Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, March 2, 2006

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, March 2, 2006
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Senator John Ensign
March 1, 2006

Press Release of Senator Ensign

Ensign Testifies About “junk Science’ at Yucca Mountain

Washington, D.C. – Senator John Ensign, during testimony today before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, criticized the Environmental Protection Agency for the agency´s efforts to establish safety standards for Yucca Mountain. Senator Ensign´s statement to the committee is below:

Mr. Chairman,

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the second proposed rule concerning Yucca Mountain radiation standards. This rule, on its face, does not make sense. And the closer one looks, the worse it appears.

The EPA found itself in a difficult position. The original EPA Yucca rule had been thrown out by a federal court, which found its 10,000 year compliance period was not consistent with recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences.

The EPA could have simply modified its rule by extending it to cover the time of peak radiation exposure as required by the Court. We know why the EPA did not do this. It didn´t do it because Yucca Mountain could not be engineered to meet that standard. Yucca Mountain could not be built.

So instead of putting forth a common sense solution, the EPA proposed the weakest peak dose standard in the world, a proposal opposed by the National Council of Radiation Protection. Again, when it comes to Yucca Mountain, sound science has been rejected.

There are those who believe Congress should ignore recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences and simply lower the safety standards for the storage of the planet´s most deadly material. Senator Reid and I are committed to making sure that doesn´t happen.

Mr. Chairman, Yucca Mountain continues to be plagued with problems and delays. The Department of Energy no longer even pretends to know when Yucca could open or how much it will cost. DOE once again has stopped work at Yucca Mountain after an NRC audit revealed that several years of data collection was done with equipment that had not been calibrated. This data is critical to health and safety because it relates to how water could enter the repository and cause corrosion of the nuclear waste storage casks.

We need to find another solution to our country´s nuclear waste problem. We need to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to require the DOE to take title of all spent nuclear fuel. And we need to invest in new technologies at our national labs to recycle the waste without producing weapons-grade plutonium as a byproduct. Transmutation technology, which transforms radioactive products into less dangerous materials and produces electricity as a result, is quickly emerging as a viable alternative.

Mr. Chairman, this new proposed radiation standard, like so much of the so-called science at Yucca Mountain, is a farce. The EPA was forced to create this ridiculous standard to make Yucca Mountain look scientifically feasible on paper. It is not. It is a dangerous, misguided project fraught with junk science and fraudulent data.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
March 02, 2006

Yucca Mountain proponents call for facility to move ahead

Doug Abrahms
dabrahms@gns.gannett.com

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. James Inhofe called Yucca Mountain the most studied mountain in the world and urged Energy Department officials to move forward with building the nuclear waste repository in Nevada so the United States could build more nuclear power plants.

"After personally visiting this site, I strongly support the storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain," said Inhofe, R-Okla., at a Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee hearing Wednesday. "How can we not support this site ... with over 20 years and $8 billion worth of scientific, environmental and engineering field work?"

Proponents of increasing nuclear power to lower natural gas prices and reduce air pollution have become frustrated that the project has stalled.

Paul Golan, who heads the Energy Department agency overseeing the proposed nuclear waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, couldn't tell the Senate panel when Yucca Mountain would open or how much it would cost. In the past, the department has estimated the cost at $58 billion. The project was halted in 2004 by a federal appeals court ruling that said the radiation standard set to protect area residents wasn't strict enough.

Nevada U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign and Bob Loux, who heads the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, spoke against Yucca Mountain and said nuclear waste could be stored at commercial reactor sites safely for 100 years until a better alternative is developed.

"I am convinced the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump will never be built," said Reid, Senate Democratic leader, "because the project is mired in scientific, safety and technical problems."

Even some past supporters of the project are voicing concerns, especially since Yucca Mountain was originally scheduled to open in 1998. The Energy Department has yet to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and a best-case scenario has Yucca Mountain beginning in 2015.

"I supported the Yucca Mountain proposal in the past, in the belief that it would solve the problem" of nuclear waste, said Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., "However, the truth is that Yucca Mountain will not provide this solution, and the project faces many challenges."

But Golan said the Energy Department continues to push forward and hopes to release a timetable for licensing and building Yucca Mountain this summer.

The department has reconfigured its design of the project to make it less expensive and easier to license, he said.

"There is limited temporary storage of (nuclear) waste at 122 sites in 39 states across our nation," Golan said. "There is a clear national need for Yucca Mountain."

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Las Vegas SUN
March 02, 2006

Yucca plays D.C.

By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun

WASHINGTON - Every so often all of the major players in the long-running saga of Yucca Mountain gather in one spot in the nation's capital, and the result is Washington theater: nuclear waste policy as a two-hour stage production.

Broadway this ain't, although the shows typically offer a few chuckles and a moment or two of drama. The hearings also offer a glimpse at the complex issues and perspectives that have shaped the Yucca story.

The actors assembled in a wood-paneled Senate hearing room Wednesday for a "status" hearing on the proposed nuclear waste repository program.

Among the players:

The Project Manager. The Energy Department's acting Yucca Director Paul Golan has one of the toughest jobs in the federal bureaucracy - shepherding the project long plagued by delays, lawsuits and budget cuts.

Golan has been acting Yucca chief since May. At the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing Wednesday, Golan briefly described the marching orders he got in mid-September from Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman: " 'Make it simpler and safer.' "

Critics have ripped the Energy Department for essentially giving up on setting a timeline and budget estimate for the project, which is more than two decades old. Golan said he planned to unveil a project schedule sometime this summer.

Speculation continued to swirl in the room among Yucca observers about the legislation being dubbed the "Fix Yucca" bill, which Golan's department plans to send to Congress, probably within days. That bill is expected to include a number of provisions, some likely to be highly controversial, designed to speed completion of the repository. But Golan wouldn't say much about the bill.

At one point, under questioning about faulty quality-assurance procedures at Yucca, Golan played the role of tough-talking reformer, vowing to make changes.

"I have a stack of reports from the GAO (General Accountability Office), the IG (inspector general) and various other people inside and outside the department that looked at the quality of Yucca Mountain," Golan said. "I've read all those reports, and they're missing one thing: They're missing accountability. So I'm going to hold folks accountable."

The Nevadans. State officials have waged a battle against the proposed repository since its inception.

They don't have many new lines.

But as a courtesy, the committee allowed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., to put their gripes on the record again.

"It should be clear to everyone that the proposed Yucca Mountain project is not going anywhere," Reid said. "It will never open."

Ensign hit his mark despite being winded from hustling to the meeting a few minutes late. He had enough breath left to call Yucca "junk science" and to suggest that the Bush administration's recent proposal to develop a controversial waste-recycling technology was "quickly emerging as a viable alternative" to Yucca.

Toward the end of the hearing, the panel's chairman - Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a vocal Yucca advocate - introduced Nevada's top Yucca watchdog, Bob Loux, mispronouncing his name.

Loux corrected him. He later told Inhofe the two men agreed on one thing - that scientific study at Yucca should finally come to an end. Loux thinks the research proves the site unsuitable - Inhofe believes it proves Yucca safe.

The Lawmakers. Congress has long wrestled with Yucca, and politics is a big part of the repository's history. Most lawmakers took up sides long ago. A leading Yucca advocate and a feisty Yucca critic were in the spotlight Wednesday.

Inhofe released a 25-page report concluding that it was time to stop researching and start developing Yucca.

Its title reflected the long-simmering frustration among many Yucca advocates in Congress: "Yucca Mountain: The Most Studied Real Estate on the Planet."

Inhofe then stole Reid's line Â- a version of the Democratic Party's new slogan - when he said, "We owe it to the American people to do better."

Inhofe also asserted that nuclear power is the nation's "cleanest and safest" source of electricity, despite the subject of his hearing - nuclear's dirty and dangerous waste. Inhofe is one of the committee's 10 Republican members - nine of whom took campaign money in the past two years from the Nuclear Energy Institute, a leading pro-Yucca lobbying group.

Reid has not always been able to corral Democrats in opposition to Yucca, but he has a vocal ally in Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who on Wednesday chewed up witness William Wehrum of the Environmental Protection Agency. Wehrum was there to explain how the EPA's controversial new radiation-release standard for Yucca will protect future generations.

He began his testimony by mispronouncing Nevada.

Boxer and other critics say the standard is too lax. She quoted a nuclear physicist who suggested the EPA standard could increase cancer rates among people living near Yucca to 1 in 5 - or even 1 in 4 for women. She repeatedly demanded a yes or no response from Wehrum on whether that was acceptable.

Wehrum would say only that he was confident the new standard would protect human health and safety.

"I'm asking you if you think that is unacceptable, and you won't answer it," Boxer said. "You won't answer it - and I think that speaks volumes to the people of Nevada."

The Regulators. The EPA last year faced one of its toughest assignments ever - proposing a radiation standard for Yucca that would protect Nevadans for 1 million years.

"No other rules in the U.S. for any risks have ever attempted to regulate for such a long period of time," Wehrum said.

Wehrum seemed to wither several moments under Boxer's questioning, but he asserted that the standard was strict enough.

"Our proposal requires the Department of Energy to show that Yucca Mountain can safely contain wastes, even considering the effects of earthquakes, volcanic activity, climate change, and container corrosion over 1 million years," he said.

The Experts. The committee heard from several Yucca observers, including Dade Moeller, representing the Health Physics Society, who delighted Boxer when he said a 1-in-4 cancer rate was unacceptable. But Moeller promptly added that he believed that estimate was inflated.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher, Allison MacFarlane, testified that geologic storage is the best solution for the nation's waste. But MacFarlane has long asserted that Yucca is a bad site.

She drew chuckles when she quoted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who famously outlined his fear that there are unknown unknowns - "the ones we don't know we don't know."

At Yucca, MacFarlane said, "Those are the things I'm worried about."

Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at grove@lasvegassun.com.

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Las Vegas SUN
March 02, 2006

March 01, 2006

EPA: Yucca radiation standards to be completed by year's end

By Erica Werner
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule by the end of the year on how much radiation can be released from the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, an agency official told senators at a hearing Wednesday.

William Wehrum, acting assistant administrator of EPA's office of air and radiation, defended the agency's proposed rule against criticism from Nevada lawmakers and a Democratic senator from California who said it wouldn't adequately protect human health.

"Our job at EPA is to set standards for the Yucca Mountain repository that are fully protective of human health and safety," Wehrum said at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.

He received strong support from the committee's chairman, Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who asked whether the rule might be "too conservative" compared with approaches taken in Europe. Wehrum said the standard was consistent with international approaches.

Inhofe also said after the hearing that he'd be open to voting to increase the storage capacity of Yucca Mountain, which by law is supposed to hold 77,000 tons of radioactive waste. Because of waste already waiting at reactor sites nationwide, the repository will be full soon after it opens.

The EPA in August proposed limiting radiation exposure near the planned dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas to 15 millirems a year for 10,000 years, then increasing the allowable level to 350 millirems a year for up to 1 million years.

That higher level is more than three times what is allowed from nuclear facilities today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A standard chest X-ray is about 10 millirems.

The EPA issued the rule under consideration after a federal court said the agency's first standard was inadequate because it didn't establish exposure limits beyond 10,000 years. A public comment period for the rule ended Nov. 21, and the agency is reviewing comments and will finalize the rule by year's end, Wehrum said.

Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign criticized the standard in testimony. Ensign, a Republican, called it "a farce."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., cited a study that she said showed cancer risks at the 350 millirem level increasing to one in four for women and one in five for men.

"This is such a nightmare that we're abandoning ... what we consider to be an acceptable cancer risk," Boxer said.

But a scientist who testified before the committee, Dade Moeller, former president of the Health Physics Society, said his estimates show a smaller increase of cancer risk under the proposed rules - perhaps 1 percent or less. Moeller's company has done contract work for the Energy Department.

The radiation issue and other problems with the project have caused a series of delays. The Energy Department originally was supposed to submit its application for a license to operate the dump to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by December 2004.

Paul Golan, acting director of the department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, couldn't provide senators a new date but said the department would release a schedule this summer.

---On the Net: Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 02, 2006

Yucca Mountain backers get assurance

DOE official says new research no distraction

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department does not plan to divert money from Yucca Mountain to research other forms of nuclear waste disposal, a DOE official told senators at a hearing Wednesday.

The Bush administration has linked the proposed Nevada repository to development of new reprocessing technologies for nuclear spent fuel, but acting repository chief Paul Golan said money for the initiatives will remain separate.

Golan responded to a concern by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Inhofe, a repository supporter, said he wanted assurance that a new administration reprocessing effort, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, "should not deter the forward progress of Yucca Mountain."

The idea that the reprocessing proposal might tap into the nuclear waste fund set aside for Yucca Mountain has been raised. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has speculated about the possibility.

Also this week, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., a repository supporter, said he was worried that the proposal would "divert managerial attention" from Yucca Mountain and money that utility ratepayers have been setting aside for repository construction, more than $20 billion.

The hearing before Inhofe's committee gave Yucca Mountain critics a new chance to cite flaws in the repository project, while Inhofe and other supporters urged DOE to keep the project moving forward.

Critics, including both Nevada senators and the state's nuclear waste director, focused on radiation safety rules being developed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The proposed EPA standard would allow somebody living on the outskirts of Yucca Mountain to be exposed to 350 millirem of radiation annually, increasing the odds of contracting cancer, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

"Let's face it, this is such a nightmare," Boxer said, adding health standards for other radioactive materials are not as lenient. "We are changing our tradition and our history of how we view cancer risks."

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said EPA "was forced to create this ridiculous standard to make Yucca Mountain scientifically feasible on paper."

William Wehrum, EPA acting assistant administrator for air and radiation, defended the agency's work. He said the action would limit radiation doses for a period up to 1 million years.

The 350-millirem level is no higher than people living in other parts of the country are exposed to from "natural levels" of radiation, Wehrum said.

The level would take effect only after the first 10,000 years of repository operations, he said. Before then, an annual dose limit of 15 millirem would be in effect.

EPA officials have said that a routine chest X-ray emits 10 millirem and that a mammogram emits 30 millirem.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the Yucca Mountain program has been delayed for so long that the EPA would have time to formulate a new radiation safety standard.

Ensign and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., promoted their bill that would require DOE to shelve the Yucca Mountain project and keep spent fuel stored in dry casks at reactor sites.

Yucca Mountain "is fraught with scientific, technical and geological problems," Reid said. "Our bill guarantees all Americans that our nation's nuclear waste will be stored in the safest way possible."

But Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., questioned the safety of keeping nuclear waste at power plants and said such storage "is a perfect dirty-bomb site."

"We do need to look into our choices," DeMint said. "We assume we can leave things the same and be safer rather than moving ahead like we have been trying to do for a number of years."

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KLAS-TV
March 02, 2006

Committee Reviews Yucca Mountain

The future of the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage project is being discussed by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

The committee heard from Nevada's two senators on Wednesday. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Senator John Ensign both discussed the problems of falsified data and mismanagement at the site just 100 miles outside Las Vegas.

They also pushed an alternative to Yucca Mountain that would store nuclear waste in dry casks around the United States.

"We've spent upwards of 10 billion dollars on nothing. We have nothing for this and I would respectfully submit, that this is not a game saying we have winners and losers. Let's leave it on site, dry cask storage is the way to go, it will be safe for at least 50 years, Sen. Harry Reid, (D) Nevada.

The Environment and Public Works Committee will now take the testimony into consideration before making a decision on the Yucca Mountain Project.

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Nevada Observer
March 02, 2006

Yucca Project Under Stop-Work Order Following Disclosure Of More Discrepancies

This Following A DOE Report Saying Project Is Continuing Under "Good Science"

On February 17 the Department of Energy (DOE) offered what they called a "Technical Report" in which it was alleged that the operation at Yucca Mountain was operating with "technical soundness of infiltration modeling work performed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) employees." Nevada's congressional delegation immediately responded in the most bitter of language. Within days of the first announcement that praised work that has been alleged to have been falsified, it was disclosed that a stop-work order had been placed on the Yucca project by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Regarding the "Technical Report" Nevada Congressman Jim Gibbons (R) said, "This report is an insult to the people of Nevada. This report just shows that the DOE has no credibility when it comes to sound science." Regarding the allegedly falsified documents, Gibbons said, "The e-mails sent between federal workers indicated disturbing flaws and pressure to make their science match a desired outcome, namely proving the safety of Yucca Mountain." Gibbons said the report does not even address "this apparent breach of scientific integrity."

Nevada Congressman Jon Porter (R) joined the chorus in mocking the DOE report. "Today's report should come as a surprise to no one, as it's been proven time and time again that the DOE will do anything and everything to justify the Yucca Mountain Project." Porter has been in a long-term fight with DOE to get documentation on his investigation of the alleged falsified e-mails.

"My investigation into the Yucca Mountain Project as Chairman of the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee has yielded significant evidence which points to a severely flawed quality assurance process." Porter's investigation hinges on water infiltration studies and the documents from the USGS seem to indicate that one set of books were set up for quality assurance while a second set of books were the actual findings. It is this alleged falsification of information that is at the heart of DOE's so-called quality assurance assurances. It is the quality assurance program that DOE is touting in the "Technical Report."

A press release dated February 17, 2006 says in part, "Although the report's findings indicate that the infiltration rate estimates are corroborated and consistent with other independently derived work, (DOE) will replace or supplement the infiltration modeling work as needed and review or verify the supporting documentation."

Just one week later, reports out of Washington indicated that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had found other possibly falsified or at least flawed reports were issued dealing with humidity and its effects on the canisters holding the high level nuclear waste. It appears that when the testing was done the agency was using non-calibrated gauges. The stop-work order was issued on January 30, but just now made public.

Water mitigation was at the heart of the alleged falsified USGS documents, and now DOE tells us that humidity testing was done with non-calibrated instruments. Nevada Nuclear Projects Director Bob Loux said, "This strikes right in the heart of the whole corrosion issue. If some of the data is suspect, it's huge." He went on to indicate that if this very sensitive part of the quality assurance program was inept, does that mean that many more parts of the program have either been falsified or doctored, or have other procedures been committed with less than "good science?"

It was determined not too long ago that the casks holding the nuclear waste would be most apt to fail because of water mitigation after between 40,000 years and 80,000 years. What hasn't been answered following this latest disclosure that has led to a stop-work order, was that determined through flawed science using non-calibrated instruments? Scientists have said that water mitigation during the first several thousand years would be converted to steam or at least dense humidity by the heat generated from the stored nuclear waste. Now, NRC tells us that the instruments used to test the casks for humidity failure were not calibrated to do the testing.

There are two questions as pointed out by the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency. What really is the corrosion rate of the casks since the USGS e-mails that indicate falsification of records and what will the affect of long-term humidity be on those casks? Loux has questioned the repository design in the past and says these latest failures by DOE back up his thoughts.

Porter said, "Based on these flaws, considering any part of the project's justification as 'sound science' is absurd and an affront to Nevadans." He went on to say, "Their best course of action would be to scrap the entire Yucca Mountain Project."

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the group representing the nuclear power industry is calling for increases in storage capacity at Yucca Mountain. They are saying that the storage limit is an artificial limit imposed by Congress and needs to be increased to meet the needs of the industry. More high level nuclear waste is developed yearly. NEI says as nuclear energy production increases, the waste factor will increase as well, and there won't be storage capacity.

It is the contract between the federal government and nuclear energy producers signed in 1982 that creates the concept of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. The federal government made itself responsible for storage of the industry waste. There is a bill before congress now that would nullify that contract and calls for the nuclear waste to be stored at the production sites. A part of the legislation also calls for the waste to be reprocessed and the resultant product to be reused. Many in congress are coming to the conclusion that Yucca Mountain was ill conceived to begin with, and is not the answer to nuclear waste storage.

The DOE has yet to submit its licensing request and is already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over the original budget.

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Environment News Service
March 02, 2006

US Forges Ahead With Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, March 2, 2006 (ENS) - The federal plan to bury nuclear waste in Nevada´s Yucca Mountain will proceed despite a long list of delays and scientific controversies that have put the facility years behind schedule, Bush administration officials told a Senate panel on Wednesday.

"Yucca Mountain is a good site," said Paul Golan, acting director of the Energy Department´s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "It is a safer and more secure location than the temporary storage options."

Golan said the Energy Department will publish a new schedule this summer detailing how and when it will submit its license application for Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Paul Golan is acting director of the Energy Department´s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. (Photo courtesy FACREP)

"Moving forward into licensing will allow an open public debate on the safety of Yucca Mountain," Golan told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "The waste is here today - let´s not pass this burden onto our children."

Critics say there is ample evidence the project should be abandoned.

"The Yucca Mountain project is a failure," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. ""It is mired in scientific, safety and technical problems. It will never open."

Even proponents of the site acknowledge it has been best by problems.

Committee chair James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said the project is "17 years behind schedule."

A 1982 law required the Energy Department to provide a federal repository for used nuclear fuel no later than January 31, 1998.

Legislation authorizing Yucca Mountain was passed by Congress in 2001 and signed by President George W. Bush.

It was originally scheduled to open in 2010 – Energy Department officials say 2015 is the earliest the repository will be ready to receive nuclear waste.

The project has been beset with criticism and skepticism about the safety of the site as well as concerns about the security of shipping nuclear waste by rail and road from sites in 39 states across the nation.

The site, which lies 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas within the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, is also on a fault line and sits above a freshwater aquifer that provides drinking water to residents of Nevada and California.

In 2004 a federal court rejected the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency´s (EPA) radiation exposure standard for Yucca Mountain because it did not include exposure limits beyond 10,000 years.

Aerial view of the crest of Yucca Mountain, Nevada 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas (Photo courtesy OCRWM)

According to William Wehram, acting assistant administrator of EPA´s Office of Air and Radiation, the agency is on track to finalize the revised radiation exposure standard by the end of the year.

The new proposal, released last August, sets a radiation exposure limit at 15-millirems a year for 10,000 years and then increases the limit to 350-millirems a year for up to 1 million years.

The proposed standard represents a total radiation exposure "that is no higher than natural levels people live with routinely in other parts of the country," Wehram told the committee.

The proposed standard is "a farce," said Senator John Ensign, a Nevada Republican.

The agency should have extended the 15-millirem per year standard for the 10,000 year to 1 million year period, Ensign said.

"We know why EPA did not do this," he said. "It did not do it because Yucca Mountain could not be engineered to meet that standard. The EPA was forced to create this ridiculous standard to make Yucca Mountain look scientifically feasible on paper – it is not."

Wehram defended the standard and said the way EPA devised the radiation exposure limits "is very consistent with the approach used internationally."

Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, predicted the EPA´s proposal would not satisfy the court ruling.

The 350-millirem standard is three times what is currently allowed at nuclear plants and covers a time period when leaks are more likely.

"It seems to me that you are not really correcting the issues," Boxer said. "This thing is going round in circles."

View of the engineered barrier system test at Sandia National Laboratory, the newly designated national lab for all Yucca Mountain testing. This test is designed to help scientists better understand how manufactured barriers work with natural barriers. (Photo courtesy OCRWM)

During the hearing Boxer repeatedly cited a study that shows the proposed rule could boost the cancer risk for women to one in four and raise the risk for men to one in five.

"This is such a nightmare that we are abandoning all of our traditions, all of our history, in what we consider to be an acceptable cancer risk," Boxer said.

Critics are ignoring the health risks of not moving forward with Yucca Mountain, said Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican.

Failure to proceed with the repository would force the 104 operating nuclear power plants in the United States as well as Defense Department facilities to store their high-level radioactive waste on their own sites.

"We need to move ahead yet we continue to be looking for every reason in the world not to move ahead," said DeMint. "We have already studied Yucca Mountain more than any other piece of land in the world."

Inhofe said the debate about nuclear waste "appears to be more of a political issue than a scientific issue."

The Oklahoma Republican told colleagues he would support revising the Yucca Mountain project to allow more waste to be stored in the repository.

The original plan calls for storage of 77,000 tons of waste – this means the repository will essentially be full as soon as it is completed.

"We run into the statutory capacity sometime next decade," said Golan, who indicated the Yucca Mountain site could probably hold more than 100,000 tons if the law creating the repository is revised.

The delays to the project will cost taxpayers more than $2 billion through 2010, Golan added, and "after that the additional costs would be several hundred million a year extra on top of that."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says Nevadans are overwhelmingly opposed to the Yucca Mountain Project. (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator)

Reid said the costs of continuing with the repository are far greater than the costs of abandoning the project.

"We have spent upwards of $10 billion and we have nothing for it," he said. "It is time we addressed the problem at hand and stop pouring taxpayer money down the drain on a project that could endanger all of our citizens,"

Reid and Ensign have introduced legislation calling for the securing of wastes on sites in dry cask storage.

Dry cask storage allows spent fuel that has already been cooled in a spent fuel pool for at least one year to be surrounded by inert gas inside a container called a cask, typically a steel cylinder that is either welded or bolted shut.

Each cylinder is surrounded by additional steel, concrete, or other material to provide radiation shielding to workers and members of the public. Some of the cask designs can be used for both storage and transportation, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Spent fuel is currently stored in dry cask systems at a growing number of nuclear power plant sites, and at an interim facility located at the Idaho National Environmental and Engineering Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Find out more about the Yucca Mountain Project online at: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ymp/index.shtml

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MSNBC
March 02, 2006

MSNBC Home » U.S. News » Environment Sponsored by

EPA in hot seat over nuclear storage radiation
Some senators resist proposal, Nevada Republican calls it a ‘farce´

MSNBC News Services

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule by the end of the year on how much radiation can be released from the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, an agency official told senators at a hearing Wednesday.

"Our job at EPA is to set standards for the Yucca Mountain repository that are fully protective of human health and safety," Wehrum said at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.

Store more there?

Spent fuel from U.S. nuclear plants — which supply about 20 percent of U.S. electricity — is piling up. More than 50,000 tons of it is stored at over 100 temporary locations in 39 states.

That higher level is more than three times what is allowed from nuclear facilities today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A standard chest X-ray is about 10 millirems.

Weighing radiation risks

Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign criticized the standard. Ensign, a Republican, called it "a farce."

Reid and Ensign have instead proposed handling nuclear waste through “dry cask storage,’ a process that would allow nuclear reactors to store waste on-site.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., cited a study that she said showed cancer risks at the 350 millirem level increasing to one in four for women and one in five for men.

"This is such a nightmare that we're abandoning ... what we consider to be an acceptable cancer risk," Boxer said.

But a scientist who testified before the committee, Dade Moeller, former president of the Health Physics Society, said his estimates show a smaller increase of cancer risk under the proposed rules — perhaps 1 percent or less. Moeller's company has done contract work for the Energy Department.

Paul Golan, acting director of the department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, couldn't provide senators a new date but said the department would release a schedule this summer.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Washington Post
March 02, 2006

Gov't plans steps to advance Nevada nuclear dump

By Lisa Lambert
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration is planning steps to advance its long-stalled proposal to build a nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert, officials told Congress on Wednesday.

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 still plagued by scientific foul-ups and political stonewalling.

Paul Golan, an acting director at the Department of Energy, did not tell the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when the department will send its proposal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That step was originally planned for 2004.

But Golan said the department will publish a schedule of when it intends to make such a submission "later this summer."

"We believe that submission of our license application should not be driven by artificial dates," Golan said.

The NRC must sign off on the plan before Yucca Mountain can begin accepting waste from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants.

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

The administration hoped to open the site in 2010 and allow 77,000 tons (70,000 metric tons) of waste to be stored deep underground.

On another front, the Environmental Protection Agency hopes to issue a proposal by year-end that would assure safe radiation doses from the site for 1 million years, which would satisfy a court order that threatens to derail the project.

Bill Wehrum, acting assistant administrator for air and radiation for the Environmental Protection Agency, told the committee his agency hopes to finish its proposal by year end.

Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat and ardent opponent of the site for safety reasons, told the panel that the repository "will never be built because the project is mired in scientific, safety and technical problems."

Reid proposed handling nuclear waste through "dry cask storage," a process that would allow nuclear reactors to store waste on-site. He and Senator John Ensign have introduced a bill requiring nuclear utilities to use the casks.

Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate energy panel, said the project needs to move to the licensing stage, and issued a report titled "Yucca Mountain: The Most Studied Real Estate on the Planet."

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Deseret News
March 02, 2006

Yucca fight could bring work to PFS

By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON — Nevada on Wednesday continued the fight in the U.S. Senate against its own potential nuclear waste storage site, a battle Utah's delegation has become involved in.

The progress and status of the government's Yucca Mountain project in Nevada is important for Utah because utilities need a place to store their waste. If Yucca continues to face more delays, utilities may opt to put their waste at Private Fuel Storage, a private nuclear waste storage site planned for Tooele County's Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, until Yucca opens. The consortium of utilities received its license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month, with a notice in Tuesday's Federal Register finalizing the process.

Nuclear waste continues to be hot topic in Congress as the Energy Department continues its push to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and the nuclear power industry wants nothing more than for the government to take its waste from power plants as was promised two decades ago.

Paul Golan, the acting Yucca chief, said before the Senate Environment and Public Works committee Wednesday that the department is working on a new design for the repository and hopes to have a new schedule for the license application by the end of the summer.

But Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., reiterated the need for Congress to rethink storing nuclear waste at Yucca and look at other options — including storing waste at the power plants themselves.

"It should be clear to everyone that the proposed Yucca Mountain project is not going anywhere," Reid said. "We've spent $10 billion and we have nothing. We have nothing to show for this."

All five members of Utah's congressional delegation joined with Nevada's late last year in sponsoring a bill that would allow utilities to use money now earmarked to move waste to Yucca to transfer waste to dry storage. The Energy Department would take responsibility for the waste once stored in the dry cask, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would have to create rules on how to transfer the waste. The bill is still pending. Only Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, still supports the Yucca Mountain project, while the rest of the delegation has come out against it.

The administration is preparing its own bill that would alter several components of the Yucca project to help move it along, although which lawmakers will introduce it or when is still not clear.

Utilities created the idea of PFS because Yucca was taking too long to complete. Four of the initial eight utilities that invested in the project said in December that they will no longer finance the project, citing progress on Yucca and the administration's refocusing on nuclear waste reprocessing among other reasons, but others could come on in the future.

Xcel Energy spokeswoman Mary Sandok said the company is not relying on a specific opening date for Yucca but several aspects on the government's plan for nuclear waste. Xcel is one of the companies that sent a letter to Hatch in December saying it would withhold its future financial investments. It holds the largest percentage of the consortium. Sandok said the company is planning to build dry-cask storage in the meantime before Yucca would open.

Now that it has its license in hand, PFS will continue to market itself to utilities as a storage option and will need more investors to go on to the construction phase.

Steven Kraft, senior director of used fuel management for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said PFS is properly looking at its facility as something that utilities can buy services from but that no utility would be looking just at the Utah option. He said it would be up to the individual companies to decide whether paying to move it to Utah would be wise.

"It truly is a business decision," Kraft said.

E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com

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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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