Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
October 11, 2005
Finding common ground
Yucca foes Reid, Domenici said to be in talks over nuke bill
By Benjamin Grove <grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON -- Could it be true?
Are Yucca Mountain's biggest opponent in the Senate and one of its biggest supporters working together on a nuclear waste bill that would shift the focus away from Yucca?
The trade publication Energy Daily reported Thursday that Yucca's chief antagonist, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., were discussing Reid's legislation that would require the Energy Department to take ownership of nuclear power plant waste and store it at the plants indefinitely.
The paper said another point of discussion may focus on the development of a U.S. reprocessing program, in which plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear fuel rods would be recycled to create new fuel, theoretically decreasing the amount of waste that would be stored at Yucca.
Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said the senators are not talking about any specific proposals or bill language.
"I'm not sure where the rumors are coming from," Hafen said.
Reid has not yet introduced the legislation because he is securing support for it behind the scenes among his Senate colleagues. Reid aides point to Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, who on Sept. 20 announced he was shedding his support for Yucca in favor of on-site storage, as an example that Reid's efforts are paying off.
Getting the support of Domenici would boost the bill's chances immediately and help the state in its fight to stop the plan to ship highly radioactive waste now piling up at the plants to the proposed underground repository at Yucca for permanent burial.
A Domenici spokeswoman declined to comment to Energy Daily and could not be reached Monday by the Sun. A spokesman in Domenici's New Mexico office was unavailable Monday. Federal offices were closed for the Columbus Day holiday.
Industry officials say the nation needs a geologic repository whether it pursues reprocessing or not, and were reportedly uncomfortable that Reid and Domenici could be discussing legislation that would decrease momentum for Yucca.
Some industry officials at times have said that Yucca Mountain was important to their plans to construct a new generation of nuclear power plants.
A spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top lobby group and leading Yucca supporter in Washington, was unavailable for comment on Monday.
Energy Daily reported that NEI chairman Adm. Skip Bowman sent a memo to nuclear industry insiders last week that said the potential for a Reid-Domenici bill was "not good news."
The publication reported that Bowman wrote, "We have been doing our dead-level best to stamp out this notion." He also wrote that leaving waste at plants could "completely dampen new plant enthusiasm."
The potential for an agreement in which the Energy Department would "take title" to the waste as it sits at the plants could actually benefit the industry, said nuclear waste specialist Kevin Kamps of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. It would at least solidify a government plan for waste, even if the industry didn't like it, Kamps said.
"Then they could say, 'Hey, what's the problem with building new reactors?' " Kamps said.
NIRS opposes reprocessing because it is a "messy" process that poses environmental and worker risks, as well as weapons proliferation concerns, Kamps said.
If Congress decides to pursue reprocessing it could be bad news for Nevada because Yucca Mountain could be chosen as the reprocessing site, Kamps said. Yucca could potentially be a waste site for the reprocessing by-product as well as the plant site, Kamps said.
"Nevada could get a double whammy," he said.
Domenici made a cryptic comment after Bennett's announcement when the Sun asked Domenici about Yucca Mountain.
"Yucca Mountain must remain alive," he said. When pressed to clarify the comment, he said, "I didn't say what it (Yucca) should be."
Reprocessing, though, would mean that nuclear waste would be shipped across country, which runs counter to arguments made by Yucca opponents.
Domenici has an interest in pursuing reprocessing technology because national laboratories in his home state stand to benefit from the research contracts, Public Citizen analyst Michele Boyd said.
But it's unlikely that any discussions between Reid and Domenici would yield a landmark agreement in the final weeks of the congressional session, largely because Domenici faces a complicated task in detaching his support from Yucca, Boyd said.
"Everybody's looking for an easy solution, and they haven't been able to find one in the last 50 years," Boyd said. "I don't think they will be able to find one this month, or next month."
Benjamin Grove is the Sun's Washington bureau chief. He can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or by e-mail at grove@lasvegassun.com.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 11, 2005
Critics dominate final EPA hearing on radiation rule
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Yucca Mountain critics dominated the final public hearing on how much radiation could be released from the proposed nuclear waste dump.
Environmentalists say the radiation standard proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency is too weak to protect future generations.
Just two of 15 people who made public statements at the agency's headquarters expressed support of the E-P-A proposal.
One represented a group that wants nuclear waste moved away from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The other was an official with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, which supports swift completion of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada.
The dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is proposed to hold 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 11, 2005
Wife of Nevada congressman seeks his House seat
By Brendan Riley
Associated Press
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Former Nevada Assemblywoman Dawn Gibbons formally announced Tuesday that she's seeking the U.S. House seat that her husband, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., is vacating to run for governor.
Gibbons, who announced her House bid in a press release rather than at a news conference, said in a telephone interview that she's already toured many communities in the sprawling 2nd Congressional District, which covers most of the state, and is nearing the $350,000 mark in contributions.
While the campaign budget may be double or more that amount, Gibbons said, "At a certain point, money doesn't make any difference. A lot of it is grass roots."
Most of the voters in the district are in the Reno area, where Gibbons lives. "But where this race really is going to be won is in the rural communities because you can count on people there to vote. That's why I'm spending so much time on the road," she said.
Gibbons will likely face Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, R-Reno, and Secretary of State Dean Heller in the Republican primary. Heller and Angle already are mixing it up, with Heller calling Angle "intellectually dishonest" for advocating two tax restraint measures after voting for a $5.9 billion budget last session.
Democrat Jill Derby, a veteran state university and community college system regent, also is in the race and could benefit from a bloody Republican primary. But Gibbons said she hopes the race doesn't turn nasty.
Even if the other candidates resort to negative campaigning, "I'm not going to," Gibbons said, adding, "It's hard for someone to say you're bad when people know you. I've done a lot of grass-roots work, and it's not like I just came on the scene all of a sudden."
"People know what they get when they meet me. It doesn't take rocket science. What they want is a good public servant who knows the issues and cares about them."
In her news release, Gibbons said she'd work to control federal spending and illegal immigration, and to ensure that any Social Security reforms leave the system solvent and able to deliver promised benefits.
Gibbons also said she'd work with Nevada's congressional delegation to fight federal plans for a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, support efforts to limit eminent domain powers and work with members of the Congressional Western Caucus to reduce federal control of western lands.
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Newhouse News Service
October 11, 2005
What Is Our Duty to the Future?
By Michele M. Melendez
Newhouse News Service
It's the human condition: The future looms, and we grapple with how to plan.
Whether the issue is pollution, retirement savings or the state of education in America, politicians, scholars, interest groups and even Mom and Dad talk about leaving new generations a better world, one unencumbered by mistakes adults make today.
Sounds good. But what determines our responsibility to the future? The question has no clear answer, yet purportedly guides how we live.
"It has to do with history and ethics and religion and morality," said William Dunkelberg, economics professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. "There's no law that says we have to think about the future. It's something that we choose to do."
Claire Irvan, 31, of Portland, Ore., has given much thought to this topic for her sons, ages 5 and 6. She said she fears deforestation and the country's reliance on oil will leave her children an unfit planet.
"We have to begin to do things that we know aren't going to hurt the earth," she said. "What are we teaching our children? ... What will be there for them?"
By many measures, American children today are better off than their parents were. Child mortality is down. A higher percentage finish high school and go on to earn bachelor's degrees. Once-feared diseases and dangers, including polio and lead poisoning, have become lesser threats.
But other problems persist. The federal deficit is swelling. Social Security faces a shortfall. Natural resources shrink as energy consumption rises.
Those trends trouble David Walker, head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which audits federal programs and spending. Since the country's infancy, he said, Americans have passed along greater opportunities and living standards. That's now in jeopardy.
"We are at risk of not delivering on that longstanding tradition," said Walker, who preaches "prudence today and stewardship for tomorrow."
Meanwhile, policymakers and regulators ponder how far into the future they should reach. Sometimes that is far indeed.
In August, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revised its proposed limits on radiation exposure at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. The stated goal is to protect public health for 1 million years.
"Yucca Mountain is a great example of how tangled up you can get under the wrong paradigm," said Robert Fri, visiting scholar at Resources for the Future, a Washington-based institute that examines environmental issues.
Fri, EPA deputy administrator during the Nixon administration, chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee in 1995 that -- at Congress' request -- evaluated the EPA's proposed standards for the Nevada site. In his view, the government's regulatory framework encourages rigid long-term plans for fluid environmental problems that deserve periodic re-evaluation. Regulations crafted today may be inappropriate or meaningless in a million years.
So, he said, the question becomes: "How do you hand off a problem to the next generation in a way that we're able to deal with, that doesn't disadvantage them?"
The starting point rests in centuries-old, even ancient, thought.
"There are certain fundamental building blocks that have to be in place in order for people to pursue the kind of life they want to live," said Alex John London, associate professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "We're moral equals. You're free to do what you want as long as you afford me access" to necessities, including clean water, food, even dignity.
"We don't owe (future generations) wealth," London said. "We owe them a just society and a safe living environment."
It comes down to values. Historically, defining and practicing a nation's values have proved challenging. Even families who love each other fight over their beliefs. Try getting a dozen, much less millions of Americans, to agree.
"We don't have any single tradition of thought," religious, philosophical or otherwise, said Mary Doak, assistant professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
Christianity, Judaism and Islam all honor human rights, the Earth's resources and the well-being of children. For decades, scholars have debated how those shared tenets should apply to tomorrow.
Practically speaking, supporting future generations can have a selfish twist, at least in the short term. Children eventually will carry the responsibility for aging adults, said Isabel Sawhill, a vice president of the Brookings Institution and co-director of its Center on Children and Families.
But the responsibility rolls both ways. Sawhill said grown-ups must ensure that children have the skills and knowledge to become productive adults themselves. She said that if adults don't minimize foreseeable problems that children will inherit, such as the mounting deficit, it amounts to "a form of child abuse. It seems terribly irresponsible."
Scholars use models, theories and equations to project into the future. They look at history. They chart. They guess. And they could be wrong.
"It's ridiculous to suggest we would know what things would be like 100 years from now," said Paul Thompson, environmental philosopher at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Look at a hundred years ago: The country had just 45 states. Not all women could vote. Movies were silent. A copy of The New York Times cost 5 cents. Las Vegas had no telephone lines, let alone twinkling casinos.
But Thompson said the country can't use uncertainty as an excuse: "We have to be cautious about we do today."
Children are counting on it.
Miranda Taylor-Weiss, 11, a sixth-grader at Sunnyside Environmental School, a public school in Portland, said she wants communities to be safer.
"When you're grown up, you shouldn't have to go outside and be abducted," she said.
Schoolmate Kyle Ebberts, 12, in seventh grade, said he hopes for more research and development of alternative sources of fuel.
"I don't necessarily plan on getting a car when I get older," he said, adding that he cringes when he sees the rainbow-shimmery spots left behind by cars: oil wasted. "It just really sickens me."
(Michele M. Melendez can be contacted at michele.melendez@newhouse.com)
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Guardian
October 10, 2005
Critics Attack EPA's Yucca Mountain Rules
By Erica Werner
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Scientists and environmentalists said Monday that radiation limits proposed for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada aren't strict enough to protect the public.
``This rule is a transparent attempt to accommodate the industry,'' Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist who has been critical of the Yucca project, told reporters on a conference call a day ahead of an Environmental Protection Agency hearing on draft regulations.
``In the proposed EPA rule, every norm of radiation protection that has been established for the general public since the late 1950s ... is to be thrown overboard,'' Makhijani said.
The EPA in August proposed limiting exposure near the planned dump to 15 millirems a year for 10,000 years into the future, then increasing the allowable level to 350 millirems a year for up to 1 million years.
That higher level is more than three times what is allowed from nuclear facilities today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A standard chest X-ray is about 10 millirems.
The 350 millirem level is ``an extremely unacceptable risk,'' said Dr. Robert M. Gould, chairman of Physicians for Social Responsibility's security committee. He said that annual exposure to that level of radiation over a lifetime would carry a one in 36 chance for someone to develop cancer.
EPA spokesman John Millett emphasized that the rule is a draft and a final standard won't be issued until after the public comment period ends Nov. 21. Tuesday's meeting at EPA headquarters is the agency's fifth and final public hearing on the rule; the four earlier hearings were in Nevada.
``It's a draft rule at this point, but again, the rationale for the 350 additional millirems from 10,000 years and beyond deals with the amount of uncertainty that we're faced with in projecting out 10,000 years, in addition to being equivalent to radiation levels commonly experienced in other parts of the mountain West,'' Millett said.
Scientists on Monday's call disagreed with EPA's decision to link its draft rule to so-called ``background radiation'' that occurs naturally in the environment, arguing that such radiation can be dangerous in itself and that some EPA estimates of it were too high.
The planned Yucca Mountain dump is designed to hold 77,000 tons of radioactive waste, mostly spent fuel from nuclear reactors, beneath a volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The EPA issued the draft rule now under consideration after a federal court said the agency's first standard was inadequate because it didn't establish exposure limits beyond 10,000 years.
The dump's opening date has been repeatedly delayed and is now expected in 2012 or later.
---On the Net
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
Environmental Protection Agency: www.doe.gov
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Nevada Appeal
October 9, 2005
Letters to the editor
EPA overlooking effect of radiation on children
I want to address a very serious defect in the Environmental Protection Agency's revised radiation standard for the Yucca Mountain Project. Executive Order 13045 that requires federal agencies to specifically address the potential impact to children's health and safety was summarily ignored. The EPA "calculated" this proposed standard using what is known as a Reasonably Maximally Exposed Individual (RMEI). RMEI is defined as a "standard man." The EPA is ignoring data that shows the increased vulnerability of low level continuous radiation.
Published data that clearly indicates that small amounts of radiation can have a significant impact on the unborn and very young children. Dr. Abram Petkau, head of the Medical Biophysics Branch of the Canadian Atomic Energy research laboratory in Manitoba, announced over 30 years ago that chronic low-level nuclear radiation exposure produced far worse damage to living tissues than high-dose, short-term exposure.
He named this the Petkau Effect. Dr. Petkau explained that continuous exposure to small amounts of nuclear radiation can destroy cell membranes in a matter of minutes to hours, leaving cells, especially those in the immune system, open to damage and destruction by free radicals.
The often-quoted level of the natural radiation is used to show that the proposed level is only about twice that of the natural radiation. Mother Nature provides a counter for the natural radiation during the time of a woman's pregnancy and for a period after the baby is born. The mother produces an enzyme during this period that neutralizes the free radicals produced by the natural radiation.
The Petkau Effect seems to cause damage to those cells, which are responsible for the body's resistance to disease. Swiss engineer and nuclear hazards expert Ralph Graeub explains in his exposé of nuclear radiation hazards, the more drawn-out the radiation (the Petkau Effect), the lower the total dose required to break the membrane. Small doses of radiation can be more dangerous than large ones and low-level radiation magnifies all health risks. Small increases in the continuous radiation such that will be emitted by the stored high level nuclear waste will not be neutralized and thus cause significant impact to the very young and the very old, both who have a low immune system.
DOE with the approval of the EPA is attempting to do something that has never been done. Beat Mother Nature. EPA must show how the Executive Order 13045 will be met with the proposed radiation limit in light of the RPHP data. The proposed standard must not be adopted until the conflicts are resolved.
Lou DeBottari
Carson City
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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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