Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, August 22, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
August 22, 2005
Editorial: PR campaign, or snow job?
Las Vegas Sun
The energy bill signed by President Bush earlier this month has buoyed the pro-Yucca Mountain Nuclear Energy Institute. The Washington-based lobbying group for the nuclear power industry is ecstatic over the fact that the bill offers huge incentives for building new power plants. After 30 years of federal disinterest in adding any more problematic nuclear power plants to the more than 100 that already exist in the U.S., the NEI is reveling in the support from the Bush administration for renewed construction.
The NEI is so energized by the vision of increased nuclear power production that it is planning a national public relations campaign. A newsletter for the energy industry, Energy Daily, reported last week that the NEI plans to spend as much as $8 million on the campaign. Steve Kerekes, NEI's spokesman, would not confirm that amount. "It could be more, it could be less," he told Las Vegas Sun Washington reporter Benjamin Grove.
Kerekes said the campaign will focus on the potential that more nuclear power plants hold for meeting the nation's energy needs. Promoters of nuclear power have long focused singly on the power produced, and how clean it is. They are now talking about a "renaissance" in nuclear power, aided by the new energy bill and the nation's obviously increasing demands for power.
Something they haven't focused on, however, is nuclear waste. We can envision a PR campaign for nuclear power that promises a new day for America, just as nuclear power was advertised back in the 1950s, when promoters put forth the vision that power would be so cheap it wouldn't even need to be metered. Our fear was all but confirmed when Kerekes said it wasn't clear yet how much the campaign would focus on Yucca Mountain. This site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is where the federal government is proposing to dump 77,000 tons of spent nuclear waste from the country's power plants.
When nuclear power first came online, people didn't worry about the waste because they had faith that advances in "technology" would soon provide a solution to how to dispose of it. Well, it's been 50 years now, and the best that technology has come up with is to enclose the waste in metal casks and bury it under a mountain in Southern Nevada. This, despite the fact that it will still be deadly to human beings hundreds of thousands of years from now.
We hope people aren't snowed by the slick ads planned by the NEI. The plan for the nuclear waste that has already accumulated -- unsafe burial and the unsafe transportation of it for at least 25 years all across the country -- is a strong reason to oppose any more nuclear power plants. Any NRI ads that do not mention the unsolved problem of nuclear waste should be regarded as sheer propaganda.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 22, 2005
THOMAS MITCHELL: 'Trying to shield almost everything'
You've got to hand it to the government. And hand it, and hand it. Mostly in taxes, fees, assessments, fines, assorted charges, levies, tolls and duties.
But when it comes to handing anything over to us, such as information about how all that money is being spent, that's when the brakes are slammed.
Most states have public records laws that allow citizens to hold elected and appointed representatives accountable.
At the federal level, the Freedom of Information Act, commonly referred to as FOIA, is supposed to give the public the key to the vault of government paperwork. It has been roundly flouted. Though the law says federal agencies must grant or deny a request for information within 20 days, many requests get no reply for years and often never.
Flummoxed requesters can go to court, but that is extremely expensive and time consuming.
Every now and then, a determined watchdog can crack the bureaucratic barrier.
In early June, Steve Tetreault -- the Washington bureau chief for Stephens Media Group, which covers federal matters for the chain of newspapers that includes the Review-Journal -- listened in on one of the countless Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump dog-and-pony shows, an exercise designed to induce acquiescent torpidity. But someone slipped up and hinted at yet another flaw in the problem-plagued project.
Tetreault immediately asked for a DOE report spelling out said problems. He was denied. So he filed an FOIA request.
Surprisingly, and within the 20-day time frame, the Department of Energy's FOIA compliance officer overruled whoever it was who had stamped the document "Official Use Only," citing the ruse of attorney-client privilege.
With document in hand, Tetreault began the legwork that resulted in a front-page article a week ago outlining how the Energy Department had failed to design its nuclear waste handling facilities to prevent damaged fuel rods from leaking and exposing the public and Yucca Mountain workers to hazardous levels of radiation. And this comes out just a few months before the department is supposed to apply for a license to build the Yucca Mountain complex.
The report was written in March but kept under wraps by the attorney-client privilege dodge.
Bob Loux, who heads up Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said DOE since this past summer has been in a mode of hiding as many documents as possible about the Yucca Mountain Project.
He and Joe Egan, an attorney representing the state in its fight to block the Yucca Mountain dump, said the DOE has resorted to saying various documents are not subject to scrutiny because they are work products, part of the deliberative process (whatever that means), a draft, uncirculated or subject to attorney-client privilege.
Egan said the document Tetreault obtained clearly was not privileged. "It would not pass the laugh test."
Loux faxed me an e-mail a DOE attorney had sent to project scientists after Egan had successfully gotten the courts to reject an arbitrary 10,000-year limit for radiation exposure standards, even though the material in Yucca Mountain would be hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.
Attorney Donald Irwin instructed the scientists to treat all their investigations of such things as "peak radiological dose, equivalent dose and associated risk to individuals and populations, from a repository at Yucca Mountain" as "confidential and attorney-client privileged."
He further ordered: "Please limit your discussion of it to who are involved in it with you and to counsel, and protect our work product against unauthorized disclosure."
Unauthorized disclosure to whom? Why, you the taxpayer, of course.
"Clearly they're trying to hide everything from the public," Loux said. " 'We'd give it to you but we're afraid you'd give it to the public.' DOE claims it is the most open agency in government but it is trying to shield almost everything in every instance."
A number of FOIA amendments are wending their way through the halls of Congress, including one by Sens. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, that would create a program to mediate disputes between the government and FOIA requesters. It also would prohibit agencies from using exemptions if they don't respond in 20 days.
Nevada's delegation should be supportive.
Thomas Mitchell is editor of the Review-Journal. He writes about the role of the press, free speech and public access. His phone number is 383-0261 and e-mail is tmitchell@reviewjournal.com.
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Pahrump Valley Times
August 19, 2005
LETTER: Yucca rebuttal
This relates to the Aug. 3 letter from W.E. Lopez, "Do the Math." It was confusing to follow in one manner and seems unrealistic in another, both pertaining to Yucca Mountain.
Somehow Lopez sees a relationship between Yucca Mountain and an eminent domain taking of private property by the federal government. The federal government already owns the property needed for the proposed repository. Eminent domain is not needed.
Lopez also suggests that "all new hires" at the Yucca Mountain project (if licensed) must have been a resident for at least 180 days. Does Nye County have such skilled personnel already in the county that are qualified and would seek such employment? Both the Department of Energy and its contractors need to hire qualified people, first and foremost. It may be more realistic to negotiate some incentives with DOE to have project personnel reside in Nye County once hired.
BRIAN O'CONNELL P.E.
DIRECTOR, NUCLEAR WASTE PROGRAM OFFICE
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REGULATORY UTILITY COMMISSIONERS
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New London Day
August 22, 2005
EPA To Keep Us Safe From Nuclear Waste?
Letters To The Editor:
It's comforting that the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing radiation exposure limits for the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste dump in Nevada that reach a million years into the future.
Waste from this safe, reliable energy source, in use for almost 50 years , will be hazardous for more than a million years. Be assured the EPA, which is almost 50 years old, will be in a position to safeguard this material for up to a million years into the future.
Of course, the United States, a country that's almost 230 years old — after we rout out global terrorism — will be able to focus on the next major global threat, guarding for a million years this deadly waste; that is if there's any air to breathe after we conquer all of the world's oil fields. Then we'll have the resources to build even more nuclear reactors.
Of course, being a good global citizen, we will have to bring the rest of the world's nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed countries into compliance with the EPA's million-year radioactive emission guidelines, to fully safeguard our citizens from this safe, reliable source of energy.
Jay Sullivan
Waterford
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Space Review
August 21, 2005
Nuclear waste in space?
by Jonathan Coopersmith
When I fly from Texas to Europe, I pay $3–6 a pound, depending on how well I do buying a ticket. When a satellite or shuttle is launched into space, the customer (or taxpayer) pays over $10,000 a pound. That is the major challenge of space flight: until the cost of going into space drastically decreases, the large-scale exploration and exploitation of space will not occur.
The world currently sends approximately 200 tons of payloads, the equivalent of two 747 freighter flights, into space annually. At $50–500 million a launch, very few cargoes can justify their cost. We have here the classic chicken-and-egg situation. As long as space flight remains very expensive, payloads will be small. As long as payloads remain small, rockets will be expensive.
If annual demand were 5,000 tons instead of 200, the equation would shift. Engineers would have the incentive to design more efficient launch systems. Large, guaranteed payloads could significantly reduce the cost of reaching orbit, ushering in a new, affordable era in space for governments, businesses, universities, and, hopefully, individuals.
Where would this much new cargo come from? Fortunately, there is an answer. Unfortunately, it´s not intuitively attractive, at least at first glance: it´s high-level nuclear waste, the 45,000 tons and 380,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive spent fuel and process waste and detritus (as opposed to the more abundant but far less dangerous and shorter-lived low-level waste) from six decades of nuclear weapons programs and civilian power plants.
There are three good reasons to send nuclear waste into space. First, it is safe. Second, space disposal is better than the alternative, underground burial. Third, it may finally open the door to widespread utilization of space.
Because of the obvious and real concern about moving such dangerous material anywhere, let alone into space, this proposal justly raises the question of safety. Can nuclear waste be safely launched into earth orbit? The answer is yes. By keeping the launch system on the ground instead of putting it on the vehicle, designing and building unbreakable containers, and arranging multiple layers of safety precautions, we can operate in a judicious and safe manner.
The nuclear waste problem
The problem of nuclear waste disposal is real, especially for future generations. Leaving radioactive wastes on earth creates permanent and tempting targets for terrorism as well as threatening the environment. We have a moral imperative to solve this problem now so we do not burden our children and their children.
For twenty years, the federal government´s preferred solution to the nuclear waste problem is underground disposal, specifically, over 11,000 30–80 ton canisters buried in 160 kilometers of tunnels hundreds of meters underneath Yucca Mountain in northern Nevada. Forty-nine states favor this plan. It´s not hard to guess which state does not.
To be fair to Nevada, any site would draw the same objections from anybody who lost this lottery, yet policymakers remain stuck on the idea of burial. Nevada´s fears are justified: researchers cannot guarantee complete environmental isolation for the thousands of years needed for these wastes to decay harmlessly. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office raised nearly 200 technical and managerial concerns about the site. Even the promise of construction and maintenance jobs has failed to sway a skeptical public.
Historically, garbage has been something to bury or recycle. Consequently, nuclear waste disposal has remained the province of the geologists, who are professionally inclined to look down, not up. That´s shortsighted. The permanent elimination of high-level radioactive waste demands a reconceptualization of the problem. We need to look up, not down. Let´s put high-level radioactive waste where it belongs, far out in space where it will not endanger anyone on earth.
The laser launch solution
Neither the space shuttle nor conventional rockets are up to this task. Not only are they expensive, but they lack the desired reliability and safety as insurance rates demonstrate. Instead, we need to develop a new generation of launch systems where the launcher remains on the ground so the spacecraft is almost all payload, not propellant. As well as being more efficient, ground-launched systems are inherently safer than rockets because the capsules will not carry liquid fuels, eliminating the in-flight danger of an explosion. Nor will the capsules have the pumps and other mechanical equipment of rockets, further reducing the chances of something going wrong.
How would disposal of nuclear wastes in space actually work? In the simplest approach, a ground-based laser system will launch capsules directly out of the solar system. In a more complicated scheme, the laser system will place the capsules into a nuclear-safe orbit, at least 1,100 kilometers above the earth, so that they could not reenter for several hundred years at a minimum. Next, a space tug will attach the capsules to a solar sail for movement to their final destination orbiting around the sun, far, far from earth.
The underlying concept is simple: the launcher accelerates the capsule to escape velocity. Like a gun, only the bullet heads toward the target, not the entire gun. Unlike a shuttle or rocket, ground systems are designed for quick reuse. To continue the analogy, the gun is reloaded and fired again. These systems would send tens or hundreds of kilograms instead of tons into orbit per launch.
Of the three possible technologies—laser, microwave, and electromagnetic railguns—laser propulsion is the most promising for the next decade. In laser propulsion, a laser beam from the ground hits the bottom of the capsule. The resultant heat compresses and explodes the air or solid fuel there, providing lift and guidance. Although sounding like science fiction, the concept is more than just an elegant idea. In October 2000, a 10-kilowatt laser at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico boosted a two-ounce (50 gram) lightcraft over 60 meters vertically. These numbers seem small, but prove the underlying feasibility of the concept.
American research, currently at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York with previous work at the Department of Energy´s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, has been funded at low levels by the United States Air Force, NASA, and FINDS, a space development group. The United States does not have a monopoly in the field. The four International Symposiums on Beamed Energy Propulsion have attracted researchers from Germany, France, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and other countries.
The long-term benefit of a ground-based system will be much greater if it can ultimately handle people as well as plutonium. Dartmouth physics professor Arthur R. Kantrowitz, who first proposed laser propulsion in 1972, considers the concept even more promising today due to more efficient lasers and adaptive optics, the technology used by astronomers to improve their viewing and the Air Force for its airborne anti-ballistic missile laser.
Where should the nuclear waste ultimately go? Sending the capsules out of the solar system is the simplest option because the laser can directly launch the capsule on its way. Both Ivan Bekey, the former director of NASA´s of Advanced Programs in the Office of Spaceflight, and Dr. Jordin T. Kare, the former technical director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization´s Laser Propulsion Program, which ran from 1987-90, emphasized solar escape is the most reliable choice because less could go wrong.
A second option, a solar orbit inside Venus, would retain the option of retrieving the capsules. Future generations might actually find our radioactive wastes valuable, just as old mine tailings are a useful source of precious metals today. After all, the spent fuel still contains over three-quarters of the original fuel and could be reprocessed. Terrorists or rogue states might be able to reach these capsules, but if they have that technical capability, stealing nuclear wastes will be among the least of our concerns. This approach is more complex, demanding a temporary earth orbit and a solar sail to move it into a solar orbit, thus increasing the possibility of something going wrong.
Addressing safety
The issue of safety has two components. One is the actual engineering of safe operations. This is demonstrable and testable. The other, equally important, part is the public perception of safety. As University of Missouri nuclear engineering professor William H. Miller, a specialist on nuclear fuel cycle and fuel management, noted, “The obvious problem is public perception. No matter how far you go to show that it is safe, there will always be someone to say ‘what if´.’ John W. Poston, a Texas A&M nuclear engineering professor with a forty-six year career in nuclear health physics, agrees, considering convincing people of the safety of space-based disposal as challenging, if not more so, than the actual technical questions.
Safety should appropriately dominate public discussion of this proposal. To succeed, space disposal must demonstrate lower risk and uncertainty than underground disposal. This project must be completely safe technically, but nonetheless will not succeed unless potential supporters and opponents are thoroughly convinced about its safety and efficiency.
Assuring safety is possible. The two major concerns are launching the capsule and ensuring the integrity of the capsule. Laser launching is safer and more reliable than rockets. The absence of rocket propellants and its accompanying propulsion systems eliminates the possibility of an explosion. The major problem would be if the laser failed before the capsule reached escape velocity. Because the capsule will be bullet-shaped, its ballistic characteristics are well known. Thus, if a launch failure occurred, the capsule would land only in known recovery zones. Launch trajectories would be designed to avoid populated areas.
One advantage of a laser launch system is that the safe return from these aborted missions can be demonstrated by testing with inert capsules. Scores of launches could test every conceivable scenario, the equivalent of firing a new rifle to understand all its characteristics. This could not be done with a rocket. If another layer of safety is desired, placing the launch system on an island in the Pacific Ocean will further decrease the chance of an aborted flight landing in a populated area. Such isolation would also improve security.
The capsule itself must protect its radioactive cargo not only from the demands of a normal launch with its severe atmospheric heating and aerodynamic loading, but also from potential accidents ranging from reentry into the atmosphere to a seriously flawed launch that would send the capsule into the high pressures of the ocean´s depths or into land. Summing up the engineering challenges, Bob Carpenter, the program manager for Orbital Sciences´ space nuclear power program, cautioned, “I´m not saying they are insurmountable, but they are major technical issues to be solved.’
Jordin Kare, now an independent aerospace consultant, was more optimistic. The laser can accelerate the capsule slowly in the lower atmosphere, reducing heating. Furthermore, noted NASA nuclear engineer Dr. Robert C. Singleterry, the same aerobraking analyses and technologies that use a planet´s atmosphere to slow down a visiting spacecraft as the Mars Global Surveyor demonstrated in 1997 can ensure the control of a capsule leaving the earth´s atmosphere.
The integrity of a capsule can be demonstrated too. The aerospace industry has accumulated decades of research and experience on how to contain radioactive material in containers that can maintain their integrity despite atmospheric re-entry, accidents, explosions, and other potential catastrophes. They are called nuclear warheads. Designing containers for space disposal is well within the state of the art. Dr. Rowland E. Burns, the engineer who led a NASA study in the mid-1970s on this issue, stated it is feasible to design and construct containers that can safely withstand the demands of even a catastrophic explosion, claiming, “I won´t say you would have to nuke the container to break it, but it would take something like that.’
Materials technology has improved since the 1970s, making even tougher capsules possible. Because launch costs will be relatively inexpensive, engineers can overdesign for safety instead of trying to create the lightest possible container. Fail-proof capsules can be built, though the ratio of waste to shielding will be low.
Ensuring safety must have an inclusionary component. A broadly based panel of stakeholders, including skeptics and opponents, should determine the criteria for tests and scenarios that proponents must pass. Computer simulations and controlled tests, however, will not be enough. Convincing demonstrations such as aborting launches with a mock payload and sending test capsules to reenter the atmosphere will be necessary to calm fears and prove the veracity of safety calculations. Minimum danger must be demonstrated, not assumed. Those opponents who unilaterally reject space-based disposal should be asked to propose an alternative. Nuclear waste will not go away on its own volition.
Expensive and inexpensive
What about the economics? Let´s be honest and upfront in our accounting: Space disposal will ultimately cost tens of billions of dollars, but the federal government has already spent $8 billion researching underground disposal and expects the total cost will be $60 billion. The difference is that future generations will not have to worry about the waste and they will have an infrastructure for reaching space. While technologically impressive, developments in tunnel boring have far less potential. Disposal in any form will be expensive. Space disposal at least offers a major spinoff, inexpensive access to space. Putting a small surcharge—a fraction of a cent per kilowatt-hour of electricity—on power generated by nuclear reactors would handle the operational costs.
How can a system be both expensive and inexpensive? Judging by the costs of other high technology projects such as the Airbus 380 and Boston´s Big Dig, developing a laser launch system will require at least $5–10 billion. This is a lot of money, but historically space technologies are expensive: The Apollo program cost over $150 billion in contemporary dollars. Constructing the actual launch system will require a few billion dollars and operations will consume billions more. And even if the price of a pound to escape velocity is only $100, 5000 tons is $1 billion.
We owe the future as well as ourselves the opportunity to determine whether space-based disposal is the best way to handle nuclear waste. Accordingly, over the next few years, NASA and the Department of Energy should establish three research programs. The first will determine the criteria and acceptance for a demonstration program. The second program will design safe capsules and the third program will test the ground-launched system. For the price of a new hotel in Las Vegas or a day or two of the defense budget, we will have enough information to decide whether to commit large resources to space-based disposal.
Space disposal may not appear the obvious solution to the high-level nuclear waste problem. Nor is disposing of nuclear waste the obvious answer to the question of how to reduce the cost of reaching space. But the immense magnitude of nuclear wastes provides the incentive to develop launch systems that will drastically cut the cost of space exploitation. The result will be lower operating costs, more infrastructure, and more skilled personnel able to develop other areas of space.
The development of the computer may offer a good analogy. Government funding, mostly from the military, intelligence community, and NASA, greatly accelerated research, development, and diffusion of computers since the 1940s. The federal government did this to conduct projects of national significance such as the census, Social Security, weapons research (especially nuclear explosions), cryptoanalysis, and space exploration. Not until the 1970s did the civilian market grow large enough to seize the technological initiative.
Space disposal may prove a similar opportunity. Once a ground launcher is developed and built, constructing additional launchers will be far less costly and risky. The dream of affordable access to space may then come true, opening up the final frontier in ways that we have not dreamed of since the 1960s. As important, we will be acting ethically, providing our children a safer earth and inexpensive access to space for people as well as plutonium.
Jonathan Coopersmith is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University, where he teaches the history of technology, including the history of space exploration. He can be reached at j-coopersmith@tamu.edu.
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San Luis Obispo Tribune
August 21, 2005
Editorial/Opinion of The Tribune
Federal snub is such a waste
The Tribune
Once touted as an energy source "too cheap to meter," the cost of nuclear power continues to have fall-out effects in dollars far beyond what pro-nuclear advocates ever imagined.
Not that we ever believed anything as complicated as nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter."
But the economic cost -- and the safety issues -- associated with storing nuclear waste ARE as frustrating and long lasting as the half life of a plutonium isotope.
Worse, though, is the attitude and effectiveness of federal agencies in resolving the problem.
As The Tribune's environmental reporter, David Sneed, outlined in a series of articles last week, California ratepayers have already been soaked for some $1 billion in costs associated with the bedeviled federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
Scheduled to receive waste by 1998, the massive underground facility may not be ready until the next decade ... if then.
This means that our own Diablo Canyon, which was originally slated to move its waste to Yucca in 2017, will have to store its radioactive material on-site for a considerably longer period than once thought --perhaps for decades, and maybe centuries according to some critics.
Needless to say, this nuclear waste shell game is going to hammer taxpayers for millions and millions of dollars beyond what was originally sold to the public.
So you'd think, with billions of dollars and the almost surreptitious creation of on-site waste sites at Diablo and other plants hanging in the balance, the federal agency responsible for Yucca Mountain would have the courtesy of attending a two-day meeting of the California Energy Commission to explain its program.
You'd think. But you'd be wrong. The federal Department of Energy declined the invitation to attend.
Let's be clear, we have no beef with PG&E and the way it runs Diablo. In fact, its facility seven miles north of Avila Beach has a safety record that equals or surpasses all 300-plus nuclear plants around the nation. In addition, it provides hundreds of head-of-household jobs and its tax base has contributed tens of millions of dollars to the county and local schools.
No, our concern is one of spent fuel waste -- a concern that's been an issue for more than 30 years. Before Yucca Mountain was chosen as the federal dump site, for example, waste- disposal proposals included shooting the stuff at the sun or burying it under ocean sea beds. Needless to say, neither idea gained traction.
So we were sold the notion of Yucca Mountain. Now that its future is cloudy at best, and PG&E has a license to run its reactors until 2023 and 2025 (it's studying whether to apply to renew the licenses for an additional 20 years), it's apparent that Diablo will become, de facto, a waste-storage site.
In anticipation, PG&E plans to store its spent fuel in dry storage casks after its storage pond reaches capacity in 2007.
Under that plan, the citizens of San Luis Obispo County deserve a voice in what may eventually become a permanent nuclear waste storage site at Diablo Canyon.
It's imperative that PG&E, California Energy Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and federal Department of Energy include local representation in these discussions.
Not everyone in this county may be a stockholder in PG&E, but we're all stakeholders in the future of Diablo. To turn a deaf ear to our concerns -- much as the federal Department of Energy did last week in Sacramento -- would be, at best, arrogant.
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Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)
August 18, 2005
Reid, Ensign Demand Answers on Trains to Yucca
REID, ENSIGN DEMAND ANSWERS ON DOE TRANSPORTATION SCHEME
Point out gaps and inconsistencies in plan to ship nuclear waste by train
On Monday, July 18th, 2005, DOE distributed its new “Department of Energy Policy Statement for Use of Dedicated Trains for Waste Shipments to Yucca Mountain.’ Under this policy DOE claims it will use dedicated train service – train service dedicated to one commodity – for its rail transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to the Yucca Mountain Repository site in Nevada.
In a letter sent to Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, U.S. Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign raise many of the inaccuracies, for example how DOE plans to ship waste by train when one-third of the reactor sites around the country do not have rail access, and demand further explanation.
“The policy statement is riddled with gaps and inconsistencies and provides no sound justification or support for its conclusions,’ the Senators said. “Like all things Yucca, the conclusions in this policy statement are seemingly pulled from thin air. While we don´t believe the proposed Yucca Mountain repository will ever open, we´re also not going to let DOE get away with misleading the public into thinking there is any way to safely transport 70,000 tons of nuclear waste over thousands of miles and through hundreds of communities.’
A copy of the letter follows:
August 17, 2005
The Honorable Samuel W. Bodman
Secretary
Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington DC 20585
Dear Secretary Bodman:
In reviewing the Department of Energy´s policy statement for the use of dedicated trains for spent fuel and high-level waste shipments to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository that was announced on July 18, 2005, we am requesting the following additional information:
(1) Since 1986, the State of Nevada has been urging DOE to require the use of dedicated trains for all SNF and HLW shipments to a repository. For almost two decades, DOE has consistently refused to make such a commitment. What prompted DOE to issue its policy statement on the dedicated train issue? Please explain the process that DOE went through in reassessing its policy.
(2) The policy announced on July 18th states that DOE “will use dedicated train service (DTS) for its usual rail transport of spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste to the Yucca Mountain Repository site … when the repository is operational (emphasis added). Please define what is meant by “usual rail transport’ and how this policy differs from current DOE policy that anticipates the use of general freight service on a case by case basis. Does the new policy mean that DOE will require all SNF and HLW shipments to a repository to use dedicated trains?
(3) The announced policy statement appears to be internally inconsistent in that it purports to require the use dedicated train shipments to Yucca Mountain but, in discussing security benefits, states that “DOE shipments have been and will continue to be made securely using both DTS and general freight service’ (emphasis added). Please explain how the use of general freight service is compatible with the decision to use dedicated trains. Also, please explain the circumstances under which DOE would use general freight service instead of dedicated train service. Will DOE require use of dedicated trains for shipments of spent naval reactor fuel to INEEL and/or other federal facilities?
(4) DOE has proposed, in a March 2004 supplement analysis to the Yucca Mountain Final Environmental Impact Statement, to transport smaller, legal weight truck casks on rail cars in the likely event that a rail spur to Yucca Mountain is delayed or not available at all. Under this scenario, about 2,200 truck casks per year would be shipped to Nevada on about 440 train movements, off-loaded at an intermodal facility, and transported to Yucca Mountain by truck. Even if it is assumed (as DOE has done) that such a scenario would only be needed for a six year period, DOE would require at least one train per day, seven days per week, for shipments to the repository. Does the new policy on dedicated train service apply to legal-weight truck casks shipped on railcars? Has DOE assessed the safety, security, and operational implications inherent in shipping thousands of truck casks on railcars, in hundreds of dedicated trains per year? If so, please provide us with that assessment.
(5) There are about 24 reactor sites, out of a total 72, or one-third, of reactor sites that are not capable of shipping spent fuel by rail. DOE has proposed transporting rail casks from these sites to rail connections by using large, heavy haul trucks. DOE has also proposed using barges to ship rail casks from 17 of these sites. Will dedicated train service be used at these 24 sites? If so, please provide DOE´s plans and timeline for providing the necessary infrastructure.
(6) There are about 24 reactor sites, out of a total 72 reactor sites, that are not capable of shipping spent fuel by rail. DOE has proposed transporting rail casks from these sites to rail connections by using large, heavy haul trucks. DOE has also proposed using barges to ship rail casks from 17 of these sites. Does the new policy mean that DOE will require all SNF from these 24 sites to use dedicated trains once the casks are delivered to a rail connection?
(7) In order to make efficient use of dedicated trains, it will be necessary for DOE move spent fuel from about 50 eastern reactor sites to marshalling yards or collection points where trains can be assembled for cross-country transport to Yucca Mountain. DOE has identified the Union Pacific Provisio Yard near Chicago as one of the probable primary marshalling points. Does the new policy mean that DOE will require all SNF shipments to use dedicated trains for shipment to these marshalling yards, as well as for shipment from these yards to Yucca Mountain?
(8) The policy statement cites “avoidance of lengthy ‘dwell times´ in rail yards’ as an advantage of dedicated trains. Please describe the method used by DOE to compare “dwell times’ for dedicated train service with the “dwell times’ for general freight service.
(9) The policy statement asserts that “the radiological risk resulting from transport without incident may be lower due to decreased time in transit.’ Please explain how DOE evaluated radiological risk to members of the general public. How will the use of dedicated trains affect routine radiological exposures to yard workers, train crews, safety inspectors, and escorts? Please provide us all analyses or assessments of radiological risk that DOE undertook or relied on in making this evaluation and coming to these conclusions.
(10) Since 1983, the State of Nevada, together with the Western Governors´ Association, has urged DOE to prepare a comprehensive plan for transporting spent fuel and high-level waste to a repository. Today, more than 20 years after the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, DOE still has not prepared a comprehensive transportation plan. The dedicated train policy statement is another example of piecemeal decision-making on DOE´s part. When will DOE be able to provide a comprehensive transportation plan that shows in detail how the dedicated train policy statement relates to and integrates with the other aspects of the requisite transportation system?
(11) The policy statement asserts that “the primary benefit of using DTS is the significant cost savings over the lifetime of the Yucca Mountain project.’ Since 1983, the State of Nevada has urged DOE to prepare a comprehensive cost analysis for transporting spent fuel and high-level waste to a repository. Today, more than 20 years after the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, DOE still has not prepared a comprehensive cost assessment of its comprehensive transportation plan. When will DOE provide us with that assessment?
Given the magnitude of human health and safety implications of the proposed Yucca Mountain transportation plan and that this policy has already been finalized, we request that you reply to these questions by September 1, 2005. We appreciate your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
HARRY REID, United States Senator
JOHN ENSIGN, United States Senator
Cc: Kenny C. Guinn, Governor of Nevada
Bob Loux, Executive Director, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects
Brian Sandavol, Attorney General, State of Nevada
Nils Diaz, Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
B. John Garrick, Chairman, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board
G. Paul Bollwerk III, Chairman, Atomic Safety and Licensing Board
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 20, 2005
Letters:
Going underground
To the editor:
Just a thought on the Yucca Mountain Project: What will we put in this huge cavern if the government is finally prohibited from finishing the job?
How about a new Strip of casinos? Motto: "What happens there, stays there." That's a lot more assurance than the government can give us if they load us up with nuclear garbage.
Jim Connor
Las Vegas
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 20, 2005
Senators want more details on nuclear shipments by rail
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — Nevada´s senators are demanding the Energy Department more fully explain its plan to use dedicated freight trains to haul spent nuclear fuel to a national radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
In a letter this week to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., complain of “gaps and inconsistencies’ in a recently announced plan to have trains haul just one kind of cargo: highly radioactive waste.
“Like all things Yucca, the conclusions in this policy statement are seemingly pulled from thin air,’ the senators said in a joint statement released Thursday. Reid and Ensign oppose the Yucca Mountain project.
The Energy Department had not received the letter, and spokesman Craig Stevens declined to answer questions it raised.
“We remain committed to opening Yucca Mountain using the best science and technology available to ensure the safety and health of all citizens,’ he said.
The Energy Department has said it would rely more on trains than trucks to haul 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from sites in 39 states to a proposed underground nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The department announced July 18 it would use dedicated trains instead of linking cars carrying nuclear waste with cars containing other freight.
Nevada officials have long advocated dedicated trains. But Reid and Ensign said the plan was incomplete.
Among other questions, they asked how the department plans to move waste from 24 reactor sites that have no train tracks; how long waste would sit in rail yards and whether rail employees would be exposed to radiation; how the public risk of radiation was evaluated; and when the department would release a comprehensive shipping plan and cost assessment.
They sought answers by Sept. 1.
In another development, the nuclear power industry´s chief lobbyist said in Washington, D.C., that reprocessing technology could make retrieval of spent fuel from the Yucca Mountain project more likely.
“A lot of people have the image that the idea is to put this stuff in, close the door, walk away, and that´s the end of it,’ said Frank L. “Skip’ Bowman, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute. “Not true. That would be irresponsible, and it never has been the plan.’
The Energy Department requires the DOE to be able to retrieve highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel from Yucca Mountain for at least 100 years and possibly for as long as 300 years, Bowman said.
Bowman acknowledged that the United States has not reprocessed spent nuclear fuel since 1977.
Bob Loux, chief of Nevada´s Nuclear Projects Agency, called it unlikely that radioactive material could safely be retrieved from tunnels where internal temperatures will be above the boiling point of water.
The Energy Department plans to submit a license application for the Yucca repository to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year. Recent setbacks have pushed back the target date for receiving waste from 2010 to 2012 or later.
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The State
August 20, 2005
SRS can´t handle all of nation´s surplus plutonium, study says
Congressional arm reports any plan to consolidate the material at the Aiken site should wait
By LAUREN MARKOE
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Tentative plans to consolidate the nation´s surplus plutonium at the Savannah River Site should be put on hold, a congressional study released Friday concludes. The Aiken nuclear campus couldn´t safely store and monitor the 50 metric tons of plutonium now at various nuclear sites around the country, according to the study by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Environmentalists agree with the report´s conclusion but say it shouldn´t have taken Congress so long to take notice of the nation´s serious plutonium storage problem. “It has already been a decade since the program to dispose of surplus weapons plutonium began, and the Department of Energy still hasn´t developed a workable plan to handle this deadly material,’ said Tom Clements, an independent nuclear consultant and former senior adviser to Greenpeace International. The U.S. Department of Energy plans to eventually deposit this spent nuclear fuel at the deep nuclear vault at Yucca Mountain, Nev. But construction of the vault has faced serious delays and is not expected to open before 2012. Until it is ready, Energy Department officials have argued it would be safer and more economical to gather plutonium at one location — SRS. The department has indicated the waste could be stored there for up to 50 years. But GAO investigators say much would have to change for that to happen. Among their reasons: nþFederal law prohibits shipments of plutonium to SRS until the Energy Department completes a plan to change the waste into a form in which it can be permanently disposed. nþMuch of the plutonium identified for storage at SRS is in the form of 12-foot-long fuel rods. SRS can handle only containers of plutonium waste. nþThe storage facility that would be used does not have adequate fire protection, ventilation or monitoring capabilities to detect whether the stored waste is becoming unstable. The Department of Energy, given a draft of the report earlier this summer, did not dispute its basic recommendation — that the department develop a comprehensive strategy for storing excess plutonium and that it review its current cleanup plans. Such a strategic plan is being developed, said Charles E. Anderson, the department´s principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management. In December 2003, another government agency — the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board — raised similar concerns about the Department of Energy´s plans to consolidate plutonium at SRS. Kevin Bishop, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the GAO report does not seem to break much ground. Bishop said Graham and the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., assured that federal law prohibits the permanent storage at SRS of plutonium that would be turned into nuclear fuel. One of SRS´ missions is to recycle spent weapons-grade nuclear fuel into commercial fuel for use in nuclear reactors.
Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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