive powder.
Benson said there will be a complete surface facility design for Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff to review in a license application for the repository.
In the past, critics of the project including consultants for Nevada's state Nuclear Projects Agency have expressed concerns about the potential for accidents during surface transfer operations.
Officials say up to 20,000 tons of spent fuel casks could be left on pads outside the repository where the decaying waste will age before it is put below ground.
---Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
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Las Vegas SUN
August 16, 2005
Yucca to cost Clark County $2.5 billion
By Stephen Curran <stephen.curran@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
A proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain is likely to cost Clark County roughly $2.5 billion in added fire, police and emergency expenses, according to a report that was expected to come before the commission this morning.
That figure, an estimate spread out over the Energy Department's planned 24-year shipment schedule, covers what officials from the county's Nuclear Waste Division say will be necessary for added security for Clark County, Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Mesquite, the county's nuclear planning manager Irene Navis said.
It's the most recent study of the impact of the proposed 319-mile rail line that would carve its way through Lincoln and Nye counties before ending at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The previous review, which examined only all-truck shipments, was conducted in 2002, Navis said.
The steep costs include possible impacts to public safety agencies, including fire police and emergency management, which would be tapped to protect "the health, safety and welfare of (Clark County) citizens in the event of an emergency," according to a draft version of the report.
This latest study takes into consideration truck and rail shipments. Rail shipments are the Energy Department's preferred option.
The Yucca-associated costs amount to what county officials are calling an unfunded mandate that would shift a burden to the local government for safety near the corridor, which would see up to 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.
"It means Nevada taxpayers would end up paying the brunt of it," Commissioner Myrna Williams, an outspoken Yucca opponent who has sat on the state's Nuclear Waste Projects Commission for the past 12 years, said this morning. "It's ridiculous."
Commission Chairman Rory Reid said the costs from shipping waste from power plants scattered throughout the country would create an unfair burden on the county that could mean cutbacks in other services funded out of its roughly $1 billion general fund budget each year.
"There are nuclear power plants all over the country that generate power for other people and we're being asked to take out their garbage," Reid said. "It's not fair."
The total costs to all jurisdictions in Clark County skyrockets to more than $3.7 billion, with the city of Las Vegas' $562 million share over 24 years coming in second to the county, according to the report.
While spread out over almost two and a half decades, each entity will begin to see a financial burden within the next 10 years as the potential nuclear waste dump is expected to reach completion. Clark County, which is expected to shoulder the largest cost, is expected to see a $291 million public safety spike in the project's first year, according to the report.
The commission, which is expected to maintain its steadfast stance against Yucca Mountain, has no plans to negotiate for federal assistance with those costs, Reid said.
"I don't think we have the best relationship with the DOE (Energy Department) right now," he said.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 16, 2005
Rising construction costs to affect Yucca
DOE estimates are badly outdated
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON -- Las Vegas home buyers aren't the only ones being pummeled by the skyrocketing cost of construction -- rising prices are likely to deliver a severe wallop to Yucca Mountain.
Rapidly increasing costs of labor, materials and fuel could drive the construction cost of the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository up at least 40 percent from badly outdated Energy Department cost estimates, experts said.
Some segments of the construction industry are experiencing some of the worst cost inflation since the 1980s, and that will translate to a higher Yucca price tag, UNLV construction management professor Neil Opfer said.
"You have to wonder if they (Energy Department) are getting whip-sawed by all these costs," Opfer said. "You're just seeing this huge inflation. Some of these costs are getting out of sight."
The Energy Department has said the total cost of Yucca Mountain would be about $58 billion by the time it is filled with 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, closed and monitored well into the next century.
The cost of actually constructing Yucca -- including excavating and developing miles of underground tunnels and constructing waste-processing and temporary storage facilities at the surface -- would be only about $4.5 billion, the department said.
But the department has not updated its Yucca cost estimates since May 2001, and officials now say even that estimate was based on a repository design the department is no longer planning to use.
Energy Department officials last week said they would not disclose a more up-to-date construction cost estimate until they have completed their design plan. And they won't unveil the design plan until they submit the application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission early next year.
When pressed on why the department does not have a construction cost estimate this late in the process, department spokesman Allen Benson said, "We will not speculate on costs until the design is finalized."
The Energy Department can expect some sticker shock when it gets around to a cost estimate, experts said.
Construction costs around the nation have shot through the roof since 2001, with Nevada experiencing some of the steepest price jumps in some cases, experts said. To compound the Energy Department's problem, last year officials acknowledged Yucca faced at least a two-year delay -- two more years for prices to climb ever higher.
A 2001 cost estimate for a construction project such as Yucca is "woefully out of date," said Ken Simonson, chief economist for Associated General Contractors of America.
The department faces a number of material cost spikes, Simonson said. For example, steel mill products are up 54 percent since 2001, said Simonson, who studies government product price statistics. Concrete-related materials are up 16 percent since 2001, he said.
Notable increases in diesel fuel and petroleum products also would increase costs at Yucca, a remote desert site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, he said.
National increases in material costs are reflected in Southern Nevada prices for everything from PVC piping to lumber, said Steve Holloway, vice president of the Associated General Contractors' Las Vegas chapter. Competition from opening markets in China and others around Asia are driving those costs up, Holloway said.
And union labor costs are now increasing from 4 to 6 percent a year, he said. Nonunion labor costs have increased even more dramatically, Holloway said.
Construction worker salaries in Clark County have gone up from $765 per week in 2001 to $836 last year, according to the Nevada Employment, Training and Rehabilitation Department.
"They (Energy Department) would have some problems getting labor, given the shortage of skilled labor here," Holloway said.
Workers won't easily give up good construction jobs on and around the Strip to toil at the remote Yucca site, Holloway said.
"It's a heck of a commute," Holloway said.
When labor, materials and other cost factors are considered, the overall cost of construction has gone up 20 percent each year in the last two years, said Las Vegas real estate consultant John Restrepo. No contractor or agency has been immune to the price spikes, he said.
The plights of two major government builders -- the Clark County School District and the Clark County Public Works Department -- illustrate what a much larger government builder such as the Energy Department might face in Southern Nevada.
More and more, there are so many construction jobs that contractors can name their price, officials with the School District and Public Works said.
The School District in recent years had endured construction cost increases of 5 to 10 percent, but in the last year alone costs spiked 40 percent, district director of construction Fred Smith said. Part of that is due to unprecedented levels of competition for contractors with private developers, especially those constructing medium- and high-rise condos, Smith said.
"The amount of work in the Las Vegas Valley has outstripped the abilities of contractors, subcontractors and laborers," Smith said. "They are able to put some premium prices on bids for their work."
It's often difficult as a government entity to compete with private developers who have more flexibility to pay contractors more, Smith said. There is no relief in sight, Smith said.
"They just keep putting more and more of these (private development projects) on the books," Smith said.
The Clark County Public Works has been staggered by the price of three commodities -- concrete, steel and petroleum products, which are used to make asphalt, deputy director Les Henley said. A cement shortage about a year ago has mostly abated, but it left prices higher -- roughly 30 to 40 percent higher than two years ago, Henley said.
And "steel prices have just been ridiculous over the last few years," Henley said.
Yucca watchdog groups are demanding an updated Yucca price tag.
"We'd like to know the cost," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste. "Four years for the last estimate is fairly poor, even for government."
Increasing construction costs may just be one factor that ultimately could drive up the overall estimated cost of $58 billion, Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency director Bob Loux said.
"A lot of people in and out of government are saying that the overall cost is well over $100 billion," Loux said. According to a 2001 Energy Department estimate, it would cost roughly $4.5 billion to construct Yucca, including about $1.2 billion to excavate and develop the underground tunnels where nuclear waste would be stored in metal containers. It would cost another $1.7 billion to construct a facility at the surface opening of the repository for a waste acceptance and transfer station and temporary storage.
Other costs would include:
•••$200 million for waste containers and titanium "drip shields" to protect the containers from moisture.
•••$330 million for testing the performance of the repository
•••$940 million for other "regulatory, infrastructure and management support" costs.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 16, 2005
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Fuel assembly plan in works, official says
Engineers' study pointed to possibility of radioactive leaks at nuclear repository
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
A facility or process for handling damaged spent fuel assemblies at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository will be added to the site's design in the coming weeks, a Department of Energy spokesman said Monday.
"Over the next several weeks that's going to be closed and solved," said Allen Benson, a spokesman for the department's Office of Repository Development.
He was responding to questions raised by a Review-Journal story Saturday about a study by department contractor engineers who were hired to troubleshoot the repository's design.
The engineers conducted the study so there wouldn't be any surprises when a license application is submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Benson said.
"We are in the process of refining the design to accommodate the issue identified in the report. It will be dealt with through refinement of design or operational techniques," he said, referring to the contractor's report.
Benson said Yucca Mountain project scientists and engineers are working to finalize the design but the department is not ready to release the blueprint in its current stage.
Contractor engineers reported in March that thousands of highly radioactive fuel assemblies are expected to arrive damaged at the site's surface facilities, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
There the fuel assemblies will be removed from transportation casks, inspected and sent to above-ground facilities for aging and repackaging before they are put in maze of tunnels deep inside the mountain for permanent storage.
The study found that 4 percent, or roughly 8,880, are expected to have varying amounts of damage to the zirconium-alloy cladding that surrounds spent fuel pellets.
Unless precautionary measures are taken to repackage the fuel assemblies in an oxygen-free environment, engineers believe cracks or undetected leaks could result in oxidation of the fuel and contamination released in the form of highly-radioactive powders. This in turn would pose potential risks to workers and the public.
Benson said there will be a complete surface facility design for the NRC staff to review in the license application for the repository. "All operational facilities will be designed to handle damaged fuel assemblies" if there are any, he said.
He said the NRC is aware of the oxidation potential "and it is up to the Department of Energy to address it in the license application."
In the past, critics of the project including consultants for Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency have expressed concerns about the potential for accidents at the surface facilities.
As much as 20,000 tons of spent fuel casks could be left on pads outside the repository where the decaying waste will age before it is put below ground. While being handled or stored above ground, the waste could be vulnerable to shaking from strong earthquakes or damage and fire from aircraft crashes, critics have said.
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Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
August 16, 2005
A national network of organizations working to address issues of nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup
New Report Documents $2 Billion in "Radioactive Pork" to Slice From Department of Energy Fy '06 Budget Request; Proposal Delivered Today to House-Senate Budget Conferees
As House and Senate negotiators begin working out details of the nation's nuclear weapons and nuclear energy spending plan for the coming year, a new report details nearly two billion dollars in programs that its authors say should be cut by budget conferees to enhance national security and protect the environment. Top Ten Department of Energy Radioactive Pork Projects in the 2006 Budget was delivered to Congress today by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a network of groups from communities near U.S. nuclear weapons facilities.
"This report identifies seven nuclear weapons and three nuclear energy projects that waste taxpayers' money and put the nation at more risk," explained ANA Program Director Jim Bridgman. "The conferees should halt all programs supporting the research, design, production and testing of new nuclear weapons as well as those that subsidize the nuclear power industry. Some of the savings should be used to fund cleanup projects essential to protecting public health and the environment and complying with legal agreements at contaminated weapons sites."
Significant policy differences involving billions of dollars remain between the House and Senate nuclear spending plans. The House struck all funding for research into a new nuclear bunker buster and plutonium bomb plant and significantly reduced appropriations for new plutonium fuel manufacturing. The Senate cut money for a controversial weapons research facility and a radioactive waste dump.
The DOE proposals targeted for elimination by ANA and their projected costs in the coming federal budget year include:
Life Extension Program ($348 million), which seeks to extend indefinitely the lifetimes of weapons in the existing Cold War-sized nuclear arsenal and to improve their military capabilities
Reliable Replacement Warhead ($9.4 million), which duplicates work performed under the Stockpile Stewardship Program and could encourage the development of new nuclear weapons designs
Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator ($8.5 million), which will be ineffective for many military targets, cause substantial radioactive fallout, and undermine U.S. nonproliferation goals
Modern Pit Facility ($7.7 million), an unnecessary new, multi-billion dollar factory to manufacture plutonium triggers, an activity that has produced massive contamination in the past
Enhanced Nuclear Testing Readiness ($25 million), a provocative plan to prepare the Nevada Test Site to resume full-scale underground nuclear explosions on 18 months notice
National Ignition Facility ($142 million), the multi-billion dollar Lawrence Livermore weapons design plant, which has been plagued by cost overruns and technical problems
Tritium Production ($87.5 million), to produce additional quantities of the radioactive gas used to boost weapons' yields even though the current inventory is sufficient for more than a decade
Plutonium Fuel Fabrication ($338 million), designed to manufacture nuclear reactor fuel from plutonium, ignoring implications for the environment, health, proliferation and homeland security
Yucca Mountain ($651 million), the much-delayed radioactive waste dump for which the Environmental Protection Agency just issued controversial health protection standards
Nuclear Energy Revival ($191 million), subsidies underwriting expansion of the nuclear power industry, transportation of its radioactive wastes, and extraction of plutonium from used fuel rods.
The ANA analysis supports cuts made by the House of Representatives in the Life Extension Program, Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, Modern Pit Facility, Test Readiness, and Plutonium Fuel Fabrication as well as the Senate's elimination of construction money for the National Ignition Facility and cuts in Yucca Mountain funding.
"Implementing ANA's recommendations would save taxpayers almost two billion dollars immediately and billions more over the coming years," Bridgman concluded. "This report should help budget conferees understand that money could be better used to address the environmental and health legacy of nuclear weapons production and to reduce the federal deficit."
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KVBC
August 16, 2005
Yucca Mountain Shipping Could Cost A Bundle
Shipping nuclear waste through southern Nevada would create a financial burden on Clark County taxpayers. Today county commissioners are outlining their expense plan on how much money they would need to protect local families from high-level nuclear waste.
In all, they say the price tag would be around 2 and a half billion dollars. That would cover police, fire and emergency crews over the Department Of Energy's 24-year shipment schedule.
Spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste will come from more than 100 sites around the country. Most of it by rail and most of it from the eastern half of the country. Shipments coming from southern California and other southwestern states could travel right through Las Vegas, in specially designed casks. The train would use the existing Union Pacific rail lines.
Once the shipment arrives at Caliente, the DOE would move it onto a dedicated rail line to Yucca Mountain. Those shipments coming by truck from the southern California area would travel along 1-15, and then use the 215 beltway to avoid the congested Spaghetti Bowl.
The State of Nevada can request an alternative route for those truck shipments. Currently, Nevada has a agreement with the secretary of energy that low level waste not travel through the Las Vegas Valley.
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The Heritage Foundation
August 16, 2005
Lacking Energy
Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D.
It sometimes seems the longer that legislation hangs around Washington, the worse it gets. That´s certainly the case with the recently signed energy bill.
President Bush had been trying for years to convince lawmakers to pass an energy bill. But when they finally did, all the … well, energy had been sucked out of it. In the end, it was typical Washington pork. There´s plenty of new spending -- an estimated $12.3 billion over 10 years, twice as much as the original proposal -- but few real solutions.
Start with oil. When most people think of energy, they think of gasoline. Any sensible bill would take steps to increase the domestic production of oil. It´s critical we start reducing our dependence on foreign providers, especially since so many of them are in bad neighborhoods.
We happen to have large oil reserves waiting to be tapped beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. But the bill Congress passed specifically ignores ANWR. “If we put it in, we wouldn´t be here,’ Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, explained to reporters.
It´s true that previous energy bills had failed because liberals wouldn´t agree to pass a measure that allowed drilling in ANWR. But no bill is better than a bad bill. If we´re not going to take the most reasonable step available to boost energy production, there´s really no point in passing an energy bill at all. (ANWR, fortunately, isn´t dead; it´s likely to pass when lawmakers try to reconcile the budget in September.)
Not only does this bill ignore potential solutions, it actually recycles the failed policies of the past. The bill provides tax breaks for homeowners who install solar panels -- a “reform’ measure first drafted by the Carter administration.
President Reagan removed those tax breaks when it became clear they wouldn´t work, just as a future administration is certain to remove them again. In the meantime, another generation of homeowners will learn to their chagrin that the upfront cost of solar panels is larger than the amount they´re likely to save by installing them.
Lawmakers deserve credit for at least attempting to take a step forward on nuclear power. Nuclear plants are efficient and produce zero emissions, and we need to build more of them to fill our growing need for electricity. The bill provides billions of dollars in tax credits for utilities, which could translate into as many as six new nuclear plants.
But the energy bill leaves the big question unanswered. Until utilities are assured they will have a permanent place to store their nuclear waste, they´re not likely to break ground on new plants, regardless of tax breaks. At one existing plant in Illinois, there are 24 silos, each packed with 13 tons of nuclear waste. No utility wants to assume that sort of headache. A useful energy bill would do something to fix the problem.
Having the waste stored in a secure, central location would be far safer than storing it on-site at scores of plants around the country. Plenty of studies have shown Yucca Mountain is the best place to put our nuclear waste. But again, lawmakers ducked that issue in the energy bill.
Washington insiders, even conservative officials, seem resigned to the big spending status quo. “It´s the best energy bill that can be passed,’ Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said.
Respectfully, sir, it isn´t. It must be possible to “solve’ a problem without throwing tens of billion of dollars at it. And it must be possible for lawmakers to target bills narrowly -- so the new law will solve problems rather than merely providing tax breaks to the energy industry.
Something good can still come out of this bill, if it energizes conservatives in Congress to finally take charge and crack down on wasteful spending. Otherwise, the bill´s merely another waste of time, money and power.
Ed Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org), a Washington–based public policy research institute.
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U.S. Newswire
August 16, 2005
Should the U.S. Emulate France In Yucca Dispute? NCPA E-Team Scholars Say Recycling Rods Could Provide Energy, Reduce Waste
To: National Desk and Environment Reporter
Contact: Richard W. Walker of the National Center for Policy Analysis, 800-859-1154, ext. 13 or richard.walker@ncpa.org
DALLAS, Aug. 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The political dust-up over radiation standards approved in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) plans for a nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada could be toned down if the U.S. were to begin recycling spent nuclear fuel rods, according to scholars with the NCPA's E-Team project.
Congress wants to dispose of spent nuclear fuel rods at the Yucca Mountain facility and asked the EPA to set a standard for storage. The proposed standard is 15 millirems of radiation per year for the first 10,000 years; after that, the exposure standard jumps to 350 millirems per year, which EPA officials say is a typical level of radiation exposure from the sun, cosmic radiation and radon in buildings.
"Spent nuclear rods are not waste, and can be re-used," said NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett. "In fact, France, which gets 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, recycles its used fuel." E-Team Adjunct Scholar and past president of the American Nuclear Society Larry Foulke agrees. "While reprocessing spent rods will not preclude the need for the Yucca Mountain facility, it will reduce the need to build storage facilities in the future."
There are several benefits of reprocessing spent nuclear rods, which are often misleadingly referred to as nuclear waste, according to Dr. Foulke:
-- Reprocessing reduces the volume and radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel, but reprocessing or no reprocessing, the Yucca Mountain repository will still be necessary.
-- One kilogram of uranium contains as much energy as 38.5 tons of coal, but conventional reactors us only about 3 percent of that energy. If the U.S. joined France and Japan in recycling used fuel, existing and future spent rods would provide an almost unlimited supply of nuclear fuel (see http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba511/).
-- Recycling spent rods could wring more energy out of spent fuel and reduce volumes of waste material, thus extending the life of the Yucca Mountain repository.
"By recycling, nuclear waste sent to Yucca Mountain would be retrievable in 50 to 100 years. During that time, technology will develop," said Foulke.
Growing worldwide demand for electricity to maintain current living standards in developed countries and raise those in developing nations makes development of new energy sources essential, including power generation from spent nuclear fuel rods, according to Foulke. The Energy Information Administration forecasts a 50 percent rise in electricity demand by 2025, which along with rising prices for fossil fuels increases the need to recycle spent nuclear rods.
"Mining new fuel is among the most dangerous of nuclear operations and we currently aren't mining enough new fuel to meet demand. It's critical for the U.S. to be able to reprocess and recycle spent nuclear fuel to generate power," Dr. Burnett added.
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The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D.C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. NCPA depends on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share our mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants.
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San Luis Obispo Tribune
August 16, 2005
Waste may remain at Diablo for decades
A report given to the California Energy Commission on Monday casts doubt on plans for a storage facility for radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain
By David Sneed
The Tribune
SACRAMENTO - Communities near California's two nuclear power plants can expect to have hundreds of tons of highly radioactive waste in their midst for decades to come.
Those plants are Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo and San Onofre, north of San Diego.
On Monday, the California Energy Commission received a highly pessimistic report on the likelihood of a central national storage repository for spent nuclear reactor fuel ever opening up in the Nevada desert at Yucca Mountain, north of Las Vegas.
Although Californians have paid more than $1 billion for Yucca Mountain, "uncertainty remains over whether the project will ever be constructed," a report to the commission concluded Monday.
Several speakers on the first of the two-day workshop in Sacramento about the future of nuclear power in California were more blunt.
"No matter how you slice it, Yucca Mountain flunks," said Bob Loux with Nevada's nuclear office.
Paul Craig, a former member of California's Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, said the federal Department of Energy has made so many mistakes in its scientific studies of the site that it has lost its credibility.
"This is a classic example of an organization that is vastly less than the sum of its parts," Craig said of the Energy Department.
The agency was invited to participate in the workshop but declined.
Because of delays at Yucca Mountain, electricity customers will soon be paying hundreds of millions of dollars to store nuclear waste at temporary storage sites that might not be temporary at all.
The fact that spent fuel will likely be stored in large steel-and-concrete casks for decades also raises the possibility that the casks will fail and that nuclear plant operators will have to repackage the spent assemblies in new casks. This would be a complicated and expensive process, Craig said.
Those casks are designed to last for 40 years, but the prospect that Yucca Mountain may never open means the waste could be stored on site at the nuclear plants for hundreds of years.
Steven Kraft, with the nuclear industry advocacy group Nuclear Energy Institute, told the commission that scientific problems with Yucca Mountain can be overcome and the project should move forward.
"Yucca Mountain is an important national priority," he said.
First in 30 years
This week's hearings were the first time in 30 years that the state has taken a comprehensive look at the part of California's utility infrastructure that produces 13 percent of the state's electricity.
Diablo Canyon and San Onofre are California's two operating nuclear power plants. Southern California also gets part of its electricity from the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona.
These plants were built with the assumption that the federal government would provide a central storage facility for nuclear waste for all of the nation's 103 operating reactors.
However, staunch opposition by the state of Nevada and questions about the reliability of technical studies done of Yucca Mountain have caused numerous delays.
The facility was supposed to open in 1998 but is now expected to open no sooner than 2013, and that date is considered optimistic.
Operators at Diablo Canyon expect to begin transferring its spent fuel from storage pools to aboveground dry casks late in 2007. The casks will be mounted on a thick concrete slab built on a hillside behind the plant.
Eventually, 138 casks will be filled over the next 35 years at a cost of $250 million.
A similar storage facility is planned for San Onofre at a cost of $162 million to Southern California ratepayers.
Rochelle Becker, a San Luis Obispo County woman who is a member of the anti-nuclear group Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, said she wants the federal government to use part of the $1 billion California has paid for Yucca Mountain to make the state's dry cask storage facilities more robust and able to withstand terrorist attacks and earthquakes.
The Utah alternative
The nuclear power industry is planning a temporary alternative to Yucca Mountain. But utilities in California are showing little interest in using it.
The temporary facility is planned for an Indian reservation in Skull Valley, Utah. It could take 4,000 casks, or about as much waste as the nation has generated. This so-called private fuel-storage facility could open in 2007.
Jeff Lewis, Diablo Canyon's spokesman, said that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. would prefer to concentrate its efforts on its own on-site storage facility and wait for a federal repository to open. The power company would prefer not to have to ship its fuel twice, once to Skull Valley and then again to a federal site.
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Kalamazoo Gazette
August 16, 2005
Keep Palisades nuclear plant open
Two years ago this week, the eastern United States, including eastern Michigan, and parts of Canada were plunged into darkness because of a power grid failure that began in Ohio and cascaded through other states and provinces.
This summer, electricity users in the Detroit area are complaining of repeated power failures and the state of Michigan is demanding an explanation from DTE Energy, which provides electricity to most of southeastern Michigan.
Is this really the right time to pull the plug on the Palisades nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan?
We don't think so.
An environmental group from Washington, D.C., Nuclear Information and Resource Service, is asking the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission not to issue a new 20-year operating license for the Palisades plant, claiming the plant's nuclear reactor is old and brittle and dangerous and that nuclear waste stored on the shores of Lake Michigan could contaminate the Great Lakes.
We, too, have been concerned about the storage of nuclear waste in casks along the Lake Michigan shoreline. That is why we support the opening of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. It is time to take the casks away from one of the planet's largest supplies of fresh water and place them in a secure repository.
But we're opposed to taking 38-year-old Palisades off-line, especially at a time when demands for electricity continue to mount and concerns about coal-burning power plants, which emit greenhouse gases and mercury into the air, are growing.
Coal is the cheapest way to generate electricity. And coal is to the United States what oil is to Saudi Arabia. But even newer, cleaner coal-powered plants pollute the air. Nuclear generation is the second cheapest; natural gas is the most expensive.
Nuclear energy has come a long way from the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Middletown, Pa., in 1979, and the world's worst nuclear plant disaster at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986.
Despite many flaws in the federal government's recently approved energy bill, it supports renewed investment in new nuclear plants. It has been 30 years since the last nuclear plant was built in the United States.
Although we are concerned about the energy bill's promises to pay the nuclear industry taxpayer money if a plant's construction is delayed by regulatory red tape or lawsuits, the bill also offers tax breaks or subsidies for designing and building new plants as well as decommissioning old ones and reprocessing spent fuel rods.
In France, which has few natural energy resources, more than 70 percent of that country's electricity is generated by nuclear power. Nuclear power is enormously popular among the French.
In contrast, the United States has lots of coal. That may be good news in terms of energy independence, but it isn't good news for the environment.
The U.S. must work harder to diversify its sources of electricity generation.
In view of that need, shutting down the Palisades plant after 2011 makes little sense.
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Buffalo News
August 16, 2005
Another voice / Potential terrorism sites
We would all be safer without parkway and West Valley
By Larry Beahan
Not to get paranoid on you, but suppose, just suppose, an al-Qaida cell in Tonawanda decided to attack Western New York. Which targets would it hit? Where in Western New York are we vulnerable? What can we do to protect ourselves?
Consider the Robert Moses Parkway, which traverses the length of the Niagara River Gorge and nuzzles across the face of the Niagara Power Project dam. (Whose four lanes carry little traffic and cut the City of Niagara Falls off from the Niagara Gorge park.) Consider the high-level radioactive waste at the West Valley Nuclear Storage Site, perched on a cliff above Cattaraugus Creek just off Route 219.
My Tonawanda terrorists might be upright citizens, work as teachers and have their kids in Little League. They might not wear turbans or beards. In Ireland I took some kidding about my namesake, Brendan Behan, a union house painter - and a famous IRA bomber. And there's our neighbor, ex-GI Timothy McVeigh.
I toured the Niagara Power Vista with my grandson. He took me down to the platform beneath the dam where he and his dad fish. Behind that mass of concrete lies the Power Project reservoir, which contains an enormous head of water destined to provide electric power for New York State. I reconnoitered the reservoir for fishing possibilities, and a patrol car warned me that the area was restricted. Since the al-Qaida bombings in London, I am reassured by that officer's vigilance.
But what about the Robert Moses Parkway? Supposing one 90-degree Sunday in August, my terrorists, the teacher and his house painter buddy, mixed a tank of fertilizer and diesel fuel, loaded it in a pickup and detonated themselves on the parkway in front of that dam?
If the Power Project dam blew out, it would shut down the Northeast power grid. How long would it take to replace the power generated by the Niagara?
I've hiked into Zoar Valley, waded Cattaraugus Creek several times and passed picnickers and swimmers enjoying the sunshine in the view of the moss-covered shale cliffs.
Not far upstream, the West Valley Nuclear Storage Site teeters on a cliff. It was a noble experiment in disposal of nuclear waste. Spent nuclear fuel was turned into stable glass logs, but then regulators sent lower-level nuclear waste to accumulate there as well. The debate goes on: When will this dangerous stuff be sent to Nevada's relatively safe, isolated, desert site at Yucca Mountain?
Suppose that on the same 90-degree Sunday, my Little League dad and his businessman friend rig up their SUV as a bomb and blow the West Valley Nuclear Storage Site into the creek? Cattaraugus Creek would be inundated with shards of radioactive glass and other evil materials. Radioactivity would foul the creek water flowing into Lake Erie, down the Niagara River and into Lake Ontario. When would it be drinkable again?
To prevent these scenarios, we don't need another Patriot Act. We need simply to move all of that nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, now, and close the Robert Moses Parkway, now.
Larry Beahan lives in Snyder.
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San Luis Obispo Tribune
August 15, 2005
Nuclear dump site far from opening, experts say
David Sneed
The Tribune
As the state launched its first major assessment of nuclear power issues in almost 30 years Monday, experts blasted the Yucca Mountain waste disposal project and questioned whether the site will ever open. If such a dump isn't developed, the spent fuel from Diablo Canyon would continue to pile up at the plant and would remain there -- potentially for decades into the future.
A representative of the state of Nevada and a former member of a California task force on nuclear waste both spoke forcefully on the subject before members of the California Energy Commission. A representative of the nuclear industry did not contradict their points, but said simply that some kind of storage must be found.
The federal Department of Energy, which is responsible for the Yucca Mountain project, declined an invitation to attend the hearings, which will continue into the afternoon and resume tomorrow.
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Chemical & Engineering News
August 15, 2005
Yucca Radiation Limits Proposed
EPA says standard will protect Nevadans for a million years, but state objects
GLENN HESS
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new radiation exposure limits for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada that seek to protect public health for up to 1 million years.
Under the standards, people living close to the facility about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas would not receive total radiation higher than natural levels that people experience routinely in other areas of the U.S., EPA says. "It is an unprecedented scientific challenge to develop proposed standards today that will protect the next 25,000 generations of Americans," says EPA Assistant Administrator Jeffrey R. Holmstead.
Nevada officials opposed to the project charge that the proposed limits are too lax and threaten legal action. "We were pessimistic about the outcome, given EPA's record of pushing the repository," says Nevada Gov. Kenny C. Guinn. "But never in our wildest nightmares would we have anticipated such a ridiculous standard." Brian Sandoval, the state's attorney general, says that if the proposed standard "or anything close to it ends up being adopted by EPA, Nevada will sue them again."
EPA's proposal responds to a year-old federal court ruling that said the agency's original radiation standard was inadequate. The revised standard would require the Department of Energy to ensure that people living near the repository during its first 10,000 years of operation would be exposed to no more than 15 millirems of radiation annually. After that period, EPA is proposing a higher dose limit--350 millirems--equal to natural background levels.
But Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) says EPA "has provided no scientific basis for the 350-millirem figure."
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Puget Sound Business Journal
August 15, 2005
Nuclear power rallies
Deirdre Gregg
Staff Writer
Engineer Jim Miller hasn't worked on siting a nuclear power plant in decades. But today the CEO of engineering-and-earth-sciences firm GeoEngineers Inc. sees a bright future for the nuclear industry.
Miller is working to position his Redmond-based company at the forefront of what he hopes will be a renaissance for nuclear power in the United States. He took one trip last month and plans several more to meet other companies interested in doing work for nuclear power plants.
GeoEngineers is one of several Northwest companies hoping to tap into the controversial and high-stakes nuclear-power market, which seems poised for an upsurge after stalling in the 1970s.
Most observers don't think Washington state is likely to welcome nuclear power plants any time soon. But proposed power plants on the East Coast and in other countries could mean big opportunities for several highly specialized companies in Washington.
No new nuclear plants have been built in the United States in more than 30 years. But many observers think that may change because of several trends.
Global energy demand, already high, is expected to keep growing rapidly, by more than 50 percent over the next 20 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Meanwhile, fossil fuels such as natural gas are getting increasingly expensive. And public resistance to nuclear power seems to be declining.
There's also the passage of the massive federal energy bill, signed into law Aug. 8, which offers billions of dollars in incentives, liability protections and research dollars to the nuclear industry.
Finally, a handful of prominent and respected environmentalists, citing the threat of global warming, is saying the once-unspeakable: Nuclear power should be considered part of the energy mix. The mainstream environmental community remains firmly opposed, but such defections mark a significant departure for a movement that was once rock-solid in opposition to nuclear power.
"What's driving the resurgence in the U.S. is the realization that if we are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we have to find a way of generating sizable amounts of power without burning fossil fuels," Miller said.
The federal energy bill is expected to help jump-start the nuclear power industry through four key provisions, said Steve Johnson, senior executive vice president with Boise-based Washington Group International, a huge construction and engineering company that has worked with every U.S. producer of power from nuclear plants.
The bill's provisions include:
A 20-year extension of the Price-Anderson Act, which indemnifies companies that design and build nuclear power plants.
$1.2 billion to fund research on next-generation nuclear power plants.
Up to $2 billion to offset the costs of regulatory or legal delays in the permitting and construction of new nuclear power plants -- up to $500 million each for the first two new plants, and up to $250 million for the third, fourth, fifth and six plants built.
A production tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for the first eight years of a new nuclear power plant's operations.
Meanwhile, the push for new nuclear power plants is on. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are offering tax breaks and other incentives to the NuStart Energy group, a consortium of 11 large utility companies interested in developing nuclear power. NuStart and other utilities hope to select sites and land permits within the next couple of years and have new power plants on line within 10 years.
The industry will probably grow faster outside the United States, with more than 100 proposed power plants around the world, Johnson said. Plans include 24 proposed plants in India, 18 in China, 19 in Russia and 11 in Japan.
Washington Group and San Francisco-based Bechtel, the nation's largest nuclear power contractor, will likely have prominent roles in building new power plants in the United States.
And new plant construction could mean big business for Washington's specialty firms and subcontractors such as Miller's firm.
Miller, who started his career in nuclear power plant siting in the early 1970s, thinks the 250-person GeoEngineers firm could help with siting decisions and permits by studying seismic activity and environmental impacts associated with construction of nuclear power plants.
He said nuclear power plants would require experts in many other areas, including ground and surface water hydrology, biology and endangered species, demography and land-use planning, power transmission planning and design, public relations and disaster planning.
In addition to GeoEngineers, several other Washington companies or operations expect an upswing in the nuclear power industry, with possible business benefits for them. Those companies include:
Seattle-based AeroGo Inc., a 51-employee company that for 20 years has built products that help move and position heavy components such as generators, fuel rods and other equipment for the nuclear power industry
Kirkland-based Lancs Industries, a 70-employee company that got its start decades ago working with nuclear-power submarines in Kitsap County. Lancs makes products such as radiation shielding and protective clothing for every nuclear power plant in the United States, said owner Timothy S. Wiest.
Seattle-based Measurement Systems International, a 62-employee company that makes and sells industrial-scale weighing systems to nuclear power plants worldwide.
Paris-based nuclear energy giant Areva Group, which owns a 625-employee nuclear fuel plant in Richland, Wash. The plant was once owned by a Bellevue-based Siemens subsidiary. Site manager Ron Land expects that Areva as a whole will benefit hugely from an upswing in the nuclear power industry, with parts of the company building new power plants in the next few years.
Energy Northwest, which operates the state's only nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station near Richland, doesn't have plans to built an additional nuclear power plant, said spokesman Brad Peck.
But Peck thinks public support for nuclear power is growing nationwide. He points to polls conducted by the Nuclear Energy Institute in May 2005, which found that 70 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed supported nuclear power.
Washington State University Professor Eugene Rosa said public opposition to nuclear power has softened, although he's not convinced that the public really supports the industry.
One surprising reason for a decline in public resistance may come from the environmental movement. Several prominent and respected environmentalists have said they are open to nuclear power, if not outright supportive.
Noted ecologist James Lovelock in 2004 announced support for nuclear power. He was joined by Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, and Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand.
Other key environmentalists have said nuclear power might be worth another look, including author Jared Diamond, World Resources Institute president Jonathan Lash, and British bishop and longtime environmental leader Rev. Hugh Montefiore.
"Coal is the enemy," says Roel Hammerschlag, environmentalist and executive director of the Seattle-based Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment. He describes himself as open-minded on nuclear power, calling it perhaps "the lesser of two evils."
Hammerschlag said he believes the potential negatives of nuclear power may be less than what he sees as the certain catastrophe of global climate change.
Local environmental leaders know and respect Hammerschlag's work, but don't draw the same conclusions. Among other concerns, they point to the unresolved issue of radioactive waste disposal. After decades of wrangling, a plan to bury waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada is still tied up in the courts.
"We can't trade in one environmental problem for another," said Nancy Hirsch, policy director for the Northwest Energy Coalition.
Kathleen Casey with the Sierra Club agrees.
"It would make a lot more sense to us to put more money toward renewables and conservation," Casey said. "At the end of the day, nuclear energy means a lot of expenses, a huge security risk and an environmental mess for tens of thousands of years."
Contact: dgregg@bizjournals.com • 206-447-8505x114
© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.
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Palm Beach Post
August 15, 2005
Nuclear energy back in vogue, but waste disposal a super-heated issue
By Kristi E. Swartz
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
It's been in the national doghouse since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, but today, nuclear power is on the way back.
"Nuclear power is one of America's safest sources of energy," President Bush said in June during a visit to a Maryland nuclear power plant. "It is time for this country to start building nuclear power plants again."
Last week, Bush signed into law a national energy policy that provides financial incentives and lawsuit protection for new nuclear power plants, which should spur development in an industry that hasn't seen a new plant start up since June 1996.
With oil and natural gas prices soaring to record highs on a daily basis, some say it can't come too soon.
"We're going to need as much new generating capacity as we can get, and from all sources, and that includes nuclear," said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade association.
But critics say there's one major problem with nuclear power: The highly radioactive waste created as a result of fission, the atom-splitting process that releases the energy of nuclear power.
"We have no idea what to do with it," said Brendan Hoffman, campaign organizer for Public Citizen, a Washington-based nonprofit watchdog group.
How utilities handle nuclear waste became an issue again earlier this month as a result of renewed attention to a series of incidents in the late 1970s and early 1980s at Florida Power & Light Co.'s St. Lucie Nuclear Plant on Hutchinson Island. Documents compiled in preparation for a court case early next year showed that workers at the plant sent radioactive waste to regular landfills, among other places.
FPL spokeswoman Rachel Scott said the waste was sent to a state-licensed farm field for nonradioactive sludge disposal. But the parents of two children afflicted with cancer have sued FPL, linking the waste disposal to the illnesses. One child, Ashton Lowe, died from brain cancer at age 13 in 2001. The other, Zachary Finestone, 11, was diagnosed with cancer in March 2000.
Nuclear waste includes the used fuel, stored in rods, as well as anything that was in a radiation control area and might have had a chance to become contaminated.
Disposal a federal duty
One-third of a nuclear reactor's fuel, known as high-level waste, is removed every 24 months during routine maintenance. The used fuel rods are cooled off in water and then are placed in dry-storage areas.
Everything else is known as low-level waste and may include things such as protective clothing, laboratory supplies and tools. This type of waste can be stored on site for a while, but then it is incinerated or compacted to reduce its volume to a tenth of its original size.
It then is shipped to waste sites in Salt Lake City or Barnwell, S.C.
"When the utilities signed up to get into the nuclear business, the government made a commitment that it would take the fuel off of their hands," said Shane Johnson, acting director of the nuclear energy department at the U.S. Department of Energy. "The biggest issue from the utilities' point of view is: Is the government going to meet its commitment?"
Scott at FPL said the problem with having adequate space to store waste has been political, not technical. For example, customers who receive electricity from nuclear power pay a small monthly charge for the Nuclear Waste Fund, which is designed to finance disposal sites, she said.
"The whole process has been stalled, but steps are being made in the right direction," Scott said.
Huge Nevada site on hold
The government's biggest answer to the nuclear waste problem is a massive disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which is expected to open in 2012. But the site has proved controversial since it was proposed, and the heightened threat of terrorism has made opponents even more vocal.
"The day that Yucca Mountain opens, it's going to be pretty much full," said Holly Binns, the clear air and energy advocate for the Florida Public Interest Research Group. "They should be building containment facilities that are on site so the waste doesn't have to be transported on our railways, highways, barges and through ports, all of which has some level of potential danger."
Singer, the Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman, counters that Yucca Mountain, which can hold 120,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, is the best solution. At the same time, nuclear plants aren't running out of storage room, he said.
"We're very, very confident in the security of where the spent fuel is on the plant side as well as on the transportation side," he said.
New plant applications filed
Meanwhile, three national consortiums of utility companies have formed recently, including NuStart Energy Development LLC, of which FPL is a member.
NuStart, a group of eight utilities, is looking for two sites somewhere in the country to build nuclear reactors, which could cost $2 billion apiece. The consortium and the U.S. Department of Energy are splitting the $520 million it takes to prepare the applications for the licenses to build and operate the plants.
"FPL is very supportive of the nuclear industry's effort to explore the development of new nuclear power plants," Scott said. "We are very proud of our safety and reliability record in the operation of our plants, and we certainly would like to see new nuclear added to our portfolio in the near future."
Three companies have filed permit applications to build plants in Mississippi, Virginia and Illinois, and other companies have contacted the office at least informally, said Roger Hannah, a spokesman with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Region II office in Atlanta. His office is charged with reviewing the safety, environmental and security requirements for any proposed nuclear plants.
"Any new plant that would be built would be built by a utility that already owns at least one nuclear plant," Hannah said.
FPL, owned by FPL Group Inc. of Juno Beach, operates two nuclear reactors at its St. Lucie plant as well as two nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point plant in Miami-Dade County. FPL Energy, a nonregulated subsidiary of FPL Group, operates a nuclear plant in Seabrook, N.H., and holds a majority interest in a 598-megawatt nuclear power plant just north of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
But for some, the more the nuclear industry grows, the unsolved problem of nuclear waste swells along with it.
"We really need to step back and realize the more we promote this industry, the more these technologies will spread, the more waste will spread," said Hoffman of Public Citizen. "As you continue to generate it, it is an infinite problem."
Johnson, the DOE director, said the government will fulfill its promise to handle nuclear waste. Like it or not, nuclear power will play a bigger role in the nation's energy matrix.
"As a rule of thumb, there is going to be new nuclear in the future," Johnson said.
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The State
August 15, 2005
Study finds agency should delay storage plans at SRS
By Lauren Markoe
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Energy should postpone plans to leave nuclear waste in storage tanks at the Savannah River Site, a new study commissioned by Congress recommends.
Environmentalists are praising the findings by the National Academy of Sciences, but they predict the Energy Department won´t accept a key recommendation.
“We´re vindicated; this is what we´ve been saying all along,’ said Dell Isham, director of the S.C. chapter of the Sierra Club. “But it may be a hollow victory because they may do whatever they want anyway.’
The Energy Department — which owns SRS and wants to leave up to 5 percent of the waste at the site in some of the 49 tanks and mix it with grout — confirmed Isham´s prediction.
“We believe that for human as well as environmental health, the wisest course of action is to proceed with tank closure,’ department spokesman Mike Waldrin said.
“Doing otherwise puts the cleanup in the position of always waiting for the next technological development to come along and would hamstring tank closure without providing a clear benefit.’
But Isham and other environmentalists question whether the tanks will hold up. They say all waste should be removed and sent to a deep nuclear waste vault — such as the one at yet-to-open, controversial Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
They point to the report´s conclusion that new technologies developed during the next five to 10 years could make it easier and cheaper to remove all waste from the tanks, so grouting and sealing should be delayed.
The Department of Energy has indicated the report likely won´t change its tank closing schedule. Two tanks already have been sealed, and the department wants the remaining 49 closed by 2022.
SRS, the 310-square-mile nuclear campus near Aiken that produced much of the nuclear fuel for the nation´s Cold War arsenal, is now primarily a nuclear waste reprocessing, research and storage facility.
The nuclear waste addressed in the study sits in carbon steel tanks buried a few feet below the ground. They can hold 36.4 million gallons of waste.
From each, the bulk of the waste can be removed and “vitrified’ — turned into glass logs for burial at Yucca Mountain.
The disagreement is over the fraction of waste that lies at the bottom of the tanks — the hardened “heel’ of the sludge, which is more difficult to remove.
The Department of Energy estimates it could cost $500 million to remove this sludge and argues that it is safer to leave it and seal the tanks.
Environmentalists in 2003 won a lawsuit that demanded complete removal. But subsequent federal legislation allows the Energy Department to reclassify the sludge as low-level waste — meaning it could stay in the tanks.
U.S. Rep. John Spratt, D-York, inserted language into a defense bill earlier this year directing the independent, Washington-based National Academy of Sciences to take a year and $1.5 million to study the storage of such waste at three sites, including SRS.
The just-released study, which focuses only on SRS, is the Academy´s interim report.
“The NAS panel suggests that we can have our cake and eat it, too — that we can allow research into other technologies to ensure that we are removing as much waste as feasible,’ Spratt said.
Mal McKibben, executive director of Aiken-based Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, and a former SRS scientist, said the Energy Department and SRS officials are willing to consider new technologies that could remove even more waste from the tanks — but must balance that with the need to seal the tanks.
“The longer we take to close those tanks, the greater the possibility of having leaks,’ he said.
Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com.
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The Republican
August 15, 2005
Editorial: Nuclear waste plans exacerbate situation
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. One-hundred times more, in fact.
That's apparently the new slogan at the Environmental Protection Agency. Told last year by a federal appeals court that plans to protect the citizenry from the effects of stored nuclear waste for 10,000 years were woefully inadequate, the EPA came up with a new proposal: Protecting the people for 100 times longer, or 1 million years.
Got any idea what the world is going to look like in the year 1002005?
We didn't think so.
And we'd be willing to bet that the scientists at the EPA are equally without a clue. Not that that has stopped them from putting on their soothsaying outfits, peering into their crystal balls - and announcing that burying 50,000 tons of nuclear waste under a mountain in Nevada won't cause anyone any problems. For at least a million years. Really.
The 50,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods scattered at sites in 31 states are no one's notion of an ideal situation.
But putting that waste on trucks and trains and barges and shipping at all to a mountain 90 miles from Los Vegas presents an entirely different set of problems. The potential for accidents in urban areas. The potential for attacks or hijackings. The potential for the kind of disaster that's more the stuff of Hollywood - a train carrying nuclear waste crashing into a reservoir, to name just one nightmarish scenario.
And that's just to consider the problems inherent in moving 50,000 tons of radioactive junk across this vast land. And once it's all been gathered together in one place? Put it in some canisters and bury it under a mountain, of course.
It's not exactly the same as sweeping the dust under the rug. Because the dust, of course, isn't deadly.
Plans to make Yucca Mountain a central repository for the nation's spent nuclear fuel rods have never made much sense.
While the current situation is not without its dangers, it is under control. Like a professional juggler who includes a running chainsaw in his act from time to time, there's potential peril in the offing. But it is profoundly unwise to take the current situation and dramatically increase the dangerousness quotient.
Assurances that all will be well for the next million or so years notwithstanding.
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San Luis Obispo Tribune
August 14, 2005
Nuclear energy's future focus of talks
This week's workshop in Sacramento will look at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre power plants' waste storage, aging operating components and effects on the Pacific Ocean's environment
By David Sneed
The Tribune
As Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant marks 20 years of operation, the California Energy Commission will hold a two-day workshop Monday and Tuesday to take a comprehensive look at the future of nuclear power in the state.
The workshop in Sacramento will be the first time in almost 30 years the state is taking such a complete assessment of nuclear issues. About an hour at the end of each day of the workshop will be devoted to public comment.
Energy officials do not know whether any new policies or regulations will result from the workshop, said Mary Ann Costamagna, commission spokeswoman.
Thirteen percent of the state's electrical power is provided by its two nuclear power plants -- Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo County and San Onofre in northern San Diego County.
The plants have been reliable sources of low-emission electricity. However, they face several challenges in the coming years, including radioactive waste storage and expensive equipment replacements.
Two San Luis Obispo County residents on opposite sides of the nuclear energy issue will participate in the workshop. Diablo Canyon plant manager David Oatley will represent Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
"He will talk about the excellent safety record of Diablo Canyon and the contribution it makes to the state's electrical needs," said Jeff Lewis, plant spokesman.
Rochelle Becker, executive director of the San Luis Obispo-based Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, will argue that nuclear power should be phased out in favor of renewable energy sources.
"We've had 20 years of nuclear power and waste," she said. "Twenty years is enough."
The first day of the workshop will be devoted to the biggest challenge facing nuclear plants nationwide -- storage of the highly radioactive waste they produce. Both Diablo Canyon and San Onofre will build aboveground dry cask storage facilities in the coming years at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars each.
They are necessary because storage pools at each plant are filling up and construction of a centralized storage facility at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas has been repeatedly delayed. The earliest that facility could open is 2012.
The second day will focus on the operating status of the two nuclear plants. Although the plants are licensed to operate for 20 more years, some crucial components are aging and in need of replacement.
The most significant are their steam generators. Diablo Canyon's steam generator replacement is expected to cost ratepayers more than $700 million starting later this decade.
Both plants also face concerns about earthquake safety, the threat of terrorist attacks and the effect of the plants' cooling systems on the ocean environment.
Michael Thomas, with the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board in San Luis Obispo, and Peter Douglas, executive director of the California Coastal Commission, have been invited to the workshop to discuss the impacts of the nuclear plants on the state's coastal environment.
State energy officials say it is unlikely any new nuclear plants will be built in the state in the near future. State law prohibits the construction of any new nuclear plants until the federal government provides a permanent place to store the spent fuel.
The workshop also will explore the complex way nuclear plants are regulated. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sole jurisdiction over radiation safety and plant security. However, the state Energy Commission regulates other aspects of nuclear power including its economic viability, reliability and cost to ratepayers.
To participate ...
The nuclear energy workshop is open to the public. Those who cannot attend can listen to the proceedings via an Internet broadcast. To listen in, go to www.energy.ca.gov/webcast/.
The public can also call in and participate in the meeting. Call 1-888-323-9686 by 9 a.m. the day of the meeting and ask for call leader Peggy Falgoust. The password is "workshop."
David Sneed covers environmental issues for The
Tribune. E-mail story ideas and comments to him at dsneed@thetribunenews.com.
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San Jose Mercury News
August 14, 2005
Rejuvenated nuclear power program key to delivering a prosperous future
By Skip Bowman
When Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined in July to adopt the first comprehensive energy legislation in more than a decade, they set the United States on a path toward a safer, cleaner and more prosperous future.
In these uncertain times, energy security and national security are inextricably linked. By developing a diverse energy supply within our borders, we are better able to protect ourselves from becoming dependent on unstable regions of the world that do not have our best interests in mind.
The United States needs as much new electricity production as it can get from all sources, including nuclear energy. Even with greater efficiency and conservation, this country will need 31 percent more electric generating capacity over the next 20 years. In that time, our consumption of oil is expected to increase by 40 percent.
Our best chance for success is to utilize America's diverse energy resources, including renewable sources, nuclear and others. The legislation approved by Congress is a vital step. Among other provisions, it includes limited incentives to jump-start the construction of next-generation nuclear plants -- the future workhorses of electricity production in this country.
The overwhelmingly bipartisan support for a new wave of nuclear plant construction may have taken some observers by surprise. But the industry's excellent record in safety, efficiency and reliability in the past decade has captured the attention of policy-makers, both Democrat and Republican.
And the geologic repository planned for Nevada's Yucca Mountain -- a state-of-the-art disposal facility for used nuclear fuel -- continues to move forward. The Department of Energy has said it intends to file its licensing application for Yucca Mountain's approval with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year.
Nuclear plants are among the most-secure industrial facilities in the United States, and we continue to enhance security in light of potential new global threats. The nuclear energy industry has invested more than $1.2 billion in security upgrades, including physical barriers, detection and access technology, and additional security officers since 2001.
The U.S. nuclear industry also is taking steps to promote non-proliferation. Under the ``Megatons to Megawatts'' venture with Russia, about 50 percent of the fuel used by U.S. nuclear plants is supplied by uranium from decommissioned nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union.
With growing concern about the potential for global warming, nuclear energy plays a key role in protecting the environment. Providing more than 70 percent of the electricity from emission-free sources, nuclear power is the nation's largest emission-free source of energy. Across the nation, nuclear power plants prevented almost 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions last year alone.
Elected officials, environmental advocates like the Pew Center and World Resources Institute, business leaders and opinion-makers in this country and abroad increasingly support the expansion of nuclear power. The Group of 8 meeting in Scotland noted the importance of nuclear power to a cleaner future and a diverse global energy portfolio. This was echoed by the strong bipartisan support for the energy bill in Congress. And in a nationwide poll conducted in May, 83 percent of Americans said nuclear energy will be important in meeting America's electricity needs in the years ahead.
Congress has taken an important first step toward long-term energy policy for America, but it is now up to the industry, state and local government leaders and consumers to carry the torch of enhancing our energy independence.
A renewed commitment to nuclear should be part of a brighter, safer, more prosperous future.
Skip Bowman is president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C. He wrote this article for the Mercury News.
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Evansville Courier & Press
August 14, 2005
How Long?
The Issue: EPA wants Yucca Mountain to meet health standards for 1 million years. Our View: Probably, 10,000 years would have been enough.
It is tempting to say that by the time the Yucca Mountain controversy, now in its 18th year, is resolved, the nuclear waste it is supposed to house will have decayed into harmlessness.
According to an Environmental Protection Agency news release this past week, "the EPA is proposing public health standards for the planned high-level radioactive waste disposal facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., that will protect public health for 1 million years." That number jumps out and grabs you.
The EPA was responding to a court ruling that found that an earlier standard, for a relatively brisk 10,000 years, didn't go far enough. So the agency tacked on a regulation limiting radiation exposure for another 990,000 years, providing protection, it said, for the next 25,000 generations of people living near the site.
Human beings in their modern form have been around for only 150,000 years or so - some say as long as 195,000 - and spread out of Africa and into the rest of the world only 28,000 years ago.
Talk about hubris. Not only does the standard assume that we'll still be around, but that the U.S. Court of Appeals will be around to enforce it. Then again, maybe the EPA knows something the rest of us don't. Maybe by then, radioactivity will be good for us.
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The State
August 14, 2005
Time to revisit opportunities of nuclear power
America´s Energy Future is built on unsteady ground.
Petroleum and natural gas are both getting more expensive, as worldwide demand rises quickly. They also must increasingly be imported, often from unstable or unfriendly countries. These fuels, along with coal, release the gases that are believed to increase global warming and other environmental problems. With economic growth pushing America´s demand for energy higher, the nation must ensure that it can meet future needs. To do that, we must end the logjam that has prevented the opening of any new nuclear power plants for more than two decades. South Carolina is well-positioned to be at the head of new nuclear expansion.
The rising price of a barrel of oil has been the headline-maker, but all major fuel costs are headed upward. Booming, industrializing economies such as China and India are straining energy supplies worldwide. Many of these fuels come from regimes that foster anti-American attitudes, or even attacks. Others are simply too politically unstable to be reliable, especially when tight supplies magnify any problems. America´s energy future should not be totally dependent on calm in the Middle East or Central Asia.
Our energy solution also cannot depend on sending ever more carbon emissions into the atmosphere. If our dependence on fossil fuels for transportation and electricity continues to increase, climate change is likely to be demonstrated as much more than a theory. Nuclear power´s ability to generate without worsening the greenhouse effect has caused some in the environmental movement to reverse their opposition recently.
• CONTAINING THE RISKS
Nuclear power uses uranium, which the United States can produce in abundance. It also, of course, requires abundant caution. Reactor designs must make a meltdown as unlikely as possible and, as a fail-safe, contain radiation in the worst case. While U.S. reactor production has been stalled, reactor designs have still been improving. New plans include gravity as a safety measure — in case of a major problem, water would flow down into the reaction chamber, cooling off the core. In short, new reactors will be better and safer than what has come before.
Still, the problem of nuclear reactor waste will continue. It must be contained safely for thousands of years. We still believe the best option is the repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which seems certain to remain stable for millennia. Certainly, storage there is preferable to the current answer: keeping containers of waste next to hundreds of active reactors, many near populated areas. The environmental threat of carbon emissions far outweighs the smaller risks of a rational nuclear waste disposal policy.
Central storage of waste would address another risk of nuclear power: terrorism. New reactors and facility security would have to be designed to withstand attack. Reactors are reinforced structures by nature. Still, adequate planning is necessary to make nuclear plants, new and old, uninviting targets.
• SOUTH CAROLINA´S OPPORTUNITY
Many of these concerns also highlight why South Carolina offers a prime locale for a new nuclear power plant. The proposal is to build one inside the Savannah River Site. That location would provide intrinsically excellent security and community safety. SRS is one of six sites being considered for the first two new nuclear plants, which would be built by a consortium of power companies.
South Carolina should have an edge in this competition; the state already has seven active power reactors, supplying more than half of its electricity. Our congressional delegation is unanimous in support of the project. The project also would tie in nicely with the state´s potential to take a lead in developing hydrogen as a power source of the future. The proposal includes a small research and teaching facility. Nuclear power could offer a way, free of fossil fuels, to produce the needed hydrogen.
Nuclear power provides about one-fifth of America´s electricity. Even with a crop of new reactors, it won´t solve our energy problems alone. America needs a broad effort to find cleaner, more secure sources and to waste less of what we have. Meeting future challenges will require ambitious efforts and tough actions. Some, such as nuclear power, this White House favors; others, such as considerably higher vehicle efficiency standards, it opposes. But America needs a whole slate of better answers on energy. On balance, nuclear power´s benefits make it one part of the solution.
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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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