Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, December 2, 2005
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 02, 2005
Yucca workers face possible layoffs in 2006
Federal budget cuts have impact
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- A portion of the Yucca Mountain workforce was told Thursday to brace for new layoffs early next year as the government nuclear waste project reshapes from a major spending cut and a redesign of key segments.
Top managers within the Department of Energy and its prime Yucca contractor Bechtel-SAIC Company LLC said in documents they anticipate personnel cuts based on a budget that was reduced 22 percent from last year.
"While we remain committed to minimizing impacts to employees, a reduction in force is unavoidable," Bechtel president and general manager Ted Feigenbaum said in a letter distributed to about 1,300 employees.
"I recognize that this is a difficult time of year to receive this type of news," Feigenbaum said, adding jobs would be safe at least for the rest of the year.
A copy of the letter was provided by Bechtel. Company spokesman Jason Bohne said Feigenbaum wasn't available for further comment.
Bohne said Bechtel will prepare a program plan for what can be accomplished within its budget allocation and present that to the Energy Department in January. Decisions about workforce reductions probably will follow, he said.
The company laid off about 150 people in April, and there has been some conjecture a new round of cuts could match or top that.
Officials declined to speculate on the size or nature of anticipated layoffs at Bechtel, a major employer in the valley whose white-collar workforce consists predominantly of scientists, engineers and technicians, and support staffers.
"I don't want to cause any consternation by guessing at a number," Bohne said. "Our focus is how we can meet the work scope and minimize the impact on the employees."
The looming cuts ripple from decisions made this fall in Congress and within the Energy Department that scaled back and redirected the repository effort that just four years ago won endorsements from President Bush and on Capitol Hill.
In the intervening years, the project was forced into delays by financial and technical setbacks, and from unrelenting political and legal opposition from the state of Nevada and environmental groups.
Lawmakers in November voted to spend $450 million on Yucca Mountain in fiscal 2006, a cut of $127 million from the previous year and $201 million less than what the Bush administration requested.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who helped set the level, said the intent was to put the project on a slower path while the government explores nuclear fuel recycling as a possible component of its waste management policy.
Near the same time, DOE officials announced plans to postpone repository licensing in order to pursue new designs for nuclear waste containers that also would necessitate redesigning an industrial complex planned at the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"It is the budget cuts that are having the most effect," said Joe Strolin, planning division administrator for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "That was a fairly severe cut (DOE) took from last year and it will have to come out of somebody's hide."
Bechtel was allocated $285.4 million in the coming year, according to BSC and DOE documents.
Excluding fixed deductions for leases, multiyear contracts and litigation, Feigenbaum said central tasks of repository designing and engineering, quality assurance and license application preparation were allocated $244.9 million.
The company spent $260.7 million on those accounts this year, officials said.
Bechtel was expecting a small additional sum for work on transportation segments of the project, although DOE officials said programs that support nuclear waste transportation had been cut as well.
Yucca Mountain deputy director John Arthur outlined major project allocations in a letter Wednesday to Bechtel.
"It is recognized that this funding will result in a reduction of forces," he said.
DOE spokesman Allen Benson said government project leaders set funding allocations annually based on the spending approved by Congress and "program needs and priorities."
"We have to look at where we are going and we have to look at the program," Benson said. "When you take a $200 million hit you have to take it someplace."
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KVBC
December 02, 2005
Potential for Yucca Mountain Project layoffs
Employees of the Yucca Mountain Project may be facing layoffs in the new year. The Department of Energy and its biggest contractor on the project, Bechtel Saic, expect some layoffs because of a reduction in government funding.
Congress approved $450 million for Yucca Mountain in 2006. That's 127 million less than it received in 2005, and less than what the bush administration asked for. Bechtel laid off 150 people last April
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Pahrump Valley Times
December 02, 2005
Meeting Preview
County deluged with new funding requests Tuesday
Primary Interest in Yucca Oversight, Public Projects
Phillip Gomez
PVT
More than $1.8 million in a plethora of mostly high-tech consultant fees and other funding requests are scheduled for discussion and possible approval at next Tuesday's meeting of the Board of Nye County Commissioners beginning at 8:30 a.m. in Tonopah. The meeting, as always, will be teleconferenced to Pahrump at the Bob Ruud Community Center.
Most of the consultant fees are for drilling wells and monitoring the water near the Nevada Test Site, or related to oversight of the Yucca Mountain Repository project. But two big-ticket items are $99,421 for Kitchell CEM to master plan new county offices for the Calvada Eye and on east Basin Avenue, and $250,000 for remodelling the Calvada Eye apartments to house the county assessor, recorder, and treasurer.
The $250,000 also covers having an asbestos survey completed, including the necessary abatement in the apartments.
Timed items scheduled for the morning include a public hearing at 10:30 a.m. for the purpose of abolishing the federal impacts advisory board. The board advises the commissioners on issues related to the federal government's presence in the county.
At 10:30 a.m. discussion will focus on the $404,672 in interest earned on the educational endowment fund prior to FY2004. Of that amount, $50,000 is slated for disbursement in the "scholarship-for-tuition" program, which pays for educational trips for Nye County students.
Other items of interest include:
• Pahrump Senior Center Inc. is requesting immediate financial support in amount ranging from $141,000 to $263,000.
• Discussion and possible decision to purchase five four-wheel-drive, quad-cab pickups for the sheriff's office at a cost of $140,000.
• Review of the recently nominated community development block grant projects and public comments received.
• Discussion and possible decision on continuing Ann Barron's $7,000-per-month contract for her efforts to bring economic development to Nye County.
• Discussion and possible decision on approving the creation of an additional geoscientist position for the independent scientific investigations program.
• Discussion and possible decision on approving the new 2006 contract with the county's lobbyist for obtaining funding related to the Yucca Mountain project.
• Discussion and possible decision on a funding request for $6,760 for a compressed video educational program for one year.
• Discussion and possible decision for approving entering into a professional services contract with Psomas in order to develop Nye County's new GIS program, database and software system.
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Tooele Transcript-Bulletin
December 02, 2005
Feds, courts hold key to nuclear storage in Skull Valley
by Mark Watson
If there are changes to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) signed by President Ronald Reagan, high-level nuclear waste could be recycled on-site where it is produced instead of being shipped and stored in areas such as Skull Valley or Yucca Mountain, Nev.
"Ultimately it will be the federal government's decision as to what happens with the storage facility proposed for Skull Valley," said Tooele County Commissioner Dennis Rockwell. "But I think the best solution is to store the waste where it is produced. And I'm starting to believe that is what will eventually happen."
After the Three Mile Island partial core meltdown in March of 1979, President Jimmy Carter lobbied heavily for tighter restrictions on nuclear power plant facilities, including disposal of nuclear waste.
In 2004, the former president released an updated statement on his opposition to store nuclear waste on-site:
"The United States built consensus on how to handle these wastes over three decades. As president I instituted a ban on commercial reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in the United States, in part to avoid aggravating the waste problem. While thorny questions remain about exactly how to remove, process and store these wastes, the NWPA does codify a broad consensus, recently reiterated by federal court ruling, that they are too dangerous to remain indefinitely in temporary on-site storage where they are produced.
"But now this consensus has been tossed aside. To save clean-up money, the Department of Energy (DOE) now advocates countermanding the law by simply renaming the waste. The DOE would "reclassify" high-level waste as "incidental waste" and treat it as such. This includes leaving it in place & in corroding underground steel tanks designed for temporary storage, under a layer of grout. Once grouted, it is virtually impossible to remove and ship the waste for permanent disposal; it stays where it is, seeping into ground and surface water."
Carter's statement is published on a Web site sponsored by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
The NWPA paved the way for Private Fuel Storage (PFS) to consider possible locations to store nuclear waste. The Goshute Tribe of Skull Valley offered land to build the storage facility on its reservation.
The State of Utah recently stepped up efforts to kill PFS's proposal to store high-level nuclear waste in Utah. Popular sentiment is that Utahns object to PFS's plans. Newspapers have editorialized against storing nuclear waste in Utah, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released a statement that it is concerned about the proposal.
If the storage site is eventually built in Skull Valley, Tooele County will be adequately compensated. Rockwell has been involved in the process from the very beginning. "Our feeling as commissioners (which at the time included Rockwell, Teryl Hunsaker and Gary Griffith) was that we might not be able to do anything about it because it would be on sovereign land. If it was going to shoved down our throats we wanted to make sure the county received money."
The county has received money from PFS to help local leaders learn about nuclear power plants. It receives a pre-operational fee of $5,000 per month and later would receive fees based on the amount of material stored in Skull Valley.
Sue Martin, public affairs consultant for PFS, said her company has prevailed in the most recent attempts by Utah to thwart PFS's plans. She said the proposed methods of storing high-level nuclear waste in Skull Valley would be extremely safe.
"They've (State of Utah) lost all the scientific arguments so now they are looking for ways to politically to stop PFS," Martin said.
The Utah Attorney General's office has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to re-consider federal-court rulings, which have overthrown Utah's proposed laws concerning PFS.
Martin said PFS still has many hurdles to jump.
"There are appeals from the State of Utah in the D.C. Court of Appeals and an appeal from dissident members of the Goshute Tribe. Even if we get the license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), we still need permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to build a rail line to the facility."
e-mail:mwatson@tooeletranscript.com
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Nevada Observer
December 01, 2005
New EPA Rules Regarding Nuclear Waste Challenged By Major Scientific Concern
Possibly More Fraudulent Yucca E-Mails Being Uncovered By Washington Probe
by Johnny Gunn
The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) has issued a paper in opposition to the recent nuclear safety standards issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "It is our conclusion that the proposed rule should be rejected as insufficiently protective of the public health," it says. Written by two of the nation's leading nuclear energy scientists, Dr. Arjun Makhijani and Dr. Brice Smith, the paper calls the EPA standards "The worst radiation protection rule that has ever been proposed."
In a summary of findings the two conclude the proposed rules are "contrary to basic ethics, cost-benefit analysis principles, and internationally accepted radiation protection guidelines, including for radioactive waste." Makhijani and Smith say the accepted guidelines are those issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Commission on Radiological Protection and radiation protection authorities in other countries.
Although nuclear energy is expanding in this country, European and Asian nuclear energy surpasses the U.S. The U.S. National Academy of Science has already condemned the EPA standards as proposed. Even the EPA once followed the international guidelines according to Makhijani and Smith.
"No country has proposed a standard as lax as that proposed by the EPA," according to the IEER report. The two scientists go on to say, "No other standard that has been proposed for times beyond 10,000 years would allow such lax long term rules." The two believe also that the proposed peak dose limit would pose a lifetime cancer incidence risk of one in 36 for the general population and one in 30 for women. They say, "EPA has previously stated that even one in 250 lifetime risk is unacceptable from a single facility."
The IEER recommended several changes in the EPA proposed standards among them a reduction in annual dose limits, drinking water standards to be at least as strong as internationally accepted standards, and radiological impacts on children should be explicitly considered.
One point Makhijani and Smith made in their report says, "The standard should recognize that the uncertainties in the estimated doses will increase with time and that the uncertainties beyond 10,000 years will become very significant." The IEER is calling for the EPA to "adopt the French approach to waste repository stands2 in which the doses beyond 10,000 years are calculated using scientifically reasonable, but highly conservative choices for parameter values."
In the meantime there are more calls in Congress to maintain nuclear energy production waste at the site of the energy plants and to continue research into reprocessing the waste. The latest convert to recycling and dumping the Yucca Mountain project is New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici (R). Domenici has been one of the strongest supporters of nuclear energy projects but has recently joined with others to say the Yucca project is a bad one.
According to at least one report out of Washington, Nevada Senator Harry Reid (D) is working on legislation to demand recycling of the waste. The Congress has already set aside some $50 million for continued research.
Yucca Mountain is designed to hold less high level nuclear waste than is already on the ground. There are no reasonable plans in the works for waste that will come about from continued nuclear energy production or the waste from new nuclear energy plants coming on line. Following the breakup of the old Soviet Union this country has been working to recycle some of the weapons grade nuclear material from Soviet Union missiles and bombs. Many in Congress are saying that the same technology should be used for the high level nuclear waste generated by power plants around the country.
There is one argument against recycling. According to some the recycling process creates weapons grade plutonium which if stolen by terrorists could be used to build weapons of mass destruction. Those arguing for recycling say that high level waste is just as vulnerable and that the recycling actually reduces the threat.
Many fear that just the transportation problem of bringing train and truckloads of the waste across the country would jeopardize more of our population that any terrorist attack. At this time the Department of Energy (DOE) does not have a license application in the works, the project is reportedly years behind schedule, and billions of dollars have been squandered on a project that may never come about. There had been a date of 2012 for having the Yucca repository on line, but most feel that date will be impossible to meet.
The Department's own inspector general released a report during the third week of November indicating that even more intra-departmental e-mails may contain fraudulent information, may contain more information of falsification of work on the Yucca project.
Criminal investigations, Congressional investigations, and departmental investigations are underway at this time dealing with previously disclosed alleged fraudulent e-mails coming from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Whether this latest probe by the DOE itself will lead to even more criminal investigations or charges isn't known just yet.
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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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