Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, October 23, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
October 23, 2005
Columnist Hal Rothman: The center works for us
Hal Rothman, a history professor at UNLV, is a columnist for the Las Vegas Sun.
You know you're in Nevada when the Republicans don't hate the unions and some of the state's leading Democrats are anti-choice on abortion.
This unlikely formulation, which perfectly describes the sentiments of our two U.S. senators, Republican John Ensign and Democrat Harry Reid, also illustrates the ways in which Nevada politics differs from the national scene.
We're a small state, and our limitations force us to the middle. Sure, there are screamers on both ends of the spectrum, but to succeed in Nevada in politics, you tack to the center. Most of us hug the middle, some so passionately that we earn the odd label of "militant centrists."
You can see it if you look at the state in Election Day color terms. If you put Nevada into the red-blue division on which TV relies these days, you'd see a bright blue center pinpointing the Las Vegas Valley, surrounded by a thickening purple ring that represents our suburbs.
The rest of the state would be red with the exception of a couple of blue dots in the north. It's a typically Western case of demography vs. geography.
At the state level, this distinction is equally clear. For the past 15 years, when we've had a Democratic governor, the complaint from his party's base was that Bob Miller governed like a Republican. Kenny Guinn has faced the same predicament: His fringe is angry at him for governing like a Democrat.
The national political parties must find Nevada exasperating. We are growing so fast that some predictions give us as many as five U.S. representatives by 2020. Right now, one seat is red, another blue, the third really purple. Who knows what colors the two new ones might be?
Our problems are our own, much to the consternation of political pundits and national parties. The uniting factor in Nevada politics is contempt for Yucca Mountain and the foul and callous way the federal government has tried to force a nuclear waste dump down our throats.
It's hard not to cheer no matter what your party is as we watch Reid cut the Yucca Mountain budget with such fervor and consistency that, before long, we'll be able to drown the damn thing in the bathtub.
Even more, our location has pulled us to the center. We sit in California's enormous shadow, simultaneously subject to its whims and apart from it.
In our politics, we've seen everything from California carpetbaggers who move here to run for office -- and I'm talking about the 19th-century U.S. Senate as well as 20th-century gubernatorial races -- to an influx of outside money trying to influence local decisions. Mostly, we've hewn to our own course, as ridiculous as it has been on some occasions, because we need the center to hold.
This is of particular importance at a time when we are bombarded by California's worst political innovation, government by referendum. While this early 20th-century mechanism was designed as a counter to the centralized political power of "The Octopus," the Southern Pacific Railroad, the mechanism has in many ways outlived its usefulness.
Instead of an instrument of direct democracy, binding referendum has become a tool of special interests, of demagogues who can afford enough media time to twist the public's perception of an issue. This was not what turn-of-the-century California intended, and it was even further from the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and the founding generation.
While we're not so dependent on California that when it sneezes, we get pneumonia, it's hard to be independent when the world's fifth-largest economy is next door.
California's influence on us is growing, as more of Nevada's population has its roots in the Golden State and seeks here to avoid what former Californians see as the various flaws of their home state. Those shortcomings differ depending on whom you ask, providing even more reason for us to hold true to the precepts of Nevada.
We can sum those up most simply as "your business is your business" and "your property is your property." These two seemingly competing impulses, privacy and minimal regulation of the private sector, blend nicely in the Silver State. Our tradition is to leave each other alone and to let people manage their assets with as little interference as possible.
No wonder we're in the center. With privacy as a virtue, we lean Democratic. With lack of regulation as a virtue, we lean Republican. Split the difference and we're back to the militant center.
In Nevada, history is barely a barometer, much less a dependable guide. Nonetheless, the state's patterns and traditions should scare political extremists of all kinds.
The center serves us well: It allows us more rather than less freedom in all kinds of ways, encourages our primary economy, and reminds us of how different we are from our neighbors. The center may not be exciting, but it does work for Nevada.
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Financial Times
October 23, 2005
Wind of change in US blows dust off nuclear facilities
By Dan Roberts
Outside a nuclear fuel rod factory in North Carolina, caretakers are unfurling a stylised metal sculpture of an atom that was folded up to protect it from the Atlantic hurricane season.
Like much of the industry in the US, the General Electric plant is also dusting down the cobwebs from a far deeper period of hibernation. Designed in the 1960s, when optimists thought nuclear-generated electricity would become too cheap to bother metering, this sprawling plant on 1,650 acres never came close to reaching its potential for packing uranium fuel pellets into the spindly metal rods that form the heart of a reactor.
The last new US power station was commissioned in the 1980s. GE, and its Japanese fuel partners Toshiba and Hitachi, have mothballed one production line and export some output to Asia.
But hype is finally turning to hope again in an industry used to many false dawns. Last month, a consortium of utility companies selected two sites next to existing nuclear plants in Mississippi and Alabama where GE and Westinghouse - a US-based rival owned by British Nuclear Fuels - will submit competing designs to build a new generation of reactors.
The lengthy design and planning process is partly subsidised by the US Department of Energy, which hopes construction of at least two new plants, starting in 2010, will encourage other private companies to follow.
By Asian or French standards the US ambitions remain relatively limited, but its mixture of public and private activity shows the way forward for many countries, such as Britain, that are slowly warming to the idea of new nuclear plants.
The renewed confidence of GE, Westinghouse and Areva - a French rival aiming to gain its own toehold in the US - also highlights a looming battle between engineering companies hoping to profit.
In the US particularly, political and economic conditions have not looked more conducive since the 1960s.
As well as contributing public money to encourage new designs, Washington politicians gave the industry a major fillip this year with an energy bill that extended federal liability insurance, promised production tax credits and offered research incentives for a future generation of reactors.
Meanwhile, record oil and gas prices mean private sector utility companies are slowly shaking off their long-held scepticism about the financial risks of atomic energy. More efficient use of existing reactors has allowed nuclear to maintain its share of US electricity generation at about 20 per cent.
A national storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada may remove some of the uncertainty over long-term waste storage. And the next generation of plants designed by GE and Westinghouse offer an attractive combination of lower operating and construction costs with much improved safety - a result of "passive safety features" that rely on gravity and natural circulation to replace expensive but unreliable pumps and diesel generators.
Despite all this, investing the billions of dollars needed to construct new reactors remains an enormous gamble. Andy White, a dry Yorkshireman who heads GE's nuclear division, says key hurdles remain. But he is cautiously optimistic that a combination of carrot and stick should do the trick.
"While the energy bill and Department of Energy's 2010 programme will help, the big question is, will we get the dollars appropriated and what will happen when the rubber hits the road in the [government] rulemaking," he says. "Based on the activity level I am seeing now from the utilities I think it's enough - there's been a lot of buzz but these incentives should now kickstart new build, especially with oil and gas prices where they are."
Whether the handful of plants projected for 2010 turns into dozens in the decade to follow is a far tougher question.
One obstacle to more widespread construction is a shortage of skilled engineers. When nuclear was seen as a dying industry, few college students chose to take the necessary specialised engineering classes. There is some resurgence in education, but companies have brought skilled employees out of retirement to train the next generation of engineers. "Three [new plants in the US] would be feasible," says Mr White. "The big question is are we going to see 20 or 30."
Until that happens, the greater prize for GE's new generation of so-called "boiling-water" reactors remains overseas. Here, the relative isolation of the US civil nuclear industry has left it at a disadvantage in big markets such as China, where a competing technology, known as pressurised-water reactors, has taken hold, so far limiting the bidding to Areva, Westinghouse and Russia's AtomStroyExport.
This leads many to believe GE will bid strongly for Westinghouse, which has been put up for sale by BNFL, to get hold of this key technology. Whether GE chooses to fend off competing interests and wins the bidding battle for Westinghouse will say much about its confidence in the wider renaissance of the industry.
This is the third in a series exploring how high energy prices are spurring a revival in nuclear energy.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 22, 2005
Editorial: It's just a matter of time
Nevada is right to be suing over an Energy Department plan to ship nuclear waste by rail
Las Vegas Sun
Last September Nevada sued the Energy Department over a tiny portion of its stated plan to transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The suit concerns the department's proposal to build a 319-mile rail line from Caliente (130 miles northeast of Las Vegas) west to the proposed dump site. Nevada's attorney for Yucca issues, Joe Egan, argued the case this week before a federal court in Washington.
Among the allegations is one stating that the department is planning the rail line while bypassing the Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that oversees rail projects. The state has an excellent point. The board is charged with being objective in authorizing and overseeing rail-line construction, while the Energy Department is biased and up against a deadline.
The department hopes to be licensed to open the mountain by 2012. Construction of the proposed, $1 billion Caliente line would take four or five years, and even preliminary engineering plans have yet to begin.
Nevada's transportation consultant, Bob Halstead, has studied the department's proposal for the rail route out of Caliente. He says it is so uneven that it would require at least 20 bridges, each more than 200 feet high. Considering the trains' deadly cargo, this image is not reassuring. Halstead also says the route is vulnerable to flooding, rockfalls and even earthquakes.
The department's plans to haul, mostly by rail, 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain from 127 sites is of national concern. The shipments would take place weekly over a 24-year-period. For safety's sake, we believe all affected states should follow Nevada's lead and file federal lawsuits.
Just this week U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta ordered rail companies to correct their track-switching procedures. Nine serious accidents have occurred this year because rail employees forgot to reset tracks, leading trains to collide with other trains or rail cars.
Track deficiencies and human error are common. If the Energy Department's transportation plan is allowed, it will just be a matter of time before a serious accident will involve a train carrying nuclear waste.
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Pahrump Valley Times
October 21, 2005
Photo: Dangerous Cargo
Image at: http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2005/10/21/news/waste.html
Gina B. Good
PVT
In an eerie precursor of what could become a common occurrence should Nevada's protest of the opening of the Yucca Mountain facility fail, a convoy of three long-haul trucks carrying radioactive cargo rolled through Pahrump Tuesday on rain-slicked Highway 160. The trucks rolled over the Spring Mountain pass from Las Vegas and barreled north at speeds in excess of the legal limit. This image was taken near the entrance to Seibt Desert Retreat. The trucks slowed twice to accommodate the passage of wide loads. The second slowdown was in conjunction with heavy highway flooding.
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Pahrump Valley Times
October 21, 2005
Growth Dilemma
Tax base won't support county
Consultant: Current Land Uses Result in Net Deficits; Northern Nye Saving Pahrump
By Phillip Gomez
PVT
Nye County's principal consultant for gauging the impacts wrought by incoming homebuyers to the Pahrump Valley told the Board of County Commissioners Wednesday that over the next decade, given current and projected states of tax revenue, the county will be broke - requiring state intervention as recently occurred in White Pine County.
Paul Tischler with TischlerBise Co. delivered the news to the commission: "You have a fiscally untenable situation long-term." Tischler has been working with the county's capital improvements advisory committee to identify the impacts of the next decade of growth on Pahrump's deteriorating streets, police and fire services, public parks and storm drainage infrastructure. His report on the cost of land use in the Pahrump Valley analyzed projected fiscal impacts.
"All land uses produce net deficits to the county except retail," Tischler's report states. "No residential land use pays for itself; all generate net deficits to the county." The county's revenue structure "cannot provide current levels of service to current residents," not to mention new ones. "Payments Equal To Taxes does not increase with growth. This revenue source is assumed to be fixed.
"You have been using your PETT funds to basically pay for your deficits," Tischler told the commissioners.
PETT money is that which the county receives every January, roughly $10.5 million, from the U.S. Department of Energy to pay for taxes that could conceivably be collected if the Yucca Mountain project was not a federal activity in Nye County.
Tischler said that Nye County was not alone in having this problem, that jurisdictions throughout the country face similar fiscal difficulties. How do they cope? he asked.
"You defer expenditures," he said - which leads to a crumbling infrastructure and worsening problems over time.
Commission Chairwoman Candice Trummell added another piece to Nye County's financial conundrum: "We also take money from the tax base in the north," she said. "Despite popular opinion (to the contrary), we actually take money from the north to subsidize services in Pahrump."
"The biggest rumor out there is that all the (tax) money is going to Tonopah," agreed Commissioner Patricia Cox.
In his detailed analysis, Tischler said the town of Pahrump had fiscal deficit problems, too, but that its looming deficits due to growth were "not nearly as bad as the county's." Nye County, responsible as it is for several town boards and multiple public services, will accrue deficits four or five times those of the town, Tischler said.
"All land uses produce net deficits to the town except office and industrial," the land use report says. As with the county, "No residential land use pays for itself; all generate net deficits to the town. ... (The) town's revenue structure cannot provide current levels of service to current residents. Current residents and new residents (are) not paying their way."
"Until there are major shopping centers here, we're going to have more (single-family) rooftops here," said Cox, indicating that demands for services will soon outpace the ability of local government to assess taxes on enough businesses on the county tax rolls to continue to bear the burden of public services.
Homeowners bring retail business to town, Cox said, but not right away. The community must first lay a viable foundation for a market and workforce in order to attract business investors and companies, Cox suggested.
"Does it ever catch up?" she asked Tischler regarding the business component.
"That will be answered in the next study," said Tischler.
As for the public and government component of the jigsaw puzzle, Tischler said, "You're not going to be able to provide higher levels of services until then. In fact, it's probably going to get worse, unless there are revenue enhancements."
"Revenue enhancements" is fiscal code for tax increases.
Cox said the Pahrump community was "behind the eight-ball" due to growing too fast in the past dozen years. "Basically, people are not paying for the level of service we are providing today," she said.
Quick to see a gathering storm, Chairwoman Trummell said, "I don't want anybody leaving here today thinking we're going to raise taxes."
"Nobody wants to pay more taxes," said Tischler, "but at some point it's not only looking at expenses, but the revenue side (too)."
In recent weeks two residents of Pahrump have separately come forward with sales tax-increase proposals to the Board of Commissioners.
"PETT money has allowed you to continue a revenue dysfunctional use long-term," said Tischler, summing up the problem thus far in Pahrump's brief history as a community. "There's a cost side and there's a revenue side. You need to establish a long-term revenue study for the county if you want to maintain services.
"Those are the facts under current levels of service," said Tischler. "It gets worse. As housing prices escalate, people come to expect higher levels of service."
Whether or not that bitter news is swallowed in the near future, Commissioner Cox saw sees it as an effort needing good will and cooperation: "Everyone has to start working together," she said. "People talk about taxes. They don't realize they're paying for three entities. People don't realize how little a percentage they're paying (for the school district, town and county services) and how many departments they're supporting.
"There are a lot of things people are not aware of when they move to Pahrump," she said.
The Pahrump Valley Times is working with Commissioner Cox to produce a booklet for Pahrump newcomers, which answers questions and points out some common pitfalls in making the Pahrump Valley their new home. Production of the pamphlet, according to Managing Editor Doug McMurdo, is nearing its completion.
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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
October 22, 2005
What does this generation owe the next?
By Michele M. Melendez
Religion 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 that 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 long-standing 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 wellbeing 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 what 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 alternate 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.’
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Las Vegas SUN
October 21, 2005
Rail ban could increase danger
By Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Banning hazardous materials on certain rail routes would not eliminate any risks and could cause more problems, a railroad expert told a Senate panel Thursday.
A train loaded with chlorine or another hazardous chemical is an attractive terrorist target and poses a great safety risk even without the terrorist threat, some cities' officials believe. The fear has prompted bans of certain materials on certain routes.
Las Vegas has an ordinance banning nuclear waste shipments. But four cities -- Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland and Chicago -- have introduced ordinances banning more common hazardous waste shipments. The District of Columbia has already passed such a ban, but because of a legal challenge shipments can still take place for now.
Advocates of hazardous waste bans are trying to recruit Las Vegas to introduce its own as well.
But if the bans pass, they won't do much good, Association of American Railroads President Edward Hamberger told the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday.
"The proposals may be well intended, but the end result of their enactment would likely be an increase in exposure to hazmat release -- and reduced safety and security," Hamberger said.
He said 1.7 million carloads of hazardous material are moved via rail in the United States each year, and "99.998 percent of these shipments reach their destination without a release caused by an accident."
"Banning hazmat movements in particular jurisdictions would not eliminate risks, but instead would simply shift them from one place to another," he said. "In shifting that risk, it could foreclose transportation routes that are optimal in terms of overall safety, security and efficiency."
Rerouting shipments could add hundreds of miles and additional days to a shipment, he said. Emergency personnel along the new routes may not have had as much training as those on the previous routes.
"Banning hazmat shipments in even one city would be problematic; banning them in cities throughout the country would cause immense confusion and economic disruption nationwide and would virtually shut down hazmat shipments by rail in this country," Hamberger testified.
Nuclear waste that could go to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain is not classified as "hazardous material." Radioactive waste has its own rules, partly governed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a division of the Transportation Department.
During the nearly two-hour hearing, the potential cross-country shipments of waste to Yucca did not come up.
Hamberger called hazmat shipments a "bet the farm" situation for railroad companies, meaning that if an accident occurred, it would be devastating to the railroad industry.
After the hearing, he said moving used nuclear fuel would not fall into that same category.
"If there were to be a breach, it does not have the same consequence," he said. "There is no plume, and the immediate impact is not as great."
Suzanne Struglinski can be reached at (202) 662-7245 or at suzanne@ lasvegassun.com.
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Indian Country Today
October 21, 2005
Skull Valley's nerve gas neighbors
Brenda Norrell
Indian Country Today
Proposed nuclear dump site is area of U.S. biological and chemical weapons testing
SKULL VALLEY GOSHUTE NATION, Utah - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a license for a nuclear storage facility on Skull Valley Goshute tribal land, prompting new questions about the federal government's use of the area as a U.S. Army test site for biological and chemical weapons, including nerve gas and anthrax.
Margene Bullcreek, Skull Valley Goshute tribal member and among those protesting nuclear and toxic dumping on Indian lands, said it is time for the government to stop dumping its nuclear waste on Indian people and stop treating them ai if they are expendable.
''There is no gain to our prosperity when there is poison spilled. The radioactive waste would bring harm to our medicine wheel in four areas: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual,'' said Bullcreek, founder of the community group Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia Awareness.
The Goshute group, along with the state of Utah, is opposing the Private Fuel Storage Limited Liability Consortium's current plan to store more than half of the nation's high-level nuclear waste on 17,444 acres of tribal land.
Goshutes, whose native language is Shoshone, are protesting the proposed nuclear dump now referred to as ''Utah's Yucca Mountain,'' after the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository in southern Nevada. Meanwhile, Western Shoshone in Nevada continue to oppose the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump on ancestral lands.
''Indigenous people within this nation have always been victimized to provide national security,'' said Bullcreek, criticizing the BIA's approval of the nuclear waste dump of Goshute land.
Already, Goshutes have been unwilling neighbors of the U.S. Army's biological and chemical weapon open-air testing at the Dugway Proving Ground in western Utah.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency recognizes the risks those weapons pose to Dugway's neighbors, the Skull Valley Goshute.
On its Web site, FEMA quotes from Jicarilla Apache researcher Veronica Tiller's ''Guide to Indian Country'':
''South of the reservation is the Dugway Proving Grounds, where chemical and biological weapons have been developed and tested by the government. In 1968, chemical agents escaped from Dugway, killing approximately 6,000 sheep and other animals on the reservation; the government buried at least 1,600 of the contaminated sheep on the reservation. ...
''East of Skull Valley, in the Rush Valley area, is a government nerve-gas storage facility. Northwest is the Envirocare Low-Level Radioactive disposal site. North of the reservation is a large magnesium production plant, which has been identified by the Environment Protection Agency as the most polluting plant of its kind in the U.S.''
Referring to the proposed nuclear dump, the FEMA site states that flash flooding and earthquakes along the Wasatch fault pose additional risks.
The operations at Dugway Proving Ground were classified for most of the 20th century. In March 1968, following a VX nerve agent experiment, 6,000 sheep died in Skull Valley and Rush Valley.
''Agent VX was found to be present in snow and grass samples that were received approximately three weeks after the sheep incident,'' said the 1970 report by researchers at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, as revealed by the Salt Lake Tribune in 1998.
The document was declassified in 1978, but not until 30 years after the deaths of the sheep did it become public. Still, the commander of Dugway said the Army does not accept responsibility for the death of the sheep or admit negligence.
VX, which was found in the bodies of the dead sheep, is a nerve agent so powerful that a single drop on the skin can result in death within about 15 minutes. It disrupts the nervous system and causes breathing to stop. GB, another common form of nerve agent known also as sarin, vaporizes quickly when exposed to air and forms a deadly gas.
International publicity about the incident contributed to President Nixon's decision to ban all open-air testing of chemical weapons in 1969.
Meanwhile, Goshute tribal leaders often question whether the deaths of several tribal elders, who died shortly after the sheep, were the result of the nerve gas accident.
At the time, in 1968, Dugway conducted aerial nerve gas testing. In one of its experiments, VX was sprayed from a jet to a ground target 27 miles west of Skull Valley. At the time of the accident, when the nerve agent escaped the target area, any animals or people who ate the grass or snow would have become contaminated.
Besides the sheep deaths in 1968, there were at least 1,174 other tests of chemical agents at Dugway, which spread nearly a half million pounds of nerve agent to the winds, according to documents revealed by Deseret News in Utah. There were 328 open-air germ warfare tests; 74 radiological ''dirty bomb'' tests and the equivalent of eight intentional meltdowns of small nuclear reactors.
Along with biological and chemical testing at Dugway, open-air nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and 1960s sent radioactive fallout drifting into Utah.
Currently, Dugway is in the market for mass quantities of anthrax, according to contract requests discovered by the Sunshine Project, a U.S.-German organization that opposes the use of biological and chemical weapons.
New Scientist magazine reported that the controversial move is likely to raise questions over the United States' commitment to treaties designed to limit the spread of biological weapons, pointing out that even though the nation renounced biological weapons in 1969, Dugway was still producing quantities of lethal anthrax as recently as 1998.
The Dugway contract request is for companies to bid for the production of bulk quantities of a non-virulent strain of anthrax and equipment to produce significant volumes of other biological agents.
Besides contracts for anthrax, other contracts are for equipment to produce an unspecified biological agent and sheep carcasses to test the efficiency of an incinerator for the disposal of infected livestock.
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Tooele Transcript-Bulletin
October 20, 2005
Fresh perspectives could change views of "Toxic Tooele"
Mark Watson
A Brigham Young University professor says Utah legislators made a tactical error when they did not join forces with Nevada legislators in their opposition to storing high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev. He said by not working with neighboring Nevada, Utah's leaders hurt their own efforts to keep high-level nuclear waste out of Skull Valley.
Richard Jackson, a geography professor at BYU, spoke to students Tuesday night on the topic of "Toxic Tooele: The Emergence of the West as a Location for Other People's Waste." Jackson specializes in the study of land uses in America and has written three textbooks on the subject. He also served on the Orem City Council, so he is aware of the dilemma placed upon local governments when companies seek out land to dump their waste.
"When one-third of a county's budget comes from lease agreements and tipping fees and other types of fees, it is hard to say no. It would be difficult to slice your county's budget by one-third," Jackson said.
The professor said Tooele County has a long history of accepting operations that only add to the perception of the West as a dumping ground for other people's waste. He believes that nuclear waste should be stored where it is created and not shipped to the West.
Jackson cited statistics which revealed that for several years local residents did not fear and/or understand the possible health hazards of some operations. Early mining activities were especially hazardous to the long-term health of the workforce as was nuclear testing in the Nevada desert.
"Back then, local governments had little say in what happened on their land, especially when it came to military operations."
"Attitudes have changed over time. There is more and more opposition now to hazardous-waste-type businesses in the West. State and federal governments are also stricter with regulations. Back in the 1930s and Ô40s there were virtually no environmental regulations," the speaker said.
Jackson said the federal government was "not always honest" in telling local people what was going on in there own backyard. He mentioned activities at Dugway Proving Ground in 1968 when aerial spraying of VX in Skull Valley killed about 6,000 sheep. Also, they were mum on the hazards to those living downwind from nuclear testing in the west desert.
The professor said calling Utah a desert area is a misnomer.
"If you want to see a real desert, go to Nevada," he said. Jackson said high-amenity areas such as Park City, which flourished on the tourist industry, sometimes seek to avoid the stigma of Utah's reputation.
"That is why Park City wants to be known as Park City, Colo."
"Utah tried to adjust its image with the slogan ÔUtah, a Pretty Great State,' but that never did really take off."
He said the national media picked up on the news when Tooele County established the first hazardous industrial waste zone. The speaker mentioned an editorial from the New York Times, which indicated Utah's isolated west desert would be a great place to store nuclear waste. All these incidents legitimize the myth that the West has nothing to offer except to be used as a dumping ground.
Jackson said it is the "rhetoric of despair" from the forgotten, forsaken counties of the West.
"Their feeling is Ôwe've got nothing to offer' so we need to accept these types of industries." he said.
Even neighboring Salt Lake County had little regard for Tooele and shipped four million tons of low-level radioactive uranium tailings from Kennecott to the county. Now they want to move the prison from the Draper area.
"These types of counties are forced to go with industries which new residents don't find appealing such as prisons, gambling establishments, power plants," he said.
Jackson said MagCorp (now U.S. Magnesium) came to Tooele County in 1972 and for 30 years was listed as the top polluter in the nation. Tooele County's west desert is a haven for hazardous waste operations with Grassy Mountain, Envirocare, Agragonie and Clive, the speaker said.
However, the professor said times may be changing. He mentioned a 2005 Tooele County Commission decision to shrink the hazardous waste zone as a step in the right direction.
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Sydney Morning Herald
October 22, 2005
Desert wasteland
The remote Northern Territory has been chosen to take Australia's nuclear waste, but some argue it would be safer in Sydney, writes Wendy Frew.
The United States Government's 18-year battle to store 77,000 tonnes of highly radioactive nuclear waste deep inside Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert has been a public relations nightmare.
The Nevada state government challenge to the plan uncovered a real danger of spontaneous nuclear chain reactions inside the waste dump. There have been accusations of doctored statistics and a fierce debate about for how many thousands of years the material will remain dangerous.
The prospect of an accident involving even one of the giant trucks full of radioactive waste that would wind their way through hundreds of major cities to the dump has unnerved many Americans.
But it's Nevada that feels most hard done by, singled out because its scattered population of 2 million doesn't carry the clout of more heavily populated neighbouring states.
None of the nuclear waste is generated in the state, so why should it be dumped on them, Nevadans ask. It's a sentiment residents of the Northern Territory would understand.
The Australian Government announced in July that low- and medium-level radioactive waste - most of it generated in Sydney - would be stored at one of three Commonwealth sites in the Territory. The Territory vowed to fight the plan, but the Federal Government introduced a bill last week that will override any legislative or legal challenge to the proposal from the Northern Territory Government, indigenous owners or green groups.
The decision follows years of planning by the Howard Government and its Labor predecessor to build a national dump on the grounds the waste would be safer and more secure than leaving it at the more than 100 sites around the country where it is now stored.
That ambition failed spectacularly last year when the Federal Court overturned a federal plan to build a low-level waste dump in a remote part of South Australia, against the wishes of that state's government.
The Federal Government's Territory plan comes as the Liberals and Labor are pushing for more uranium exports (China could be Australia's next customer), and not long after the former prime minister Bob Hawke suggested Australia make money from accepting high-level radioactive waste that the rest of the world doesn't want.
There's also a controversial debate about replacing coal with nuclear power to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, a suggestion the environment movement says is a front for selling more uranium.
In the meantime, Territorians face a proposal to bury low-level waste not much deeper than the average grave, or possibly store it with much more dangerous intermediate waste in what's called a dry storage facility - essentially a factory-like building housing steel drums holding the waste.
The Federal Government will choose between three possible sites: Harts Range, about 100 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs; Mount Everard, 27 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs; and Fishers Ridge, about 40 kilometres south of Katherine. The facility could be operating by late 2011.
Australia doesn't have high-level nuclear waste generated from nuclear power stations, the kind of material that will be buried at Yucca. But concerns remain about the safety and security of moving the waste from where it is generated - mostly at Sydney's Lucas Heights research reactor - thousands of kilometres by road or sea.
It might not only be the people of the Northern Territory who are worried when it becomes clear trucks carrying the waste would have to travel over the Blue Mountains via the Great Western Highway or up Australia's east coast, where the Great Barrier Reef is already vulnerable to shipping accidents.
The Government says the low-level waste would include contaminated laboratory gloves, clothing and glassware, and contaminated soil. Intermediate level waste would include disused radiotherapy and industrial material.
Under an agreement with France, about 50 cubic metres of waste that is due to return after reprocessing of spent fuel rods from Lucas Heights would also be included.
Some waste would come from therapeutic or diagnostic drugs that contain radioactive material and are used in the diagnosis of diseases and conditions, including cancer.
A Friends of the Earth campaigner, Dr Jim Green, says the waste to be dumped in the Northern Territory is far more radioactive and hazardous than the lower-level waste the Federal Government tried to dump in South Australia. He also rejects the claim there is no high-level waste in Australia.
"Spent nuclear fuel from Lucas Heights meets the radiological and heat criteria for classification as high-level waste, as the NSW Environment Protection Authority has acknowledged, but [the Lucas Heights reactor operator] ANSTO and the Federal Government persist with the fiction that spent fuel is not waste," says Green, who has a doctorate in nuclear science.
He says much of the Government's information about the dangers of nuclear waste is misleading, such as a claim by the Science Minister, Brendan Nelson, that uranium in the ground in the Northern Territory was more radioactive than the waste that will be taken to the dump.
"Wrong. The spent fuel reprocessing waste and some other waste to be dumped in the NT is far more radioactive and hazardous than uranium," Green says.
A Macquarie University geologist, Professor John Veevers, believes the Federal Government has painted itself into a corner by arguing the material is safe but then choosing extremely remote locations for the waste facility, thousands of kilometres from where the material is generated.
"If it is OK to store it in the Northern Territory where they don't generate any of it, it is good enough to be put at Lucas Heights or North Shore Hospital," Veevers says.
He scoffs at Hawke's suggestion Australia should become an international nuclear waste dump. He says highly contaminated material should be stored where it is generated rather than moved elsewhere, because it is so dangerous.
He says there is some merit in building centralised facilities in each of Australia's major cities for less dangerous material instead of multiple storage sites at universities and hospitals.
But, while he argues there is no logic to transporting this kind of material all the way to the Northern Territory, he says the dangers are sometimes exaggerated.
"If a semi-trailer crashed and the drums holding low-level material burst open (which is unlikely) it would not be the end of the world. You can handle that material relatively easily," he says.
A nuclear engineer, Alan Parkinson, is worried that what he describes as the Government's poor record on handling nuclear waste will jeopardise the safety of the proposed facility in the Territory.
Parkinson is an experienced nuclear engineer who oversaw the bulk of the clean-up at the nuclear test site at Maralinga in the 1990s but was removed from that position in 1998 after questioning some parts of the clean-up.
At Maralinga, he says, plutonium waste with a half-life of 24,000 years was buried only a couple of metres below the surface compared with the current plan to transport relatively safe, low-level material thousands of kilometres to house it in a dry storage facility.
(Half-life is the time it takes for half of the radioactive element to decay.)
Parkinson also says that it would be easier to guard waste if it was stored in more populous areas.
"The public perception is that it is dangerous so the Government thinks if it puts it in a remote area it will be OK," he says.
"But no one wants the waste and that is the problem."
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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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