Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, November 17, 2005
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 17, 2005
Yucca audit unearths more e-mail questions
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Government inspectors said in a report Wednesday that they discovered more e-mails that raise questions about work performed at Yucca Mountain, including one message that suggested backdating notebooks and another with a recommendation to "make up something."
The report prepared by the Energy Department inspector general refocused attention on Yucca Mountain quality assurance, an area in which department has been regularly criticized.
DOE spokesman Craig Stevens said the department was aware of the e-mails, which he characterized as a "blip in the cosmos of Yucca Mountain." Critics said the audit provides fresh evidence of the proposed nuclear waste dump's management shortcomings.
"This report reinforces the complete lack of confidence I have in the ability of the DOE to honestly evaluate the safety of Yucca Mountain and to truly enforce any type of quality assurance program," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.
In March, the Yucca program was tossed into turmoil with the release of a cache of e-mail messages in which U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists discussed possible falsification of quality assurance documents on water infiltration research.
The 16-page report issued Wednesday was part of an ongoing criminal investigation related to those messages, which also are the topic of a probe by a U.S. House subcommittee. Auditors said they reviewed e-mail written by or associated with workers being investigated.
Auditors said the latest review "identified a number of e-mails containing language that could indicate possible conditions adverse to quality."
Investigators did not say how many questionable messages were found or whether they referred to the same matters uncovered in March. Five e-mails were excerpted in the report.
In one excerpt, an author referred to a report that concerned rainfall. "Our best guess. Screw 'em. It's a lovely, 85, sunny, warm breeze. It's nice to be disconnected and not caring whether it's QA (quality assurance) or not. If you can't give them QA, that's fine."
Another said "... we may want to backdate the notebook to when we started putting things together."
Quality assurance requires scientists and engineers to record and document their research, computer modeling and field reports meticulously so that they can be verified and confirmed as part of repository safety licensing.
The e-mails disclosed in March and the latest messages disclosed by auditor indicated that some workers held the quality assurance process in low regard.
Additionally, auditors said that the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management in DOE fell short in how it reviewed internal messages to ensure that possible quality control problems were being identified and investigated.
Out of 10 million e-mails that accumulated over years, the Energy Department deemed nine million irrelevant for repository licensing. But inspectors said they found e-mails among the rejects that should have raised flags.
DOE spokesman Stevens said the department is responding by preparing a new review of the 10 million e-mails, plus another 4 million, using statistical sampling to examine a more comprehensive set of messages than before.
Paul Golan, acting director of the Yucca Mountain project, has issued a corrective action plan that will guide the reviews, and people who are examining e-mails for hints of problems are being retrained, Stevens said.
Stevens said DOE examiners found some of the new e-mails this summer while others were brought to the department's attention by the inspector general and are being examined.
"The issue of the e-mails is something that has been looked at ad nauseam by people in this department," Stevens said.
"When this came to the knowledge of the front office, they worked quickly to get on top of this.
"In the universe of the Yucca Mountain Project, this report isn't even a twinkle from the most distant star," Stevens said.
The audit prompted some members of Nevada's congressional delegation to renew calls for an independent investigation of the nuclear waste project.
"What is clear from this report is that allowing the DOE to review its own quality assurance records is like giving prisoners the keys to their own jail cells," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who leads the House subcommittee that has been conducting an examination of the e-mails and related issues, said the audit "highlights what I think is a culture of mismanagement at DOE. They left out nine million e-mails, and that troubles me."
Energy Department officials were not certain how long it would take to perform the new examination. The department plans to spend more than a year and more than $1 million to try to put to rest questions about Yucca Mountain science that were raised by the e-mails disclosed in March.
Some officials have cautioned against reading much into e-mails offered without background or context.
Joseph Hevesi, a USGS hydrologist identified as one of the e-mail authors, told Porter's subcommittee at a hearing in June that provocative messages he wrote were merely "water cooler talk." Hevesi said he did not falsify documents on the project.
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 17, 2005
Senators block Bush choice
Questions surround pick to lead Yucca Mountain project, Ensign says
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Nevada's senators are blocking confirmation of President Bush's pick to lead nuclear waste disposal efforts at Yucca Mountain.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said he and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., have placed holds on Ward Sproat, who has been nominated to become director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management in the Department of Energy.
Senators can invoke procedural holds to block final action on nominees and legislation. Ensign said he and Reid will relent on Sproat "once we can get answers about where the administration is going" on nuclear waste. Reid had no comment.
Ensign met with Sproat on Nov. 2.
"I think he can be very good," Ensign said in an interview. "But we still have a hold on him until we can see these other questions get answered first."
Bush administration officials "will work with senators who have placed a hold on Mr. Sproat to remedy their concerns," Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved Sproat's confirmation Wednesday by a voice vote, sending the confirmation to the Senate floor.
But the nominee's path forward could be uncertain if opposition exists, said the committee's chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. The Senate is expected to recess in mid-December, with unfinished business carrying into next year.
"It is hard to get a nominee through if somebody doesn't want him to go, so I would think this is serious," Domenici said. He assigned his committee chief of staff to talk to Reid, the Senate Democratic leader.
The Yucca Mountain project has been without a Senate-confirmed leader since Margaret Chu resigned in February. Paul Golan, the principal deputy director, has been serving as acting director.
A flurry of activity and rumor this fall has focused attention on possible new directions in the government's efforts to manage nuclear waste and establish a repository at the Yucca Mountain site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Congress passed a bill earlier this week that continues spending for Yucca Mountain but at a reduced rate. The bill directs the Department of Energy to start searching for sites that might hold a nuclear waste reprocessing complex to supplement a repository.
Yucca Mountain project managers last month announced a redesign of some features and impending changes in contract management.
The Energy Department is preparing other legislation to benefit the stalled Yucca Mountain program, including provisions that would remove accounting restrictions on project spending and would withdraw federal land for the repository, DOE officials have said.
Rumors have been floating in nuclear industry circles, unconfirmed by Bush officials, that the administration is working on a nuclear waste reprocessing initiative that would involve Yucca Mountain in some way.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
November 17, 2005
Nevada senators blocking Bush nominee for Yucca Mountain chief
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada's senators are blocking confirmation of President Bush's pick to lead nuclear waste disposal efforts at Yucca Mountain.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said Wednesday that he and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., have placed holds on Ward Sproat, the administration nominee to direct the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
Ensign, who met with Sproat on Nov. 2, said he and Reid will relent on Sproat "once we can get answers about where the administration is going" on nuclear waste. Reid had no comment.
Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said Bush administration officials "will work with senators ... to remedy their concerns."
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved Sproat's confirmation Wednesday by a voice vote, sending the confirmation to the Senate floor.
But senators can invoke procedural holds to block final action on nominees and legislation. The committee chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., assigned his committee chief of staff to talk with Reid, the Senate Democratic leader.
The Energy Department got approval from Bush and Congress in 2002 to entomb the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The project has been without a Senate-confirmed leader since Margaret Chu resigned in February. Paul Golan, the principal deputy director, has been serving as acting director.
Congressional budget cuts and revelations that scientific data may have been falsified have slowed Energy Department progress toward applying to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an operating license.
Congress has also directed the Energy Department to start searching for sites that might hold a nuclear waste reprocessing complex to supplement a repository.
---Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
---------------------------
Orlando Sentinel
November 17, 2005
To save industries, jobs . . .
Lynn E. Weaver |
America's economy is relying heavily on natural gas as the locomotive of growth. But the public doesn't seem to have any clear realization that the soaring cost of natural gas is taking the ground out from under major industries.
Until recently, the relatively high wages earned by American workers were blamed for the exodus of industrial production to China and other developing countries. But now the price of U.S. natural gas -- the highest in the world -- is a major factor in forcing a substantial number of industrial plants to shut down and move overseas, with serious implications for our nation's economy and industrial competitiveness.
The situation doesn't look rosy, particularly in the chemicals and plastics industries. Since 2003, the chemical industry -- which needs large amounts of natural gas for energy and as a feedstock in making fertilizers and other products -- has lost $40 billion in business to overseas competitors who pay less for natural gas. Chemical companies closed 140 facilities in the United States last year, and expect to close at least 40 more this year. The situation is especially grim for fertilizer plants, many of which have shut down.
But the picture isn't much better elsewhere. Natural gas is a source of heat and power for other major industries. Piping-hot gas prices are placing a measurable strain on industry, and it's pushing up the cost of many products we use daily.
High gas prices reflect a very tight market. Demand for natural gas is outstripping production, in large part because of the uncontrolled use of gas for electric-power generation. Gas-fired power plants account for 20 percent of the nation's electricity, but more than 95 percent of new electric-power capacity developed in the last decade is fueled with natural gas. The result is that industries must compete with electric utilities and homeowners for gas supplies.
And the trend will continue. Gas consumed for electricity production is set to grow 5 percent a year over the next several years, overtaking industry as the biggest user of natural gas. Meanwhile, U.S. gas production is declining, and imports from Canada and liquefied natural gas from overseas must fill the gap. But that won't be easy, because the overall demand for natural gas is expected to increase 40 percent in the next 20 years.
If we hope to save U.S. industries and jobs, there's really only one way out: making greater use of clean-coal technology, nuclear power and alternate energy sources for electric-power production. Expanding the use of these energy sources could save natural gas for industries and home heating. Yet, when utilities are ready to make power-supply decisions, one of the most environmentally attractive and inexhaustible resources -- nuclear power -- is out of reach due to economic and regulatory uncertainties.
Action is needed to make nuclear power a real option for electric utilities, so that a new generation of nuclear power plants can begin to substitute for natural gas. Congress can show we are serious about our nation's energy security by staying the course and seeing to it that construction proceeds on an underground repository for spent-nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Otherwise, at the rate we're going, there won't be much left of America's industrial base.
Lynn E. Weaver is a professor of electrical engineering and the president emeritus of the Florida Institute of Technology.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
November 16, 2005
Energy inspector general: More suspect Yucca Mountain e-mails
By Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - There is more evidence of questionable work on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada, an Energy Department inspector general's report said Wednesday.
Criminal investigations already were under way into a batch of e-mails the Energy Department disclosed in March that suggest government scientists falsified data on the project.
The inspector general uncovered more e-mails that raise new questions about work on the national nuclear waste dump being developed in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"The office of inspector general found e-mails by other authors that identified possible conditions adverse to quality at Yucca," the report said. "However, these e-mails had not been identified by Yucca personnel as requiring further review."
One e-mail cited by the report says that the office of quality assurance "just discovered that (quality assurance) software requirements were being ignored." Another says: "We may want to backdate the notebook to when we started putting things together."
The report doesn't say who wrote the e-mails or how many were found, and a spokeswoman for the inspector general said she couldn't elaborate because of the criminal investigation into the original e-mails. Those were written by U.S. Geological Survey scientists studying how water moved through the underground dump site.
It's not clear whether the newly discovered e-mails dealt with the same issue.
The report also says Yucca Mountain workers have not adequately focused on quality control in their reviews of e-mails written about the project, and they should go back and look at approximately 10 million project e-mails. The e-mails and other documents are being reviewed as the Energy Department readies an application for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to operate the dump.
Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said department managers have signed off on a corrective action plan to implement the report's recommendations. He said the 10 million e-mails - plus an additional 4 million subsequently discovered - will be reviewed through statistical sampling
"We certainly appreciate the information the inspector general gave and the recommendations the inspector general presented and this is something we take very seriously," Stevens said.
Problems at the Yucca Mountain dump, including the e-mail controversy, have delayed the projected opening date by years, and it's now not expected until after 2012. The dump was approved by Congress in 2002 as a national repository for 77,000 tons of spent reactor fuel and high-level defense nuclear waste. It faces strong opposition from Nevada lawmakers.
---On the Net:
Energy Department inspector general: http://www.ig.doe.gov/
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 16, 2005
Energy spending bill approved by Senate
Nuclear waste burial funds slashed, fuel reprocessing OK'd
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- A bill that slices President Bush's budget request for Nevada nuclear waste burial while directing more federal spending into nuclear fuel reprocessing was passed by the Senate on Monday.
Senators approved the $30.5 billion energy spending bill by a vote of 84-4, sending it to the White House for Bush's signature. The House passed the bill last week.
The measure for the 2006 fiscal year directs spending for programs within the Department of Energy, the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and several smaller agencies.
The bill contains more than $285 million in earmarked spending inserted by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The money is directed to research at Nevada universities, for flood control and water conservation programs in the state, and for operations at federal facilities including the Nevada Test Site.
Among major items in the bill, Congress reduced the Bush administration's budget request to develop nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The stalled project was allocated $450 million, a 31 percent decrease from what Bush requested.
Lawmakers said persistent delays in the Yucca project mean the department does not need the entire $651 million that it requested earlier this year.
At the same time, lawmakers approved $80 million to continue research into advanced nuclear fuel reprocessing technologies, and an additional $50 million for an initiative to identify one or more of them that might be brought online in the next decade.
Scientists have touted reprocessing as holding the potential to exact more use out of spent fuel while reducing the leftover waste in volume and toxicity.
Experts differ however as to how long it might take to make the technology economical while some others have raised environmental concerns.
"Congress is taking a giant step backward by advancing spent nuclear fuel reprocessing programs," said Thomas Cochran, director of nuclear programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "These projects threaten our national security, our public health, and our safety. And they are wildly expensive."
A repository still would be required for the waste products, experts and lawmakers have said.
The measure directs the Department of Energy to open a competition for communities interested in hosting a waste reprocessing complex, offering $5 million apiece to develop site plans at four locations.
The department was told to submit a detailed program to Congress by next March 31, and to open the site competition by the end of next June. The target for site selection would be in late 2006 or 2007 with a construction goal of 2010, lawmakers said in the bill.
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
November 16, 2005
County getting a handle on PETT
By Doug Mcmurdo
PVT
Comptroller Marie Owens might have stuttered and stammered her way through the ordeal, but when she was finished briefing the Nye County Board of Commissioners on the status of the Payments Equal to Taxes special project fund 492 late Monday afternoon, she managed to answer the one question nobody in county government has been able to adequately respond to in more than a decade - where is all the PETT money?
PETT is an acronym for payments equal to taxes; funds the federal government pays Nye County for its use of Yucca Mountain as the probable site to store 77,000 metric tons of the nation's high-level radioactive waste.
Each year the Energy Department pays a negotiated amount to Nye and nine other "affected units of local government." In January the county will receive roughly $10 million for fiscal year 2005-2006, which began July 1, and all but $2 million of that revenue has been committed - and a substantial portion of that funding was approved in 2003 and 2004.
It is critically important readers understand Owens' figures are "un-audited," meaning they could change upon further scrutiny - but only by $100,000 one way or the other.
The county on Oct. 21, 2003 pledged $1.5 million to help fund a Pahrump community college, monies that would be spent contingent on the 2005 Legislature approving a full-fledged Pahrump campus. But the Legislature was not kind to rural Nevada in the last session and the promised commitment was not honored.
College boosters will now be asked to once again plead their case to the commissioners lest the funding promise be taken away - and at a time when a concerted effort is under way to move the valley out from under the umbrella of the Community College of Southern Nevada system and into the Great Basin system. Both systems are part of the Nevada System of Higher Education; however, Pahrump would likely fare better under the Elko-based Great Basin system.
Other projects that could be in jeopardy include a Nye County Community Grant fund approved Feb. 17, 2004 for $1.25 million, $300,000 to the Pahrump fairground project, approved April 6, 2004 and $61,000 that was dedicated to the Pahrump skateboard park that same day.
In her five-page report, Owens provided a description of specific commitments, the date they were approved, the total commitment from Nye County, what has been paid, and finally, the remaining balance.
According to Owens, there was more than $7.5 million in PETT funding carried over from the fiscal year ending June 30, 2004. Add that to this fiscal year and more than $15.6 million that would be available in January.
It is important to note there are several items that are budgeted that must be paid, such as old and new commitments for medium term financing, communications providers Harris and Motorola, and annual maintenance of the county's HTE financial software system.
Transfers to various county funds, such as for airports, museums, probation, law library, forensic services, parks and recreation, self-insurance, a loan repayment from the county - $3 million was borrowed from PETT to balance the county's books last spring - and senior nutrition add up to more than $2 million. Those commitments must be honored and much of it has already been paid.
The bottom line - the county has paid nearly $13 million in PETT funds on projects ranging from road improvements to signs, from a master plan in Pahrump to the abatement of a nuisance in Beatty.
Owens' one error involved public works, which saved the county roughly $1 million over the past two years by having county crews perform base work on roads before they are chip-sealed. She mistakenly placed that money as a PETT commitment.
If the status quo is maintained and commissioners agree to honor all current commitments, they would have roughly $2 million left after the Energy Department deposits $10 million in county coffers come January.
What is most important, at least from the perspectives of Owens and Commission Chairwoman Candice Trummell and her peers, is that Nye County might abandon its carry over from one fiscal year to the next, meaning Nye County would close the books each year and start anew.
---------------------------
Nuclear Engineering
November 16, 2005
Appropriations committee boosts research but cuts Yucca funding
The US Senate and House appropriations conference bill for 2006 has been passed with a number of provisions for the nuclear industry.
The Energy and Water Appropriations $30.5 billion bill makes appropriations for the Department of Energy (DoE), the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers.
For the DoE, the Conference report provides $24.3 billion, of which $557.6 million is earmarked for nuclear energy. The total budget is $76.5 million above the President´s request although it comes in at $129 million below the 2005 level.
Of the $226 million included for nuclear energy research and development, $66 million is allocated for the Nuclear Power 2010 programme, a cost-sharing plan to aid industry in navigating the new licensing process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by subsidising 50% of the cost for three separate combined construction and operating licence (COL) applications. A further $55 million is allocated for Generation IV research, of which $40 million is earmarked for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant programme; and the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative will receive $80 million.
The Conference report provides $450 million for work on the Yucca Mountain repository, a significant cut from the $577 million in each of the last two years and $201 million below the request. This funding includes $100 million for nuclear waste disposal and $350 million for defence nuclear waste disposal. In addition, the Conference agreement provides $50 million for the energy secretary to plan for and initiate a competitive site selection process to develop one or more integrated spent fuel recycling facilities. Additional resources are also provided to the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology to develop an advanced spent fuel recycling technology for the country.
Language is also included directing the DoE to begin a spent nuclear fuel recycling plan and to set up a competition to determine if there are communities or states that want to volunteer to be the site for a recycling reprocessing facility.
Defence environmental cleanup programmes are funded at $6.19 billion, an increase of $177 million over the request. Of this amount, $157.4 million is the addition of NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) cleanup activities, initially proposed in the request as transferring to NNSA. The Conference report provides $526 million for the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant.
The bill also provides a total budget of $734.3 million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an increase of $41 million over the President´s request and $41 million above the current year level, which will be used to support the licensing of next generation reactors. The NRC will also be required to undertake a security assessment of on-site pool storage of spent nuclear fuel.
The bill terminates the Nuclear Energy Plant Optimisation programme, but includes $290 million to restore funding for domestic fusion research under the Office of Science.
---------------------------
NRDC
November 15, 2005
Senate Sends Bill Slashing Project Funding to Bush
This story first appeared in this morning's E&E Daily.
The Senate last night sent the $30.5 billion fiscal year 2006 Energy and Water appropriations bill, which slashes funding for the troubled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, to President Bush for his signature.
The bill, H.R. 2419, passed on a lopsided 84-4 vote.
The measure reduces Yucca Mountain funding by $127 million and acknowledges that the planned opening of the proposed facility 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas has slipped beyond the 2010 planned opening due to uncertainties surrounding the site licensing process and the state of Nevada's continued legal maneuvers against it.
Overall, the bill provides $24.29 billion for the Energy Department, $76.5 million above the White House request and $129 million less than the department's FY '05 funding level. For Yucca Mountain, the $450 million in funding is $127 million lower than last year's level and $201 million short of what the White House had requested.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), ranking member of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, is a staunch opponent of the Yucca Mountain project and a key obstacle to its full funding for much of the past two decades. Reid praised the work negotiators put into finishing the bill but called it "the product of thousands of compromises," none of which completely satisfied the four House and Senate negotiators.
"It goes without saying there are difficulties in this bill," Reid said in remarks on the Senate floor.
Reid singled out language in the conference report requiring DOE to start a nuclear fuel recycling program and to set up a competition to determine if any communities or states will volunteer to host a recycling, or reprocessing, facility. The bill provides $50 million for that program, of which $20 million would be given to four individual sites, at $5 million each, to demonstrate they can get through regulatory, legal and legislative hurdles to host reprocessing sites. The remaining $30 million would be used for research.
Reid, who said he generally supports reprocessing and recycling, said the measure is troublesome because it still relies on what he considers a dangerous element: transportation of the waste from reactor sites to a recycling facility.
The Natural Resources Defense Council also was not pleased with the language but for other reasons. NRDC officials noted last night that the funding legislation also includes $80 million to continue spent fuel reprocessing research under the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative. Combined, the recycling/reprocessing initiatives constitute "a giant step backward," said Thomas Cochran, director of NRDC's nuclear program.
"These projects threaten our national security, our public health and our safety," Cochran said. "And they are wildly expensive. This funding would be better spent finding safer sites for deep geologic disposal with strict, protective public health standards."
Defense cleanup funding Elsewhere, the bill provides $6.19 billion for defense site cleanup, $177 million above the White House's request but below the $6.81 billion FY '05 enacted level. It also struck middle ground on how the Army Corps of Engineers manages its budget by reaching into the past to borrow language from a 1922 statute that defined how the agency assigns contracts.
The compromise agreement paved the way for a record $5.4 billion appropriation for corps projects -- an increase over both the original House and Senate numbers driven by the intensity of attention directed to the agency following Hurricane Katrina.
Lawmakers overcame a major stumbling block to negotiations on the spending bill by replacing language in the House version that would have restricted the corps' use of multi-year contracts with language from a 1922 statute allowing continuing contracts in special circumstances but "significantly" cutting the corps' reliance on them.
The bill also provides $1.83 billion for energy supply and conservation programs; $557.57 million for nuclear energy programs; $3.63 billion for scientific research; $598 million for fossil energy programs; $6.43 billion for weapons programs; and $1.63 billion for nonproliferation.
Among specific program levels are: $220 million for mixed oxide fuel facility construction at the Savannah River Site; $526 million for the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant; $18 million for the FutureGen initiative; $50 million for the Clean Coal Power Initiative; and $66 million for the Nuclear Power 2010 program.
To see more of Environment and Energy Daily, or to subscribe online, please visit http://www.eenews.net.
Greenwire
---------------------------
Deseret News
November 16, 2005
Nuclear waste battle is looming in D.C.
Huntsman heading east to fight proposal by PFS
By Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News
A high-powered lobbyist from Utah is heading to Washington, D.C., this evening to jawbone members of Congress against the Private Fuel Storage nuclear repository — none other than Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.
"The Cedar Mountain wilderness legislation is moving along," and he's going to Washington to ensure it keeps moving along, Huntsman said during an interview in his office Tuesday.
He was referring to a provision inserted in the military spending bill before Congress that would set up the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area in Tooele County.
The purpose of that action is to block construction of the proposed Private Fuel Storage high-level nuclear waste storage repository on the Skull Valley Goshutes Reservation, about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
If a wilderness area is established, a railroad spur could not be built where planners envision it to carry spent nuclear fuel rods from power plants to the PFS site. Other than some special exceptions, the Wilderness Act bars motor vehicles in wilderness areas and prevents building roads and other projects — such as railroads — that would mar the natural landscape.
Huntsman said he is encouraged that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., now supports the wilderness proposal.
For years, Reid has been at odds with some members of the Utah congressional delegation who did not back him in his drive to ban shipment of the same sort of waste to the government's proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
Huntsman has opposed Yucca Mountain, and recently Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, announced he was reversing his stance and opposes the Nevada repository. Bennett said he now is against shipments of the spent fuel rods, preferring they remain at the power plants where they are stored until reprocessing becomes feasible.
Seven weeks after Bennett's reversal on Yucca, Reid came out against PFS and in favor of the wilderness provision.
Huntsman said he will spend Thursday and Friday meeting with conferees who will meet to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the military spending bill.
He wants to "make sure we've got critical mass to move this forward successfully," Huntsman said. "We want to make sure that we get it done, not wait any longer."
According to the governor, the conference committee should be meeting soon to finalize the legislation.
"It looks like we're in good shape with Sen. Reid supporting us, as opposed to his previous position," Huntsman said. "So I think we've got a good, fighting chance to get this thing through — which spells the end of PFS."
He plans to meet with all five members of the Utah congressional delegation and with as many of the conferees as he can.
With Reid opposing PFS, Huntsman added, "This is a new day."
Mike Lee, the governor's general counsel, said Huntsman will be meeting with "key members of Congress" but he did not have a final list of those he will meet with other than the Utahns.
Wilderness designation, he added, would "create a significant impediment to PFS' plans to store spent nuclear fuel on the reservation."
E-mail: bau@desnews.com
---------------------------
Denver Post
November 16, 2005
Nuclear dump in Nevada takes $127 million cut in budget talks
By The Associated Press
Washington - The Senate voted Monday to cut significantly the budget for the troubled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump as negotiators tried to finalize several spending bills before stopgap funding expires.
The $450 million Yucca Mountain budget - down $127 million from each of the last two years - is included in a final bill funding energy and water programs for fiscal 2006, which cleared the Senate by an 84-4 vote. Senate negotiators immediately headed to a House meeting room for talks on two other bills.
The urgency comes as lawmakers try to wrap up work on the 11 spending bills that make up the approximately one-third of the federal budget that Congress passes each year. After years of consistent increases, the overall budget for domestic agencies, except for the Homeland
Security Department, is essentially frozen or even slightly below last year's levels.
The Senate vote clears the sixth of 11 spending bills for President Bush's signature. Lawmakers hope to be done by Friday, when a stopgap bill expires.
Meanwhile, House leaders have had trouble passing $50 billion-plus in cuts over five years to the approximately 55 percent of the budget for programs such as Medicare and Medicaid that goes up automatically each year. GOP leaders scrapped plans for a vote last week.
---------------------------
Middletown Press
November 16, 2005
Conn Yankee: Rate increase necessary
By Josh Mrozinski
Middletown Press Staff
HADDAM -- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will decide in December whether a $831 million rate increase implemented by Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Plant is justified.
Speaking at a Community Decommissioning Advisory Committee meeting on Tuesday, Connecticut Yankee officials explained the rate increase and why, they said, it is needed.
After FERC granted the increase in 2004, the state counsel and state Department of Public Utility Control requested that it be reduced.
State officials have claimed that at least $200 million in cost overruns was caused by Connecticut Yankee´s mismanagement of the decommissioning process.
But Connecticut Yankee officials think otherwise.
"We do believe we managed the decommissioning appropriately," said Ken Heider, Connecticut Yankee vice president.
A FERC administrative judge is now presiding over a hearing on the rate increase, which consumers have been paying since February.
"The judge right now has a stack of papers in front of him," said Heider.
Citing growing costs associated with decommissioning, Connecticut Yankee had requested that the rate be increased from $16.7 million per year for 10 years to $93 million per year.
This money is used to pay for fuel storage and decommissioning.
Connecticut Yankee, which has been decommissioning since 1998, is a wholesaler of energy to electrical companies throughout New England and does half of its business in Connecticut.
Heider said the growing costs of providing security around the fuel storage pad, investments weakened by volatile financial markets and the Department of Energy´s failure to open Yucca Mountain in Nevada for fuel storage made decommissioning and fuel storage more expensive.
The termination of the decommissioning contract with Bechtel Nuclear in 2003 also drove up costs, said Heider.
Heider added that it is unlikely the judge will disallow the rate increase.
First Selectman Tony Bondi, who brought up the question about the rate, asked Connecticut Yankee officials to talk about the spent-fuel pool water that will be discharged into the Connecticut River.
The pool had stored the spent fuel.
The water will be filtered, treated and evaluated before it is discharged through a canal into the river. Connecticut Yankee officials said Tuesday, the water´s weakened radioactive character will be further diluted by the Connecticut River.
"They´ll be some tritium in the water," said Joe Bourassa, Connecticut Yankee director of nuclear safety and regulatory affairs. "It´s a small amount."
Tritium is radioactive hydrogen isotopes.
After the approximately 280,000 gallons of water is drained from the pool in September, Connecticut Yankee will begin to do test borings.
Recently, Connecticut Yankee found elevated levels of radioactive isotopes along the eastern wall of the spent-fuel building, which contains the spent-fuel pool, as they excavated soil.
Bourassa said Tuesday that it will be impossible to tell when and how much water had leaked but added, "That´s a likely hood that it did come from the spent fuel pool."
He also said that the contamination did not reach the bedrock and is localized.
To contact Josh Mrozinski, call (860) 347-3331, ext. 222 or e-mail jmrozinski@middletownpress.com
---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------