Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, November 27, 2005
---------------------------
Reno Gazette Journal
November 27, 2005
Plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain begin to crumble
Doug Abrahms
dabrahms@gns.gannett.com
WASHINGTON -- For more than 20 years, the federal government's sole plan to dispose of nuclear waste building up at atomic reactors around the nation has been to bury it in a rural mountainside in Nevada about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But lately there have been hints that a new plan is in the works, especially as the deadline to open the Yucca Mountain repository as a long-term nuclear-waste dumping ground keeps slipping.
Since 1982, when Congress approved burying high-level radioactive waste in a national repository, the nation's energy scene has shifted dramatically -- with utility companies poised to build nuclear power plants for the first time in a generation, said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a staunch supporter of nuclear power.
"I believe we must look anew on our policy on spent nuclear fuel," he said in a speech Tuesday, "and I think that re-evaluation is under way."
Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of the nation's electricity, and proponents say it offers the best hope to cut air pollution and lower natural gas prices. Disposal of the nuclear waste remains a problem.
The Energy Department's long-range disposal plan would move 77,000 tons of nuclear waste by trains and trucks across the country to Yucca Mountain, and the project will cost electric consumers at least $58 billion. The department remains committed to the project, spokesman Craig Stevens said.
The department's license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the Yucca project will proceed despite a federal appeals court decision in 2004 that federal radiation safety standards for Yucca are inadequate, he said. The last deadline to open Yucca Mountain was 2012, but the department no longer offers any timetable. This month, Congress agreed to spend $50 million to study reprocessing nuclear waste, which breaks down enriched uranium rods into components for more efficient use. Proponents say it could reduce nuclear waste volumes and eliminate the need for Yucca Mountain.
But many nuclear experts say that current reprocessing technology doesn't work. The practice was stopped in 1979 because expense, ineffectiveness in reducing nuclear waste and also because the process generates a certain kind of plutonium isotope that is a key element in nuclear bombs, said Steve Kraft, an official with the Nuclear Energy Institute.
"At the end of the day, you still have material to dispose of," Kraft said.
"It doesn't make (nuclear) waste go away. All it does is separate it into different fractions," agreed Ed Lyman, senior staff scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group that opposes reprocessing.
In theory, a new type of atomic reactor could be built that would consume most of the nuclear material and vastly reduce the amount of waste to be stored, said Joe Egan, a nuclear physicist and attorney working for Nevada to block the Yucca Mountain project. Scientific American magazine published an article this month describing such a reactor that uses liquid sodium rather than water as a coolant, he said.
"The only problem is that no one has ever built one of these reactors successfully," Egan said. "It's like the Mars project -- it's a nice thought, but it's not going to happen anytime soon."
Nevada U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign plan to introduce legislation next month to keep nuclear waste stored at reactor sites with the federal government assuming ownership, said Tessa Hafen, a spokeswoman for Reid. The spent fuel rods would be stored in protective casks and could remain there safely for many decades until a better solution can be developed, she said.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
November 26, 2005
Editorial: Discord mounts on Yucca
Criticisms by longtime Yucca Mountain supporter Sen. Pete Domenici are the latest in a string of reversals for the plan to bury high-level nuclear waste in Southern Nevada
The state of Nevada and its congressional delegation, with support from an overwhelming majority of its residents, has spent 20 years fighting the federal government's plan to haul high-level nuclear waste from the nation's power plants and permanently bury it 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain. And for all of that time, the state has stood its ground virtually alone.
In 2002 Nevada's fight reached a low point. President Bush approved the Energy Department's recommendation of Yucca Mountain and the House and Senate added their approvals. Nevada, however, kept up its fight and filed lawsuits, striking gold last year when a federal court ruled that Yucca Mountain was being built to the wrong radiation standard, a key safety issue. The finding sapped a lot of the pro-Yucca momentum, forcing the Energy Department into an indefinite delay in filing for a license to operate the facility.
Since that ruling there have been more developments tilting toward Nevada's position, which maintains that transporting the waste to Yucca would be a grave risk and that storage inside the mountain poses an unacceptably high chance that air and ground water would become contaminated.
In September, after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted to approve a temporary nuclear dump in his state, Utah Sen. Robert Bennett saw the light on Yucca. The Republican Bennett had long been an ardent supporter of the project. "However much the idea of a single repository may have made sense decades ago, it is now clear that it does not make sense, and we need to move in some future direction," Bennett said in a Senate speech.
Another Yucca blow came earlier this month, when Congress slashed funding for the dump. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, at the time hinted that he was reassessing his long support for Yucca. He said the cuts to the project were the "beginning of a re-evaluation of a bigger policy, which will include Yucca."
From the day in 1987 when Yucca Mountain was chosen as the site for burying nuclear waste, Domenici has been one the project's most passionate supporters. But he didn't sound like that on Wednesday when he addressed a group of nuclear power leaders.
"As most of you know, (Yucca) was not a good solution either on straight science, or surely, on economic grounds," Domenici told the group in a stunning change from his past remarks. Domenici went on to make other disparaging statements about Yucca.
It's far too early to believe that the fight against Yucca Mountain has been won. But Congress and the Energy Department are now working on a new waste policy, one that won't be released until next year. We believe the new policy should call for storing nuclear waste at the power plants where it is produced until there is a solution that doesn't involve Yucca Mountain.
---------------------------
New York Times
November 25, 2005
Editorial: The Million-Year Health Standard
The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed radiation standard for a planned nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada took a severe battering during a comment period that ended this week. The standard is supposed to protect future residents of the area from hazardous radiation doses for the next million years, but critics, led by the State of Nevada, skewered E.P.A.'s often sloppy justifications and complained bitterly that no other radiation standard now in force would allow the public to receive such high doses.
The proposed standard would indeed allow more radiation exposure to residents living near Yucca in far distant epochs than we would accept today. Even so, it passes a very important common-sense test. It would provide reasonable health protection without setting such tight restrictions that no waste repository could possibly be licensed.
We have been brought to this juncture because an appeals court ruled that the E.P.A.'s initial effort to set a standard good for 10,000 years, roughly twice the span of recorded human history, did not go far enough. By Congressional decree, the standard had to be consistent with advice from the National Academy of Sciences, and the academy noted, correctly, that there was no scientific basis for stopping at 10,000 years when the peak hazard might emerge hundreds of thousands of years later.
So the E.P.A. has come back with a two-tier standard. For the first 10,000 years, a resident near Yucca could be exposed to no more than 15 millirem of radiation per year as a result of leaks from the burial site. That level - equivalent to a chest X-ray or two - is widely accepted as safe. From 10,000 years on out to a million years, the standard would be set at 350 millirem per year.
The distinction makes sense on practical grounds. There are such uncertainties about how conditions will change over the eons - glaciers may come and go, volcanoes erupt and earthquakes rend the rocks - that it is unreasonable to require the repository's builders to prove they can hold annual leakage to an X-ray's worth of exposure a million years hence.
The problem with trying to set standards so far into the future is not just that the natural environment may change, but that human capabilities will presumably change as well. No allowance is made for the possibility - some would say the near certainty - that medicine will have found a cure for radiation-induced cancer or that new technologies may enable people to monitor and remove radiation easily from food and water. It's as if we asked our primitive ancestors to protect us from infections without knowing about antibiotics.
Critics charge that the 350 millirem standard was chosen simply because Energy Department calculations suggest that's a bar Yucca can meet. But that's beside the point. The key question is whether the 350 millirem standard is protective enough. We believe it is, given that many Americans in states with high indoor radon levels generated by natural uranium in the soil already receive as much or more radiation than future Nevadans would receive with Yucca added on. Indeed, the E.P.A. got the number by using Colorado as a yardstick. Coloradans already average 700 millirem a year of background radiation. The current residents of Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota receive even more, and few people flee those states out of fear of radiation levels.
In occupational settings, people willingly accept higher doses. Airline crews may get from 300 to 600 millirem per year from high-altitude radiation. Nuclear workers are theoretically allowed to receive up to 5,000 millirem per year, and while few come anywhere near that, more than 5,000 power plant workers got more than 500 millirem in 2003.
Most experts agree that burial deep underground in stable, leak-resistant geological formations is the best way to dispose of used fuel rods from nuclear reactors and highly radioactive wastes from nuclear weapons production. Deep disposal should keep the wastes from human contact long after current governments have disappeared. It would also keep potential bomb-making materials out of the hands of terrorists.
The key question is whether Yucca is a suitable site. Its remote, arid location atop volcanic rocks that have been there for 12 million years has a lot to recommend it, but questions persist as to how permeable the rocks might be to water. Thus far the Energy Department has been coasting along in the belief that metallic waste containers and engineered barriers can largely keep the wastes bottled up for the first 10,000 years by themselves. But the department will have to demonstrate that the site can hold exposures to 350 millirem a year even after the containers corrode away. Department officials are confident that they can. If they fail, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ought to refuse a license for Yucca and set off a search for alternatives.
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
November 25, 2005
No To Sproat
Nevada senators not happy
By The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS - 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 last week, by a voice vote, sending it to the Senate floor. But senators can invoke procedural holds to block final action on nominees and legislation.
The Energy Department got approval from Bush and Congress in 2002 to entomb the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, near Beatty in Nye County.
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.
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
November 25, 2005
Letter: Highways to hell
I recently read that over 139 truckloads of (low-level) radioactive nuclear waste has been transported through Pahrump this past year. I have seen several of these trucks as well as other trucks transport hazardous waste along Highway 160 through Pahrump myself.
Any truck hauling these shipments is off the major truck routes to waste disposal and treatment facilities north of Pahrump along Highway 95. High-level nuclear waste shipments going to the Yucca Mountain repository will soon be traveling along Nevada highways.
We need to stop these indirect shipments of hazardous waste, both chemical and radioactive, from traveling through Pahrump. Trucks transporting these dangerous hazardous waste and nuclear waste shipments need to be regulated to Highway 96 and not on Highway 160. An accident involving a truck transporting any of these hazardous waste loads could be disastrous for Pahrump.
Richard Marsh
---------------------------
Pahrump Valley Times
November 25, 2005
Community Development Block Grants
Tonopah, Amargosa Valley projects favored
By Phillip Gomez
PVT
Tonopah and Amargosa Valley came out on top, at the Nye County level anyway, in the 2006 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) nominations last week. Their projects will now move forward to compete with 25 other eligible Nevada entities for funding next year.
The Board of Nye County Commissioners selected the projects for consideration by the Nevada CDBG advisory committee, which meets for a week in March to select the projects to be funded from among the many submitted by Nevada cities and counties.
Nevada-wide, $2.7 million in federal largess is available for funding projects, about 10 percent less than last year's congressional appropriation of $3.32 million.
The county commissioners chose Tonopah Public Utility's $303,000 application as its priority for funding. The sewage utility is somewhere in the middle of completing its $4.5-million wastewater collection, treatment and disposal project for the town of 2,721 (2000 census). It was the second year in a row that the Tonopah utility won a block grant.
The wastewater treatment plant was awarded a block grant of $250,000 last year and the utility has also acquired funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's rural development office and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a combined amount of $2.3 million.
Nye County has also already funded the project to the tune of $175,000. The utility additionally is seeking $260,000 from the county in PETT funding, the federal funding Nye County acquires from the Energy Department for the Yucca Mountain Repository.
The Amargosa Valley Town Board's request for funding appeared larky by comparison, involving not wastewater but water to swim and soak in. The town's $300,000 project was originally to offset the cost of building a year-round community swimming pool estimated to cost $500,000 to construct.
However, during discussion it became clear that Amargosa Valley would never be approved for funding at the state level without first doing a preliminary engineering report (PER) analyzing the community need and offering alternative project designs to meet that need.
"They do not give construction money without a PER," said Harriet Ealey, who served on the economic development commission for two years. Ealey now administers Nye County's CDBG program.
"I see problems with each one of them," said Ealey, when asked her opinion of the three competing projects presented for review by the county commissioners. "The one that might have a chance is the Beatty renewable (solar) energy project, if it was better leveraged (with other funding sources), but I don't know if (grant writer and presenter Eileen Christensen) can come up with other funding in time."
"We've gained international attention for this project," said Christensen in her breathless, whirlwind presentation. The Barrick Mining Co. has recently donated 82 acres of its obsolete mining property for setting up a solar energy "farm," and a feasibility study is the next step.
But the commissioners chose to pass on Beatty's and the county's senior nutrition (Meals-on-Wheels) transportation projects. The latter project was to construct five bus garages, one each in Amargosa Valley, Beatty, Gabbs, Smoky Valley and Tonopah. The buildings would have serviced six senior citizen buses acquired through state grants at a cost of $50,000 each.
"It is detrimental to have these expensive vehicles stored outside with no protection," states the application for $52,468 in CDBG funding for a preliminary planning and engineering study. The study is only 10 percent of the estimated total cost of the project, or $524,680.
Commissioner Joni Eastley, in whose district Amargosa Valley partly resides, said she had talked with members of the CDBG committee and agreed with Ealey about the feasibility of getting the swimming pool project funded: "It would be a wasted effort," Eastley said regarding pursuit of a construction grant, especially since Amargosa Valley had not obtained any other funding commitments.
"We're setting them up for failure and leading them to believe that something will come of this," Eastley said.
Twice, Amargosa Valley Town Board Chairwoman Jan Cameron dropped mention in her presentation that the town had never received a CDBG funding grant before, implying that the town of 1,400 was owed one.
Commissioner Patricia Cox was concerned that next year new projects would come forward expecting to be funded, usurping Amargosa Valley's pet project.
Commission Chairwoman Candice Trummell was worried that the town would not be able to sustain operational costs of the swimming pool once it was built. She suggested having the preliminary study determine the financial support needed for operation of the community pool.
To this Commissioner Midge Carver agreed, saying that Round Mountain found it couldn't afford to operate its swimming pool year-round after it was built.
All the commissioners agreed that Amargosa Valley wasn't ready to apply for a construction grant, but that it may qualify for a grant to do the preliminary planning and budgeting for the project.
Cameron said the community's one motel and trailer park generated room tax revenue the town could draw from, but she didn't know how much. Nor had she developed an operating budget for the pool. But there was "lots of community support, including businesses like the dairy," she said.
Commissioner Cox motioned to move forward the Tonopah and Amargosa Valley projects, in that order, and Commissioner Gary Hollis seconded her motion, which then unanimously passed.
---------------------------
Salt Lake Tribune
November 25, 2005
Yucca proposition by EPA has critics
End of comment period: The agency received more than 120 written statements on its 2-tiered standard
By Suzanne Struglinski
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - This week marked the end of an almost four-month comment period on the standards for the Yucca Mountain project. The Environmental Protections Agency has to create a new standard after a federal appeals court threw out the existing ones last year.
The agency received at least 120 written comments. 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.
''I find the extension of the time frame for the Yucca Mountain rules to 1 million years to be absolutely preposterous,'' wrote Frank 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.''
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.
---------------------------
Old Colony Memorial
November 24, 2005
License to ask
By Daniel Axelrod
MPG Newspapers
PLYMOUTH (Nov 23) The first of several upcoming public hearings about whether the Pilgrim nuclear power plant should be allowed to operate until 2032 is set for Dec. 6, at 7 p.m. at the Plymouth Public Library's Otto Fehlow room.
Plymouth's Nuclear Matters Committee will host this session, which is designed to get public feedback about what issues town officials should raise while Entergy officials attempt to relicense the plant.
Come January, Entergy officials will officially begin the more than two-year process of having the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) consider extending the plant's original 40-year operating license 20 years beyond when the license expires in 2012.
Plymouth's elected officials will play a key role in the relicensing process. Since Entergy's current annual structured tax agreement would automatically end if the plant is relicensed, town officials could be able to negotiate for more property tax revenue from the plant.
Plymouth officials can also highlight concerns to the NRC about how the Pilgrim plant's continued operation may affect the area around town and Cape Cod Bay, which the plant uses for cooling purposes.
"There are pulses of water that go out into the bay that may be hotter than they're supposed to be and there's a question of whether the temperature should be considered on an average or whether it should be considered lethal above a certain temperature regardless of the duration the water is discharged," Nuclear Matters Committee chairman Jeff Berger said.
"A fish hit with 130 degree water is dead from that burst, but that's just a deviation from the average temperature of the water the plant discharges."
Berger knows the key to town officials making the right moves depends upon how well they solicit public input. His committee is charged with recommending whether Plymouth should support relicensing the plant and assembling a list of concerns for town officials to bring up.
Besides the upcoming question-and-answer session at the library, the nuclear matters committee will meet Dec. 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the emergency operations facility off Obery Street to come up with its final relicensing recommendations.
"Before we go ahead and potentially endorse allowing the NRC to extend the license of this plant to 2032, we need to know exactly what the people of Plymouth think so our committee can make intelligent recommendations to the board of selectmen," Berger said. "Then town officials can decide what steps need to be taken for and against relicensing."
The NRC will also hold as-yet-unscheduled public hearings, beginning next year, to gauge Plymouth residents' environmental concerns.
Under the relicensing process, Plymouth residents and officials are not allowed to raise questions about the plant's security, evacuation plans or its active systems.
The NRC only judges whether a plant's passive systems, such as its pipes, are too old. The NRC doesn't address security or evacuation plans during relicensing because the government said it regularly monitors these issues.
"We have evaluated the safety, security and active systems such as pumps and valves of these plants all along, with regular inspections, and we have resident inspectors at each plant," NRC spokesman Diane Screnci has said.
Meanwhile, Berger knows his committee has much challenging work ahead.
"I think just weighing everything appropriately is most challenging because there are a lot of factors that play into relicensing the plant," Berger said. "If the plant's license is renewed, it'll be operating until 2032 and that's a long time for a plant that was built in the 1970s."
Plymouth must also address whether the town has any potential to collect fees from Entergy if the utility starts burying concrete casks full of spent nuclear fuel rods at the site.
Every bit of nuclear fuel ever used to power the Pilgrim plant's boiling water reactor since 1972 is still at the plant cooling in a concrete pool full of water.
The spent fuel pool will fill up during 2012.
If safety questions surrounding whether the federal government's proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain aren't answered by then, Entergy officials said the utility will bury spent fuel rods in thick concrete containers under the grounds.
The Pilgrim plant sits on 150 acres of industrial-zoned land while Entergy owns another 1,600 acres of forestry land to the west of the plant.
"If dry cask storage has to be adopted, what compensation should the town be entitled to as a result of the liability of having a lot of nuclear waste being stored in town?" Berger said.
Berger said his committee would still ask tough questions and thoroughly examine even the issues the federal government doesn't allow residents to raise in the relicensing process. If need be, town officials will lobby to congressmen to change the rules of relicensing.
"We don't feel handcuffed," Berger said. "I tend to be an optimist. Goliath doesn't scare me and I don't think it scares the committee."
---------------------------
Nieman Watchdog
November 24, 2005
Is the first nuclear plant application since the '70s a harbinger?
Duke Power of North Carolina recently applied for licenses to start construction on the first new nuclear power plants in the United States since 1978. Even before the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 power companies had ceased applying for nuclear power plant licenses because of public opposition. What´s different now, if anything?
By Sam Kean
skean@niemanwatchdog.org
There is no guarantee that nuclear power will revive and thrive in the U.S. as it does in many European countries. But news organizations should begin reporting now and not be caught off guard, as logic suggests the Duke Power application (for plants in North and South Carolina) is only the first of numerous applications to come.
No doubt, there will be a renewed battle between proponents of nuclear power and environmentalists, especially over the unresolved problem of where to store spent fuel, which remains toxic for centuries.
In telephone interviews, I talked to two experts on nuclear power. One was Peter Stoett, the Political Science Department Chair at Concordia University in Montreal, who has written on the intersection of nuclear power, globalization and international security. From our conversation, these questions emerged:
Q. If there is a serious move toward nuclear power plants, then who will make the decisions about themt? Will there be any representatives of environmental groups, for instance?
Q. How will projects be insured? The Price-Anderson Act, in place since 1957 and recently renewed, limits the indemnity of nuclear power plants in case of accidents. So what type of public liability is there in the event of nuclear accidents or catastrophes?
Q. How much of the funding for construction/maintenance is public, and from which levels of government?
Q. Nuclear power is often touted as an alternative to a carbon-based energy economy. But what are the total carbon emission costs for nuclear plants, “cradle to grave,’ including mining, delivery and disposal?
Q. Who will pay for the enforcement of security provisions? Will this be rolled into the cost of electricity paid by local consumers, or will it be subsidized via federal taxes, etc.? (Post 9-11, the security costs will be tremendous for a nuclear plant.)
Q. Which firms are involved in the construction? Are they companies that already export nuclear technology?
Stoett added the following points:
Companies with heavy investments in oil and coal are eager to expand into nuclear power. They will likely spend a good deal of money toward convincing the public of its legitimacy.
The public-relations battle may be somewhat smoother in light of concerns over global warming and, in the post 9/11 era, increased state security. Presumably, nuclear power can offer a detour from the usual heavy reliance on oil imports, suggesting an improvement in national energy independence can be gained in spite of increased electricity consumption.
Global warming offers creative debating points for proponents. For example, British Nuclear Fuels—which runs England´s nuclear power plants—has argued that Britain should pay nuclear power generators extra because they don´t produce greenhouse gases, and to make it economic to build new plants. But, while nuclear power plants run on very low emissions, when the entire nuclear fuel cycle is factored in, from uranium mining to delivery to fuel disposal, the situation is much more complicated and the benefits much less obvious.
Nuclear power cannot present itself as a neutral power source free of massive capital consolidation and state assistance. Wherever one finds nuclear power, from India to Romania, it is heavily invested with state support. And while exports of nuclear technology were once considered potential destabilizers of world peace, the Canadian government now boasts of its sales to China and Turkey.
Other countries, notably Japan and France, have increased their reliance on nuclear power. France relies on it for 70 percent of its total power. Canada and some smaller nations have pursued aggressively subsidized export policies. Still, large American and British nuclear engineering firms remain the most important players. Other nations that rely on nuclear power include Germany, Sweden and India. Nations with rich deposits of nuclear material that might suddenly increase in international importance include Australia, Russia, South Africa, Uzbekistan, Namibia, Niger, China, and the Czech Republic.
Reliance on uranium may, in the long run, prove as complex and costly as reliance on oil. But there is no doubt that the major public relations trump card—the relatively low level of greenhouse gas emissions—remains on the side of nuclear-power advocates.
The second expert I spoke to was Ernest Moniz, professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chair of the report The Future of Nuclear Power. Moniz offered these questions:
Q. How do the companies plan to pursue and utilize tax incentives for first-time plants?
Q. In the past, separate companies were licensed to build and operate plants. Recently, and unusually, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted licenses to the same firm to both build and operate a plant. What effects will this have on the cost and the final product?
Q. Are the companies concerned about the lack of resolution about spent nuclear fuel? How have they evaluated the risk of not having the fuel moved?
Q. There are different options for nuclear fuel cycles: an open, once-through fuel cycle, and a closed-fuel cycle that involves reprocessing spent fuel and recycling fissionable materials. Advanced closed-fuel cycles are said by some to improve spent fuel management, and by others to increase proliferation risks. What is the company´s preference? Why?
Reporters need to investigate how the plants would be constructed and the security and environmental concerns surrounding them, as well as whether public opposition has waned to the point that political leaders and financial backers will support nuclear plants.
Some context about nuclear power in the United States:
According the Department of Energy, no construction projects have been initiated in the United States since 1978 (a long-standing project at Watts Bar in Tennessee was started in the 1970s and completed in 1996).
According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the United States´s 104 reactors (at 67 sites) provide 20 percent of its total power. Many European and Asian countries rely much more heavily on nuclear power.
These reactors are concentrated along the East Coast and in Illinois. Nevada, prospective home of the much-debated Yucca Mountain waste facility, has no nuclear power reactors.
The Energy Information Administration (a segment of the Department of Energy) provides an overview of the nuclear power industry, including a link to charts on New Nuclear Construction and Why Is No One Building New Nuclear?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has more detailed and technical information available; click here.
And for a map and list of currently active nuclear reactors, click here.
Sam Kean is a researcher for the Nieman Watchdog Project.
E-mail: kean@niemanwatchdog.org
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
November 23, 2005
Support for Yucca softens a little more
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- A key senator who was once a strong advocate of Yucca Mountain offered some of his harshest words yet about the proposed nuclear waste repository.
"As most of you know, it was not a good solution either on straight science, or surely, on economic grounds," Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said Tuesday in a speech to a group of U.S. and Japanese nuclear power leaders.
"So clearly, we have to move in another direction."
Domenici has long been a supporter of the nation's policy on dealing with the radioactive spent fuel from nuclear plants and U.S. defense sites: burying it in underground tunnels at Yucca Mountain.
But Domenici, a vocal advocate of nuclear power and considered the Senate leader on nuclear issues, has distanced himself from Yucca in recent public comments.
"For years Yucca Mountain was the answer, and we ran around talking about it as if it were the singular answer," Domenici said Tuesday. "But we all know that it was a creature of nineteen-hundred and eighty-two.
"While Yucca was created as the final resting place, there can be no doubt that it is not the final answer."
Domenici's comments came as the Energy Department is preparing a new national nuclear waste policy that is likely to embrace recycling. While the department is now pushing for a simpler plan for Yucca, it will not abandon the project.
"Our administration is committed to successfully establishing Yucca Mountain as the nation's permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel," Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said in a speech Monday. "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."
Industry observers and interested lawmakers have eagerly awaited the department's new policy for months, but it is not likely to be unveiled this year, department spokesman Craig Stevens said.
Domenici said he has heard enough about the developing policy "to know it's exciting, but I've not heard enough about it to say I'm clamoring for it."
Domenici has not publicly advocated that long-delayed Yucca program be scrapped. He has said he envisions a new, broader national nuclear waste policy in which Yucca Mountain plays some role.
"In this environment, the current U.S. policy regarding Yucca Mountain clearly won't do," Domenici said. "And it won't do all by itself. I believe we must completely re-evaluate our policy on spent nuclear fuel."
Domenici is quietly discussing waste policy with the Energy Department. He also has discussed it with strident Yucca foe Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Domenici has not embraced a proposal advocated by Reid and the rest of the Nevada congressional delegation -- leaving waste where it now sits on site at the nation's nuclear power plants.
Domenici has expressed interest in storing waste at government interim sites.
"Interim storage is a very good solution," Domenici said Tuesday.
Domenici also said the nation should pour its "scientific passion and creativity" into developing new waste-handling technology in the next 20 years.
Domenici also advocates a policy that includes plans to recycle spent fuel, which ultimately could reduce the toxicity of the waste bound for Yucca.
President Jimmy Carter banned recycling because of fears that the process, which separates plutonium from waste, could enable terrorists to obtain the bomb-making material. Domenici said those fears are unfounded.
Domenici is not the first lawmaker to soften his stance on Yucca. Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, in September scrapped his support for it, and others are re-thinking their positions, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has said.
Domenici's speech fell just two weeks after he and Reid led an effort to slash this year's Yucca budget from a Bush administration request of $651 million to $450 million. Domenici is chairman of an appropriations panel that also allocated $50 million for waste recycling technology.
"I am convinced that our great nation cannot be self-reliant, prosperous and green without more nuclear energy," Domenici said.
Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or bgrove@lasvegassun.com.
---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------