Yucca Mountain News Clips - Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
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Byte and Switch
November 22, 2005

A Different Take on Nuclear Storage

Since 1943, the major storage problem in Hanford, Wash., has been what to do with nuclear waste from plutonium reactors there.

Bechtel National´s IS manager involved with a waste removal project in Hanford faces a less dangerous yet still daunting storage problem: how to back up and protect data for the mission. That data seems to be building up to rival the liquid sludge on the site.

Hanford was one of the Manhattan Project sites beginning in 1943, and was once home to as many as nine plutonium reactors until they were shut down in 1989. Nuclear waste from the reactors was stored in underground tanks, but leakage threatens to contaminate the Columbia River.

As part of a $6 billion contract from the Department of Energy, Bechtel is building treatment plants to convert the waste through vitrification, a technology that splits the components of nuclear waste, adds glass-making materials, and then heats it at nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That turns the waste into molten glass, which is poured into stainless steel canisters. Eventually, the canisters will be transported to a Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada.

Michael Maier, IS and technology manager for the Waste Treatment Plant Project, had storage problems that had nothing to do with steel canisters. His team has to secure the data for the 10-year project.

“This is a high-pace project that ramps up quickly, with a lot of data that grows fast,’ says Maier, who recently implemented a BlueArc Titan NAS system and CommVault backup software.

Project data includes CAD drawings and other records pertaining to the project´s hundreds of contractors and partners. Federal regulations require the data be kept for the life of the project. At first, Maier´s team used direct storage with servers running one application apiece. But with 3,000 employees and 180 servers involved, it soon became apparent that networked storage was necessary.

“We started in January 2001 and grew to about 13 Tbytes within three years,’ Maier says. “We were backing up 7 Tbytes by June 2003. Now we have about 33 Tbytes and we´re backing up 16 Tbytes.’

In mid-2004, Bechtel submitted a request for proposal (RFP) for a networked storage system that included hardware and backup software integrated into one package. Maier says market research firms pointed him toward Fibre Channel, but his current infrastructure pointed in another direction.

“We felt the cost of Fibre Channel was too much given the infrastructure investment we already had with an IP network,’ he says. “We believed IP-based storage would be the best.

“I considered this the linchpin for setting up the architectural vision and long-term strategy for the life of the project. We saw the best approach for us was a completely integrated solution where the backup software complemented storage hardware and vice versa. We wanted a total cradle-to-grave turnkey installation and upgrade maintenance process.’

Maier says he sent an RFP to 10 vendors, six responded, and his group evaluated three systems. He won´t name the other contenders or the final price, but says the total storage bill for the project tops $1 million.

The new system had to leverage the existing network architecture, support IP and Oracle, and provide 99.99 percent uptime, Maier says.

Two Bechtel groups oversaw the RFP process. The contracts group looked at prices, while Maier´s group did the technical evaluation. Overall scores were given by both groups, and the winning bid consisted of a BlueArc Titan system with CommVault QiNetixbackup software. In September, the system was implemented with 70 Tbytes of storage.

Maier says he hasn´t fully configured the system yet. So far he´s set up online backups and begun migrating data. His team set up two data centers at the Hanford site connected with 10-Gbit/s Ethernet. “Now we can start looking at building our failover recovery site,’ he says.

Failover is a good idea, considering the site -- and perhaps the project -- is on shaky ground. Seismic studies show parts of the plant might not be able to withstand a severe earthquake, so buildings have been redesigned and the project probably will probably run past its 2010 deadline. Also, Congress has proposed slashing the project´s budget, all the more reason to keep the storage system on a fixed budget.

“We have a 10-year budget, but we manage our money very prudently,’ Maier says. “I don´t want to go back to the government and ask for more taxpayers´ money.’

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch

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Deseret News
November 22, 2005

A 'wild' fix for nuke waste

Deseret Morning News editorial

More evidence of questionable work on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump has surfaced, according to a U.S. Department of Energy inspector general report. Criminal investigations are under way, so officials are fairly guarded about the specific content of e-mails uncovered in an ongoing probe. But they have said that some refer to quality control issues. For instance, one e-mail said, "We may want to backdate the notebook to when we started putting things together."

This could mean even greater delays in the opening of Yucca Mountain, which was designated by Congress in 2002 as a national repository for 77,000 tons of spent reactor fuel and high-level defense nuclear waste. While that can be considered as good news, it is somewhat troublesome in that backers of a private nuclear waste facility in Utah's western desert might use the latest news on Yucca Mountain as leverage to move ahead with the Utah project, which is designed to hold 44,000 tons of waste generated at nuclear power plants.

Neither Yucca Mountain nor the proposed Private Fuel Storage in Tooele County is an acceptable solution to the nation's nuclear waste issue. For one, the West shouldn't be written off as the nation's nuclear waste dump. For another, two finite dumps cannot be considered the final answer to perpetual waste streams.

If this waste is as safe as proponents contend it is, there is no reason to move it until a long-range solution can be achieved. A "temporary" above-ground storage facility on tribal lands in Utah's western desert near the Utah Test and Training Range is a ridiculous "solution." In the eyes of the federal government, "temporary" means 40 years. Keep in mind that fighter jets from Hill Air Force Base use the nearby training range for live-ordnance training.

We hope that, between the efforts of state officials and Utah's congressional delegation, the Private Fuel Storage facility can be derailed. Thus far, backers of the dump have enjoyed considerable success at administrative levels. This fall, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a license to Private Fuel Storage to construct and operate a nuclear waste storage facility at the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation.

Late last week, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., was in Washington, D.C., to huddle with members of Utah's congressional delegation to keep nuclear waste out of Utah. The Utah proposal includes designating the Cedar Mountain area as a wilderness to block rail shipments of nuclear waste to the PFS facility.

Presently, Cedar Mountain Wilderness appears to be Utah's best bet in keeping nuclear waste away. It takes on added urgency given the latest news about Yucca Mountain. Indeed, the congressional delegation must keep the wilderness area in the final version of the defense bill.

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Washington File
November 22, 2005

Deputy Energy Secretary Recommends More Use of Nuclear Power

But countries must guard reactor fuel from diversion for weapons, Sell says

Greater use of nuclear energy could help meet the world's increasing need for power to fuel economic growth, U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell says.

In November 21 remarks at the U.S.-Japan Nuclear Energy Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sell said the solution for meeting the expanding demand for energy around the world should include nuclear energy as an efficient alternative to oil, coal and natural gas.

The Bush administration "believes that nuclear power must play an enlarged role to meet the global demand for clean, affordable, safe, and reliable sources of energy, not just in the United States, but around the world," he said.

But Sell cautioned that although nuclear energy can provide "incredible benefits," it also has inherent risks.

The challenge for nuclear energy development is to find ways to increase the use of nuclear power while maintaining safeguards, the energy official said, citing concerns over the possibility of nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran as well as the threat from terrorist organizations like al-Qaida.

Enriched uranium is the primary fuel for nuclear power reactors but also can be used in the development of nuclear weapons.

The United States is expanding the use of safe nuclear energy through international forums to accelerate development of advanced nuclear energy systems that offer sustainability, safety and proliferation resistance, according to the deputy secretary.

Sell also cited the U.S. effort to achieve an effective nonproliferation regime by calling on nations with uranium enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to refuse to sell enrichment and processing equipment to any state that does not already possess "full-scale, functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants."

The deputy secretary also lauded Japan for its commitment to responsible nonproliferation practices.

Currently, Japan has 16 operational nuclear power reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. organization tasked with verifying nuclear safety and security. In Japan, nuclear facilities are designed so that earthquakes and other external events will not jeopardize the safety of the plants.

According to Sell, Japan is currently the world's fourth largest energy consumer and second largest energy importer.

For additional information on U.S. nonproliferation efforts, see Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and the State Department electronic journal Today's Nuclear Equation.

Following is the prepared text of Sell's remarks:

(begin text)

U.S. Department of Energy
November 21, 2005

US-Japan Nuclear Energy Conference

Remarks Prepared for Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell

I am pleased to be here with you this morning.

As President Bush mentioned in his visit to Kyoto last week, Japan and the U.S. are good friends, in part because we have so much in common. We are democracies, allies, and trading partners. Both our societies are technologically advanced and well educated. And because Japan is the world's fourth largest energy consumer, and second largest energy importer, it shares many of the same energy challenges as the United States.

Moreover, we are both conscientious about the effects that our energy use has on the environment. So each of us is looking to the promise of nuclear power to keep our economies growing.

That is why I think this year's Santa Fe conference is particularly timely. We can only benefit by working together in this important effort to expand the supply of clean, affordable energy.

But despite the many characteristics we share, we are hardly alone in this respect. The desire for reliable, environmentally friendly energy is something the whole world has in common.

On the one hand, therefore, the need for peaceful nuclear power all over the globe has never been more apparent. Yet, at the same time, I think we all recognize that the proliferation threat posed by nuclear materials and technology has never been more grave.

These are the two considerations, the two challenges, that I believe must guide our thinking about nuclear power today.

First, most analysts agree that the coming decades will be marked by economic expansion around the globe. In particular, we should expect to see growth in many parts of the developing world, from China and India to South America and Africa.

If these forecasts are correct, it will mean the improvement of living standards for people all over the planet. It will mean the rescue of millions from poverty and despair, a development all of us would welcome.

But with economic growth also comes a commensurate growth in the worldwide energy demand. Our Department's Energy Information Administration estimates perhaps as much as 50 percent more by 2025, with more than half of that growth coming in the world's emerging economies.

This rise is anticipated to be especially steep with regard to electricity. In fact, we estimate world electricity demand to increase by nearly 75 percent over the next two decades.

Finding clean and reliable ways to generate all this electric power is essential because electricity is the energy source of the Digital Age, a compact, efficient, nearly-instant source of power, which runs everything from light bulbs and refrigerators to surgical lasers and supercomputers.

But, while recent world energy forecasts predict large increases in the use of oil, coal and natural gas over the next quarter century, they estimate only a slight increase in the growth of nuclear power in comparison with other energy sources. For the sake of our future energy security, and to help us honor our responsibility to protect the environment, the outlook for nuclear energy must change.

If we don't expand nuclear power in the U.S., its percentage of our electricity production would drop from its current 20 percent to about 14 percent by 2025. Secretary Bodman recently said that allowing nuclear energy to undergo such a decline is economically and environmentally irresponsible. I certainly agree with that, and so does the President.

Our Administration believes that nuclear power must play an enlarged role to meet the global demand for clean, affordable, safe, and reliable sources of energy, not just in the United States, but around the world.

Recognizing the incredible benefits that nuclear energy can provide, however, does not blind us to the risks inherent in nuclear technology and materials.

That brings me to the second of the two considerations I mentioned earlier, and that is the steps we must take to establish a sensible 21st century nonproliferation approach to the expanded global use of nuclear energy.

After all, the grand ideas we nurse for the future of nuclear power can amount to nothing without the firmest possible commitment to control the spread of nuclear technologies, materials, and expertise.

Clearly, North Korea and Iran pose major concerns regarding the development of nuclear weapons technology. But we also face another menace, in the form of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network - fanatics who despise modern civilization, and would inflict unspeakable destruction if they obtained a nuclear bomb, or even radiological materials.

The solution we must seek, then, is finding ways to expand the use of nuclear power, making its benefits available to a wider group of nations and people, while simultaneously maintaining and improving the international nonproliferation regime.

Let me tell you how our Administration is addressing these twin challenges.

The first involves expanding the use of safe, secure nuclear energy in the United States.

We are doing this not only to meet our own rising electricity needs, but also because developing the next generation of nuclear technology will help us share the benefits of nuclear power with the rest of the world. To that end, we are pursuing a variety of initiatives to help boost the prospects for the revival of nuclear construction in America.

I think all of you know that no new nuclear power plants have been built in the U.S. in decades. This fact has many causes, including regulatory barriers, as well as public opposition which has often been based on misguided or outdated assumptions.

But there do seem to be signs that the tight energy markets causing high prices, as well concerns about greenhouse gases, are leading many people to reappraise the benefits of nuclear power.

So, working with Congress, we were able to ensure that the landmark energy policy legislation President Bush signed in August contains several provisions to facilitate nuclear energy's resurgence. Among them is a measure establishing federal insurance to protect new reactor projects from foundering due to regulatory and legal delays.

Other key provisions, such as Nuclear Power 2010, a cost shared partnership between industry and government, will demonstrate streamlined regulatory processes, leading the way for industry to field new advanced light water reactors by the end of this decade.

The law also provides production tax credits for electricity produced by new nuclear power plants, as well as loan guarantees for innovative nuclear energy technologies.

In addition, our Administration is committed to successfully establishing Yucca Mountain as the nation's permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. Solving the problem of how to store spent fuel will reap tremendous benefits for America's future and will greatly facilitate the expansion of nuclear power.

We are also working with nearly a dozen international partners, including, of course, Japan - through the Generation IV International Forum to accelerate development of advanced nuclear energy systems - systems that offer further improvements in efficiency, sustainability, safety, and, most importantly, proliferation resistance.

This goal of preventing the spread of nuclear technology and materials is the other half of our approach.

To achieve an effective non-proliferation regime, we must recognize the special responsibility of nations already possessing the complete fuel cycle. So in an address last year at the National Defense University, President Bush issued a bold challenge to the world's nuclear supplier states.

He called on them to commit to assuring the benefits of nuclear energy to those states willing to forego enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. And he called on them to refuse to sell enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technologies to any state that does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants.

The President proposed this initiative with the aim of closing the loophole in the Nonproliferation Treaty that had been exploited by North Korea and Iran, while ensuring the continued expansion of nuclear power around the globe. As President Bush noted in his remarks, enrichment and reprocessing capabilities simply aren't necessary for nations seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Since the President made this proposal 21 months ago, we have engaged with other suppliers and the IAEA on ways to assure fuel services to those reactor states that swear off enrichment and reprocessing. It is not enough to promise reliable access at reasonable cost to fuel for civilian reactors. A promise amounts to little without the means to carry it out.

So while the current commercial market is able to satisfy the demand for fuel services, we need to provide for a back-up or "safety net" mechanism that could provide reliable access to nuclear fuel in the event of possible future disruptions in market supply. To that end, the United States has been working with the IAEA and the major fuel suppliers to put in place a mechanism that would allow the IAEA to assist states in identifying alternative suppliers who could meet their needs in the event of such disruptions.

We must also be ready to engage with our international partners in defining the incentives that will drive this relationship. Clearly, one area of cooperation is in disposition technologies for high-level waste and spent fuel. And we should not close the door on the possibility of establishing international spent fuel storage facilities and repositories.

This will require taking a hard look at future technologies for spent fuel recycling. The Department of Energy is pursuing an Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative to achieve a sensible long-term approach for dealing with spent nuclear fuel. It is important to emphasize that in addressing future recycling technologies, our research and development is guided by the overarching goal of no separated plutonium.

As Secretary Bodman said last month, "the pursuit of recycling technologies that do not produce separated plutonium must be considered not just a worthwhile, but a necessary, goal."

I know that Japan too has an interest in advancing this type of technology and I see this as an area of future cooperation between out countries.

In fact, let me take this opportunity to point out that if all nations demonstrated the kind of commitment to responsible non-proliferation practices that we are seeing from Japan, the world would be a much safer place.

Ladies and gentlemen, the prospects for nuclear energy today are more promising today than at any time since its development.

The technical advances and safety improvements, and the need to have a major emission-free source as a key part of our energy mix, have set the stage for renewed growth of the commercial nuclear industry. And I believe that nuclear power is poised to take its place as the provider of a significant and steady percentage of America's electricity.

But to reach that future we need to take concerted action today. And we need to enhance communication and cooperation between the leading nuclear technology nations, such as the United States and Japan.

So I congratulate you for holding this important conference, which I think is helping to set the stage for a new age of clean, safe, and affordable nuclear power that will benefit the whole world.

Thank you for your attention, and for the invitation to share my thoughts with you this morning.

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DOE
November 21, 2005

US-Japan Nuclear Energy Conference

Remarks Prepared for Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell

I am pleased to be here with you this morning.

As President Bush mentioned in his visit to Kyoto last week, Japan and the U.S. are good friends, in part because we have so much in common. We are democracies, allies, and trading partners. Both our societies are technologically advanced and well educated. And because Japan is the world´s fourth largest energy consumer, and second largest energy importer, it shares many of the same energy challenges as the United States.

Moreover, we are both conscientious about the effects that our energy use has on the environment. So each of us is looking to the promise of nuclear power to keep our economies growing.

That is why I think this year´s Santa Fe conference is particularly timely. We can only benefit by working together in this important effort to expand the supply of clean, affordable energy.

But despite the many characteristics we share, we are hardly alone in this respect. The desire for reliable, environmentally friendly energy is something the whole world has in common.

These are the two considerations, the two challenges, that I believe must guide our thinking about nuclear power today.

But with economic growth also comes a commensurate growth in the worldwide energy demand. Our Department´s Energy Information Administration estimates perhaps as much as 50 percent more by 2025, with more than half of that growth coming in the world´s emerging economies.

This rise is anticipated to be especially steep with regard to electricity. In fact, we estimate world electricity demand to increase by nearly 75 percent over the next two decades.

If we don´t expand nuclear power in the U.S., its percentage of our electricity production would drop from its current 20 percent to about 14 percent by 2025. Secretary Bodman recently said that allowing nuclear energy to undergo such a decline is economically and environmentally irresponsible. I certainly agree with that, and so does the President.

Recognizing the incredible benefits that nuclear energy can provide, however, does not blind us to the risks inherent in nuclear technology and materials.

Let me tell you how our Administration is addressing these twin challenges.

The first involves expanding the use of safe, secure nuclear energy in the United States.

But there do seem to be signs that the tight energy markets causing high prices, as well concerns about greenhouse gases, are leading many people to reappraise the benefits of nuclear power.

So, working with Congress, we were able to ensure that the landmark energy policy legislation President Bush signed in August contains several provisions to facilitate nuclear energy´s resurgence. Among them is a measure establishing federal insurance to protect new reactor projects from foundering due to regulatory and legal delays.

The law also provides production tax credits for electricity produced by new nuclear power plants, as well as loan guarantees for innovative nuclear energy technologies.

In addition, our Administration is committed to successfully establishing Yucca Mountain as the nation´s permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. Solving the problem of how to store spent fuel will reap tremendous benefits for America's future and will greatly facilitate the expansion of nuclear power.

This goal of preventing the spread of nuclear technology and materials is the other half of our approach.

The President proposed this initiative with the aim of closing the loophole in the Nonproliferation Treaty that had been exploited by North Korea and Iran, while ensuring the continued expansion of nuclear power around the globe. As President Bush noted in his remarks, enrichment and reprocessing capabilities simply aren´t necessary for nations seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

So while the current commercial market is able to satisfy the demand for fuel services, we need to provide for a back-up or “safety net’ mechanism that could provide reliable access to nuclear fuel in the event of possible future disruptions in market supply. To that end, the United States has been working with the IAEA and the major fuel suppliers to put in place a mechanism that would allow the IAEA to assist states in identifying alternative suppliers who could meet their needs in the event of such disruptions.

As Secretary Bodman said last month, “the pursuit of recycling technologies that do not produce separated plutonium must be considered not just a worthwhile, but a necessary, goal.’

I know that Japan too has an interest in advancing this type of technology and I see this as an area of future cooperation between out countries.

Ladies and gentlemen, the prospects for nuclear energy today are more promising today than at any time since its development.

So I congratulate you for holding this important conference, which I think is helping to set the stage for a new age of clean, safe, and affordable nuclear power that will benefit the whole world.

Thank you for your attention, and for the invitation to share my thoughts with you this morning.

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Las Vegas SUN
November 21, 2005

EPA to review Yucca input

Public weighs in on proposed radiation standards

By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- By the end of today, the Environmental Protection Agency will add its last pages to the stack of public comments on the proposed radiation protection standards for the Yucca Mountain project.

Today marks the end of an almost four-month comment period on the standards, proposed in August. The agency has to create a new standard after a federal appeals court threw out the existing ones last year.

The EPA received at least 120 written comments, according to its Web site.

As expected, those who support and oppose the standard expressed their thoughts, although those against it have different stances on what is wrong with it.

The agency proposed a two-tiered standard. One tier maintains a 15-millirem standard for up to 10,000 years and the second limits exposure to 350-millirem per year for 10,000 to 1 million years for those living in a certain area around Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Yucca critics, including state officials, strongly oppose the standard for a number of reasons. They claim the proposed rules do not satisfy what the court ordered last July, do not protect health and safety of future Nevadans and is written in a way to automatically let the mountain "pass."

But some opposed the standard because of the 1 million year time frame, saying it was ridiculous to try to regulate something that far into the future.

"I find the extension of the time frame for the Yucca Mountain rules to 1 million years to be absolutely preposterous," wrote Frank A. Albini, a retired research professor of mechanical engineering at Montana State University, Bozeman.

"The rules should apply no longer than the current life of the nation, about 200 years. By then, the people of the U.S., if such still exists, will probably not even be able to read, much less interpret, the rules. This is silliness in the extreme."

Others rejected the Yucca Mountain project outright, with some suggesting their own alternatives for storing nuclear waste, including creating "atomic batteries" that future generations could use to generate electricity or putting waste in steel containers wrapped in concrete with a sign in several languages saying to not go inside the mountain.

Some used the opportunity to urge the completion of the project and get waste there as fast as possible.

Other excerpts from comments submitted include:

* "Are you seriously insane!?" said someone identified only as Jeremiah. "Quit laughing. Look at the real data. Quit dismissing it. And do your damn jobs. Your current proposal is dangerous and ludicrous. That anyone could propose it with a straight face is hideous and offensive in the extreme."

* "10,000 years is a convenient threshold regardless of what the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) or Nevada has to say," wrote K. Halac.

"NAS and Nevada are entitled to an opinion. ... But rational decisions should be made by the EPA, even if they are not directly in line with the hypothetical arguments. Nevada is crying foul solely to stop construction of Yucca. Shall we allow one state out of fifty to drive public policy on this issue? While the wheels of motion are stopped by lawyers (making over $500 per hour each) to ponder time frames of 10,000 years-plus, the other 49 states in the union are concerned about the next 10 to 20 years of public health and safety."

In a second, separate comment, Halac added: "I personally would much rather have a very large radiological event in the Nevada location rather than a smaller radiological event at Indian Point in New York."

* "The EPA appears to be pandering to the needs of the Department of Energy (DOE) and nuclear industry by tailoring this proposed radiation exposure standard to fit the Yucca Mountain site so that it could be licensed," wrote R. Kaplan.

Comments submitted by Friday ranged from barely legible handwritten pages to quick e-mails to carefully-worded typed documents. A few contained profanity. And some included warnings on what would happen if Yucca opened, while others warned what would happen if it did not open.

It is not clear when the agency will finish reviewing the comments and issue its final rule.

The last time the agency proposed a radiation standard, it took two years to take public comment, respond and make the final standard public.

Suzanne Struglinski can be reached at (202) 662-7245 or at suzanne@lasvegassun.com.

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Las Vegas SUN
November 21, 2005

Properly cooked bird

By Ben Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
and Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>

New Yucca chief?

Edward Sproat moved one notch closer to taking over the Yucca Mountain project when a Senate panel approved him Wednesday with no opposition. Or did he?

Whether the full Senate will get to vote on Sproat's nomination to be the new director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management remains to be seen.

Ensign and Reid have placed a hold on Sproat's nomination until they get more answers on the department's plans for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Based on answers Sproat gave to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which approved him, the senators may not receive answers they like. Sproat remains committed to opening the repository, and will "aggressively pursue the submittal of the license application."

He also said he was not aware of any nuclear waste reprocessing technology that would eliminate the need for Yucca Mountain.

Sproat plans to do a thorough review of the program and formulate a plan "that will have specific, measurable goals and objectives for all parts of the OCRWM organization."

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Tri-Valley Herald
November 21, 2005

Recycling nuclear fuel draws fire

\Scientists attack proposal by two congressmen
B
y Ian Hoffman
Staff Writer

Reversing 30 years of nuclear policy, federal lawmakers last week ordered the U.S. Energy Department to start designing experimental separation plants for spent nuclear fuel and by July to open a competition for one or more nuclear-fuel recycling parks.

The nation's return to reprocessing

of spent fuel is the most controversial among several opening moves in a resurgence of nuclear power, driven partly by concern about greenhouse warming and rising oil and gas prices.

But a nuclear renaissance faces several obstacles — nuclear power remains too costly to compete with fossil-fueled electricity, questions loom over producing more nuclear-weapons materials, and waste disposal remains largely unresolved.

The U.S. government's plan to dispose of spent fuel in underground caverns of Yucca Mountain has faltered against stiff political opposition. The planned opening of Yucca Mountain has been delayed from 1998 to 2007, and that date also appears unlikely.

By then, electrical utilities will have 60,000 tons of spent fuel piled up at 72 reactor sites. That is close to the point at which a federal nuclear-waste law says the nation must begin finding a second repository for its high-level nuclear waste, in essence, another Yucca Mountain.

Two powerful lawmakers in Congress are frustrated and driving to make chemical reprocessing and recycling of spent fuel part of the solution.

"Right now this fuel is sitting around all these power plants in this country, and we're incurring a cost to those powercompanies because the government agreed to remove that material," Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, told National Public Radio this summer.

Hobson and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairmen of the House and Senate Energy and Water appropriations committees, respectively, led colleagues last week in cutting $200 million from the Yucca Mountain project for this year. They ordered $130 million spent on new reprocessing research and told the Energy Department to deliver a national blueprint for reprocessing by March.

In 2007, they want the department to choose a reprocessing technology and start searching for one or more sites for an "integrated fuel recycling" center. Such a center would have a reprocessing plant to separate plutonium and possibly other materials from the fuel rods, plus a recycling plant to turn the recovered plutonium into the fresh reactor fuel and a vitrification plant to entomb the remaining waste in glass or ceramics for disposal.

Domenici and Hobson set aside $20 million for potential sites, at $5 million each, to start obtaining the necessary permits.

Neither committee held hearings on reprocessing, and the Energy Department has not weighed its cost, environmental impacts and proliferation risks against those for storing the spent fuel. But such centers are likely to be expensive. France spent $6 billion on a reprocessing plant alone; it cost Japan $20 billion.

The move dovetails with ideas that the Bush administration has for discouraging other countries from engaging in reprocessing by offering to process the fuel in the United States as a way of limiting the spread of separated plutonium.

Details of the administration's proposal, known as the Global Nuclear Energy Initiative, have been closely held and are expected to be released early next year. But President Bush already has suggested that developing nations look to the United States and other developed nuclear powers for uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing.

The United States tried civilian reprocessing briefly in New York and North Carolina. But the plants either never opened or were shut down due to safety problems.

Presidents Ford and Carter started a U.S. moratorium on reprocessing after India harvested weapons plutonium from its spent fuel and exploded a nuclear bomb in 1974. The United States has discouraged Brazil, South Korea and other nations from starting reprocessing but has failed to dissuade North Korea and Iran.

The latest push for reprocessing is not coming from the nuclear industry, which says the technology may be promising decades in the future but today is neither economical nor a solution to the need for a secure storage of spent fuel. The biggest proponents of reprocessing are federal nuclear laboratories such as Argonne, Idaho, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories.

Studies by Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the American Physical Society recommend against reprocessing until it is less expensive and less prone to spread weapons materials more widely.

Instead, those three studies recommend continuing U.S. practice of running nuclear fuel through a reactor once, then storing the spent fuel rods if not in Yucca Mountain then in dry casks at a secure central or regional repository, for 50 years or more.

MIT physicist and former Energy Department Undersecretary Ernie Moniz says reprocessing technologies that are economical and resistant to proliferation are perhaps 20 years away.

Moniz favors an expansion of nuclear power to replace fossil-fuel power plants that contribute to global warming. But reprocessing will not significantly help the nuclear waste problem and create political problems that could hobble any growth in U.S. nuclear energy, he said.

"I believe in fact it would put movement on this front at great risk," he said.

The federal government already spends about $1 billion annually guarding weapons-grade plutonium and uranium at its own facilities, and Harvard physicist Matthew Bunn said it is a bad idea to create new stores of weapons plutonium in private-sector, civilian reprocessing centers.

Argonne lab scientists say they have new reprocessing techniques that can make the plutonium unattractive for bombs by keeping it mixed with other materials from the spent fuel. But at least one of those materials, neptunium, is as good or better than uranium for building atom bombs, by itself or mixed with plutonium.

"The history of the nuclear industry is littered with examples of rushing to judgment on new technologies, with bad results," said Harvard's Bunn.

He, Moniz and other researchers said resurrecting reprocessing will make it harder for the United States to persuade other nations that they should not reprocess for their own energy needs.

"It's craziness," said Princeton University physicist Frank von Hippel. "What's in this package actually makes the waste problem worse unless you invest huge amounts in recycling this stuff. This would increase the amount of nuclear-weapons materials loose in the world, and that's the last thing we need right now."

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com.

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PR Newswire
November 21, 2005

Callaway Nuclear Plant Returns to Service Following Refueling and Maintenance; Sets World Record for Steam Generator Replacement

FULTON, Mo., Nov. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AmerenUE's Callaway Nuclear Plant, located near Fulton, Mo., has returned to service after shutting down Sept. 17 for refueling, maintenance and major equipment upgrades. The plant began generating electricity again at 1:31 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19.

The outage duration of 63 days and 13 hours set a new world record for the shortest time it took to conduct an outage that included replacement of four steam generators -- the giant "boilers" that produce steam for generating electricity. The previous record was 64 days and 17 hours, set by the South Texas Project in October 2002.

Refueling outages at the 1,147-megawatt plant occur approximately every 18 months, and this was the plant's 14th refueling since it began operating in 1984.

As in past refueling outages, thousands of maintenance activities, modifications, inspections and tests were performed throughout the plant. About 3,000 people worked on the project, including more than 2,000 contractors and Ameren employees from other locations who joined the plant's regular staff to help handle the large volume of work.

Replacement of the plant's four steam generators was the biggest job due to their huge size. Measuring 70 feet tall and 17 feet in diameter at their widest part, and weighing 400 tons each, the new steam generators feature the latest technology for efficiency and reliability.

Another major upgrade performed during the outage involved replacing all four turbine rotors with new, more-efficient models. Each turbine rotor is 35 feet long. Three are 15 feet wide and weigh 164 tons, while the other is eight feet wide and weighs 70 tons. The rotors spin by steam pressure to turn an electric generator and produce electricity.

Like the replacement steam generators, the new turbine rotors are designed to provide increased efficiency and durability compared to the original units manufactured in the 1970s.

The refueling, itself, involved replacing 88 of the 193 fuel assemblies in the reactor core. A fuel assembly is an 8 1/2-inch-square bundle of 12-foot-long metal tubes containing ceramic pellets of uranium dioxide fuel. Each fuel pellet is about the size of a pencil eraser.

Used fuel assemblies removed from the reactor will be stored temporarily in the spent fuel pool -- a stainless steel-lined water pool inside the fuel building. The pool -- about the size of a tennis court -- has enough space to safely store all the used fuel that accumulates at the plant until 2020, with the capability for additional storage capacity through 2024 when the plant's current operating license expires.

Eventually, AmerenUE plans to ship the used fuel to a permanent disposal facility licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In early 2002, Congress and the president approved Yucca Mountain, Nev., as the site for this facility, and the U.S. Department of Energy is currently preparing a license application.

The Callaway Plant generates enough electricity to power 830,000 average homes. While the plant was out of service, its generation was replaced by other plants.

AmerenUE is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Ameren Corporation (NYSE: AEE). Ameren owns a diverse mix of electric generating plants strategically located in its Midwest market with a capacity of more than 15,200 megawatts. The Ameren companies serve 2.3 million electric customers and more than 900,000 natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area of Missouri and Illinois.

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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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