Yucca Mountain News Clips - Friday, February 10, 2006

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, February 10, 2006
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 10, 2006

Senator who voted for Yucca calls for 'pause' on repository

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A North Carolina senator who voted for Yucca Mountain four years ago said Thursday he now believes the Nevada nuclear waste repository should be put on a back burner while scientists explore new ways to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.

Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican, called for a "pause" on the repository. He suggested federal spending on underground nuclear waste disposal be frozen or reduced for the time being, while the government prepares to spend new millions on research into potentially promising alternatives.

"Maybe it is time for us to rethink based on what we know today versus what we knew a number of years ago when we made the decision on Yucca Mountain," Burr said. "I believe we should explore whether reprocessing is a better route."

In the meantime, Burr said, "we might be able to store sweet potatoes at Yucca Mountain."

The Energy Department's bid to license a Yucca Mountain repository has stalled since President Bush and Congress gave the go-ahead in 2002.

Technological advances now being promoted by the Bush administration and key lawmakers like Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., are refocusing nuclear waste strategy.

Burr's change in position is evidence of this shift taking place in Congress, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said. Doubts about Yucca Mountain that used to be expressed only in cloakrooms now are becoming public, he said.

"I think it is significant anytime you have an original supporter of Yucca Mountain now coming and saying there are serious problems and we shouldn't look for more money," Ensign said, predicting more senators will follow suit.

As a House member, Burr worked on Yucca bills as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and voted to designate the Nevada site for nuclear waste in 2002. In 2004 he was elected to the Senate from a state where five nuclear reactors supply 32 percent of electricity.

More than 2,700 metric tons of used nuclear fuel is stored in water pools and dry cask vaults at North Carolina plants, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

But dozens of pending lawsuits against Yucca Mountain promise to "delay indefinitely any decisions on the movement of that waste," Burr said. "I try to be a realist.

"I think we need to make a decision whether we are going to go through a different course than Yucca for storage of current fuel," he said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., "has said for decades that Yucca Mountain is never going to happen and we are very happy to see that other senators are starting to see that fact," spokeswoman Sharyn Stein said.

Burr became the second senator to rethink support for Yucca Mountain since September, when Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, announced his position in favor of the project had changed. A majority of senators continue to publicly support the Nevada repository.

But with a growing emphasis on reprocessing, a Nevada repository as is presently being designed may not be the Nevada repository that is eventually put into use, Domenici, Senate Energy Committee chairman, said Thursday.

"Part of this is assuming that we are not going to be putting that same waste into Yucca," said Domenici. "We have to adjust but how much we would have to adjust I don't know yet."

Reprocessed nuclear waste is said to be volumes smaller and less toxic than the highly radioactive fuel rods planned to be buried at Yucca Mountain. France, Germany and Japan are among nations that currently reprocess.

Fuel rods now are removed from reactors and set aside after being utilized "once-through." Reprocessing proponents say fuel recycling technologies could wring up to 96 percent more energy.

Advanced reprocessing being studied in government laboratories may also be able to shape new fuel without producing plutonium byproducts capable of being used in nuclear weapons, they say.

Critics say reprocessing is prohibitively expensive and unproven for nuclear nonproliferation. But President Bush has gotten behind the effort, proposing $250 million to get started on a research and development initiative called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

DOE officials have tied Yucca Mountain to the GNEP initiative, but have not explained how the projects would be harmonized. Talking to reporters on Thursday, Domenici also said that much is uncertain about how the two would fit together.

The Bush administration may provide more clues when it sends new legislation to Congress. DOE officials have briefed key senators and staffers but have not said when it will be introduced.

The Environment and Energy Daily, a Web-based publication, reported this week that industry officials expect the bill will authorize nuclear waste to be moved from reactor sites and stored on an interim basis at federal facilities possibly in Tennessee, Idaho, South Carolina, Washington or the Nevada Test Site.

DOE spokesman Craig Stevens said he would not confirm the report.

Appearing before the Senate Energy Committee on Thursday, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said GNEP could cost between $20 billion and $40 billion, and might rise to the $62 billion once estimated by the National Academies of Science in a 1996 study.

Domenici raised the idea that money the nuclear power industry has been gathering in a government fund to build Yucca Mountain might be redirected to fuel reprocessing research that would achieve the same result. About $20 billion sits in the fund.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 10, 2006

Transport Of Nuclear Waste: Panel says shipments safe

Scientists did not evaluate security risks to cargo

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of shipments of highly radioactive nuclear waste can be conducted safely, a panel of scientists concluded Thursday, although it said the Department of Energy has challenges to meet in shipping the waste to Yucca Mountain.

The report by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences is expected to carry considerable weight as the government moves toward developing a central repository in Nevada for used commercial reactor fuel and defense waste now kept in 39 states.

The study appeared to contain no potential showstoppers and few sharp edges, according to transportation analysts who reacted to the report. Officials from the state of Nevada found things to like, as did the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"In general, it reflected a lot of the recommendations the state has had for a number of years," said Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Loux noted the academy called for full-scale safety testing for waste casks and a recognition that DOE faces "a huge impediment" because people perceive that nuclear waste will be dangerous as it passes through their communities.

On the other hand, Loux said, the scientists appeared to be supportive of a rural Nevada railroad line being considered for Yucca Mountain over the objections of the state and a number of ranchers along the corridor.

In one key recommendation, the panel said the Department of Energy should not commence shipments until it finishes building a 319-mile railroad through rural Nevada to the Yucca site. Uncertain whether it can get such a line built in time, DOE has been looking at plans to ship radioactive material by truck through the state as a stopgap.

DOE had no comment on that recommendation, spokesman Craig Stevens said. Otherwise, he said the study "validated many of our current practices," including plans to use dedicated trains and to move a majority of nuclear waste by rail and not by truck.

The group examined the risk from possible accidents as nuclear shipments crisscross the country, but said it did not assess security risks to such shipments because it could not gain access to classified information.

It called for a further examination of security issues, including a shipment's potential vulnerability to terrorist attacks. It also said that the group doing the investigation should be independent of any governmental or industry conflicts.

The Energy Department is preparing a transportation plan to ship some 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from around the country to Yucca Mountain, if the facility gets a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The department said that would require 4,300 shipments -- about three-fourths by rail and the rest over highways -- over 24 years. Nevada officials, who strongly oppose the Yucca project, have said there could be as many as 50,000 shipments with waste going through at least 43 states.

The study by a special panel of the academy's National Research Council concludes there are "no fundamental technical barriers to the safe transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the United States."

"The radiological risks ... are well-understood and are generally low," the report continued, noting that during 40 years of making such shipments there has never been a significant release of radioactive material.

But the scientists warned of "social and institutional challenges" -- from possible property value decline and loss of tourist business along transport routes to public anxiety over such shipments -- that would have to be overcome as the number of shipments increase.

That recommendation was a reflection of the unease expressed by residents of Nevada and other states, said Hank Jenkins-Smith, a public policy professor at Texas A&M University.

The Energy Department should "give serious attention to the community and economic impacts of the program," Jenkins-Smith said.

"The distrust that has mounted over years between (Nevada) and the government creates a really tough context for building the type of cooperation that really needs to be in place for ensuring safety as far as getting emergency responders up to speed," he said.

Associated Press Writer H. Josef Herbert contributed to this report.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 10, 2006

Letter: Shifting winds

To the editor:

In response to Sherman Frederick's Feb. 5 column, "Cut Miss Nevada a break": Thank goodness for some relief from the media hysteria and anti-nuclear rhetoric when it comes to Yucca Mountain.

It gets lost on those new to the valley that years ago our elected officials supported a repository at the Nevada Test Site. But the political winds have turned, and it's OK to detonate weapons, but nuclear waste storage in a multiple-engineered system is bad.

Our state has a long and storied history of involvement with federal projects, whether it's Hoover Dam, Nellis Air Force Range, the Top Gun base at the Naval Air Station in Fallon, the army munition depot in Hawthorne and the Nevada Test Site, which has been dedicated to nuclear missions since the early 1950s.

We need more common sense and a more responsible approach when it comes to Yucca Mountain. Miss Nevada should be commended and not criticized just because she takes a differing approach. Go ahead and criticize me, because I'm on her side.

I believe a repository is inevitable, I just happen to think we should benefit -- and significant benefits should come our way when it does.

Christi Turner
Las Vegas

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 10, 2006

Letter: Merry band

To the editor:

Sen. "Robin Hood" Harry Reid continues to lead his band of merry congressional robbers in their plundering of the funds collected from ratepayers of nuclear-generated electricity.

A fund was set in motion by Congress to ensure the safe and scientific development of a facility for storing spent nuclear fuel rods from generating stations across the nation. To date, more than $20 billion has been collected, but much less than half of the amount has reached the project for which it is intended: Yucca Mountain. Yearly, Congress fails to fund the project at the level requested by the Department of Energy.

Unfortunately, the project has fallen way behind schedule. Sen. Reid opposes Yucca Mountain and anything nuclear. In his zeal to scuttle the effort, he is denying present and future generations reliable and economically produced electricity.

The senator has contaminated the thinking of Nevada citizens about the importance of Yucca Mountain to the nation as a whole. The rising price of oil and gas is putting a strain on our economy, which is causing many utility companies to urge the construction of new nuclear generating facilities. Without the immediate completion of Yucca Mountain, many of the existing nuclear plants may be forced to shut down or reduce production.

Let the senator know you want him to disband his merry band of congressional robbers and begin acting responsibly when it comes to using the money earmarked for Yucca Mountain.

Richard G. Telfer
LAS VEGAS

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Las Vegas SUN
February 10, 2006

Editorial: What on Earth is going on?

Claims by NASA scientist that public information is censored are borne out by colleagues

An expert in global warming who has been with NASA for nearly 40 years has been going public in recent weeks about censorship within the space agency. In interviews with The New York Times, Dr. James Hansen has been exposing pressure from NASA's public affairs department to either halt the release of scientific information or align it with Bush administration policies.

Hansen, a physicist and climatologist, is director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, where global climate trends are simulated and analyzed on computers. In articles published Jan. 29 and Feb. 4 in the Times, Hansen was quoted as saying that public affairs officials "feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," and that warnings about reining in his public remarks were coming from White House appointees in NASA headquarters.

In its Feb. 4 follow-up story, the newspaper reported that other NASA scientists, as well as public affairs officials within the agency, came forward to confirm Hansen's conclusion that a concerted effort was under way to "control the flow of scientific information from the agency." The paper reported denials from NASA's public affairs department, but the charges obviously had veracity, given the response by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

In the Feb. 4 article, Griffin was reported to have written to all 19,000 NASA employees: "It is not the job of public-affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff." Griffin was right in moving quickly to protect the integrity of scientific information.

And Hansen was right to take a stand against partisan political appointees who wanted to distort and block scientific information, particularly information about global warming. Hansen said censorship pressure intensified after a Dec. 6 lecture he gave in San Francisco. The Times reported that in his lecture, Hansen said cuts in emissions that cause global warming "could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the Earth a different planet."

In a story this week, the Times reported that one of Hansen's public-affairs antagonists, appointed to his position by President Bush, had been forced to resign when it was discovered that he didn't have a college degree, as he had claimed on his resume. Hansen was quoted as saying, "He's only a bit player. The problem (of misinformation) is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That's what I'm really concerned about."

This concern should be shared by everyone, particularly here in Nevada, where Bush's promise that "sound science" would govern the construction of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain is still ringing in our ears. We are incensed that lackey political appointees would be put up to censoring the work of honest, eminent scientists whose information is vital to protecting our futures.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
February 10, 2006

Activists should take one for team

Cory Farley

An informal rule in warfare, also applicable to other areas of competition, says that "when your enemy is making a mistake, don't interrupt him."

Opponents of the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump should apply that now, while Miss Nevada's remarks on the topic are still stinking in the sun.

If you missed the kickoff, Miss Nevada, Crystal Wosik of Las Vegas, recently was asked about locating the nation's nuclear trash heap in the state she represents.

Why her opinion matters is unclear. What's clear is that she said it was a dandy idea. Radioactive junk has to go somewhere, she said, and Yucca Mountain is "the best-built facility in the country."

For all I know, that's true, though given the government's recent record in disaster anticipation, it may not be much of a recommendation.

Still, not everyone found the reassurances of a 23-year-old community college dance student reassuring.

"But what if people could die?" an interviewer asked. Wosik's reply will live after her tiara has rusted away: "We just have to take one for the team," she said.

There was a predictable flurry of outrage (this just in: Genius not a prerequisite for beauty contestants!). Then, also predictably, the story died down.

I figured that was the end of it; nobody's going to build a nuke dump on Miss Nevada's say-so anyway. But now her mother, Lena Wosik, says the family has been "threatened and harassed" because of Crystal's statements.

This is why political groups need to muzzle their wackos. Both sides have them, and they'll be useful if the battle moves to the streets. Somebody will have to throw the Molotov cocktails, decoy the snipers, take one for the team.

Meanwhile, though, keep 'em under a tarp. Otherwise you have things like this: On one side, wack jobs making anonymous threats, elevating Wosik from cup-of-coffee-in-the-bigs to wronged symbol of all that's decent. On the other "» well, Karl Rove, but he's an anomaly.

Let it go. Wosik isn't in this; her opinion doesn't matter; bashing her just makes you look desperate. Which you may be, but this won't help.

In other news: As a late adopter of Internet technology (but a proselytizer now), I can find my way through the more common acronyms. FWIW is a quick take on "For what it's worth;" IMO is obviously "In my opinion." Some military applications have carried over, too. JAFO: always useful.

Often, though, I bog. What's UPGS, for instance, or YAOTM? Inquiring minds can find out at www.gaarde.org

Cory Farley´s column appears on Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. He can be reached at (775) 788-6340 or cfarley@rgj.com.

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KVBC
February 10, 2006

Lawmakers argue over Yucca Mountain project

South Carolina's Republican Senator Richard Burr, an original supporter of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, says he now believes the project should be put on the back burner.

Thursday Burr said, "Maybe it's time for us to rethink based on what we know today, versus what we knew a number of years ago when we made the decision on Yucca Mountain."

Burr is the second senator to change his tune on Yucca. Last September, Republican Senator Robert Bennet of Utah changed his mind on the project too.

As lawmakers argue over Yucca Mountain, a panel of scientists now say highly radioactive nuclear waste can be shipped safely. The panel goes on to warn that significant radiation might be released if the shipment becomes engulfed in a long and intense fire.

The new report by the National Academy of Sciences could serve to bolster support for Yucca Mountain. The group does say they still need to examine security issues such as vulnerability to terrorist attacks.

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MSNBC
February 9, 2006

Science panel OKs nuclear waste shipments

‘Extreme´ fire, radiation unlikely from accident; report urges terror studies

WASHINGTON - Thousands of shipments of highly radioactive nuclear waste can be conducted safely, a panel of scientists concluded Thursday, although they warned that significant radiation might be released if a shipment becomes engulfed in a lengthy and intense fire.

It called for a further examination of security issues, including a shipment´s potential vulnerability to terrorist attacks. It also said that the group doing the investigation should be independent of any governmental or industry conflicts. Such information should be made public to the extent possible, the scientists said.

The Energy Department is preparing a transportation plan to ship some 70,000 tons of nuclear waste from around the country to a proposed central repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, if the facility gets a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

4,300 shipments, or 50,000?

The department said that would require 4,300 shipments — about three-fourths by rail and the rest over highways — over 24 years. Nevada officials, who strongly oppose the Yucca project, have said there could be as many as 50,000 shipments with wastes going through at least 43 states.

The study by a special panel of the Academy´s National Research Council concludes there are “no fundamental technical barriers to the safe transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the United States.’

“The radiological risks ... are well understood and are generally low,’ the report continued, noting that during 40 years of making such shipments there has never been a significant release of radioactive material.

But the scientists warned of “social and institutional challenges’ — from possible property value decline and loss of tourist business along transport routes to public anxiety over such shipments — that would have to be overcome as the number of shipments increase.

The panel concluded the robust canisters in which the waste will be kept have been shown to withstand virtually all conceivable transport accidents. But it warned that a significant radiation release could occur “in extreme accidents involving very-long duration, fully engulfing fires.’

“While the likelihood of such extreme accidents appears to be very small, their occurrence cannot be ruled out,’ said the scientists. They called on the NRC to further analyze the impact of such an event on various waste package designs and said any transportation plan should try to minimize the likelihood of such an accident.

Rail favored

The panel also urged the government to ship as much of the waste by rail on dedicated trains, as opposed to trucks. The Energy Department has said that it prefers rail over highway transport.

While some sensitive information such as the times or routes of a specific shipment may have to be kept secret, the panel urged the government to share with the public as much information as possible including general information on possible routes, what material is being shipped and the broad timeframe of shipments.

The 16-member Research Council panel was chaired by Neal Lane, a professor of physics at Rice University, and included representatives from academia and various consulting organizations.

The government´s plan for opening the proposed Yucca Mountain facility has been delayed and the facility now may not open until 2015, or even later. The Energy Department has yet to send an application for a license to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has said the administration remains committed to building the Nevada facility and last week asked Congress for $544 million for the project for the next fiscal year, including money to develop a transportation plan.

But some in Congress, including Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate´s Democratic leader from Nevada, has argued that the waste should remain in aboveground storage at current reactor sites to avoid transportation concerns.

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Philadelphia Inquirer
February 10, 2006

Nuclear waste can be moved safelyExperts said shipments could be conducted, but also raised questions on fires and attacks.By H. Josef HebertAssociated Press

WASHINGTON - Thousands of shipments of highly radioactive nuclear waste can be conducted safely, a panel of scientists concluded yesterday, although it warned that significant radiation might be released if a shipment were engulfed by intense fire.

The group examined the risk from possible accidents as nuclear shipments crisscross the country but said it did not assess security risks to such shipments because it could not gain access to classified information.

It called for a further examination of security issues, including a shipment's potential vulnerability to attack. It also said that the group doing the investigation should be independent of any governmental or industry conflicts. Such information should be made as public as possible, the scientists said.

The Energy Department is preparing a transportation plan to ship about 70,000 tons of nuclear waste from throughout the country to a proposed central repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, if the facility gets a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The department said that would require 4,300 shipments, about three-fourths by rail and the rest by highways, over 24 years. Nevada officials, who oppose the Yucca project, have said there could be as many as 50,000 shipments with wastes going through at least 43 states.

The study by a special panel of the Academy's National Research Council concludes there are "no fundamental technical barriers" to safely transporting spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

But it warned that a significant radiation release could occur "in extreme accidents

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San Francisco Chronicle
February 10, 2006

Nuclear safety study denied data

Agency looking at waste transport risks can't address terrorist attacks

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer

Friday, February 10, 2006

The risk of terrorist attacks on mega-shipments of deadly, radioactive spent nuclear fuel and waste from across the nation to Nevada could not be properly evaluated because federal officials refused to share classified information with investigators looking into the safety of such shipments.

If one ignores the terrorist possibility, the shipments by trains and trucks are probably safe from non-terrorist-related mishaps, such as derailments or traffic accidents, says the long-awaited study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a 143-year-old, quasi-independent agency chartered to advise the U.S. government on scientific issues. The thick report, released Thursday, bases this claim partly on the results of numerous experiments in which simulated containers of nuclear fuel survived after being rammed into walls or dropped from great heights.

But since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the biggest concern has been terrorist attacks -- and about that danger, the report is silent because its investigators were unable to obtain adequate information from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The decision to issue the report without dealing with terrorism angered activist groups.

The Sierra Club's national press secretary, Eric Antebi, issued a statement slamming the report for saying the nuke shipments are "safe only if you ignore any risk of terrorism and if everything else goes right."

"Those are some pretty big ifs," Antebi said. "I think Americans are keenly aware that in the real world, whether you are talking about levees, O-rings on the space shuttle, or shipping nuclear waste, the chances of everything going right are extremely small."

Within the next few years, the Bush administration hopes to have trains and trucks hauling tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel rods and waste from the nation's nuclear power plants to a final burial ground in Yucca Mountain, Nev., near the California border. The plan has long been bogged down by lawsuits filed by Nevada officials and has also been plagued by scientists' disagreements over how fast groundwater will move through Yucca Mountain and penetrate the radioactive repository.

The regulatory commission, the nation's No. 1 overseer of commercial nuclear power plants, refused to show a majority of the investigators on the academy's panel analyses of ways in which terrorists might attack and destroy the shipments on the grounds they lacked security clearance, academy officials said Thursday. As a result, the panel concluded it didn't have the information it needed to determine whether terrorist attacks pose real dangers, said academy officials speaking at a Washington news conference.

The threat of terrorist attacks, "is certainly an area of concern to all the American people, and it needs to be properly addressed," said Neal F. Lane, chairman of the academy panel.

Regulatory commission officials responded to the academy's criticisms Thursday, saying the terrorist issue has been studied and its researchers have concluded there's nothing to fear. "We feel that our studies have been very thorough and anything that was identified that needed to be done (to lessen the terrorist risk) has been done," commission spokesman Dave McIntyre said. He declined to discuss specifics, saying only that "we are confident that the transportation of spent nuclear fuel is safe and secure."

Anti-nuclear activists criticized the new report, charging that attacks by terrorists armed with anti-tank weapons, explosives that slice through thick metal, or similar portable weaponry could easily penetrate shielding on the radioactive shipments and ignite a shipment into a radioactive bonfire whose wastes could contaminate cities or large regions -- "mobile Chernobyls," as activists call them.

The academy's report is "a whitewash of transportation dangers," said Kevin Kamps, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington.

At Thursday's news conference, academy officials called for a new study to explore whether terrorists threaten the shipments, a study staffed solely by investigators with full security clearances and complete access to the regulatory commission's terrorist studies.

Their report concluded that non-terrorist-related mishaps are unlikely to spill radioactive materials into the environment, but cautioned that further study is needed on certain aspects of the subject. One possibility in particular that warrants follow-up, the report said, is an out-of-control fire that could burn for days, perhaps spewing radioactive waste into the environment. It said the likelihood of a long, super-hot fire melting the container carrying radioactive material is slight but not totally beyond the bounds of possibility.

The report drew a mixed reaction from the Washington lobbying arm of the U.S. nuclear industry, the Nuclear Energy Institute. "Generally speaking, it's a good report," said Steve Kraft, director of used fuel management.

However, he criticized two proposals in the report, including one that advises minimizing risks by having the first shipments to Yucca Mountain involve so-called "older, colder" spent fuel. Such fuel is less radioactive and, hence, less hazardous to ship. The risks of any accident are so low in any case that such a shipment poses a negligible safety advantage, so "it isn't worth it" to give the older, colder fuel first dibs on its one-way trip to Nevada, he said.

Kraft also criticized the academy's call for further research on the possibility of long-lasting fires. "All I can tell you is that (the fire danger) has been studied and studied and studied," which shows "the risk is very low, very safe," so no further analysis is needed, he said.

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.

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New Scientist
February 10, 2006

US nuclear waste strategies evaluated

David L Chandler

Methods planned for transporting radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power reactors are generally safe, but questions remain over the safety of nuclear casks in the event of a sustained, hot fire, a review panel of the US National Academy of Sciences has concluded.

The NAS report released in Washington DC on Thursday, found there are "no fundamental technical barriers" to safe transportation, but that a number of "serious challenges" remain.

Assuming no new plants are built, disposing of fuel from the US's 112 operating plants will require a two-decade-long programme of daily shipments, and more planning needs to be done for managing this massive operation, the report says.

The report assessed the adequacy of planning for every kind of accident scenario, but not the potential for deliberate acts such as terrorist attacks. To evaluate that aspect, it says, would require creation of a new committee with full access to classified materials.

Trains versus trucks
There are several main scenarios under consideration for moving the 54,000 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste from the US's 103 nuclear power plants, and a similar amount from military weapons-production plants. One is the movement to their ultimate repository, proposed as the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada. Another is transport to an interim storage spot or possibly to reprocessing facilities.

The material could be moved in an estimated 55,000 truckloads, or in 9600 dedicated trainloads and just 1000 truckloads, they say. The multidisciplinary panel "much preferred the rail option", says Neal Lane, its chairman, both because of the greatly reduced number of trips and because the rail lines are less subject to disruptions, such as traffic jams.

Research on the strength of the planned containment vessels or casks – which included dropping them from aeroplanes and slamming into them in simulated railroad crossing collisions – assures that they would survive any likely accident or natural disaster, except for the contingency of a very hot fire sustained over a long period, the report says.

Structural issues
Such fires have occurred, for example, in at least two cases where trains of petroleum-filled tanker cars burned for days before being controlled. The only way to minimise that risk for now, the panel concluded, is to make sure petroleum-carrying trains never get close to nuclear waste trains, but more research should be done on the effects of such fires on the nuclear casks.

More research is also needed on other points, such as the best ways of organising and coordinating the shipments, the panel says.

"There are significant questions" about the performance of the Department of Energy agency running the programme right now, panel member Seth Tuler told New Scientist. The report concludes that "changing the organisational structure for this programme will improve its chances for success".

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NEI
February 10, 2006

Nuclear Notes: NAS Releases Report on Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel

Eric McErlain

Yesterday the National Academy of Sciences released a report entitled, Going the Distance? The Safe Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in the United States.

Here's what NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer, Marv Fertel, had to say about the report:

"Overall, the National Academies report is a strong endorsement of the used nuclear fuel transportation program that has operated well and operated safely in the United States for the past four decades. Specifically, the nuclear energy industry agrees with the three major findings of the National Academies report:

"?First, that there are no fundamental technical barriers to the safe transport of used nuclear fuel. This conclusion is supported by the fact that more than 3,000 shipments of used nuclear fuel have been made safely in the United States over the past 40 years. Even in the approximately 10 instances where accidents have occurred, no releases of the waste packages'? radioactive contents have resulted, and public health and safety has been protected.

"Second, that existing international standards and U.S. regulations ensure the effectiveness of shipping containers over a wide range of transport conditions. In short, there's no need to go back to the regulatory drawing board because a program with strong public health and safety protections already is in place.

"And third, that there are opportunities to further implement operational controls and restrictions that will make this program even safer and better than it already is. The use of dedicated trains for rail shipments is a leading example of a safeguard that should be adopted to maximize safety of used fuel shipments.

"The industry also concurs with the National Academies'? main conclusions with regard to testing of shipping containers --? namely that full-scale testing of shipping containers is worthwhile as part of an integrated testing program that includes scale models and computer simulation, but that full-scale tests are not necessary for regulatory certification of the containers, and that testing of packages to fail, or to destruction, is not warranted for certification. The ability of containers to serve their protective function during severe conditions can be proven without the excessive testing that would cause their destruction.

"There are a few instances where we do not agree with the report. We do not believe there is further value to be gained from additional study of long-duration fire scenarios that the report recommends. Intensive study of long-duration, fully engulfing fires already has been done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"We also disagree with the report'?s call for negotiations or federal legislation to achieve shipment of older used fuel first. Safety measures already are so strong and the risks of harmful impacts already are so low that one cannot justify the burden of additional expenses and potential litigation that this recommendation would cause.

"?The concern voiced by the National Academies that it did not have access to classified or otherwise restricted information does not negate the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy have completed research on the physical security of used fuel containers and of transportation. As a result, the agencies have taken additional steps already to enhance physical security in this area.

"As the federal government'?s nuclear waste management program continues, the industry looks forward to working with Congress, the administration and regulatory bodies and emergency responders at all levels of government to maintain the highest levels of safety in this program."

In addition, NPR did a story on the report that aired yesterday evening. Thanks to reader Paul Primavera for the NPR pointer. You can read more at the Deseret Morning News.

UPDATE: To get a copy of the four page summary of the report, click here. For a combined copy of the summary and the recommendations contained in the report, click here.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Environment, Energy, Yucca Mountain

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U.S. Newswire
February 10, 2006

Nuclear Energy Policy Is A Step in the Right Direction; NCPA E-Team Scholar Says President's Policy Reduces Waste and Provides Energy

To: National Desk, Energy Reporter

Contact: Dorene Englert of the National Center for Policy Analysis, 972-308-6459 or dorene.englert@ncpa.org

DALLAS, Feb. 10 /U.S. Newswire/ -- President Bush's proposal to recycle spent nuclear fuel rods as a form of clean energy is both economically and ecologically sound, according to NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett. The recycling proposal was included in the $2.77 trillion budget submitted to Congress this week.

"Spent nuclear rods are not waste. They can be re-used," said Dr. Burnett. "The president's policy helps reduce the amount of nuclear waste that needs to be stored and provides a valuable, clean source of energy."

The NCPA recommended a similar approach to nuclear waste last March, ("Burning Bright: Nuclear Energy's Future"), noting that:

-- One kilogram of uranium contains as much energy as 38.5 tons of coal, but conventional reactors use only about 3 percent of that energy. If the U.S. joined France and Japan in recycling used fuel, existing and future spent rods would provide an almost unlimited supply of nuclear fuel.

-- Recycling spent rods could wring more energy from spent fuel and reduce the amount of waste material, thus extending the life of the Yucca Mountain repository.

-- The more than 15,000 plutonium pits removed from dismantled U.S. nuclear weapons provide another supply of nuclear fuel after reprocessing.

-- If we recycle rather than store these plutonium pits we will actually reduce rather than increase the threat of proliferation.

"Mining new fuel is among the most dangerous of nuclear operations, and we currently aren't mining enough new fuel to meet demand. It's critical for the U.S. to be able to reprocess and recycle spent nuclear fuel to generate power," Dr. Burnett said.

--The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D.C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. NCPA depends on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share its mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants.

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Platts
February 9, 2006

Cost of Global Nuclear Energy Partnership may hit $62-bil: Bodman

Washington (Platts)--9Feb2006

The total cost of the Bush administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership would likely reach between $20-bil and $40-bil, and possibly as much as $62-bil, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Thursday.

Testifying at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the administration's FY-07 budget request, Bodman said GNEP, in which the US and other countries would provide fresh nuclear fuel for power reactors around the world and recover the spent fuel for recycling, would "be very expensive and take a very long time."

But he added that the reprocessed waste resulting from the initiative would remain toxic for 1,000 years rather than the one million years envisioned for ordinary spent fuel. Bodman said he hoped GNEP's development costs could be reduced through help from other countries.

Senators said after the hearing that nuclear energy ratepayers would also have to help pay for GNEP. Sen Raymond Burr (Republican-North Carolina) told reporters he no longer supports developing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, and said the US should concentrate instead on reprocessing. Burr said the Yucca Mountain project is being brought to a standstill by legal problems.

Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (Republican-New Mexico) said the Nuclear Waste Fund could help pay for GNEP. "Look, I don't think we've figured out who's going to pay for that," Domenici said. "Right now we've got [$18-bil] sitting in a trust fund that's supposed to be for Yucca, but it's really the utilities paying for completing the fuel cycle. I'm not suggesting that they would sit by and let us use it [for GNEP], but this may not be a total government expenditure as we put it together."

A DOE spokesman said the department will make a "go, no-go" decision on whether to proceed with GNEP after three years of study. The administration is seeking $250-mil for GNEP in FY-07.

For more information, take a trial to Platts Electricity Alert at http://electricityalert.platts.com.

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Platts
February 9, 2006

NAS: Spent fuel, high-level waste transport safe

Washington (Platts)--9Feb2006

Spent fuel and high-level waste can be transported safely in the U.S., said a study released today by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). "There are no fundamental technical barriers" to safe transport of these materials, but "a number of challenges must be addressed," NAS said today in a press statement accompanying its report, which was requested by Congress. NAS said "a separate, independent study of the security of such shipments against malevolent acts is also needed." The report also provides recommendations on DOE's Yucca Mountain, Nev. repository project. The report is on the NAS Web site at
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309100046?OpenDocument.

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Deseret News
February 10, 2006

N-waste may move — but take a detour

Bush aims to reprocess it for worldwide energy

By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON — Moving nuclear waste can be done safely, according to a National Academies' National Research Council report released Thursday, but there are some issues to be solved before a nationwide shipping program could begin.

Thursday's report comes just days after the Bush administration unveiled its $250 million "Global Nuclear Energy Partnership" program in Monday's 2007 budget proposal. After months of speculation that the White House was considering a nuclear waste policy change, the ambitious program not only aims to develop technology to reprocess waste safely but pushes for more nuclear power worldwide and to find ways for new reactors to produce energy from reprocessed nuclear fuel.

This is a shift from the government plan since 1987 to only store used nuclear-fuel rods inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. President Jimmy Carter banned reprocessing because it created material that could be used in nuclear weapons. President Reagan lifted the ban, but there was no market for reprocessing technology. The new program, referred to as G-NEP, does not back down from the Yucca project, but a different form of waste may ultimately be stored there if the site is approved.

With the administration's continued commitment to nuclear power and desire to open a federal nuclear waste repository in Nevada, the waste transportation situation is one the country will still need to handle.

"The reprocessing option still requires moving this material to the reprocessing plant, so you've got to move the material as we have it as well as after the reprocessing takes place, it has to be moved again so you still have fundamentally the same issues," said Thomas B. Deen, former executive director of the National Research Council's Transportation Research Board who helped write the study.

John W. Poston Sr., a professor in the department of Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University and also a member of the board that wrote the report, said the transportation study included spent nuclear fuel as well as high-level nuclear waste, which is what could come out of any reprocessing method.

"Regardless of whether we put material in Yucca Mountain or we reprocess or whatever, the kinds of recommendations we made in our report pertain to any of those options," Poston said.

The progress on the government's Yucca project as well as Private Fuel Storage, a commercial project that wants to ship and store nuclear waste to Skull Valley, Tooele County, prompted the study originally.

A bill approved last year blocks the company's preferred place to build a railroad line to ship the waste and the government still needs to approve a right of way on public land to build a facility that would handle waste by truck.

Several investor utilities opted to freeze their financial support for PFS last year saying they will wait to see what happens with the Yucca project, but company officials have said other companies may choose to participate at a later date.

Energy Department Deputy Secretary Clay Sell said the administration did not go to the utilities with this new program as a reason to change their minds on PFS. He said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, who heads the House Appropriations subcommittee that writes the energy spending bill, started the conversation on reprocessing and there has been a increase in interest in advancing recycling.

He said he did not know of any direct link between the department's new initiative and the utilities' position on PFS, but emphasized the government's support for Yucca.

"Yucca Mountain is the right answer and PFS is not," Sell said.

Meanwhile, the report found no "technical barriers" to moving used fuel or high-level radioactive waste but called for another study that could look at security aspects more closely. Not all of the members of this report's committee had proper security clearances to look at classified information.

The report also recommends that the Energy Department make its transportation plans public so local officials can begin to plan accordingly if the shipments were to come as planned.

E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com

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Salt Lake Tribune
February 10, 2006

Classified: The study didn't consider the possibility of a terrorist attack because the info was off-limits

By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON - Nuclear waste can be safely shipped, either to Yucca Mountain in Nevada or to Private Fuel Storage's proposed commercial facility in Utah, a National Academies of Science report said Thursday.

The safety of the nuclear waste shipments has been a major issue pressed by Utah officials opposing Private Fuel Storage's plan to house 44,000 tons of reactor fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation until it can be moved to a permanent repository in Yucca Mountain.

"The committee could identify no fundamental technical barriers to the safe transport of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the United States," stated the report by the National Research Council's Committee on Transportation of Radioactive Waste.

The committee said the risks of shipping spent nuclear fuel "are well understood and are generally low," and noted that waste has been shipped worldwide for four decades without a significant radiation release.

But public perception remains an issue, and steps should be taken to address concerns, such as engaging in an open process and training first responders.

It would take roughly 4,000 rail cars to move the nuclear waste to the proposed Utah facility planned by the PFS consortium of nuclear power companies as a temporary storage area. If Yucca Mountain opens, it would take about 9,600 rail shipments and 1,100 trucked shipments to move the 70,000 metric tons of waste to the facility, an estimated 90 percent of which would travel through Utah.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has expressed concerns about the nuclear shipments to Utah or through Utah en route to Nevada, and his general counsel, Mike Lee, said Thursday that the report doesn't put those fears to rest.

"To say that it can be transported safely doesn't mean it's a good idea to ship it through Utah or ship it to an Indian reservation in Utah where it will be stored in the low-altitude flight path on a route to a bombing range," Lee said.

"There are still concerns that there are risks associated with this deadly material. We don't like the idea of our state being used to store it or the idea of our state being used as major corridor to store it in another state," he said.

The study, which was nearly three years in the works, did not consider the potential for a terrorist attack on the nuclear shipments because it could not review the necessary classified information.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission welcomed the report "that the agency believes validates its efforts to ensure the safe transport of spent fuel and high-level waste."

PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said the company has been confident all along that it can safely move the waste from the reactors, and Thursday's report supports that view.

Critics of plans to ship nuclear waste said the report is "a whitewash of the true dangers."

"This report seems geared to grease the skids to get large numbers of nuclear waste shipments on the roads and rails and that's very disconcerting," said Kevin Kamps of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington, D.C., group that has called the waste shipments "Mobile Chernobyls."

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Kansas City infoZine
February 10, 2006

Challenges Remain for the Safe Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-level Radioactive Waste

National Academies' National Research Council Report

Washington, D.C. - infoZine - There are no fundamental technical barriers to the safe transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the United States, but a number of challenges must be addressed, says a new report from a committee of the National Academies' National Research Council. A separate, independent study of the security of such shipments against malevolent acts also is needed, said the committee, which was unable to make this examination because needed information was classified or otherwise restricted.

The radiological risks associated with the transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are well-understood and generally low, the report says, noting that spent fuel has been shipped worldwide for more than four decades without a significant release of radioactive materials during an accident. However, more attention needs to be paid to understanding and managing the "social" risks involved in transporting these materials - risks that have potential impacts such as lower property values or reduced tourism along shipping routes, for example.

The Research Council conducted the study to meet the need for an independent examination of the risks and key concerns associated with the transport of spent fuel and high-level waste. Shipments of these materials in the United States will increase dramatically if the Department of Energy opens a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Spent fuel and high-level waste would be shipped there from more than 70 sites in 31 states, and most of these shipments would likely pass through or near major metropolitan areas. Shipping may also increase if DOE develops a spent fuel recycling facility at another site, or if the commercial nuclear industry constructs a facility to store spent fuel until Yucca Mountain opens.

Responding to a request from Congress, the committee also assessed how DOE currently selects routes for shipping spent fuel from research reactors between its facilities in the United States. DOE's procedures for selecting these routes appear to be adequate and reasonable, the committee concluded, noting that the department has considered risk assessments as well as advice from affected states and tribal nations.

Risks Arising From Transport

The committee examined two types of radiological risks -- those arising from normal transport and those from accidents during shipping. The main radiological risk during normal transport is from the low levels of radiation emitted from packages loaded with spent fuel or high-level waste, since no shipping package can block radiation entirely. The report presents a number of comparisons between this risk and other common sources of radiation exposure.

Releases of radioactive materials from shipping packages during accidents are very unlikely given the packages' robust construction and the strict regulations for transporting them, the committee said. However, recent research suggests that a very small number of extreme accident conditions involving fires of very long duration might compromise the packages. More analysis is needed to understand how packages behave under these conditions and to inform possible regulatory or operational changes. Transportation planners should survey routes in advance of shipments to identify and mitigate hazards that could lead to such accidents.

Transportation planners also should establish formal mechanisms for obtaining advice on managing social risks, the report says. For example, DOE should add experts on social risk to one of its existing advisory groups.

Operating Large-Quantity Shipping Programs

In addition to examining risks, the report provides findings and recommendations on operational issues related to the transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. While the recommendations focus on DOE's Yucca Mountain program, they apply to any program for shipping large amounts of these materials.

DOE should identify and make public its preferred routes to Yucca Mountain as soon as possible to support state, tribal, and local planning -- especially efforts to prepare emergency responders. The department should consult with states and tribal nations in selecting these routes. DOE also should immediately begin to execute its responsibilities for preparing emergency responders.

The committee strongly endorsed DOE's decision to ship spent fuel and high-level waste to Yucca Mountain using mostly trains rather than trucks, since rail transport would reduce both the overall number of shipments and their interactions with people along routes. It also strongly endorsed the plan to use "dedicated" trains, which would carry only spent fuel or high-level waste and no other freight. To implement its "mostly rail" option, however, DOE must first build a 319-mile rail line in Nevada. If the department fails to complete this step before the repository opens, it should not resort to large-quantity truck shipments as an interim measure, the committee said.

Shipping older fuel to Yucca Mountain first would provide an additional margin of safety because it generates less heat and radiation, the report says; it would also allow DOE to gain experience and build confidence. However, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act does not give DOE authority to decide the order in which fuel will be shipped from operating plants. The department should negotiate with commercial spent fuel owners to prioritize the shipment of older fuel, and if negotiations do not succeed, Congress should consider changes to the law.

Federal agencies should develop and disclose clear, consistent, and reasonable criteria for protecting sensitive information about shipments, and they should commit to openly sharing information that does not require such protection. For example, before making a shipment, it would be appropriate to share general information such as possible routes, the material to be shipped, and general shipping time frames. More-detailed information -- specific routes, times, and responses to any incidents, for example -- could be disclosed afterward.

DOE's Yucca Mountain transportation program might not succeed unless it is restructured to give it more planning authority and flexibility, the committee said. Though it was beyond the scope of the study to recommend a particular organizational structure for the program, the committee suggested that Congress and the secretary of energy evaluate three possible ways to reorganize it: as a quasi-independent organization within DOE, as a quasi-government corporation, or as a fully private organization operated by the commercial nuclear industry.

The study was funded by the U.S. departments of Energy and Transportation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Electric Power Research Institute, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, and the National Academy of Sciences. It was overseen by the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board and Transportation Research Board of the National Research Council, which is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides science and technology advice under a congressional charter.

Copies of Going the Distance? The Safe Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in the United States will be available from the National Academies Press; tel. 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242 or on the Internet at www.nap.edu.

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Senator John Ensign (R-NV)
February 9, 2006

Ensign, Reid: NAS Findings on Nuke Waste Transport will Benefit Nevada

Washington, D.C. – Senators John Ensign and Harry Reid said today that a newly released study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a positive development in Nevada´s fight against a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The NAS report, according to the senators, calls for studies and reports on the transportation of nuclear waste that have previously not been undertaken.

“As we´ve said many times before, the more we delay Yucca Mountain the closer we are to defeating it once and for all,’ Ensign said. “The tone on Capitol Hill is shifting dramatically when it comes to Yucca Mountain, from a feeling of inevitability to a realization that we must consider alternatives. NAS´s recommendation that a full-scale security study be conducted verifies our long-standing concerns about the risk of a terrorist attack or other possible catastrophe.’

"I agree we should have a full-scale security study before we consider transporting nuclear waste, but my concerns run much deeper," said Reid. "The standards set by a security study would be meaningless unless they're strictly enforced. The Department of Energy has repeatedly failed to meet the scientific, technical and legal standards set for Yucca Mountain. I do not trust them to uphold any guidelines for transportation. I appreciate the efforts of all the talented people at NAS, but all they have really concluded is that nuclear waste can be transported safely under very strict conditions if no mistakes are made. That is not enough."

Among other recommendations, the NAS study calls for an in-depth examination of transportation security issues, expert evaluation of the effect of transportation on local communities and a review of extreme accident or fire scenarios.

The NAS study was mandated by Congress in 2003.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 09, 2006

Porter sets Yucca hearing

Congressman aims to break stalemate over access to documents

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A House chairman plans to summon Energy Department officials to a hearing in a new bid to break a stalemate between DOE and Congress over access to Yucca Mountain documents.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., will schedule a hearing in about three weeks after DOE once again this week resisted a demand to turn over a 5,800-page draft license application for the proposed nuclear waste repository, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Porter, chairman of the federal workforce and agency organization subcommittee, said he wants to examine the document as part of an investigation of scientist e-mails that suggested quality assurance documents might have been fabricated.

Department officials have challenged whether the document is relevant to the probe.

Also, DOE general counsel David Hill said in a letter to Congress on Tuesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled last week that the document was not required to be made public.

Porter has uncovered further information that justifies access to the repository documents, spokesman T.J. Crawford said. He would not say what was discovered.

"We will have a hearing and will present additional information and ask DOE for a full explanation of why they feel that we should not see the draft license," Porter said.

In the letter sent to Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., Hill said DOE plans to supply other documents the panel has requested, including new e-mails uncovered in the fall.

The repository would be built about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 09, 2006

Editorial : The nature of environmentalists

Last month, Miss Nevada Crystal Wosik found herself in newspaper headlines statewide, and not just because she was participating in the Miss America pageant in her hometown of Las Vegas.

During the interview portion of the pageant, Ms. Wosik was asked about the federal government's plans to entomb high-level nuclear waste inside Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Ms. Wosik, 23, expressed support for the project -- a view not uncommon among Southern Nevadans.

Predictably, environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists went batty. They ripped Ms. Wosik as though she were an elected official with genuine influence on public policy.

Apparently, things got worse from there. According to Ms. Wosik's mother, Lena, their family has been subjected to anonymous taunts and threats that condemn Miss Nevada's support for the Yucca Mountain Project.

Lena Wosik said messages have been left on her answering machine and on her doorstep calling her daughter, a student at California's Orange Coast College, a "baby killer" who wants to "dump toxic waste on our families."

Now Peggy Maze Johnson, director of the environmentalist group Citizen Alert, says those threats must be coming from Yucca Mountain supporters intent on smearing groups like hers. She says such deplorable behavior goes against the nature of people intent on protecting the environment.

Really? Perhaps Ms. Johnson has never heard of green extremists like the Earth Liberation Front, which was deemed a terrorist organization by the federal government after it torched tens of millions of dollars worth of property? And what about the sabotage artists of Earth First!? Or the taxpayer extortionists and scientific frauds at the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club?

Yes, Ms. Johnson, radical environmentalists are certainly capable of disrupting the lives and destroying the property of those who don't agree with them.

Nevada's environmentalist extremists should leave Ms. Wosik and her family alone and attempt to direct their frustrations toward more productive purposes.

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Pahrump Valley Times
February 09, 2006

'No worries' concludes low-level background radiation study

By Heather Emmons
Special to The PVT

LAS VEGAS - The Desert Research Institute completed the results of a study assessing potential exposure to the public from truck transport of low-level radioactive waste to the Nevada Test Site. The NTS, located 25 miles north of Pahrump, is administered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration's Nevada Operations Office (NNSA/NSO), which funded the study. DRI researchers set up a solar-powered array of four Pressurized Ion Chambers, or PICs, to collect data from February through December 2003, at a pullout area that lies outside the Mercury gate at the NTS.

The Nevada Site Office was interested in addressing ongoing public concern over the safety of low-level waste, or LLW, shipments to the NTS. The study addressed whether residents along transportation routes receive cumulative exposure from individual LLW shipments that pose a long-term health risk. While DOE and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations ensure that radiation exposure from truck shipments is negligible, stakeholders in rural communities along transportation routes in Utah and Nevada perceive risk about cumulative exposure, particularly when "Main Street" and the routes being used by LLW trucks are one in the same.

"Most studies of radiation exposure from truck transportation are based on calculations of potential exposure," said David Shafer, DRI's executive director of the Frank H. Rogers Center for Environmental Remediation and Monitoring. "The study was designed to help answer the question, 'What do the trucks really measure?'"

How the study worked:

The PIC arrays took gamma readings from 1,012, or nearly 47 percent of the 2,260 trucks that delivered LLW to the NTS during the test period. The Nevada Site Office could not contractually require waste generators to participate in the study, so the database is biased to voluntary participants. Drivers parked their truck in a marked "footprint" within the array and recorded shipment information, including date, time and Waste Shipment Identification Number into a logbook located at the PIC array. The PICs were positioned three and one-third feet from the truck trailer at a height of five feet to simulate conditions of a citizen standing on a sidewalk next to a LLW truck on a standard two-lane highway in the U.S., and to be representative of the exposure of chest organs. The use of four PICs, two on each side of the truck, was to investigate and account for variations in gamma radiation levels at different locations around the trucks because of differences in the radioactivity between waste packages, as well as how the waste containers were packed in the truck. In addition to the PICs, photoacoustic sensors, positioned between the PICs on each side of the array, were used to detect when a truck entered and departed the array, as LLW trucks can arrive at the NTS around the clock. Data from the PICs and photoacoustic sensors were recorded on dataloggers.

Results:

Of 1,012 trucks measured, about 70 percent could not be distinguished from background radiation levels or were less than 1/100,000 of the DOT shipping standard. In reality though, their percent of the DOT standard was even less. The DOT standard (10 millirems per hour) is actually established at 2 meters distance from the truck, while the truck measurements were made at 1 meter. Although the DOT standard is set at 2 meters, the PICs were placed one meter from the trucks so that measurements of the trucks could be made faster, making it easier for truck drivers to participate in the study. At 2 meters distance, the potential exposure to a person would be less because of the increased distance from the radiation source. Only 54 trucks, or 5.3 percent of the trucks in the study, had exposures greater than or equal to 10 percent of the DOT standard as measured at one meter. When cumulative exposures were considered, the few number of trucks with comparatively higher measurements could strongly influence the results. For example, in the unlikely event that a person had been standing by the road for the 42 LLW trucks that traveled through Amargosa Valley on their way to the NTS, 35 percent of the person's total exposure would have come from just one truck. No trucks measured during the study exceeded the DOT shipping standard.

Background:

Since 1980, more than 27 million square feet of LLW has been disposed of at the NTS by shallow land burial. Since 1988, the majority of this waste has been generated at other DOE and Department of Defense sites and facilities in the U.S. LLW is shipped in different types of containers or forms: drums, boxes, or large, bulk-type containers like concrete monoliths. The NTS has Waste Acceptance Criteria, and generators must measure the external radiation from LLW trucks before they leave their site to ensure that it is below DOE and DOT regulations for transportation.

What is low-level waste?

Low-level radioactive waste can best be described by what it is not. It is not spent nuclear fuel or high-level waste from reprocessing spent fuel, such as the type proposed to be disposed at Yucca Mountain, Nev. It is not transuranic wastes that have radionuclides heavier than uranium at concentrations greater than 100 nanocuries per gram. Most low-level waste is dominated by radionuclides with short half lives and includes items like construction debris, trash, soil and equipment. Shielding provided by LLW packaging ensures that workers can handle most of this waste without any special equipment or clothing. For truck transportation, any potential risk from LLW would be from gamma radiation as the containers and the walls of the trucks would shield alpha and most beta emissions.

Sources of radiation:

The average individual receives approximately 360 millirem of radiation per year from natural and man-made sources. Natural sources of radiation include: terrestrial sources, like rocks, soil and building materials derived from the earth's crust (like granite) and cosmic rays from outer space. In addition, about 40 millirem of the average person's total exposure emanates from within the body itself. Man-made radiation sources include x-rays and nuclear medicine procedures, as well as consumer products like smoke detectors, building materials, lawn fertilizer and even television sets.

Accounting for

background radiation:

In determining the amount of "net exposure" from the LLW trucks, the PICs ran continuously, whether a truck was in the PIC array or not. When trucks were not present, the gamma radiation levels measured by the PICs were used to obtain background readings at the array site. The background was subtracted from the total reading to obtain the net exposure above background that was a result of the LLW.

Study available to public:

The study is available to the public in public reading rooms and libraries, including the Nevada State Library, UNLV and UNR libraries and the Desert Research Institute's Dina Titus Public Reading Room located at 755 E. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, Nev. 89119. The study also will be available in the near future at the U.S. DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information at www.osti.gov.

About DRI:

A nonprofit, statewide division of the Nevada System of Higher Education, DRI pursues a full-time program of basic and applied environmental research on a local, national, and international scale. Nearly 600 full- and part-time scientists, technicians, and support staff conduct more than 300 research projects at DRI annually. DRI generates $45 million in total revenue consisting predominately of competitively won research contracts and grants. The State of Nevada provides critical funding in support of DRI's administration, operations and maintenance, through the Nevada System of Higher Education's budget. While DRI's portion of the NSHE budget is less than 1 percent, the institute leverages these funds to enhance its competitiveness.

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Pahrump Valley Times
Februrary 8, 2006

Yucca funding an issue - again

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush's $2.77 trillion budget proposal for 2007 seeks $544 million to continue work licensing a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

Congress approved $450 million for the project in 2006 - less than Bush's $650 million request.

The budget for Yucca Mountain was $577 million in 2004 and 2005.

Bush's budget request for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 also proposes $250 million as down payment on a multiyear program to resume commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing, which was abandoned in the 1970s over proliferation fears.

The aim is to reduce volumes of waste from commercial power reactors and develop an international program to control civilian nuclear material.

A series of setbacks - including a required rewrite of radiation safety standards for the repository - has slowed spending on Yucca Mountain. It's not clear when the Energy Department will submit its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the projected opening date has slipped to 2012, at the earliest.

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Pahrump Valley Times
February 09, 2006

Still another dump plan, still lacking full debate on the topic

Dennis Myers

Last week I was cruising the net when I came across a story in the Bridgewater Courier News in New Jersey. The headline read: "Mercury leaving Hillsboro GSA Depot," but it was the subhead that was the grabber: "Officials say mercury being moved to Army site in Nevada."

The story was undated, but a search on Google's news page suggested it had run on Feb. 2.

Mercury coming to a Nevada military dump wasn't something I had encountered in Nevada's news outlets, so I wondered what the heck was going on. Normally we hear a lot about these kinds of things - particularly when, as in this case, more than four thousand tons of toxins are involved.

Nevada's governor's office was on top of it, though. Before I could do much digging, a story appeared on the web page of the Long Island newspaper Newsday (the mercury is located in four different states) that quoted a statement from Governor Guinn's office and a Nevada environmental official saying, thanks, but no thanks for the mercury.

After Guinn's stance reached New Jersey, the Courier News, which had not bothered in its first story to scrutinize whether the proposed transport of mercury out of their community was a good idea, took another look.

The director of a local Jersey environmental group told the newspaper he had concerns about moving the stuff based on a 2003 site inspection where leakage was seen: "We were able to locate beads of mercury that were outside of the containers. Some of these containers were quite old ... I have inquired about its structural stability."

The story was still too narrowly focused. The headline was "Is mercury move safe for Hillsboro?" The safety of other locales - such as communities along the transport route, to say nothing of Nevadans - was never examined, nor was the suitability of storage near Hawthorne in Nevada, where the mercury is supposed to be dumped.

Nevadans have experienced this kind of thing repeatedly - shipment of sludge from California to Nevada landfills, leaky shipments of low level nuclear waste to the Beatty dump in the 1980s, plans for storage of high level waste in the Yucca Mountain dump.

We tend to blame outsiders for this attitude that Nevada is a big sandbox where toxins and unattractive projects like the MX missile system can be dumped. But whenever there's one of these disputes, I'm always reminded of how new is the protective attitude of our leaders toward this state.

While it's not the only reason, one of the reasons other states think of us as a dump is because our leaders encouraged that view for so long.

"We had long ago written off that terrain as wasteland, and today it's blooming with atoms," said Nevada Governor Charles Russell in the 1950s of the federal decision to test atomic weapons in the state. Compare that to the statement this week from Gov. Guinn's office in response to the mercury news: "Nevada is not the nation's dumpsite."

In the 1960s Gov. Paul Laxalt encouraged all things nuclear as economic development and in the 1970s Gov. Mike O'Callaghan attacked Ralph Nader for defending the state from the Atomic Energy Commission's dishonesty. The state's congressional delegation took similar stances. Only Gov. Grant Sawyer (1959-67) was suspicious.

In 1975 the Nevada Legislature passed a resolution asking the feds to put a dump for high-level nuclear wastes in the state.

Little wonder the nation thinks of the state as a place to dump unpleasant things - a "great nuclear sponge," as one Air Force officer put it.

In the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, Nevada leaders told us that the Nevada public supported their efforts to bring all things nuclear to the state for economic development.

It was a difficult proposition to disprove (there were few to no polls and public hearings were not the fixture they are today) and so their claim took on the aura of assumed truth, which discouraged the expression of dissenting views. The needed full debate never took place.

As archival records came out from under seal, we began to learn that there was not the unanimity of opinion they claimed. Nevadans were writing to their elected officials expressing concern, and often for their trouble they were abused and accused.

Martha Bardoli Laird, a Lincoln County resident, wrote to U.S. Senator George Malone of Nevada about her worry over the testing and the fallout, and she got back a letter in which Malone questioned her patriotism. (She lost her seven year-old son to leukemia).

So it's not just the outsiders who targeted Nevada for dumping. Now Nevadans live with the reputation shortsighted Nevada leaders gave it. It's a compelling argument in favor of encouraging the expression of unpopular viewpoints.

Today the assumed truth is in opposition to dumping in the state, and the unpopular view gets little ink or airtime. That's just as foolish as our earlier one-sided debate.

Myers is a veteran capital reporter. His column, "Against the Grain," appears here on Wednesdays.

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Monticello Times
February 09, 2006

Public airs views on waste storage

Most support nuclear power plant´s proposal for dry-cask storage facility

By Eric O´Link
News Editor

The long, many-stepped review process that will decide whether nuclear waste will be stored in Monticello has entered a very public phase.

An administrative law judge oversaw public hearings in Monticello last week, taking comments from a variety of people about whether Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant should be able to construct a drycask storage facility on the plant grounds.

Another public hearing is scheduled next week in the Twin Cities.

Most, but not all, who commented at the two hearings in Monticello spoke in support of granting a certificate of need for Xcel Energy to build waste storage at the power plant.

Xcel, which owns the plant, needs the certificate of need as an official “OK’ from the state to build the storage facility, which is necessary to remove the spent fuel rods in the plant´s refueling pool if the plant is to continue operating beyond 2010. Its current 40-year operating license expires that year, meaning that unless the plant is granted a license extension, it will have to shut down and be decommissioned.

In separate but related actions, Xcel has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license extension to 2030, and has filed a request with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for permission to build a temporary waste storage facility. Draft environmental impact statements on both decisions have been published. Decisions on the operating license and the waste storage facility are expected in 2007.

The state´s process to review the waste storage proposal includes a series of hearings. The public comment portion of those hearings began in Monticello Thursday. About 50 people came to the afternoon hearing, with an evening session more sparsely attended.

Before the public comment portion of the hearing, representatives from each of the formal parties involved stated their positions (see related story).

For the majority of each of Thursday´s hearings, a number of local government officials, businesspeople and community members gave testimony before Administrative Law Judge Steve Mihalchick. Mihalchick, who has been assigned to the case, is independent of the state´s utilities commission, which ultimately makes the decision on allowing waste storage.

Almost all public comments were in favor of allowing waste storage at the plant to keep it operating.

Monticello Mayor Clint Herbst said that, as mayor and a 34-year resident of the community, he gets phone calls about just about everything - but not the power plant. That is a credit to the plant´s employees, he said.

“Not once have I ever heard any complaint or concern about the plant,’ he said. “As far as concern from the public, if there is any out there, I haven´t heard it–and I´ve heard everything.’

Monticello School District Superintendent Jim Johnson and a representative of Monticello-Big Lake Community Hospital also voiced their support of waste storage to keep the plant operating.

Wright County Commissioner Pat Sawatzke, a Monticello resident, spoke on behalf of the county commissioners.

“We do support Xcel Energy´s request to store spent fuel and dry casks at the Monticello facility,’ he said.

He said the commissioners recognized the importance of the plant to the community and the county and to the Midwest.

Sawatzke serves on the Wright County nuclear response team. He said he is familiar with safety training and the biannual drills conducted at the plant and gave the agencies involved a vote of confidence.

“I´ve come to realize that the state, federal government and county are prepared in the unlikely event that there is some sort of incident at the facility,’ he said.

State Rep. Bruce Anderson said that a study by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute showed that nuclear energy is coming back into the spotlight as technology improves. With operating costs of nuclear plants decreasing from the 3.3 cents per hour they once were to 1.2 cents now, countries in Europe are moving ahead with plans to build new nuclear reactors. Anderson also touted the zero emissions factor of nuclear reactors.

“When you look at that, compared to coal or natural gas...the environment comes up as a big plus,’ he said.

Susan Struckness, vice president of Premier Banks Monticello and past chair of the Monticello Chamber of Commerce, also spoke in favor of waste storage.

“We strongly feel the nuclear plant should be granted their life extension,’ she said.

She added that losing the plant would have an economic effect on the community - Xcel Energy pays between 30 and 40 percent of the city´s taxes.

“The taxes Xcel pays are extremely important as we continue to reside in one of the fastest growing corridors– I-94–in the Midwest,’ Struckness said.

She also said that the city would lose its wintering population of trumpeter swans, should the plant be decommissioned. More than 1,000 swans flock to Monticello each winter because the Mississippi River does not freeze, with the plant´s warm water discharge upstream. Struckness said the swans are responsible for bringing 10,000 tourists to Monticello annually.

Larry Newell, general manager for Liberty Paper Mill in Becker, said his business relies on the low-cost energy provided by Xcel. He, too, voiced support of the storage facility.

“We rely on safe, low-cost energy to stay viable and competitive,’ he said.

Former Monticello City Council member and lifelong Monticello resident Roger Carlson said Xcel Energy and the plant had been good for Monticello, and Monticello had been good for Xcel.

“Xcel is a very important member of the Monticello business community,’ he said. “Monticello would not be the same without Xcel Energy.’

Dan Lemm, a Monticello Township resident who lives about three-quarters of a mile from the plant, said he had many questions about the storage facility, but that he was for it.

“I think it´s good for our community, the state and the nation,’ Lemm said. “I think of Xcel as a good neighbor. They´ve done a lot for our community.’

One of the people who spoke at Thursday´s hearings, however, was vocal in her opposition to the waste storage.

Diane Rother, a resident of Eden Prairie, made a lengthy case as to why the waste storage was a bad idea. Among the points she touched on, she noted that the federal government had not yet fulfilled its responsibility to take the waste; that the transportation of the waste posed an undue risk; that waste storage might increase cancer rates, as some studies had shown a correlation; and that though the storage casks were supposed to have an integrity of 200 years, the waste would be dangerous for thousands of years.

“Are we going to continue producing nuclear waste for the sake of turning on a light bulb?’ Rother asked. “My question is, what if the light goes out because of a nuclear accident?’

The opportunity for public comment is not over yet. The public hearing will reconvene at 1 and 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, at the Public Utilities Commission´s offices, 121 Seventh Pl. E., Suite 350, in St. Paul.

Judge Mihalchick is also accepting written comments through Friday, March 3. Comments may be mailed to the judge at the Office of Administrative Hearings, 100 Washington Ave. S., Suite 1700, Minneapolis, Minn., 55362.

The next step in the Public Utilities Commission´s process is an evidentiary hearing, which is scheduled to be Feb. 21-24 in St. Paul, where the groups who have formally intervened in the review process will be able to cross-examine witnesses.

Jim Alders, Xcel´s manager of regulatory projects, welcomed people´s comments at public hearings.

“We´re happy to have you here,’ he said, “and encourage you to speak.’

Xcel, intervenors make arguments

Many people spoke at Thursday´s public hearings regarding Xcel Energy´s proposal to keep radioactive waste at a storage facility at Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant.

Most comments were made by members of the public–local government officials, businesspeople and homeowners.

But those parties formally involved in the review process–Xcel Energy and the three groups challenging the utility´s request to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for a waste storage facility–also stated their cases.

Jim Alders, Xcel Energy´s manager of regulatory projects, offered a brief summary of the plant´s current situation. He explained the plant´s application for license renewal and its need for waste storage:

Because the federal government´s Yucca Mountain waste storage site in Nevada has yet to be completed, further operation of the plant would require a temporary waste storage site. Xcel plans to put the radioactive spent fuel rods into 20-ton dry, sealed steel canisters, and place those canisters within a large concrete vault that would be built near the plant´s reactor building. Such a storage facility is likely in Monticello´s future, as Alders says one would be needed whether the plant continued operating or had to shut down in 2010.

“In the foreseeable future, we see the need for dry spent fuel storage, regardless,’ he said.

Alders said storage technology similar to what was proposed in Monticello is in use at 28 other sites across the nation, totaling 300 casks.

“It´s a proven technology that´s been used for well over a decade,’ he said.

If the plant shuts down, he continued, it would have to be replaced, as its 600 megawatts of continuous base load electricity provide about 10 percent of the energy for Xcel´s customers in the five-state area. Xcel looked at replacing some of Monticello´s electricity with energy from renewable sources, he said, but the energy was too expensive. A Minnesota Department of Commerce analysis of various electricity generation sources has estimated that keeping the Monticello plant running would save about $750 million over decommissioning the plant and turning to new electricity sources.

Also, Alders said, renewable energy sources were not reliable enough.

“Renewables can´t play the same role that a base load power plant like Monticello can,’ he said. “That´s not to say we don´t support renewables.’

He noted that Xcel is one of the largest purchasers of wind energy in the United States.

Three Minnesota organizations have formally intervened in the waste storage application process. The North American Water Office, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA) and Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ME3) have provided testimony and will be participating in the evidentiary hearings later this month. They will cross-examine witnesses, in an attempt to convince the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission not to grant Xcel a certificate of need.

Representatives from the organizations also spoke during Thursday´s meeting.

Tom Harlan, an attorney representing MCEA and ME3, said his groups´ concern was to balance “the true costs’ of waste storage in Monticello.

“Nuclear energy...is not just clean, safe energy,’ he said. “Like everything else, it has a byproduct.’

Harlan noted that although the federal government has accepted responsibility for nuclear waste, no federal storage option for waste yet exists. Neither are reprocessing the waste, or an initiative for a privately-funded storage area in Utah, yet viable options.

“The federal government has just issued another unfunded mandate,’ he said. “The question is, what are the citizens of Monticello and of Minnesota...going to do about it?’

George Crocker, the executive director of the North American Water Office, said his organization´s goal was to focus on the relationship between energy development, economic development, the environment and social justice issues.

“Our role...is to help the decision-makers and the public understand that, in our perspective, (waste storage at Monticello) is a terrible mistake,’ he said.

Crocker acknowledged “the tremendous economic benefits’ that the power plant brings to Monticello and electricity generation. But he argued that the costs of possible releases of radiation that accompany waste storage and the operation of nuclear plants would not be worth the money saved by continuing to operate Monticello.

“We are very disturbed at how...dramatically understated the costs and the risks of dry storage are,’ he said.

He added that managing the waste, which remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years, was geological in scope.

“Humans don´t know how to manage this stuff,’ he said.

Harlan also offered a response to the often-heard comment in Monticello that the power plant is “a good neighbor.’

“If they really, truly want to be a great neighbor,’ Harlan said, “they´re going to think long-term about what is going to be done with these rods.’

Ways to comment

Want to voice your thoughts on waste storage at Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant?

• Attend the second day of public hearings. The hearings are scheduled at 1 and 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission offices, 121 Seventh Pl. E., Suite 350, in St. Paul.

• Write Administrative Law Judge Steve Mihalchick, Office of Administrative Hearings, 100 Washington Ave. S., Suite 1700, Minneapolis, MN, 55401-2138.

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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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