Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, February 23, 2006

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, February 23, 2006
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Reuters
February 23, 2006

US nuke industry wants no Yucca waste dump limit

By Chris Baltimore

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration should remove federal limits on the amount of nuclear waste that could be stored at a proposed waste dump in the Nevada desert, U.S. nuclear industry lobbyists said on Thursday.

The government's plan to build an underground waste dump in the Nevada desert about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is more than 10 years behind schedule and continues to be plagued by scientific foul-ups and political stonewalling.

In coming weeks, the Bush administration is expected to send its latest legislative proposal to Congress, with the aim of moving the stalled plan forward. Republican Pete Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and a nuclear industry proponent, will lead that effort in Congress.

Officials at the Nuclear Energy Institute, which lobbies for the utility owners of the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants, say the administration should remove the 77,000-ton limit (70,000 metric tons) on waste allowed at the site.

"This capacity limit is something that needs to be dealt with," Steve Kraft, the group's senior director of used fuel management, told reporters, calling the current number an "artificial limit" that was driven by politics, not science.

Kraft declined to say what the new limit should be, but pointed to Energy Department studies that show that Yucca Mountain could hold up to 115.5 tons (105 metric tons).

At the rate that waste is stacking up at U.S. nuclear plants, Yucca Mountain could be fully subscribed when it opens, Kraft said.

Spent fuel from the nation's nuclear plants -- which supply about 20 percent of U.S. electricity -- is piling up, with over 50,000 tons (45,500 metric tons) of it stored at over 100 temporary locations in 39 states.

The administration should also freeze a per-kilowatt fee that nuclear operators pay into a federal fund, and waive rules that require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to certify that nuclear waste can be moved to a federal storage site like Yucca Mountain by a certain date, Kraft said.

Such rule changes will clear the way for the nine to 12 new nuclear plants that the Nuclear Energy Institute expects to be built in the United States over the next 20 years, Kraft said.

Despite delays, the Yucca dump should open by 2025, Kraft said. "The scientific basis hasn't changed," he said. "The (Energy Department) has run into a series of bumps in the road that they need to straighten out."

According to Energy Department officials, the administration's proposal would ensure that funds Congress set aside to build Yucca Mountain are secure. Opponents of the plan -- including Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid -- have attempted to strangle the project by cutting off funds.

The administration proposal would also reserve about 147,000 acres of federally owned land to build a railway corridor to transport spent fuel to the Yucca Mountain site.

"The draft legislation is still being tweaked," an Energy Department spokesman said. "When appropriate, (we) will submit it for congressional consideration."

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Energy Institute has hired Alex Flint, the Senate energy panel's staff director, who will become a senior vice president for governmental affairs later this year.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 23, 2006

Yucca feeling heat on humidity

Stop-work order prompted by failure to calibrate gauges

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Another problem has surfaced in the scientific work that is supposed to ensure the safety of entombing the nation's most lethal nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain.

A spokesman for the project confirmed Wednesday that concerns by nuclear regulators about flawed humidity measurements in corrosion-rate studies of the metal waste disposal packages have prompted them to order a halt to that work.

The stop-work order took effect Jan. 30, about three weeks after inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's safeguards office wrote to the project's licensing director to say that the work was based on humidity gauges that weren't calibrated. Project contractor Bechtel SAIC had claimed that the work was "technically sound" with "defensible results."

The revelation comes nearly a year after the Energy and Interior departments revealed that several U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists had exchanged e-mails discussing "fudge factors" and possible falsification of quality assurance documents on water infiltration research.

Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency and a leading critic of the government's effort to dispose of spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said the latest revelation means the project's entire quality assurance program is flawed.

"This strikes right in the heart of the whole corrosion issue. If some of the data is suspect, it's huge," Loux said.

Steve Frishman, a full-time consultant for the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said that if they used improperly calibrated or uncalibrated equipment, government scientists might have underestimated corrosion rates of the nickel alloy, known as Alloy-22, that will be the outer cover of the stainless-steel waste packages. The packages are supposed to contain 77,000 tons of spent fuel assemblies and highly radioactive defense wastes in a maze of tunnels inside the mountain.

"They did not only not follow their quality assurance measures, they also didn't follow the scientific procedures for the experimental work. ... It isn't science if quality assurance isn't there," Frishman said.

"Now we have the corrosion rate of the container in question, and because of the USGS stuff we have the infiltration of water in question, and these are two critical pieces of the repository design," he said.

An investigation into the uncalibrated instruments used in corrosion experiments is under way to determine the root of the problem and what corrective actions must be taken, said Allen Benson, a Department of Energy spokesman for the Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas.

"We take these quality assurance concerns very seriously, and we will look into and address all the concerns raised by the NRC," Benson said.

He said the investigation will focus on high-temperature humidity instruments called "Vaisala probes," and "any other instruments at or beyond documented calibration ranges."

In August, observers from the NRC staff examined an audit by a Bechtel SAIC team into the quality assurance of waste package corrosion experiments conducted between 2002 and 2005 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, 45 miles east of San Francisco.

The NRC observers found that:

• Experiments were started without calibrated instruments.

• Calibration was not documented.

• Lawrence Livermore scientists planned to conduct an "in-house" experiment to calibrate the probes and qualify data "after experiments were completed."

A Lawrence Livermore spokesman deferred comment Wednesday to DOE's Office of Repository Development.

Benson said the investigation is expected to be completed in late March. Until then, project officials won't know whether any or all of the Lawrence Livermore work on the corrosion studies will have to be redone.

Sandia National Laboratories currently is redoing the infiltration model, anticipating that the lack of traceable quality assurance documentation of the scientific work will lead to failure to pass the scrutiny of a license application review by the NRC.

As for the corrosion experiments, Frishman said lack of calibration of the humidity instruments would skew results of how dust containing minerals and salts could accelerate the corrosion of the waste packages' outer shell. Some of the experiments were exploring the impact of "deliquescence," in which some minerals and salts soak water vapor form the air, creating a corrosive solution.

At a Feb. 1 technical review panel meeting in Las Vegas, scientists estimated that corrosion will take its toll on waste packages after they have been in the mountain for 40,000 to 60,000 years. Water moving through the mountain at first would be driven away by heat from the decaying waste, but eventually moisture would condense and infiltrate the tunnels, carrying off deadly, long-lived radioactive materials.

While the news was breaking about the calibration issues Wednesday, state Attorney General George Chanos and members of the statewide environmental group Citizen Alert met in Las Vegas with Minnesota legislators who wanted to hear the state's concerns on Yucca Mountain before touring the site today.

"Our new attorney general said as long as he is attorney general, Yucca Mountain is not going to happen," said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert.

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Deseret News
February 23, 2006

PFS gets N-storage license

By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON — Private Fuel Storage officially had its license in hand as of Tuesday night, but several steps still need to be fulfilled before nuclear waste would come to Utah.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs needs to approve the lease for 820 acres of land on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County and the Bureau of Land Management needs to approve the use of land to build a transfer station to take waste off trucks and move it to the nuclear waste storage site.

William H. Ruland, deputy director of Licensing and Inspection Directorate in the Spent Fuel Project Office at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, sent a letter to John Parkyn, chairman of the board of Private Fuel Storage, L.L.C., formally approving the license. The commission had given a draft license to PFS last week for it to review and return. It expires in 2026.

PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said the BIA approved the lease in 1997 before the consortium of nuclear utilities even applied for a license, but it was on the condition the license be approved. Now that it has been, she said it should be able to sign off on the lease.

BLM is conducting a public comment period right now on whether allowing PFS to use public land would be in the public's best interest. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has encouraged every Utahn to write a letter saying it is not in the best interest because moving nuclear waste through the state to an area near an Air Force base is a bad idea.

Martin said PFS has been marketing the project to nuclear utilities for years but now the effort will continue.

"It is hard to sign on customers until you have a license," Martin said.

PFS is designed to temporarily store 40,000 tons of nuclear waste until the government opens the federal nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Several of PFS's financial backers suspended their support in December, saying they would continue to support Yucca Mountain.

E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com

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Deseret News
February 23, 2006

N-storage license in hand, PFS faces several more steps

BIA needs to approve lease and BLM must sign off on land use

By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON — Private Fuel Storage officially had its license in hand as of Tuesday night, but several steps still need to be fulfilled before nuclear waste would come to Utah.

Martin said PFS has been marketing the project to nuclear utilities for years but now the effort will continue.

"It is hard to sign on customers until you have a license," Martin said.

E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com

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PR Newswire
February 23, 2006

Prairie Island Tribal Council Tours Proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository

Minnesota Tribe Learns Yucca Mountain Project Status Firsthand

YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- The Prairie Island Indian Community Tribal Council today toured the proposed national nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain to learn about the project's current status. As one of the closest communities in the country to a temporary nuclear waste storage site, Prairie Island wants the federal government to make good on its commitment to move the nuclear waste to a safe facility.

"Storing the nation's nuclear waste in a remote, militarily-secure facility seems to be a better alternative than leaving it where it sits now; next to exposed communities such as ours," said Tribal Council President Audrey Bennett. "After the tour, the Tribal Council was struck by the facility's remoteness. "There's nothing around it for as far as the eye can see. At Prairie Island we can't look out our living room window without being reminded of the radioactive waste stored next to our reservation."

The Yucca Mountain project is routinely under-funded by Congress. Of the $750 million paid annually by ratepayers into the nuclear waste storage fund, only $100 million was allocated for the Yucca Mountain program last year. Recently, some members of Congress have suggested that the project be reconsidered altogether.

"We're extremely discouraged by the lack of progress," said Vicky Winfrey, Prairie Island Tribal Council vice president. "It seems foolish to continue producing nuclear waste without any way to dispose of it. There should be resolution on Yucca Mountain before the industry proceeds with new nuclear power plants."

"Members of Congress who want to abandon this project are wrong to suggest that leaving nuclear waste next to communities such as ours is better than storing it at remote, militarily-secure Yucca Mountain," said Ronald Johnson, Tribal Council Assistant Secretary/Treasurer.

The federal government took ownership of the nation's nuclear waste in 1982 with establishment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and in 1987 directed the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to focus only on Yucca Mountain as the potential repository for the waste. The DOE was to have the facility open by 2010 but its target completion date now is unknown and in doubt.

In Minnesota, Xcel Energy's nuclear waste storage site is located just 600 yards from the Prairie Island Indian Community and includes 19 above ground, dry-cask storage units of highly radioactive nuclear waste. The tribe has been fighting to have the nuclear waste removed since 1994 when the state first allowed Xcel Energy to store the waste near its reservation.

The Prairie Island Indian Community is a federally recognized Indian nation located 50 miles southeast of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul and near the cities of Red Wing and Hastings, Minn.

Source The Prairie Island Indian Community

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Las Vegas SUN
February 21, 2006

Nevada tribe returns to U.N. to claim racism in treaty violations

By Tom Gardner
Associated Press

RENO, Nev. (AP) - An American Indian tribe will return to Geneva this month to renew their claims before a United Nations committee that the U.S. government unconstitutionally stole its ancestral land.

"We see no way we can continue internally in the United States so we're taking our argument across the water to the United Nations, and the United Nations is listening," Raymond Yowell, chief of the Western Shoshone National Council said Tuesday.

He said Western Shoshone tribes lost the ears of every president from Jimmy Carter on after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that a treaty approved when Abraham Lincoln was president gave the government trusteeship over tribal lands.

"They did not need to talk to us any more," he said.

The tribes turned to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 2001, arguing before it in Geneva that the U.S. policy of "gradual encroachment" after the treaty was enacted in 1863 amounted to racism against an indigenous people.

The committee responded in August 2005 that the tribes had raised questions that deserved answers from the U.S. government, which has not responded.

"The U.N. can bring pressures on the United States because of the shameful findings," attorney Robert Hager said at a news conference Tuesday.

The Indian Claims Commission of 1946 determined the lands had been taken during settlement of the West and awarded $26 million to the tribe based on the 1872 value of 24 million acres. The money has been collecting interest since 1979.

The sides don't agree on the amount of acreage involved, with estimates from about 24 million to more than 60 million. The Western Shoshone ancestral lands ranged from the Snake River Valley in Idaho to Salt Lake Valley in Utah, across most of eastern and central Nevada, and into Death Valley and the Mojave Desert in California.

Nor do the parties agree on the number of Indians eligible for the settlement - from about 6,000 to more than 10,000.

A bill signed by President Bush in July 2004 gave approval to distributing more than $145 million as compensation after some Shoshones voted to accept the distribution in a disputed election.

"The tribe twice has voted decisively in favor of the distribution," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid, a proponent of the bill. "The senator will continue to work with the Interior Department to assure a fair and expeditious distribution under the law."

Yowell has asked a federal court to say whether tribal members would be giving up their treaty rights if they accept the payments.

Hager, who represents the Western Shoshone, said the United States never established a right to the indigenous land and was granted only limited access under the Treaty of Ruby Valley.

"Unlike all other Indians, they never signed a treaty giving up their land. This government has refused to accept the legal concept of that treaty."

Yowell added that while his tribe has adhered to the terms of the 1863 pact, the government has not.

"Yucca Mountain is not in the treaty. Mining is not in the treaty," he said, calling both a "violation of Mother Earth."

"That's not allowable. It's against our religious beliefs," he said.

Tribal elder Carrie Dann, who with her late sister Mary, has been a focal point of the quarter-century fight over the Shoshone land, said enforcing the treaty was an unconstitutional act.

"It's racism as far as I'm concerned," she said. "If we have the same rights, why don't we practice these rights for all people?"

Yowell cautioned that cyanide runoff from mining operations and the potential threat of Yucca Mountain aren't just a concern for the indigenous people.

"Radiation doesn't respect the color of peoples' skin," he said.

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Pahrump Valley Times
February 22, 2006

Community Viewpoints

Readers respond to Miller's Yucca opinion

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Screw Nevada

Editor: Please print this response to Paul J. Miller's diatribe against those of us who oppose the government's development of Yucca Mountain into a nuclear waste repository (Yucca Mountain essential to the nation, PVT Feb. 15).

We probably include the vast majority of Nevadans as well as a substantial number of the rest of Americans, especially if they knew the true costs associated with the project. In fact, it's my personal belief that the only Nevadans who support the Yucca Mountain project are those who either are, or who are expecting to be, receiving direct financial benefit from the project.

I don't quite see Mr. Miller's logic in associating us with Hitler, Saddam, Nazi propaganda films, terrorists, etc., etc. I also fail to see the relationship between Yucca Mountain and a strong America.

I'm sure nuclear energy will be part of our energy scene for some time in the future if they learn to clean up their act. America would be stronger (and richer) if we pulled together to develop new energy sources that have already been identified, but the government and "big power" continue to drag their feet in favor of special interests like the "Nuke Lobby" and other power providers who sweeten their coffers at election time.

The Yucca Mountain project is just another example of too little, too late. In the 1970s, when President Jimmy Carter made the administrative decision not to reprocess nuclear waste, it probably wasn't a bad idea. He hoped to stop nuclear proliferation, as a byproduct of reprocessing waste is the production of fissionable material, useable in the construction of destructive devices (such as bombs). Nowadays, when any Third World dictator, terrorist group, or just plain nut with two nickels to rub together can buy a ready-made bomb (or figure out how to make one over the Internet for free) the idea loses its original merit.

Since every other nuclear power in the world is reprocessing its waste and reusing it to generate more power, why are we the only nation in the world storing waste?

From the beginning Yucca Mountain has been a "Screw Nevada" project. It has been proven time and again that the design is flawed. There have been numerous articles in your paper and others about the "phony science" and "Ether engineering" that went on to generate this project.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has stopped the project time and again for design safety violations. The only value to Yucca Mountain is to give traditional power providers another few years to gouge the users. That seems to me to be a terribly high price to pay.

Arden Houser

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Miller's 'scary'

Paul Miller's self-appointed guardian of our society column was kind of scary. The fact that I'm against the Department of Energy putting 77,000 tons of the most poisonous substance ever know to man into Yucca Mountain makes me anti-American.

Mr. Miller wrote that the waste might have to be stored for a few years; Popular Science magazine said that for one drop on your little finger to not kill you, 250,000 years must pass.

Mr. Miller is not concerned at all that the waste should be transported by rail from all across the country, he has obviously not read the papers in October, November and December of the train wrecks in Nevada and California alone.

The proponents of nuclear waste storage in Nevada are the people that are creating it in their own back yards and want it out of there. They want to turn Nevada into their garbage dump. It's far cheaper for them to move it here and not be worried about it than to recycle the same as France and other countries do.

Mr. Miller probably hasn't listened to Harry Reid's proposals for wind farms and solar collectors. I guess free energy is not profitable enough for big business.

Envisioning a solar collector powering a steam generator to grind tires to be used as a replacement for the current asphalt doesn't enter into Mr. Miller's ideas of patriotism.

As far as his comments about our troops defending the American way of life, I don't recall Saddam Hussein ever doing anything to this country. We are at war for the control of oil and nothing else.

If terrorism were really the reason, we would have Osama Bin Laden on trial right now. The current administration has us in debt that won't be paid for in the next three generations. They have no problem finding money for a war in Iraq, but can't take care of the homeless, senior citizens, mentally impaired, teachers, prescription drugs, or secure our borders, not just from illegal aliens, but terrorists from around the world. I find Mr. Miller's flag waving an obscene joke.

Richard A. Brown

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Christian Science Monitor
February 22, 2006

Is used nuclear reactor fuel headed for the reservation?

By Faye Bowers
Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, Utah – It's a question that has dogged the nuclear industry since the 1970s: What can it do with spent fuel rods?

The radioactive waste, eventually slated for permanent storage at a still unfinished site in Nevada, has been piling up, mostly at the nation's 65 commercial nuclear power plants. Late Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave its blessing to a solution: a storage site on a barren patch of a reservation in Utah that's home to some 25 native Americans, next to a proving ground for chemical and biological weapons, and near an Air Force bombing range.

The NRC licensed what would be the nation's largest - and only private - nuclear-waste storage facility. A consortium of utility companies would store for up to 40 years some 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel for an industry rapidly running out of space.

But the plan has powerful opponents, including Utah's entire congressional delegation and its governor, who have developed a multipronged attack plan to try to beat back this latest effort.

"Our position is this represents public policy at its absolute worst," says Mike Lee, general counsel to Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. "What these people want to do is take spent nuclear fuel and put it above ground in casks in a valley that's located 40 miles immediately upwind from Utah's only population center. To make matters much worse, this aboveground, open-air facility lies immediately under the low-altitude flight path of 7,000 F-16s a year en route to a bombing range."

But it is precisely those conditions that make the reservation land unfit for most anything else, says Leon Bear, chairman of the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation. In addition, Utah has outlawed gambling in the state, so the Goshutes can't open a casino. That is one reason the tribe leased 840 acres of its sprawling reservation for an undisclosed sum to Private Fuel Storage (PFS), the consortium that would house the nuclear fuel rods.

"What do they think we can do, sell bottled water?" Mr. Bear asks.

Standing on a hill, where small mounds of snow-covered Great Basin sage and rabbit bush stretch as far as the eye can see, he explains his vision. It includes the return to this 18,000-acre reservation of many of his small band of 123 Goshutes. They would join the 25 or so who currently live here because the deal would provide enough money for decent housing, education, a cultural center, and healthcare - and spin off several jobs as well.

The tribe's efforts to land a nuclear storage facility date back to the late 1980s, when Mr. Bear's father, Richard, and uncle, Lawrence, began to look into the process and the risks involved.

Mainly with grants from the Department of Energy, and financial backing from PFS, which is also paying most of the tribe's legal fees for pushing this project, Bear and a few others from the tribe have toured spent nuclear storage facilities in England, France, Sweden, and Japan. They've also visited the two federal aboveground storage facilities, in Idaho and Minnesota.

But the state's public servants say they worry that, with all the delays and problems involved with opening the permanent storage site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, the proposed temporary storage site at Skull Valley may become a permanent one. And they are pursuing multiple options to derail the project.

For example, Rep. Rob Bishop (R) of Utah was able to include a measure to declare lands around the reservation national wilderness area in the Defense Authorization bill that passed in December. That effectively stops PFS from building a rail spur into Skull Valley Reservation from the main railroad parallel to Interstate 80, about 33 miles north of the reservation. That will force PFS to find an alternative transportation method, which will require the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issue rights of way. The governor's office plans to lobby the BLM so it won't issue them.

Moreover, the state has one more chance to stop the effort by appealing to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, according to Mr. Lee of the governor's office. The BIA must approve the lease agreement between PFS and the reservation.

Such moves are only the latest by opponents, which include environmentalists and even members of the Goshute tribe. They have waged a protracted nine-year battle to prevent the reservation from taking possession of the dry-storage casks containing spent nuclear fuel, and don't plan to give up their fight anytime soon.

The Bears, for their part, say they are patient, and that this effort is only a continuation of the Goshutes being good neighbors, good hosts. When they've been asked to host other government projects, such as a rocket motor testing program, or the storage of solid waste from Salt Lake City, they've done it.

"Whenever we've been asked to go to war for this country, or to host something, we have been willing to help as long as they have asked," says Tomy Bear, Leon Bear's wife.

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Reuters
February 22, 2006

NRC grants license for private nuclear waste site

LOS ANGELES, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a construction and operating license to Private Fuel Storage LLC for a nuclear waste storage site in Utah, the NRC said on Wednesday.

Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of eight utility companies, still must secure financing and approval from other federal agencies before it can build the spent fuel storage facility in Skull Valley, Utah, about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City on the Goshute Indians reservation.

"The facility is intended for temporary above-ground storage, in large cylindrical casks, of up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from U.S. commercial nuclear power plants," the NRC said a in a press statement. It said it issued the license on Tuesday.

PFS is to be an interim option to store spent nuclear fuel until a permanent site is in place. But plans to open the federal Yucca Mountain project in Nevada are uncertain.

In 2002, Congress approved of the Department of Energy's proposal to store 77,000 tons of used nuclear fuel, currently stored at 126 sites around the nation, at Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

However, Yucca still faces numerous challenges and will take years before it opens, if it ever does.

PFS needs approval of other federal agencies including the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Surface Transportation Board.

PFS has said it would take about two years to build the facility with the earliest in-service date in 2008.

Members of the consortium, who have wavered in their support of the PFS project over the years, have included subsidiaries of Xcel Energy Inc. (XEL.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Dairyland Electric Cooperative, American Electric Power Co Inc. (AEP.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Edison International (EIX.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Southern Co. (SO.N: Quote, Profile, Research), FirstEnergy Corp. (FE.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Entergy Corp. (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and FPL Group Inc. (FPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Once the fuel is stored at Skull Valley, it would still be owned by the utilities that used it.

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Oak Ridger
February 22, 2006

New Y-12 leader welcomed

Reception is held for new Y-12 president

Ellen Rogers
Oak Ridger Staff
ellen.rogers@oakridger.com

BWXT Y-12 welcomed its new president and general manager, George Dials, with a reception attended by local dignitaries and community leaders at Pollard Technology Conference Center Tuesday evening.

Dials, who officially replaced acting general manager Steve Liedle on Monday, has nearly 30 years of experience in energy with over 15 years focused on the nuclear industry.

He has operated a private hazardous waste disposal facility and led and licensed a low-level radioactive waste treatment and storage facility as president and chief operating officer of Waste Control Specialists LLC. He oversaw all management and operations contractor design, engineering and scientific studies of the Yucca Mountain Project as president and general manager of TRW Environmental Safety Systems Inc. Dials has also served in management positions with ICF Kaiser International Inc. and as manager of the Carlsbad Area Office for DOE, managed the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant project and the National Transuranic Waste Program. Assistant manager of the Idaho Operations Office in Idaho Falls and U.S. Army nuclear weapons specialist are titles he has held as well. His military decorations include a Silver Star and Bronze Star for Valor, awarded for combat operations in Vietnam.

"I'm very impressed," said Randy Spickard, director of National Security Programs, of Dials. "He met with the entire BWXT Y-12 staff today and laid out his vision for leadership. It's very much in line with the way most of us like things run. I look forward to working with him and his fresh perspective."

East Tennessee Economic Council chairman Tom Ballard found Dials to be "very engaging and personable, as is his wife."

"This is a man who knows how to make a good first impression," Ballard said.

Mayor David Bradshaw agreed, saying he looked forward to the couple becoming members of the Oak Ridge community.

"We're very happy to be here," Dials said. "This is a very important facility, and I'm very pleased to join an already excellent management team and continue the programs they have in place."

After completing travel commitments, Dials will return to Oak Ridge on March 1. He and his wife are currently looking at housing in the area.

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Bloomberg
February 21, 2006

Bush Says High Oil Prices Make Other Sources Viable (Update1)

President George W. Bush said the rising cost of crude oil is making the development of energy from agricultural waste and other alternative sources economically viable.

Higher oil prices over the last year are acting ``like hidden taxes'' on U.S. consumers that can be removed only by developing alternatives to imported petroleum.

``In order for us to achieve this national goal of becoming less dependent on foreign sources of oil, we've got to spend money'' on research, Bush said at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an Energy Department research facility in Golden, Colorado, involved in investigating solar power and agricultural waste and hydrogen as usable power sources.

A former Texas oilman, Bush visited three states in two days this week touting the benefits of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, the future of solar energy, electricity generated by wind and expanding nuclear power. He's seeking to address public concerns about rising oil prices, which are up about 20 percent from a year ago, by focusing on efforts to develop alternatives to gasoline power.

Bush's remarks come at a time when oil supplies are unstable from some corners of the world market. Oil prices rose in New York today after rebel attacks in Nigeria cut by about 20 percent output from Africa's largest producer. Earlier this week, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his country's natural gas is for the domestic market and South America, and not the U.S. Crude oil for March delivery rose $1.27 to $61.15 a barrel at 11.25 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Oil Addiction

In his State of the Union address to Congress Jan. 31, Bush said the U.S. is ``addicted'' to imported oil and he set a goal to cut by 75 percent oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. To help the transition, his 2007 budget proposal seeks funding for development in energy from hydrogen fuel cells, coal, solar power and wind, as well as money to advance the use of fuel additives made from corn and farm waste.

Reversing a 29-year-old government policy, Bush earlier this month proposed to reprocess the waste produced by nuclear reactors in the U.S. and other countries.

His 2007 budget proposal, released earlier this month, requests $250 million for development of a process to reduce and recycle radioactive waste. The process would foster expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. by reducing by 80 percent the amount of waste sent to the storage site in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Bush is also backing exploration of offshore oil and natural gas resources and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Cutbacks

The research facility that Bush visited today announced on Feb. 7 that trim 32 workers -- eight researchers and 24 support staff out of about 930 workers -- because of budget cuts. On the eve of Bush's arrival in Colorado, the Energy Department notified U.S. Senator Wayne Allard, a Republican of Colorado, that the funds for the workers would be shifted from ``unused funding from other accounts'' and the fired workers should be recalled, according to a statement from Allard.

In the panel discussion in front of about 200 NREL employees, Bush acknowledged ``mixed signals'' when it comes to funding for NREL. ``I think we've cleaned up those discrepancies,'' Bush said.

Funding for the facility for the current fiscal year is about $175 million, down from a peak of $230 million in 2003. Bush asked for $190 million for NREL in his 2007 budget request.

Spending on energy in the U.S. rose last year to 8.6 percent of gross domestic product last year, up from 7.4 percent of GDP in 2004, according to government estimates. In a report released earlier this month, the White House said ``we are likely to face tight crude oil markets for a number of years.''

One way to alleviate the strain, Bush said, is to use other sources of fuel for the nation's cars and trucks. In addition to using agricultural products and waste to power internal combustion engines, the president said the big ``breakthrough'' will be development of new, more powerful batteries.

``This is coming,'' Bush said. ``It's going to require more research dollars.''

Brendan Murray in Milwaukee and Michigan at brmurray@bloomberg.net

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Waste News
February 21, 2006

Energy Dept. report supports earlier infiltration modeling work

Feb. 21 -- The U.S. Department of Energy has released a report supporting the technical soundness of infiltration modeling work performed by U.S. Geologic Survey employees studying the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project.

The U.S. Geologic Survey studied how water seepage might impact plans for building a high-level radioactive waste repository in the Nevada desert. E-mails discovered last year between some USGS employees revealed that they apparently failed to follow certain quality assurance procedures and may have falsified information in conducting their work.

Despite the concerns raised by the e-mails, independent scientific conclusions support the USGS employees´ findings, according to the Energy Department report and department officials.

"We are committed to opening Yucca Mountain based only on sound science," said Paul Golan, acting director of the Energy Department´s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "The work that we do must be without question or qualification, and this report confirms that we are on the right path forward."

Despite finding that the U.S. Geologic Survey conclusions are valid, the Department of Energy plans to replace or supplement the infiltration modeling work as needed, according to department officials.

The technical report is available online at www.ocrwm.doe.gov.

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Asbury Park Press
February 21, 2006

Recycling nuclear waste getting fresh attention

BY James McGovern

Without much hoopla, an important nuclear technology that was shelved in the United States almost 30 years ago is on the verge of a revival. The recycling of spent fuel that's in storage at nuclear power plant sites around the country — including more than 1,700 metric tons in New Jersey — holds the promise of making further use of a valuable energy resource, while providing a long-term solution for the permanent disposal of nuclear waste.

This year could be pivotal for nuclear recycling, which would be highly appropriate. Utilities in eight states are gearing up to build 16 nuclear power plants to meet the nation's growing need for electricity. Since nuclear plants generate large amounts of "base-load" power without emitting carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases, they play a pivotal role in the critically important effort to stop global warming.

The possibility of recycling spent fuel, which contains uranium and plutonium that can be used again to make more nuclear fuel for electricity production, is being taken seriously. The Bush administration is requesting nearly $250 million in the coming fiscal year to demonstrate and deploy technologies for recycling, along with advanced new reactors that can burn the recycled spent fuel.

Recycling would remove about half the material from nuclear waste, dramatically decreasing storage costs and, in effect, doubling the capacity of a waste repository like Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The use of recycling — known in the nuclear industry as reprocessing — would mean that a second and third repository would not have to be built, at least for many decades — resulting in an enormous savings.

On the other hand, without recycling, Yucca Mountain will reach its storage limit — 70,000 tons — with waste produced by 2010 from existing nuclear power plants. But recycling would reduce the volume and toxicity of waste stored at Yucca Mountain, enabling far more waste to be kept there. Thus, it's essential that we complete the Yucca Mountain repository, so that waste from commercial reactors and the defense program can be disposed of in the underground facility.

Critics question the economics of recycling. It may not be competitive with the cost of the natural uranium we are using today. But a rapid growth in nuclear power generation around the world — which is gaining momentum — could drive up the cost of uranium in years to come. And when we factor in the cost of additional permanent storage facilities like Yucca Mountain, recycling could look much better economically. In any event, we need to have that option developed and available for the time when it does become competitive.

Several other countries are already recycling their used fuel into new fuel, including Great Britain, France and Japan. They have decades of experience in proving its safety and reliability.

Certainly the United States, which has more nuclear power plants than any other nation and a strong research capability, can develop a new technology for recycling that's economic and secure, from the point of view of nuclear proliferation. The heart of the Bush administration's initiative on recycling is a technology being developed by Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. It is a method of removing plutonium and other long-lived radioactive elements in spent fuels that makes the elements reusable in nuclear power plants, but difficult to use for making weapons.

We need funds both to pursue research on processing and to complete the Yucca Mountain facility. The right way to accomplish that is to remove the Yucca Mountain project from the annual budget process, so that it has assured funding from consumer contributions to the Nuclear Waste Fund.

The wrong way would be to draw funds away from the Yucca Mountain program. We would pay a huge price for such shortsightedness in construction delays and increasing storage costs at nuclear plant sites.

We need recycling for the long term, and Yucca Mountain for the near term. Without either, we could seriously limit the ability of nuclear power to provide the emission-free energy the world desperately needs.

James McGovern, Ocean Grove, has been a consultant to industry and government on nuclear energy issues for many years.

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DOE
February 17, 2006

Technical Report Confirms Reliability of Yucca Mountain Technical Work

WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Energy´s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) today released a report confirming the technical soundness of infiltration modeling work performed by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) employees.

“The report makes clear that the technical basis developed by the USGS has a strong conceptual foundation and is corroborated by independently-derived scientific conclusions, and provides a solid underpinning for the 2002 site recommendation,’ said OCRWM´s Acting Director Paul Golan. “We are committed to opening Yucca Mountain based only on sound science. The work that we do must be without question or qualification, and this report confirms that we are on the right path forward.’

Last March, DOE disclosed e-mails between USGS employees that appeared to suggest that these employees had failed to follow certain quality assurance procedures during their work. This report was developed to assess how issues raised by the e-mails may have impacted some of the scientific conclusions contributing to the Yucca Mountain Site Recommendation of 2002 and the Key Technical Agreements between DOE and NRC. The report found no impact on those conclusions.

The 144-page final report, entitled Evaluation of Technical Impact on the Yucca Mountain Project Technical Basis Resulting From Issues Raised by E-mails of Former Project Participants, examined work products developed by the USGS employees—mainly the infiltration contributing to the evaluation of the long-term performance modeling of the underground repository. The report concludes that the net infiltration ranges, as determined by the USGS employees, were consistent with ground water recharge rates determined by other scientists studying other arid and semi-arid regions in the United States and provides reasonable inputs to models used for the 2002 site recommendation.

Although the report´s findings indicate that the infiltration rate estimates are corroborated and consistent with other independently derived work, OCRWM will replace or supplement the infiltration modeling work, as needed, and will review or verify the supporting documentation.

As part of OCRWM´s comprehensive review process, preliminary drafts of the report were supplied to three, non-DOE affiliated experts in hydrology and computer modeling in October 2005. The independent experts studied the drafts and associated references, and their feedback is reflected in the final report.

The technical report is available at http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/.

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Yahoo! Asia
February 21, 2006

Yahoo! Asia

U.S. to ask Japan, other nations for nuclear fuel program funding

(Kyodo) _ The United States said Thursday it will seek technical and financial contributions from Japan and other countries taking part in a new U.S.-initiated international nuclear fuel program.

"I think we will ask for all of these countries to participate, hopefully financially and hopefully to participate in the technical work," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told reporters after testifying at a congressional hearing.

Bodman said the program will cost somewhere between $20 billion and $40 billion but noted the estimate is "my personal sense."

The secretary identified Japan, Britain, China, France and Russia as "potential international partners" for the program.

U.S. officials recently visited the five nations to explain the new initiative aimed at safeguarding against nuclear proliferation by providing nuclear fuel to developing nations and advancing technologies for recycling and protecting nuclear fuel and waste.

On Feb. 6, the Energy Department announced the program, called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, in seeking $250 million from Congress as part of President George W. Bush's budget plan for fiscal 2007 starting Oct. 1.

Separately at a press conference Thursday at the Foreign Press Center, Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell expressed strong hope for Japan's technical cooperation.

"Japan has great capability in recycling technologies," Sell said, referring to its nuclear fuel plants, including what he called "the world's newest commercial reprocessing facility" to be opened soon.

"We think there are potential opportunities there to test and demonstrate new technologies," Sell said.

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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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