Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, December 26, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
December 26, 2005
'Write your Congressman' more than just a catch phrase
Aides receive and answer thousands of letters every year
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Santa may receive a lot of mail before Christmas, but he's got nothing on congressional lawmakers, who get it by the bagful all year.
Most correspondence -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid receives between 2,000 and 6,000 pieces a week -- arrives via e-mail, fax and phone. But even in the fast-paced world of digital communication, people still take time to pen letters to their lawmakers.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., gets roughly 7,000 "contacts" a month in one form or another, and letter writing is "definitely not a lost art as far as our constituents are concerned," Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said.
A letter addressed to Congress can take two to six weeks to make it to a lawmaker's office -- mail destined for Congress is sent to an irradiation center in New Jersey where it is opened and zapped to kill anthrax spores.
In Reid's office, the mail is brought in daily by the bundle.
Correspondence to Congress varies widely in topic and is often written for the sole purpose of letting lawmakers have it. Messages from constituents on just about every political topic are often passionate, emotional, sometimes angry and even profane.
"Folks are not afraid to express their opinion, and the language can be strong, either in its praise or criticism," said David Cherry, spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "It's a good barometer to measure how feelings are running on an issue."
Hot topics this year included the war in Iraq, the Supreme Court nominees, congressional spending and the Patriot Act.
"Yucca Mountain is always big," Finn said.
Some constituents write about problems they have with federal agencies -- trouble getting a Social Security check or a veterans benefit. Others describe heart-wrenching stories of how an immigration policy is tearing their family apart.
"There are so many human stories that come out of the mail," Cherry said.
Reid has six full-time, letter-answering aides who handle different legislative topics. Reid's goal is to answer every piece from Nevadans within two weeks.
To speed the turnaround time, staffers often rely on form letters, sometimes editing them to fit a particular response.
Letter answerers -- most are young aides in their first job on Capitol Hill -- typically do not crave the spotlight. Their bosses don't care for them discussing constituent mail with the media.
The legislative assistant who answers Reid's correspondence on health care and Social Security issues received about 1,500 pieces during one week earlier this year as Reid helped lead opposition to President Bush's Social Security proposals. The aide, from Las Vegas, did not want her name published.
She said she is often struck by the volume of poignant correspondence from people with no health insurance.
"We'll see letters like, 'I need a kidney transplant and I can't afford it -- what should I do?' " the staffer said. "It's very dire in some cases."
Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at grove@ lasvegassun.com.
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Rutland Herald
December 26, 2005
CVPS on hook for $3 million at Mass. reactor
By Susan Smallheer
Herald Staff
Central Vermont Public Service Corp. will have to kick in about $3 million more to help with the decommissioning and decontamination of a nuclear power plant in Massachusetts.
CVPS, the state's largest utility, owns a small portion of Yankee Rowe nuclear power plant, which was shut down in 1992 due to aging and cracking problems at what at the time was the smallest and oldest commercial reactor in the country. Decommissioning started in 1993.
According to CVPS spokesman Stephen Costello, CVPS owns only 3.5 percent of the plant, and would be responsible for just under $3 million over the next five years.
"CVPS rates to retail customers are already in place and will not change until the company makes a new rate case filing before the Public Service Board, which at this time we have no specific plan to do," Costello said.
Yankee Rowe, which is owned by a consortium of New England utilities, has filed a rate case with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, asking for $80 million more from its owners. The company has already collected and spent about $650 million to dismantle and clean up the reactor.
A spokeswoman for the Vermont Department of Public Service, which acts as the ratepayer's advocate in such cases, said that the state had filed for intervenor status in the case out of concern for the continuing high costs of the decommissioning.
Yankee Rowe, which is located less than a mile from the town of Readsboro, Vt., is completely dismantled, but extensive ground contamination has been uncovered at the site, according to Kelley Smith, spokeswoman for Yankee Atomic, the owner of the plant.
"We've identified additional soil that needs to be excavated and removed," she said.
Smith said the company would have to remove an additional 100 million pounds of contaminated soil and truck it to various waste disposal sites, according to what the contamination is.
Smith said the company had already removed 30 million pounds.
Most of the contamination comes from PCBs, an oil-based hazardous chemical that was used to harden the paint used in the reactor's large spherical containment dome, Smith said. There is also asbestos contamination, she said, and some low-level radiological contamination.
She said the paint chips have been found in Sherman Pond on the Vermont-Massachusetts border.
Of the total of $730 million cleanup, decontamination and demolition work, she said $200 million was for the storage of the plant's high-level radioactive waste, including the design and construction of the storage facility.
The company built a concrete cask storage facility and transferred its old nuclear fuel into the casks for safekeeping until the Department of Energy opens its national nuclear waste facility.
That facility had been planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev., but in the past year has come under increasing attack by Nevada's national politicians, as well as scientists. Earlier this month, legislation was introduced in Congress to abandon Yucca Mountain and have the Department of Energy create or take over individual waste sites at each of the 103 commercial nuclear reactors in the country.
"As we all know, the future of Yucca Mountain is still unfolding," Smith said.
Yankee Atomic has sued the Department of Energy for its failure to construct the high-level waste facility, despite contracts with the nation's nuclear power companies to do so. The trial was held this year, Smith said, and a decision isn't expected until 2006.
Smith said the final cleanup, with the removal of all the contaminated soil, is expected to be completed in August. Cleanup at the site has been suspended for the winter months, she said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
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Rutland Herald
December 26, 2005
Vt. Yankee site could stay hot for generations
By Susan Smallheer
Herald Staff
BRATTLEBORO — Entergy Nuclear may delay the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant for 60 years after it finally shuts down as a way of earning enough money from the plant's $350 million decommissioning trust fund to pay for the storage of its old, highly radioactive fuel.
Meanwhile, the state has gone on the record saying it is dissatisfied with the financial plans offered by Entergy Nuclear about the long-term financing of the nuclear waste facility proposed for the reactor's grounds.
"Entergy has not demonstrated that adequate financial assurance exists," wrote William Sherman, the state's nuclear engineer, in his pre-file testimony to the Public Service Board, although it is possible for Entergy "to create conditions which would demonstrate this financial assurance."
"If this concern were resolved, the department could recommend Entergy be granted a certificate of public good for the proposed dry cask facility," Sherman added.
Entergy spokesman Robert Williams said the company had done the financial analysis for the delay to address the state's concerns. Despite that scenario, he said the company still hoped to complete decommissioning and have all the fuel removed to a federal site by 2042.
Williams noted that another Entergy consultant estimated that it might be 50 to 70 years before a national nuclear waste site is ready, but in the plant's own most optimistic scenario, the last waste would leave in 2042, about 30 years after shutdown.
In recent filings with the Public Service Board, Entergy consultant William A. Cloutier said the longer period is under consideration because of continued delays by the federal government to build a national facility for the waste.
Vermont Yankee's federal license to operate expires in 2012. At Maine Yankee and Yankee Rowe in Massachusetts the company began dismantling the plants and returning them to a "green field" within a couple of years.
But Cloutier said that the annual operating costs of the Vermont Yankee waste facility, about $5 million a year, forces Entergy to look at funding alternatives.
According to a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it is Entergy's decision alone on how and when the plant is decommissioned and dismantled. Entergy could put Yankee into what is called "safe store" by removing all the fuel and putting it in concrete casks, draining the plumbing in the plant, and put it under constant monitoring, according to Neil Sheehan of the NRC.
The only NRC requirement is that the plant be decommissioned within 60 years of its shutdown, he said.
The uncertainty of exactly how long the waste will be left in Vernon and who would pay for it — it remains radioactive as long as 100,000 years — is a concern, especially since the future of the proposed federal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is in doubt.
Just last week, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada helped introduce legislation to require individual waste facilities at all reactors, which would essentially kill the Yucca Mountain project.
Rep. Steve Darrow, D-Putney, a member of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, had inserted language in Act 74 that called for "financial assurance" by Entergy that it would take care of the waste for its lifespan.
"The problem is, Entergy describes it as temporary storage, but no one can give us any assurances it won't be permanent," Darrow said Wednesday.
Darrow also said Entergy's corporate structure left questions unanswered about long-term liability for the fuel because the entity that owns the reactor is a limited liability corporation.
"That fuel remains dangerous for 100,000 years," Darrow said, noting that the $350 million decommissioning fund "runs out" in 2035.
"The whole issue of storage of high-level waste for 100,000 years is the big lie," he said. "How can you possibly plan to store anything for that long?"
Even the concrete casks that Entergy wants to put its old nuclear fuel in would only last 100 years at the most, he said.
No one knows how much the new casks would cost, nor about the transfer of the waste, he said.
"With an LLC involved, any future liability has to be very clearly assigned now," Darrow said.
Darrow noted that Entergy is one of eight companies planning a private high-level waste facility in Skull Valley in Utah, on a Goshute Indian reservation.
If Entergy delays decommissioning by 60 years, that means another three generations of Vermonters will have to deal with the issue, he said.
Sherman declined to comment on his testimony Wednesday, referring all questions to his pre-filed testimony on the upcoming case before the Public Service Board. Hearings on the proposal start in February.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
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Deseret News
December 25, 2005
Letter: Hatch makes sense on Yucca
After years of keeping a low profile on storage of spent fuel at Yucca Mountain, Sen. Orrin Hatch has become one of the few rational voices. His announcement of support for the federal takeover of the fuel, years overdue, is another message that needs to be heeded. For too long the federal government has forced an unfunded mandate on the nuclear electric utilities to take care of the fuel, while the law actually requires that the feds take possession of the material. Adding to that insult, the utilities, and therefore the ratepayers, are footing the bill for storing the fuel. Sen. Hatch seems to be working toward a solution to this problem. He deserves our support.
Kevan Crawford
Salt Lake City
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Knoxville News Sentinel
December 25, 2005
DOE works to find place for leftover nickel
By FRANK MUNGER
munger@knews.com
OAK RIDGE - One of the biggest nuclear cleanups in U.S. history is done, but something valuable got left behind: 5,600 tons of nickel.
Because the nickel is radioactively contaminated, its future is problematic.
BNFL Inc., the government contractor that decommissioned three uranium-processing buildings at Oak Ridge, originally agreed to take ownership of the nickel and other valuable metals as part of its 1997 cleanup pact with the U.S. Department of Energy. The subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels planned to process the nickel to remove most of the radioactivity and sell the metal on the commercial market to recoup its investment here.
That plan, however, generated a storm of protest from groups that feared the radioactive metal would end up in a broad range of consumer products and skewer the credibility of the entire recycling industry.
Then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson bowed to the pressure, and DOE in July 2000 established a moratorium on the recycling of metals from the agency's nuclear facilities.
The moratorium prohibited the commercial sale of metals, no matter the contamination levels, except for uses in the nuclear industry.
Nickel recovered during the BNFL project is still stored at K-33, one of three uranium-processing buildings that the company decommissioned over the past seven years.
The recycling rules have been looked at and debated at some length since then, but DOE officials said they are still adhering to terms of the moratorium and storing the nickel safely while assessing needs in the nuclear world - including facilities at DOE sites.
"Opportunities for reuse/recycle within the nuclear industry include using the nickel to alloy stainless steel for fabrication of steam generators for commercial nuclear electric plants or for use at the DOE Yucca Mountain Project," DOE said in response to questions.
Yucca Mountain is a disposal facility for high-level nuclear waste under development in Nevada.
While DOE wants to get rid of the radioactive nickel, Steve McCracken, the agency's environmental manager in Oak Ridge, said, "We don't want to give anybody the idea that we're anxious to give this stuff away. We're going to recover what we can from this economic value. What we are very interested in is that it not become a liability, which it will be if we ever have to declare it a waste.''
He said there are promising prospects for reuse. Vince Adams, another manager in DOE's environmental program, said the nickel is radioactively contaminated both on the surface and internally.
The nickel was part of the barrier system in converters that helped separate the U-235 atoms during the Oak Ridge operations that processed uranium in a gaseous form. That work was shut down in 1985.
Nickel was used in the barrier because it could withstand the corrosive environment of the uranium hexafluoride, DOE said. Jack Howard, the federal official who oversaw BNFL's three-building cleanup project, said the nickel became contaminated "because that's where the uranium was."
McCracken said DOE does not plan to extract and recover any additional quantities of nickel during upcoming decommissioning of the K-25 and K-27 buildings. The converters in those facilities are smaller and don't have to be taken apart for disposal purposes, he said.
"To segment them just to remove the nickel would greatly increase the hazard to the workers," the DOE official said.
He also said the investment wouldn't be worth the return.
Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.
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Provo Daily Herald
December 24, 2005
New hope for Skull Valley
The Daily Herald
Utah's hopes for nuclear safety have been dashed so many times with Skull Valley that we're all a little numb. But recent events suggest the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming trainload of nuclear waste.
Congress approved the Defense Appropriations Act which included a provision creating the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area.
The wilderness provision, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, designates as a wilderness area the land Private Fuel Storage needs for a rail spur into its proposed nuclear waste depository. It puts the land off limits to development.
PFS, a consortium of nuclear power producers, is seeking to put a "temporary" -- meaning for at least 40 years -- storage facility on the Goshute reservation in Skull Valley. The tribe's leader, Leon Bear, sees the nuclear waste as the Goshutes' ticket out of poverty.
Former U.S. Rep. James V. Hansen attempted the wildnerness gambit once before, only to have the language stricken by Nevada lawmakers upset about Utah's support for the Yucca Mountain repository. Most of Utah's congressional delegation supported the Nevada repository in the mistaken belief that it would mean the end of PFS's plans in Skull Valley.
But things are different now. Utah is supporting Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's bill requiring that nuclear waste be stored at the power plant that created it, not be shipped across the nation to a desert respository. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has also dropped his opposition to Utah's wilderness proposal. We are starting to see the benefits of working with our neighbors and not against them.
Bishop's proposal is not a fatal blow to PFS; the consortium could challenge it in court. But it buys Utah some time. PFS may also choose to discontinue the project, as even a winning lawsuit may eat too far into its profits.
That is the more likely scenario, given what is happening within PFS's ranks. It seems the partners are becoming weary of the prolonged effort to establish the waste storage facility at Skull Valley. Five of the eight power companies that established PFS are currently withholding funding.
It seems that PFS may have won the legal and regulatory battles so far, but it is having serious trouble in the war of attrition. PFS seems to be wearing down.
But it is too early to declare victory. Too many times the PFS plan appeared dead, only to come back again like the radioactive monster in a B-grade horror movie.
Utah should take advantage of the shifting tide and renew its efforts to keep nuclear waste out of the state, continuing to stress the threat the stuff poses to every community it passes through between the power plant and its final destination. That strategy eliminates the NIMBY charge and reminds others that this is a national problem.
Meanwhile, many Goshutes are unhappy with Bear's relentless pursuit of waste that would poison the earth. We wouldn't be surprised to see some changes in tribal leadership in the future. At least it's appropriate to hope at this time of year.
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Topeka Capital Journal
December 24, 2005
Reprocessing nuclear waste: Forget it
By Edwin Lyman
MinutemanMedia.org
Thirty years ago, there was a debate in this country about what to do with the spent fuel from nuclear power plants. At that time, there were plans to "reprocess" and "recycle" the waste. Ultimately, the United States rejected reprocessing of spent fuel for both security and cost reasons. But in a little noticed provision passed earlier this year, Congress appropriated money to restart a program for reprocessing commercial spent fuel. At a time of extremely high deficits and growing threats of nuclear terrorism and proliferation, it would be a grave mistake for the United States to change course and pursue this exorbitantly costly and dangerous path.
Back then, instead of reprocessing, the United States decided to dispose of its power reactors' spent fuel directly in an underground repository. However, the program at the current candiCiting Yucca Mountain's delays, some policymakers and scientists have again embraced reprocessing as an alternative to direct disposal. Reprocessing is a complex chemical technology that separates plutonium and uranium, which can be used in new nuclear fuel, from the intensely radioactive constituents of spent fuel.
The biggest problem with reprocessing is that the plutonium separated by this process can be used in nuclear weapons. A typical U.S. nuclear power plant produces over four hundred pounds of plutonium a year, enough to make dozens of nuclear bombs, but this plutonium is difficult to steal because it is dispersed in large, heavy and lethally radioactive spent fuel assemblies. On the other hand, the plutonium extracted from spent fuel by reprocessing is concentrated and can be handled with little danger. Even more disturbing is the fact that reprocessing facilities in other countries produce so much plutonium that they routinely lose track of quantities sufficient to make a bomb. Terrorists seeking nuclear weapons would find such facilities promising targets for theft.
Proponents also claim that recycling spent fuel would greatly reduce the quantity of waste that would ultimately require geologic disposal. But reprocessing results in the generation of large quantities of low- and intermediate-level radioactive wastes, gaseous and liquid radioactive emissions, and poor-quality reprocessed uranium that is more expensive and troublesome to use than freshly mined uranium. Moreover, unless the separated plutonium can be utilized to an extremely high degree, something that no country has been able to accomplish, there will likely be a large stockpile of unused plutonium and spent plutonium fuel that will also require disposal. In other words, reprocessing can only worsen an already difficult disposal problem.
Finally, reprocessing is extremely expensive and would require massive government subsidies. The reprocessing language signed into law by President Bush in November provides $50 million to the Energy Department in fiscal year 2006 to begin a siting process for up to four "integrated spent fuel recycling facilities" around the country. But this sum is just a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars that taxpayers would have to pony up for the actual construction and operation of these facilities. The Energy Department estimated in 1999 that it would cost over $300 billion (in 2004 dollars) to reprocess and recycle the amount of spent fuel that the current population of U.S. reactors will have generated by around 2020.
U.S. nuclear utilities have shown little interest in reprocessing because it is so much more expensive than direct geologic disposal. However, utilities might well support a taxpayer-funded reprocessing program. A more fiscally responsible approach would be to require that the utilities themselves bear all costs associated with reprocessing, leaving it up to the market to decide.
We do have a nuclear waste dilemma, but embarking on a prohibitively expensive reprocessing adventure that would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism is not the answer. Until the issues at Yucca Mountain are solved, or a better underground repository found, storing nuclear waste safely at nuclear plants around the country is our best option for dealing with this problem.
Edwin Lyman is a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS is an independent nonprofit alliance of 50,000 concerned citizens and scientists across the country. UCS augments rigorous scientific analysis with innovative thinking and committed citizen advocacy to build a cleaner, healthier environment and a safer world. www.ucsusa.org
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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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