Yucca Mountain News Clips - Saturday, December 10, 2005

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Saturday, December 10, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
December 10, 2005

Editorial: A bungling for all to see

As Energy Department says it needs another billion for Yucca Mountain, the California Energy Commission cites managerial and technical probles and demands a refund

The Energy Department this week said that another billion dollars would be needed to develop Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump. The announcement was just another admission of ineptitude in the federal government's long and bungled history of this project.

A California agency acknowledged the tangled mess last month when it asked for a partial refund on the billion-plus dollars that utility ratepayers in the state have paid into a federal fund dedicated to paying for Yucca Mountain.

"The federal waste disposal program remains plagued with licensing delays, increasing costs, technical challenges and managerial problems," a report by the California Energy Commission said.

Since 1982 consumers of nuclear-generated electricity have paid a little extra in their power bills to fund the safe storage of radioactive waste. At that time, Congress promised to have a permanent storage facility opened by 1998. Southern Nevada's Yucca Mountain was chosen in 1987 as the sole site for the facility.

Nevada immediately protested and over the years has demonstrated in studies and legal filings that Yucca Mountain is geologically unsafe for such a use. The state's arguments have prevented Yucca Mountain from opening, although the Energy Department clings to the notion that it can begin operating a facility there sometime after 2012.

The California Energy Commission wants to use its ratepayers' money for a more sound solution -- storing waste safely on site at its two nuclear power plants. We agree that on-site storage should continue until a safe, permanent solution is found.

Another terrible risk involving Yucca Mountain is transportation of the waste to the site from all parts of the country. The final leg would be a 319-mile railroad the Energy Department proposes to build through rugged, undeveloped terrain west of Caliente to Yucca Mountain. Caliente is a small town 130 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

The Energy Department has said all along that this railroad would cost $1 billion. But on Wednesday it changed that to $2 billion. (Given the department's penchant for understating Yucca Mountain's costs, we expect even that figure to soon be revised upward.) The Energy Department's financial and scientific inaccuracies are so common regarding Yucca Mountain that even Congress, which approved the project in 2002 by a large majority, is cutting the dump's construction budget.

The California Energy Commission this month will ask that state's Legislature to endorse its call for a refund. We agree with Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who hopes the California Legislature obliges and who also hopes that other states begin asking for refunds.

The project is too managerially flawed and too scientifically unsafe to receive another penny.

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Lahontan Valley News
December 9, 2005

Nev. inventor 'Tin Can Slim' heats house by nailing cans to its roof and sides

By David C. Henley
Publisher Emeritus

GOLDFIELD, Nev. -- Although winter doesn't officially arrive for another 12 days, cold weather and snow have already arrived in much of Nevada.

But despite the fact that temperatures in parts of the state already are reaching into the teens and substantial electric and natural gas rate hikes have been recently enacted, Slim "Tin Can" Sirnes isn't particularly affected by the rising costs of heating his home.

That's because Sirnes, 75, has discovered a unique, energy-efficient way to heat his home here by covering his entire house with an infinite number of soft drink and beer cans he has collected with the assistance of local children.

The cans covering the sides of the house, together with a homemade solar system that stores heat reflected from hundreds of flattened cans nailed to the roof, set off a heat-activated blower that pushes warm air throughout the structure, "really cutting down my utility bills," exclaims Sirnes.

Sirnes, who first arrived in this tiny Esmeralda County seat in the late 1970s after stints in the U.S. Army and working on the Alaska pipeline, also has let his inventive mind create numerous other innovations to his house and adjacent property in Goldfield, which is 202 miles southeast of Fallon on U.S. 95.

The house itself is an amalgamation of three structures ... his original dwelling, a 1950-era, 8-foot-by-30-foot trailer he hauled from Colorado; a wooden building containing a bedroom, living room and bath he constructed himself and another building that houses his office and workshop.

Sirnes, whose real first name, Svein, reflects his family's Norwegian heritage, also has built a greenhouse made of metal bed frames and bottles that one enters via an ancient refrigerator which has had its door and back removed.

This building, too, is sheathed with flattened aluminum cans that warm it to a toasty temperature.

An artist as well as a builder, Sirnes has developed a special tool that cuts cans into strips. Sirnes then weaves the strips into sculptures, animals, vests, purses and even furniture and lamps.

While visiting Sirnes in his living room, which is supported by scavenged telephone and telegraph poles, I sat upon a chair constructed of aluminum fabric cut from the thousands of cans he has collected during his life here.

Sirnes also ties his shoulder-length hair with a slim strip made of a can and wears an aluminum band around the top of his head.

I first met Sirnes about 20 years ago, when he was the Goldfield and Esmeralda County correspondent for the weekly "Gateway Gazette" which covered several communities astride Highway 95 as well as Death Valley.

When the newspaper was shut down several years ago, Sirnes was hired as the correspondent for the weekly "Pahrump Mirror," covering news here and in the neighboring communities of Silver Peak, Gold Point, Lida, Dyer and Fish Lake Valley.

Sirnes' columns feature his views on local politics and personalities. He has won first place awards in the Nevada Press Association's annual writing contests, and his weekly "Slim Sez" column in the "Pahrump Mirror" is avidly read by subscribers in this sparsely-populated area of rural Nevada.

Current issues covered by Sirnes include a move by some Goldfield residents to build a new sheriff's office and jail (which he says are "ridiculous" and "a waste of taxpayers' hard-earned money") and the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste storage facility which would include the building of a trans-Nevada rail line to transport the waste along a route near here. Sirnes labels this idea "crazy and a boondoggle."

Sirnes' wife, Carol, works alongside him, also writing for the Pahrump newspaper and helping create his tin can artwork which he sells at several shops across the nation.

Sirnes' tin can mania also has been transferred to wheels, and he has covered several of his cars and trucks with tin and tin sculptures.

Across town from his house on Lida Street, Sirnes has created an "Art Car Park" near the long-shuttered Goldfield Hotel, where he displays a half-dozen can-covered cars created by artist "Rockette Bob" of Reno.

Sirnes has laid low the past couple of years from a stroke which left him in a coma at a Las Vegas hospital. But he's feeling much better today and works daily in his shop, turning cans into artwork and participating in community events.

"As long as they make cans, I'll keep on working," said Sirnes as he fashioned strips of cans into a lamp that soon will illuminate and decorate someone's bedroom.

Outside, the temperature was in the low 40s, but Slim's can-covered house was warm and snug as a bug in a rug.

During the summer months, Sirnes disengages the roof-top blower that forces the hot air into his home and, presto, the tin cans reflect the sun off the house and keep it cool.

"I guess you can call me the can man of all seasons," says Sirnes.

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Las Vegas SUN
December 08, 2005

PFS loses two support of two members for nuke dump

Jennifer Talhelm
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two members of a company seeking to build a temporary nuclear waste facility in Skull Valley, Utah, say they are suspending their financial support, causing some to question the future of the project.

Southern Nuclear Operating Co. and Xcel Energy say they are committed to a permanent waste repository planned for Nevada's Yucca Mountain and that the Utah site no longer meets their needs.

The companies are two of the eight members of Private Fuel Storage, a group of utilities that applied for a license to build the nuclear waste dump on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

Both said in letters released Thursday by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch that while Yucca is a viable option, they will not support PFS.

"It's become clear PFS will not be open in time to allow Southern Nuclear to be able to use the facility," Steve Higginbottom, spokesman for Alabama-based Southern Nuclear, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Making Yucca Mountain a success will require our full attention and resources, and that's where we're going to focus our resources."

Hatch said their decision means the plan is all but dead. In 2002, six companies - including Southern Nuclear - pledged in a letter to Hatch and Utah Sen. Bob Bennett they would not fund the PFS facility past the licensing phase.

"This marks the first nail in the coffin for PFS," Hatch said in a statement. "The PFS plan has been on life support for some time, and we're removing the feeding tubes."

But John Parkin, chairman of the PFS board and the company's chief executive officer, said Hatch's assessment is inaccurate.

Parkin said neither letter indicates that Xcel or Southern will never bring waste to Utah once the PFS site opens, just that present time the timetable for opening does not meet their needs.

Even if Xcel and Southern ultimately opt out of the Utah site, Parkin said, "there are still a lot of other utilities out there that have pressing needs."

In September PFS won federal approval for a license to build the storage site, despite objections from the state of Utah. Private Fuel Storage wants to store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel aboveground in 4,000 steel casks.

The company has more regulatory hurdles to jump through before construction can begin, and Utah officials are trying to prevent PFS from getting any further.

Parkin said that PFS stands by it's promise of being a temporary facility and says PFS agrees that a permanent site must be built whether at Yucca Mountain or elsewhere.

"There's no way we will keep (waste) in Utah," he said.

---Staff Writer Jennifer Dobner contributed to this report from Salt Lake City.

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Deseret News
December 9, 2005

Utah N-storage takes 2 hits

Utilities back away from PFS Skull Valley project

By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON — Xcel Energy has put a hold on its investments into Private Fuel Storage, the company announced Thursday, edging Utah closer to victory in its fight against storing high-level nuclear waste in the state.

Xcel was responsible for about 34 percent of Private Fuel Storage's budget.

Also Thursday, one of six other utilities in the PFS consortium that had placed a hold on its investments in 2002 —Southern Co. — completely pulled its contributions to PFS.

That leaves the other five still with a hold on their investments in the proposed storage facility for Tooele County's Skull Valley, but Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said without Xcel's chunk of the funding, there is little left to support the proposed site.

"The viability of the PFS proposal is seriously threatened," Hatch said. "Skull Valley is never going to happen."

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s office was pleased with Hatch's announcement but less certain that the battle has been won. "It certainly doesn't sound the immediate death knell for PFS," said Mike Lee, the governor's general counsel. "This is an early Christmas gift, but it doesn't mean that it's over."

Jason Groenewold, director of the anti-nuclear group Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, said he's encouraged by the Xcel development but isn't sure it means the dissolution of PFS.

"This is an important development, the significance of which will play out in time," he said. "We're not ready to break out the party hats yet."

He said the pullout of Southern Co. is encouraging, but he's not sure what Excel's moratorium on funding really means.

"Does it mean they will not fund legal fights? . . . It feels a little bit like semantics. We'd be wise to pay very close attention to the semantics of the next move the utility companies of PFS make."

Huntsman has pushed hard to stop the waste facility for up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods proposed for land owned by the Skull Valley band of the Goshute Indian Tribe.

The proposal has long divided the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, which has about 121 members. Chairman Leon Bear could not be reached for comment Thursday but in the past has said the project had the support of the majority of the tribe.

In a letter sent to Hatch from its President J. Barnie Beasley Jr., he wrote: "Southern Company has determined that Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS) cannot be successfully developed as a spent fuel repository in a time frame to meet Southern's needs."

Now only the Dairyland Power Cooperative will continue to fund the program. That utility only had less than a 12 percent share in PFS, according to Hatch's office.

"At least someone will be there to turn out the lights," Hatch said at a press conference in his Senate office.

Rep. Bob Bishop, R-Utah, called the announcements a "major step that it (PFS) will not be a reality."

But PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said these announcements will hopefully not be as dire as the lawmakers said. She said financial support for the project is not limited, and any utility that would need a storage option can come forward and invest.

She said the utilities have always been signed up to invest in one phase at a time. Now that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recommended a license for the site, it will be up to the involved utilities to make a "business decision" on whether to stay on for the construction phase. Other utilities can come in, too.

"The next phase is a whole new ball game," she said.

Margene Bullcreek, who organized Goshute opposition in Utah through her group Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia Awareness, said she's still ready to fight the NRC's decision based on environmental justice.

She calls the proposal "environmental racism" because, she said, her tribe was targeted by a large corporation "because we're supposed to be in poverty . . .

"It's good to know that this is happening," she said of the Xcel and Southern Co. actions. "They don't have as many utilities behind them now. . . . Now we've got five more to go."

But in 2003, the state overturned the law, relieving pressure on Xcel to find another storage option.

That change, on top of Utah's continued opposition against the Skull Valley facility and a potential resolution on Yucca Mountain were all part of Xcel's reasoning in deciding to put a hold on its PFS funding, according to Bomberger.

"I think there will be a new solution coming forward, but I have no idea what it is," Bomberger said.

Hatch said his cooperation with the administration and reluctance to go against Yucca Mountain and align with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., allowed him to negotiate with the utilities. Hatch would not go into detail on who in the administration helped with the negotiations or what exactly was brought to the table. He said he brought up Bishop's position on the House Rules Committee, his future chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee and the litigation options the state still can put into play.

News of the financial changes came as a surprise to many on Thursday, but it was unclear why progress on Yucca Mountain seemed to be the main reason the companies changed. The project has its own set of problems, and Nevada is fighting Yucca as much as Utah is fighting PFS.

"Southern and Xcel have clearly seen the writing on the wall for interim storage in Utah, but they mistakenly continue to look to the unsafe and unsuitable site at Yucca Mountain to solve their waste problem," said Michele Boyd, legislative director at Public Citizen, a nonprofit that opposes the Yucca repository.

Meanwhile, Hatch and Bishop insisted that this blow to the PFS project will not cause them to back down at all from Bishop's attempt to create 100,000 acres of wilderness in Utah's western desert. The proposed wilderness designation would block PFS from building a railroad to move waste through Utah.

Bishop and Hatch expect a decision on the wilderness language today.

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KUTV
December 09, 2005

PFS Loses Two Support Of Two Members For Nuke Dump

WASHINGTON, D.C. Two members of a company seeking to build a temporary nuclear waste facility in Skull Valley, Utah, say they are suspending their financial support, causing some to question the future of the project.

Southern Nuclear Operating Co. and Xcel Energy say they are committed to a permanent waste repository planned for Nevada's Yucca Mountain and that the Utah site no longer meets their needs.

Both said in letters released Thursday by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch that while Yucca is a viable option, they will not support PFS.

``It's become clear PFS will not be open in time to allow Southern Nuclear to be able to use the facility,'' Steve Higginbottom, spokesman for Alabama-based Southern Nuclear, said in an interview with The Associated Press. ``Making Yucca Mountain a success will require our full attention and resources, and that's where we're going to focus our resources.''

Hatch said their decision means the plan is all but dead. In 2002, six companies – including Southern Nuclear – pledged in a letter to Hatch and Utah Sen. Bob Bennett they would not fund the PFS facility past the licensing phase.

``This marks the first nail in the coffin for PFS,'' Hatch said in a statement. ``The PFS plan has been on life support for some time, and we're removing the feeding tubes.''

But John Parkin, chairman of the PFS board and the company's chief executive officer, said Hatch's assessment is inaccurate.

Parkin said neither letter indicates that Xcel or Southern will never bring waste to Utah once the PFS site opens, just that present time the timetable for opening does not meet their needs.

Even if Xcel and Southern ultimately opt out of the Utah site, Parkin said, ``there are still a lot of other utilities out there that have pressing needs.''

The company has more regulatory hurdles to jump through before construction can begin, and Utah officials are trying to prevent PFS from getting any further.

Parkin said that PFS stands by it's promise of being a temporary facility and says PFS agrees that a permanent site must be built whether at Yucca Mountain or elsewhere.

``There's no way we will keep (waste) in Utah,'' he said.

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Provo Daily Herald
December 09, 2005

Goshutes Nuclear

PFS loses two support of two members for nuke dump

Jennifer Talhelm
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Two members of a company seeking to build a temporary nuclear waste facility in Skull Valley, Utah, say they are suspending their financial support, causing some to question the future of the project.

Southern Nuclear Operating Co. and Xcel Energy say they are committed to a permanent waste repository planned for Nevada's Yucca Mountain and that the Utah site no longer meets their needs.

Both said in letters released Thursday by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch that while Yucca is a viable option, they will not support PFS.

Hatch said their decision means the plan is all but dead. In 2002, six companies -- including Southern Nuclear -- pledged in a letter to Hatch and Utah Sen. Bob Bennett they would not fund the PFS facility past the licensing phase.

"This marks the first nail in the coffin for PFS," Hatch said in a statement. "The PFS plan has been on life support for some time, and we're removing the feeding tubes."

But John Parkin, chairman of the PFS board and the company's chief executive officer, said Hatch's assessment is inaccurate.

Parkin said neither letter indicates that Xcel or Southern will never bring waste to Utah once the PFS site opens, just that present time the timetable for opening does not meet their needs.

Even if Xcel and Southern ultimately opt out of the Utah site, Parkin said, "there are still a lot of other utilities out there that have pressing needs."

The company has more regulatory hurdles to jump through before construction can begin, and Utah officials are trying to prevent PFS from getting any further.

Parkin said that PFS stands by it's promise of being a temporary facility and says PFS agrees that a permanent site must be built whether at Yucca Mountain or elsewhere.

"There's no way we will keep (waste) in Utah," he said.

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Salt Lake Tribune
December 09, 2005

Nuke waste coalition partner drops out

Tough stance: The company insists the slew of disengagements are not going to be major setbacks

By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON - Another partner in the coalition trying to bring nuclear waste to a Utah Indian reservation is dropping out of the group, and a second formalized a decision not to provide any more money to the project.

The announcements marked a continued unraveling of the coalition - a defection of partners that became apparent in early September when six of the eight members of Private Fuel Storage said they no longer needed the planned Utah facility and were pursing their own storage options.

In the latest development, Southern Company, an Alabama-based nuclear utility, said in a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch released Thursday that it was withdrawing entirely from Private Fuel Storage.

The largest partner in the consortium, Xcel Energy, based in Minnesota, affirmed in a separate letter it no longer needed the storage and would halt is financial support.

"After a great deal of consideration and internal review, Southern Company has determined that Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS) cannot be successfully developed as a spent fuel repository in a time frame to meet Southern's needs. Therefore, Southern will no longer support PFS," wrote company chairman, J. Barnie Beasley Jr.

"This is a sure sign that the PFS partnership is crumbling," Hatch said. "PFS has just one small company with a minority shareholder. At least someone will be there to turn out the lights."

Hatch had pressured the partners to abandon PFS, and said he was working with the Bush administration to address their storage concerns.

The PFS consortium had consisted of eight companies that sought to store 44,000 tons of radioactive material from nuclear reactors on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, until a permanent waste dump can be built at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted to issue PFS a license in September.

Sue Martin, spokeswoman for PFS, said the companies' announcements are not major setbacks.

"Individual utilities' needs change over time and they have to make a business decision based on what their needs are at the time," she said. The industry has changed since the project petitioned for a license in 1997, she said, but other reactor operators could still want to contract with PFS for waste storage.

The company is required to have commitments for the cost of constructing and decommissioning the site before work can begin. If there is not adequate support for opening the facility, it won't open. "This project is going to be market driven," she said.

She would not say if PFS has any signed contracts yet.

"I will say that we're optimistic that there is an existing, immediate need for safe economic, temporary storage and that that need is going to increase in the future," she said.

Charles Bomberger, general manager of nuclear asset management at Xcel, indicated to The Tribune three months ago his company's interest was lagging, since Xcel had "plenty of our own on-site storage."

Bomberger on Thursday said when it became clear PFS wouldn't be opened before Xcel had to renew its license on a Minnesota reactor, it opted to pursue state and NRC approval of interim on-site storage.

"From a financial standpoint we couldn't really support both initiatives," Bomberger said. "There's recognition, through the opposition of Utah and others, there are still significant hurdles to go through in order to be successful with PFS."

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Toledo Blade
December 9, 2005

Michigan marketplace: Nuclear power plant, anyone?

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Ever thought about buying your own nuclear power plant? There's one for sale near Kalamazoo. CMS Energy, the parent firm of Consumers Energy, put their Palisades Nuclear Power plant on the market this week.

How much will it cost? Hard to say, says Greg White, who is legislative liaison for the Michigan Public Service commission. He's spent many years monitoring nuclear issues. Perhaps in the range of $300 million, he said.

But the sale doesn't represent a lack of confidence in nuclear power. Industry analysts speculated that CMS Energy merely needs more cash on hand - and the company itself indicated it thought another firm might be able to operate the plant more efficiently. Consumers also said it expected to sign an agreement to buy electricity from Palisades from whomever eventually buys it.

Indeed, there are clear signs that not only will Palisades sell for more than it would have a few years ago - but that nuclear power may be on the verge of making a comeback.

Nuclear power looked like a long-term loser for years after the Three Mile Island reactor accident in 1979. No new nuclear plants have been built since then, and a number have been closed.

Those include the Big Rock nuclear plant near Charlevoix, which has been inactive since 1997 and is now being dismantled.

Besides Palisades, Michigan has only two other functioning nuclear plants: The Cook Nuclear plant on Lake Michigan in Bridgman, near the Indiana border, and Fermi II in Monroe.

Detroit Edison, which operates Fermi, has indicated it plans to decommission the plant when its current license expires in 2025.

But there is a flurry of interest in new plants elsewhere in the nation, said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy-making organization for the nuclear industry.

"We're seeing interest in North Carolina, Illinois, Virginia, other states," he said. In some towns people really want a plant, seeing it as a source of cheap and clean energy and jobs.

Yet the problem still remains: Disposing of the spent fuel. For years, Washington has been debating a plan to permanently store the highly radioactive fuel rods in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Those plans have been stalled, however. Mr. White said he wasn't even sure whether the United States will open Yucca Mountain - or any other long-term nuclear waste facility - in our lifetimes.

Meanwhile, the spent fuel rods pile up, kept either in carefully monitored pools of water, or buried in what is called dry cask storage.

Palisades has come in for particular criticism because its spent fuel is buried close to Lake Michigan.

David Lochbaum, a former nuclear safety engineer, is now with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group which has been critical of the nuclear industry. He concedes that we're reaching the point at which new plants will need to be built, but he is concerned. "We still haven't solved the waste disposal problem."

Interestingly, all the experts agree that when new plants are eventually built - in Michigan or elsewhere - the most likely locations will be … next to existing nuclear reactors.

"Those communities have already accepted nuclear power," Mr. Lochbaum said. That, he added, gets around the NIMBY (not in my backyard) problem.

One hitch that could hold up the Palisades sale: Concern that the containment vessel surrounding the reactor is becoming brittle and could possibly crack, with horrific consequences.

In fact, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was so concerned about this that it shut the aging facility down for a time in 1982. Now CMS Energy says the problem is fixed, but some protesters aren't so sure.

They want the NRC to deny Palisades a 20-year-renewal of its license, when the current one expires in 2011.

Does that mean Palisades' license may not be renewed? Mr. White, who serves on a national public utility panel, doubts it. "I've never seen one (a renewal application) turned down yet."

Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade's ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.

Contact him at: omblade@aol.com

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Tech Central Station
December 09, 2005

TCS COP 11 Coverage: Nuclear Explosion at Montreal

By Ronald Bailey

MONTREAL -- "This is a dirty filthy industry," screeched Elizabeth May, head of the Sierra Club of Canada. Her outburst occurred during a panel discussion devoted to nuclear energy and climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference at Montreal. The panel was sponsored by the Heinrich Böll Foundation which is a think tank affiliated with the German Green Party. The panel was convened for the release of the Foundation's new study Nuclear Energy and Climate Change. The study was done by Felix Christian Matthes, a policy analyst from the Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin.

What provoked May's eruption was that the report's findings were being vigorously challenged from the floor by a phalanx of representatives of the nuclear power industry. First, what did Matthes conclude? Matthes started by suggesting that the emissions of greenhouse gases will have to be cut by up to 60 percent by 2050 in order to prevent an increase in the earth's average temperatures of more than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial temperature levels. Accounting for projected increases in the demand for power, this means that between 25 and 40 gigatons of the chief greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (GtCO2) would have to be cut by the middle of this century.

At a previous United Nations Climate Change conference at The Hague, negotiators excluded nuclear power from receiving greenhouse gas emissions reduction credits under the Kyoto Protocol. The goal of Matthes' study was to find out whether or not increases in the production of electricity by nuclear energy are necessary to achieve the deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Unsurprisingly, the Böll Foundation study found that nuclear power was not necessary -- that deep emissions cuts could be achieved through increasing the energy efficiency of buildings (4 GtCO2), industrial plants (5 GtCO2), and transport (7 GtCO2) combined with new renewable energy sources (15 GtCO2), carbon capture and sequestration (4 to 10 GtCO2), fuel switching from coal to natural gas (3.6 GtCO2) and co-generation (GtCO2).

Matthes asserted that it would take tripling the size of the nuclear power industry to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 5 gigatons (5 GtCO2). To achieve this would mean that 25 gigawatts (25 GW) of new nuclear power plants would have to be built each year for the next 50 years. A gigawatt is enough energy to supply about 400,000 homes each year. Another panelist Michael Mariotte from the anti-nuclear group, Nuclear Information and Resource Services (NIRS), noted that it would mean that a new nuclear plant would have to be built every two weeks in order to achieve the goal of generating 25 GW more power each year.

Matthes argued that nuclear power has failed the "market test" because the industry depends on government subsidies in the form of caps on liability and funding for long term waste disposal of high level radioactive wastes. It was these claims that the industry representatives in the audience were keen to try to refute. However, it was clear that the anti-nuclear panelists did not believe that subsidies were per se bad., just that they did not want nuclear power to enjoy them. For example, panelist Oswaldo Lucon, an environmental activist from Brazil, claimed that tens of billions go to subsidize fossil fuels and nuclear power each year, but that industrialized countries spent only a total of $2.8 billion on renewable sources of energy.

First, Colin Hunt from the Canadian Nuclear Association dismissed the activist implication that the number of power plants needed to offset 5 GtCO2 of emissions cannot be built fast enough. "Building enough nuclear facilities to produce 25 GWs of additional power each year is equal to the construction worldwide in the 1970s and 1980s," he said.

So what about the subsidy claims made by Matthes and other anti-nuclear activists? Liability insurance for nuclear power plants is governed by the Price-Anderson Act in the United States. Sama Bilbao y Leon, a nuclear safety analyst with the U.S. electric utility Dominion Power and a representative the American Nuclear Society, explained the two-tier insurance scheme that operates in the United States. First, each nuclear power plant is required to purchase $300 million in private liability insurance from American Nuclear Insurers (ANI). ANI is a syndicate of stock property and casualty companies formed to write material damage and liability insurance on industry-operated nuclear reactors and related operations. If that turns out not to be enough to cover a loss, then the second tier kicks in. In such a case, each nuclear plant must pay a proportionate share of the loss, up to a maximum of $100.6 million per reactor per accident. Since there are 104 operating plants in the United States this amounts to a pool of $10 billion dollars in insurance.

The anti-nuclear activists scoff at this, suggesting that $10 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the potential losses. On the panel they repeatedly cited the damage caused by the 1986 Chernobyl reactor fire in the old Soviet Union which spread radioactive fallout across northern Europe. Make no mistake about it, Chernobyl was a huge disaster, but fortunately its consequences, bad as they are, are much less than had originally been feared. Nuclear supporters were quick to point out the many serious flaws in the Chernobyl reactor design, not the least of which was that it was not surrounded by a containment facility. Thus when it exploded, it belched radioactive material directly into the atmosphere. Such containment is required for nuclear power plants in the United States and most of the rest of the world.

Pro-nuclear activists point to the 1979 Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor meltdown in Pennsylvania. A tiny amount of radioactive gases escaped the containment. Epidemiologists estimate that perhaps one person over the course of his lifetime might get a fatal cancer from exposure to TMI accident radiation. Eventually, the private insurance pool paid out $71 million in claims and litigation costs for the TMI accident, well within the private liability limits set at that time. Pro-nuclear activists argue that current insurance scheme is not any different than other schemes in which the government acts as insurer of the last resort for activities that are socially beneficial but whose risks are hard to accurately quantify. For example, they point to the national Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund which is a no-fault insurance scheme that is designed to compensate people who have been harmed by bad reactions to childhood vaccines.

Nevertheless, Matthes and his fellow panelists may have a point. Would private insurers offer policies for higher liabilities if the federally imposed caps were removed?

What about the claim that the government subsidizes the disposal of nuclear wastes? Here the activists are wrong. The nuclear industry people point out that taxpayers do not subsidize nuclear waste disposal; ratepayers do. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires electricity consumers to pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund a fee of one-tenth of a cent for every nuclear-generated kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed. That fund now totals $24 billion. It may be government mandated, but it is not government financed.

The current plan is to bury high level nuclear wastes at an underground facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. So far about $6 billion dollars have been spent on the facility and some estimates suggest that the ultimate cost might reach $58 billion. Nevertheless, the Nuclear Waste Fund mechanism seems adequate for covering the waste disposal costs.

Finally, it certainly should not be the case that nuclear power is pre-judged and excluded by international treaties dealing with climate change. If the activists are so sure that they are right that nuclear power will fail the market test, then they ought to give the market a chance to prove them right.

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books. His email is rbailey@reason.com

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 08, 2005

Yucca managers relay 'path forward' plan to regulatory staff

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Managers of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project outlined their new "path forward" plan for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff Wednesday.

But one critic at the meeting, Steve Frishman, a full-time consultant for Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, said the plan amounts to a path backward that puts the beleaguered project "back to square one after 20 years."

"They made it very clear they have no schedule at all for certification or a license application," Frishman said during a break in the meeting.

The new plan announced in October by the Department of Energy differs from the course that DOE had been pursuing because it relies on spent fuel assemblies to be sealed in standardized waste canisters and shipped in transportation casks to a surface facility near Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Instead of taking the spent fuel assemblies out and repackaging them for disposal in a maze of tunnels in the mountain, the sealed canisters will be sorted for "aging," or a cooling down of their thermal heat, before they are put in a steel and nickel-alloy package for disposal.

Each transportation cask will be checked for leaks by sampling gases inside the casks when they arrive, said Paul Harrington, acting director of DOE's Office of Project Management and Engineering.

The new strategy requires dramatic changes in the design of above-ground facilities, he said.

Frishman said the "path forward" plan will take years before it passes reviews and a new design is in place.

And, with news this week that a special rail line to haul waste casks to the mountain would cost $2 billion, or more than twice DOE's first estimate, Frishman said he doubts that the line ever will be built.

"And it's going to be really hard to get those big containers here without the railroad," he said. "It's really amazing they're having this conversation now."

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Las Vegas SUN
December 08, 2005

California wants Yucca refund

Frustration boils over regarding glacial progress of nuclear waste management project

By Benjamin Grove
Sun Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- California may ask the federal government to refund money that it has paid for Yucca Mountain, a request based on "uncertainty" surrounding the proposed nuclear waste repository.

Yucca supporters said the development could give federal officials fresh incentive to move to open it as soon as possible, while critics said the action was further evidence that Yucca is viewed as a waste of money.

"I don't blame California -- they should have their money back," Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said. "And I think every other state should, too. This is just one more example that the foundation that has been supporting Yucca Mountain is starting to crumble."

California's action reflects the long-simmering frustration of nuclear power utilities nationwide -- and the states where they are located -- over Congress' broken promise to construct a national nuclear waste repository by 1998. The Yucca repository has suffered numerous setbacks for years, and some critics suggest that it may even be losing support in Congress.

While waiting for a storage site to open, utilities have paid to store their highly radioactive waste at their plants. The utilities have filed dozens of lawsuits, most of them still pending, to force the government to pay for the on-site storage.

Federal law requires that nuclear power ratepayers pay part of the cost of developing Yucca. So ratepayers since 1982 have paid a special tax collected in a national nuclear waste fund. The fund currently has about $17.9 billion, according to the Energy Department. About $8 billion has been spent on Yucca to date.

California ratepayers have contributed more than $1.1 billion to the fund. Last month the California Energy Commission recommended that "some portion" of that money be returned to the state to help pay for the "long-term on-site" waste storage.

"The federal waste disposal program remains plagued with licensing delays, increasing costs, technical challenges and managerial problems," a commission report noted.

It is not clear, however, how California could obtain a refund. It would be illegal for a state to stop making its payments to the fund, and it would take an act of Congress to approve refunds.

"The law is pretty clear about what is required of states," Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said. "We remain committed to Yucca Mountain and to opening the repository based on sound science."

Obtaining a refund for now is "more of a goal" than a specific plan, said Barbara Byron, nuclear waste policy administrator at the California Energy Commission.

The proposal, first pitched by a consultant to the state in August, is being sent this month to the California Legislature and governor's office, she said.

Byron made the case often repeated by officials in other states: Ratepayers are essentially paying twice for nuclear waste storage -- into the waste fund for Yucca, and for the current on-site storage at the plants.

"It's sort of a fairness issue," she said.

California may be the first state to consider requesting a Yucca refund, said Brian O'Connell, director of the nuclear waste program for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Other state utility boards may take notice, he said.

"Anytime the biggest state in the union does something, the other states pay attention," O'Connell said.

He added: "It has come up from time to time: 'If the money is going down a rat hole, why don't you stop paying?' "

While utilities generally have agreed that it is not in their best interest to stop paying, they also believe they eventually will prevail in their lawsuits, O'Connell said.

The California action is consistent with the frustration felt by nuclear power companies and the states, said Michael Bauser, a lawyer for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's leading trade group. It likely would grab the attention of Congress if other states start asking for their money back, he said.

"It would draw their attention to the importance of the Department of Energy meeting its contractual obligation, so those enormous liabilities that have been piling up don't get any further out of hand," he said.

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Inyo Register
December 06, 2005

Yucca project continues to lose support

Even one-time advocates now critics of proposed nuke waste dump

By Benjamin Grove
Las Vegas Sun

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 (D-Nev.).

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.

(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service)

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Decatur Daily
December 08, 2005

NRC panel gets update on Browns Ferry Unit 1

By Holly Hollman
Daily Staff Writer
hhollman@decaturdaily.com

ATHENS — TVA officials have dubbed Unit 1's pressure vessel "the most inspected vessel in the country."

The vessel is where water boils to create steam for power generation.

Inspections throughout the unit's restart have revealed only low safety violations, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said Wednesday. This was the first public meeting between Tennessee Valley Authority and the NRC's Unit 1 Oversight Panel.

TVA is spending $1.8 billion to restart Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant's Unit 1, which it shut down in 1985. It expects the unit to generate enough power for 650,000 homes. The restart process is 73 percent complete and startup is slated for May 2007.

On Wednesday, TVA and Browns Ferry officials addressed the two most recent violations the NRC found.

The first was that workers failed to remove thermal overloads.

Browns Ferry licensing manager Bill Crouch said those overloads keep motors, which constantly open and close valves, from overheating. Crouch said some valves didn't need to open and close continuously, so a work order asked workers to remove those thermal overloads.

"The paperwork was misplaced, and we failed to remove them," Crouch said. "The NRC found it, and that was the only occurrence."

He said the staff corrected procedures and checked for other communication issues.

The second concern was improper installation of four cable splices.

Browns Ferry Site Vice President Brian O'Grady said the staff retrained the engineers about installation. NRC plans follow-up inspections on this issue.

Notification

The Browns Ferry staff notified NRC officials they have found scratches, dings or other marks on welds in the vessel. The welds hold together cylinders. Crouch said the staff inspected each weld and determined that the marks had not weakened the welds.

Mark Lesser, chief of the Engineering Branch 3 Division of Reactor Safety for the NRC, said inspectors have been watching Unit 1's recovery since 2003. Lesser said inspectors have only found Level 3 and 4 safety violations. The scale is from 1 to 4 with 1 being a very high safety violation.

Joe Shea, chairman of the NRC panel, said in addition to typical inspections, the commission plans to closely monitor Browns Ferry's handling of iron deposits found on the vessel's bottom.

Due to control rods across working vessels, workers cannot see into the bottom. Because TVA is replacing many systems in Unit 1, the staff was able to send a camera to the vessel's bottom to discover the iron deposits.

Removal

Crouch said workers used a high-pressure washer and grinding tool to remove some of the debris and then vacuumed.

"Some adhered and would not come off, so we left it," Crouch said.

He said the pressure from the water and grinding tool would be more than pressure from the vessel's operation and that the deposits won't flake off during operation.

When operational, the vessel is half full of water, Crouch said, and has nuclear fuel. Nuclear fission causes the water to boil, sending steam to the turbines to make them spin and generate electricity.

The byproduct of this power production is a concern for Jackie Tipper of Town Creek, a member of the Shoals Environmental Alliance. She told NRC officials after the meeting that she's concerned about nuclear waste storage.

Tipper said she thinks about the "worst case scenario," such as a terrorist attack.

"It's not like the Twin Towers where those were hit and just disappeared," Tipper said, referring to 9-11. "If terrorists attack a nuclear plant, think about how long the impact will go on."

Browns Ferry spokesman Craig Beasley said the plant has above-ground casks to store spent fuel. Loading began in July and ended in September.

Beasley said there are three loaded containers on the pad, and the plant can add more as necessary. Each container is 20 feet tall and has 30-inch thick walls of concrete and steel.

"They meet the regulatory requirements for manmade and natural disasters," Beasley said.

TVA also works with federal, state and local emergency personnel who monitor air traffic around the plant.

Browns Ferry had to install the aboveground casks to store nuclear waste because of delays in the opening of a planned repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

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Hawaii Reporter
December 08, 2005

A Nuclear Future?

By Mike Fox, PhD.,

It's a testimonial to just how far nuclear power has come back politically in the United States that when former President Jimmy Carter recently visited a nuclear power plant in Michigan, he declared that the future holds "great opportunity for nuclear." This view came from a president that once described nuclear power as "a last resort." The impact of his statement was so great locally that there was immediate "buzz" in the press about the possibility of building a new nuclear plant in Michigan.

Carter's endorsement of nuclear power was the second by a former or current resident of the White House within one week. Earlier President Bush visited a nuclear plant in Maryland, calling for an expansion of nuclear power to improve the nation's energy security. But Carter's visit was the more striking of the two - it was of profound interest to those of us who have watched nuclear power slide for years in the United States, despite its unique benefits.

Carter was last at a nuclear plant in 1979, when he visited Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania shortly after the reactor underwent a partial core meltdown, the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history.

That accident cast a pall over nuclear power in this country, and there hasn't been an order for a nuclear plant since then. Never mind that the Three Mile Island reactor's containment worked as designed and that no member of the public was injured as a result of the accident. Leave aside the fact that U.S. nuclear power plants overall have a stellar safety record, which is no less impressive than that of the U.S. nuclear submarine fleet.

The fact is, the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity, safely and reliably, without polluting the air or emitting greenhouse gases. Even a number of environmental leaders now recognize nuclear power's importance in battling what they view as the greatest threat facing humankind: global climate change.

Just as important, nuclear power is not tied to any foreign country or cartel; it is produced by energy companies and technologies homegrown, here in the United States. Nuclear power plants are located in 32 states. Hawaii, of course, is not one of them, and it's very unlikely that a large "baseload" nuclear plant will ever be built here. But we need to remember that our country needs a mix of energy sources, and nuclear power must continue to be part of the mix. Quite simply, nuclear power is crucial for our energy security.

What's been missing from nuclear power's list of assets is access to the same government economic incentives that have been available to oil, natural gas, coal, and even renewable sources such as ethanol, solar and wind energy. While the oil industry has received a depletion allowance for drilling and other energy sources continue to get production tax credits and allowances worth billions of dollars, nuclear power has largely functioned on its own, at least since the first round of plants was built in the 1960s and 1970s. For example, nuclear power does not receive anything comparable to the 1.8-cent per kilowatt-hour production tax credit that has been bestowed on wind turbines.

What's more, nuclear power has been subject to vicious political attacks, cumbersome federal regulations, and long delays in completing the Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada,.. It often seems that rather than helping nuclear power, the federal bureaucracy has been its greatest obstacle.

Today, at least eight electric utilities are seriously considering building new nuclear power plants, but they are having a hard time assuring that governmental policies and regulation won't hamstring them again.

These uncertainties make it difficult to get the investment capital that a new nuclear plant would need. For one thing, Wall Street is understandably concerned that a nuclear plant - which would require over a billion dollars and five years or more to build - could wind up with no customers if a natural-gas cartel suddenly lowered the world price of gas. Another risk is that anti-nuclear groups might find a way to stretch out or even block the federal licensing process, as they did in the 1970s and 1980s, causing long delays in completing a nuclear plant and thus driving up its cost. Wall Street needs to see more certainty, at least in the first few plants that are ordered.

To overcome these concerns, the Senate has passed a comprehensive energy bill that provides a number of incentives, including loan guarantees and risk insurance, for construction of the first few nuclear power plants with advanced technologies and new licensing procedures. Once the first four to six nuclear plants are built, others that follow will be competitive with power plants fueled by oil, natural gas, and coal - or else they won't get built.

Some "free-market" advocates say that nuclear power should be required to stand on its own - and it will, over the long term. But no other energy source has ever had to make it "on its own." Certainly not oil - a recent study by the National Defense Council Foundation estimates that the United States spends more than $300 billion a year on federal "subsidies" for domestic oil exploration and production, shoring up the regimes of oil-producing countries in the Middle East and other volatile regions, protecting the shipping lanes of ocean-going oil tankers, and in consumer purchases of foreign oil. And today, when we desperately need new technologies that are under our control and that don't emit greenhouse gases, no new energy source - certainly not renewables like solar or wind power or new "clean coal" technology -- would ever be developed without government support.

For something as vital as energy production, there needs to be a level playing field. If we want to be ideologically pure and set all energy sources free from government involvement, we need to end all tax credits to wind turbines and solar power - and even to energy efficiency technologies - and all tax allowances for the drilling of oil and gas, and the vast amount of money we spend protecting our oil supply and cleaning up the environment from air emissions from fossil fuels.

Otherwise we must recognize that having abundant, secure and environmentally friendly energy is a basic national need that must be fostered by the federal government - and near the top of the list must be nuclear power. With support from Congress, nuclear power can help meet our national security and environmental aspirations. That's a goal worth pursuing - one envisioned by both President Bush and Jimmy Carter.

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., is retired and living in Kaneohe. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He can be reached via email at mailto:foxm011@hawaii.rr.com

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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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