Yucca Mountain News Clips - Tuesday, March 7, 2006

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, March 7, 2006
---------------------------

Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 07, 2006

Energy secretary's statement retracted by White House

Bodman said nuclear waste would stay at power plants until Yucca repository licensed

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration on Monday retracted a declaration from Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman that nuclear waste will remain stored at power plants until a Nevada repository is licensed.

Bodman "simply spoke too soon" in comments he made Friday during a meeting with reporters, according to an official familiar with negotiations within the administration on nuclear waste policy.

Bodman told reporters the Bush administration had ruled out creating temporary storage sites where thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste could be relocated from power plants in 39 states while work continues at Yucca Mountain.

A nuclear waste bill that is being written by the Energy Department and the White House would not seek permission from Congress for interim storage, Bodman said.

But officials said Monday that interim storage remains a possibility and the new legislation has not been finalized.

The official, who took an unusual step of calling reporters to discuss Bodman's comments, declined to be identified.

"The legislative package is not complete and discussions are ongoing, and Secretary Bodman simply spoke too soon," the official said.

Bodman had no immediate comment on Monday, but he is expected to talk about nuclear waste and interim storage during an appearance Wednesday before the House energy and water subcommittee.

Bodman said Friday that federal law prohibits the Energy Department from seeking to establish interim nuclear waste storage until a repository is licensed, and he was planning to follow that course.

"All our efforts will be going into the procurement of an operating license" for Yucca Mountain, Bodman said. "At that point in time we will make a decision whether we will take advantage of interim storage opportunities or not."

Nuclear industry officials who support the Yucca repository did a double-take at Bodman's remarks. Lobbyists for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's main trade group, had declared swift relocation of nuclear waste from power plants to be their prime goal this year.

Ongoing delays within the Yucca program, coupled with a Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process that could stretch for years, could mean nuclear waste would not be removed from plant sites for the foreseeable future if the administration follows the course outlined by the secretary. If interim storage is not in the plans, "what is the purpose of having a bill in the first place?" said one industry official who sought a transcript of Bodman's remarks on Monday.

Pulling back comments from the energy secretary "is one of those things that doesn't happen very often," the official said.

There had been broad speculation that the forthcoming nuclear waste bill would seek to establish interim storage at the Savannah River site in South Carolina, the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls, or at the Nevada Test Site.

---------------------------

KVBC
March 07, 2006

Lawmakers to Travel to Yucca Mountain

March 6, 2006, 12:32 PM PST

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill could soon travel to Nevada to discuss the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Project at the site itself.

An Energy Department Official says as far as he could tell it would be the first public meeting at the repository.

The Congressional hearing is set for March 23rd.

---------------------------

Las Vegas Business Press
March 07, 2006

UNLV scientists work on nuclear waste reduction

Program expands as DOE funds research to alleviate storage woes

By Arnold M. Knightly
Business Press

Research and doctoral programs tied to UNLV's Transmutation Research Program have received $18 million in grants over their first 4 1/2 years from the Department of Energy in the hope that the research will find ways to reduce nuclear fuel waste.

"What's nice about it is it gives us a chance to do some interesting science," said Dr. Ken Czerwinski, associate professor of chemistry at UNLV. "The students get some very good projects, get some good science, push back our frontier of knowledge in the fundamental science of these radionuclide. But there is also the tactical aspect of trying to make a better fuel."

Last year, the university received $95 million in extramural funding with $69.4 million going to research, according to Mark Rudin, senior associate vice president of research services at UNLV, who added that there has been a significant increase over the past few years in research funding. He cited Czerwinski's Radiochemistry program as helping raise the profile of the university as a research institution.

The latest grant from the federal government came in early February, when the Department of Chemistry received a research and development grant for $687,288 from the DOE's Nuclear Energy Research Initiative and will fund the Radiochemistry program's research on decreasing the amount of nuclear waste.

PRESIDENTIAL INITIATIVES

NERI is a product of a 1997 request by then-President Bill Clinton of the Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology to address the nation's future energy production and use. The committee recommended expanding nuclear energy as an option and encouraged more research. In 1999, Congress began funding NERI-sponsored research.

Czerwinski, along with Dr. Thomas Hartmann, a research scientist at UNLV's Harry Reid Center, and Dr. Al Sattelberger, a visiting chemistry professor, will collaborate with the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico on a project titled, "Solution-Based Synthesis of Nitride Fuels."

"It is a method for making a novel fuel for reactors," Czerwinski said. "The reason, for us, that we're interested in doing it is from a very academic point of view in the sense that we are developing at UNLV a Radiochemistry Ph.D. program and we have a research group that involves doing research in this area.

"If you wanted to burn plutonium in a reactor you wouldn't have to bury it at the mountain. We came up with a method that is based on some novel chemical synthesis. We looked at this so we can apply this to solving this problem with fuel development."

"This problem" is that existing nuclear plants in the United States produce too much waste that may overtax the current storage facilities.

During his recent State of the Union address, President George W. Bush announced the Advanced Energy Initiative "to push breakthroughs" in electricity generation including nuclear power.

The president's 2007 budget asks for $250 million for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership in which America will work with other nations that, the White House and Czerwinski admit, "have advanced civilian nuclear energy programs."

"In some ways they're ahead of us and in some areas we're ahead of them," said Czerwinski, who worked in Europe for five years. "But there's no question with these applications for civilian use, they're ahead of us."

The GNEP program will work to "develop and deploy innovative, advanced reactors and new methods to recycle spent nuclear fuel," according to the 15-page document titled, "Advanced Energy Initiative." The initiative will help the United States increase energy production while reducing the waste and lowering the opportunities for weapons to be made from the byproducts by recycling or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

NON-PROLIFERATION

In 1979, the Carter Administration decided to halt reprocessing for two main reasons: The fear of plutonium falling into the wrong hands, and to keep the reprocessing technology from spreading to other parts of the world. Nuclear energy already had a public relations problem in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident and the radicalism that the Iranian Revolution brought home every day with the hostage crisis. These events put nuclear proliferation on the back burner.

Other nations did not, however, follow the U.S. lead. Instead, they became more proficient in separation and reprocessing.

"In some respects we are playing catch-up as a nation," Czerwinski said. "The problem with this area, in my opinion, is it's tied to politics. The reason America stopped reprocessing was purely political. There was no technical reason for it. We still have very good scientists at the national labs. I believe we can do it."

But no matter how the president's plans develop, Yucca Mountain is still in play. The program is designed to reduce the amount and "radio-toxicity" of the waste that could be headed there. One of the goals of the president's plan, and a side benefit of Czerwinski's research, is that the country would only need one nuclear waste repository.

There are currently 104 commercial nuclear generating units providing 19.9 percent of the country's electricity generation. The last plant was ordered in 1973 with the reactor coming online a decade ago. The Watts Bar Nuclear Plant on the Tennessee River 50 miles north of Chattanooga began service in May 1996. Costing more than $6 billion, the plant took more than two decades to build and only one of two units has currently been finished. Construction on the second unit has been stopped.

The country's nuclear plants are, on average, 24 years old with licenses to operate 40 years with renewal options for another 20 years.

"You're always going to have some residual (waste) just because of the nature of the industrial process," Czerwinski said. "But one of the goals of this whole reprocessing program is to say if we need to build a repository, how many repositories do we need to build? My opinion is if we come up with any number but one, the program's dead."

USES FOR THE WASTE

Reprocessing could have an impact on Yucca Mountain. The repository has been planned so that stored waste can be pulled out at a later date. Scientists theorize that future technologies will allow the repository to become a monitored retrievable storage facility. They expect to develop uses yet to be discovered for the waste.

"I think that even if we do bury it in Yucca Mountain, it will be pulled out by future generations," Czerwinski said. "Even if they want to get the titanium drip shields, there'll be resources in there."

Calling it "an opportunity unlike any other at a university," Czerwinski arrived from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Nuclear Engineering Department in 2004.

While reprocessing and the ability to reduce nuclear waste are components of the research, the program is not geared to any given technology or application.

"The way we do our studies is all very fundamental and our students can go work in all these fields," Czerwinski said. "The real key is having the capability to work with radionuclide and understand how to handle them and what information I can get from them. We're doing fundamental science that naturally lends itself to those applications."

aknightly@lvbusinesspress.com | 702-871-6780 x316

---------------------------

Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 07, 2006

ONLINE GUY: They're podcasters hear 'em roar, their messages are making local lore

Podcasting can turn anyone into an overnight star -- including preachers, newcomers, scientists and journalists. All it takes is a microphone, a digital recorder, editing software and something to share with the rest of the world.

"Godcasting" is what Bill Hoshauer, associate pastor of The Crossing (www.thecrossingonline.com) calls the weekly audio and video podcasts of church services. He got the idea to share sermons and church services after years of taping the messages and burning them to compact discs.

He heard from a church member stationed in Kuwait, where the CDs were used in informal religious services. That evolved into video podcasts of entire Sunday services.

Las Vegas newcomers Scott and Melissa Whitney share their "first-person look at living in Sin City" at Living in Las Vegas (www.livinginlv.com). The couple's weekly show has a folksy, yet technically polished feel, as they share experiences ranging from real estate and home construction adventures to exploring downtown's First Friday celebration to a tour of Mesquite.

They rate their finds either "hot or horrible," in hopes of helping other newcomers as they settle into the city. Photos accompanying each podcast are posted on their Web site.

The Yucca Mountain Project has joined the podcast revolution, said Erik Muller, public information officer for Clark County's Comprehensive Planning Nuclear Waste Division. The podcast is part of the division's Web site at (www.co.clark.nv.us/Comprehensive_plannning/YuccaMountainPodcast.htm).

One goal of the podcast is to reach specific populations. A recent edition of the Yucca Mountain podcast addressed the Chinese population in Las Vegas.

"We have received magnificent results from the podcast and have been able to reach younger publics," Muller said. "We just finished a podcast with the Chinese Community and are getting ready to produce a podcast in Spanish."

Podcasting the NevadaNewsmakers (www.nevadanewsmakers. com) television program has boosted Web traffic more than 20 percent, producer and host Sam Shad said.

Freelance journalists Steve Friess and Miles Smith recently broke the news of the closing of "Avenue Q" at Wynn Las Vegas, information they obtained during an interview with Steve Wynn and distributed through their podcast -- "The Strip" (www.thestrippodcast.com).

"For the first time that I know of, the major mainstream media was forced to report on a story broken via a podcast interview from our show," Friess said. "It is a significant, maturing moment of the young podcast medium, moving from entertainment to a mode of creating and disseminating journalism."

For more on podcasting visit Podcast411 (www.podcast411.com)

Share your Internet story with me at agibes@reviewjournal.com.

---------------------------

Asheville Citizen-Times
March 07, 2006

Nuclear material shipments are subject to some of the nation´s most stringent regulations

by Joe Gilliland

Recently the Citizen-Times published a guest commentary by Dr. Michael Hopping (“Let´s stop a nuclear accident in WNC before it happens,’ AC-T, Feb. 17) that I found of more than passing interest. One reason is that I was a public affairs officer for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for 19 years, the last four years as assistant to the public affairs director. The other is that, three days before the column´s publication, the National Research Council announced the results of an independent study examining the safety of transporting irradiated nuclear fuel to a proposed underground repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The Research Council´s announcement said the study — requested by Congress — found “no fundamental technical barriers to the safe transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the United States.’ It called for separate evaluation of the “social impacts’ of such shipments, mainly on tourism and property values. And it said more studies are needed to assess long-duration fires that could engulf spent fuel casks, as well as to evaluate “the security of such shipments against malevolent acts.’

In a separate announcement the same day, the NRC said it sponsored a study that concluded that a fire such as the one in a Baltimore (not Boston) tunnel in 2001 would cause neither spent fuel particles nor fission products to be released from a cask. That study was not completed in time for the National Research Council analysis. NRC also said it is completing a series of security assessments in light of the current terrorist threat environment and is preparing for a comprehensive fuel cask safety update. More recently, the NRC published for public comment a separate report that analyzed the implications on spent fuel transportation of a highway tunnel fire in California in 1982. This study´s conclusions are similar to those in the analysis of the Baltimore rail tunnel fire. Anyone interested will find the National Research Council announcement at www.nas.edu, along with information about ordering a copy of the full report. NRC´s statement on the Research Council project is available at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doccol lections/news/2006/06-020.html. Its announcement on the highway tunnel fire report may be found at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doccol lections/news/2006/06-026.html.

In his commentary, Dr. Hopping linked spent fuel transportation with various other nuclear issues, viewing them all with alarm. He also had some words of cheer about the potential for spent fuel-laden trains traveling through Biltmore Village. That is certainly a possibility, but I worry more about the effects of future flooding there.

Obviously spent fuel is part and parcel of the whole nuclear scene, but it is something our society must deal with even if every nuclear power plant in the United States shut down tomorrow and the government immediately halted its nuclear weapons program.

By law, this highly radioactive waste is eventually to be disposed of in an underground repository, a complex underground structure that is much more than a “dump.’ Like it or not, the law also specifies Yucca Mountain as the site to be evaluated.

As things now stand, the Department of Energy — which is responsible for developing the repository — has formally approved the Yucca Mountain site and has published a final environmental impact statement. But, to say the least, it does not appear that its submission of a license application to the NRC is just around the corner. Whenever that happens, NRC will still have to review the application in detail and deal with any legal challenges.

Whether one favors or opposes any future nuclear development, it seems reasonable to me to recognize that, as the National Research Council report says, a radioactive release from spent fuel shipping casks is “very unlikely given [their] robust construction and the strict regulations for transporting them.’ These two factors are precisely why an extremely good safety record has been maintained over 40 years worldwide in the shipment of such highly radioactive material.

Without question, the magnitude of these shipments will increase dramatically with the opening of a spent fuel repository or even of other proposed controversial facilities, like a so-called interim storage site or even a fuel reprocessing plant. Much planning and other shipment-related work remain to be done by governmental authorities, whose activities should be as transparent as possible, consistent with security. But the safety regime already in place is a distinct advantage as we approach this task.

Joe Gilliland is a retired public affairs officer for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He also worked for a group of community newspapers in Middle Tennessee and holds a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He lives in Asheville.

---------------------------

Indian Country Today
March 07, 2006

Prairie Island seeks nuclear waste disposal

by David Melmer
Indian Country Today

WELCH, Minn. - The Prairie Island Sioux Community continues its search for a location to dump nuclear waste that sits in dry casks just yards from the community.

Since 1994, when the casks were first placed on a dock at the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant (then owned by Northern States Power Co.), the community has objected, gone to court and eventually worked out compromises with the state Legislature and NSP. Yet the dry casks remain, unwelcome and a threat to thousands of lives.

The Prairie Island tribal council has visited the Yucca Mountain facility before, but recently revisited it for the second time in four years to see what progress has been made. The on-again, off-again site that is under construction to house all of the nation's nuclear waste will take more years to complete than the Prairie Island people anticipated. Tribal council members told Indian Country Today that the facility may not be complete until 2025. (The site was originally slated for completion in 2010; later, 2015.)

The site's opening has been delayed because of federal budget cuts and litigation over environmental issues. The Yucca Mountain site is also strongly opposed by some Western Shoshone who call it a human rights violation and have appealed to the United Nations for intervention.

The Prairie Island Sioux Community will continue to fight to remove the nuclear waste, even through numerous setbacks, said Victoria Winfrey, tribal vice president.

''Native land could be permanently marred by the nation's failed waste policy,'' she said.

Each year, as fiscal year budgets emerge and are finalized, the Yucca Mountain project receives fewer dollars than the year before, thereby delaying the project.

''Each year, the fund is less and less and less. It's partly the fault of Congress and ... some ridiculous standards,'' said Ron Johnson, assistant tribal secretary/treasurer.

The state of Nevada successfully lobbied and received a change in the length of safe storage from 10,000 years to 1 million years. The 21 dry casks that now sit on the dock at Prairie Island are supposed to be safe for 10,000 years.

''A one-million-year radiation standard on the mountain seems ridiculous when casks yards away from our community do not have the same standards.

''The standards are clearly being imposed to kill the project,'' Johnson said.

The community now receives the support from Red Wing, a nearby Minnesota community that would be affected should a meltdown or other disaster occur. The power plant and both communities are located on the Mississippi River, 30 miles southeast of the Twin Cities. The Mississippi is subject to flooding from time to time, thereby presenting another risk, the council members said.

While Congress and the administration promote more nuclear power as clean energy, the budget for Yucca Mountain is inadequate and can't help Prairie Island or other communities with the same issue. While discussions take place, the Prairie Island power plant and its residue sit within 600 yards of the tribal community, where health risks are now emerging.

''We know there are health risks; we don't know how they tie in or correlate. A lot of tribal members have different types of cancers,'' said Audrey Bennett, tribal president.

Currently, a health study by the University of Minnesota is under way and the Mayo Clinic has a health clinic in the community that is also collecting data.

''We see cancer in people who grew up with the plant ... What does that say for another 10 or 20 years?'' Bennett said.

Yucca Mountain won't be able to store nuclear waste any time soon. There are no completed tunnels or alcoves that could store the waste; alcoves under the mountain are still being tested.

Johnson said what the group saw in their visit was promising. One-third of the construction is complete; and from what the scientists and geologists told the Prairie Island group, Yucca Mountain will make a safe, long-term repository for nuclear waste, the council members said.

''We would like to strongly encourage congressional leaders to get up and going on funding support for this project,'' Johnson said.

''It is important this facility is opened. We spend our money to fight for these efforts. Who is going to wake up on the federal level and help us? Hey, we are spending our resources; it's time our constituency stepped up for tribes and gets going,'' he said.

In the meantime, the reminder of nuclear waste faces the Prairie Island community every day, as the dry-cask storage is above ground.

''Here [Yucca Mountain], it's out in a remote area; you can't see anything. We don't know how much longer the casks will be [at Prairie Island],'' Vickie said.

A possible nuclear waste repository site at the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah, which also faced strong opposition by a tribal faction, has been licensed. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Feb. 21 licensed the potentially largest privately owned nuclear waste dump. But it is all aboveground, and the storage capacity will be 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear rods to be held for a period not to exceed 40 years.

This would be an economic boon to the Goshutes, but Prairie Island council members are still worried about the time line: it will take 10 years for that site to be functional, they said.

The Prairie Island community has been living with the problem for a long time. The first reactor went online in 1973 and the second in 1974. Construction began on the facility in 1969, but the Prairie Island community didn't realize it would use nuclear power.

''We didn't have a choice. It happened rather quickly and we had to live with it,'' Winfrey said.

The land was originally privately owned farmland. A couple of locations along the Mississippi were chosen, but communities fought the proposals and the location settled on was Prairie Island, officials said.

The tribe was poor at the time and could not properly fight the proposed power plant.

The Prairie Island community has worked out an agreement with Xcel Energy Inc., the power company that grew from NSP, for compensation of $1 million per year for the power plant and $400,000 per year for as long as the dry casks are stored on the site.

Another of the tribal community's concerns is terrorism. The dry casks are stored in the open and at any time, as Johnson described it, someone in a plane could hit the casks and the reactors. Millions of people live in the Twin Cities area and could be affected by the results of such an attack.

Another consideration is access to the island. There is only one road, which is blocked many times a day by trains passing on a rail line that crosses it. There could be 10,000 people on the island, at the casino or attending other events, and all employees at the plant must use the same road. Evacuation would be very difficult.

''That's a pretty scary proposition,'' Johnson said.

''We are frustrated but we never give up. We started as a tribe with nothing, went through [the] hard knocks of life, and now there is a health concern. We are also fighting for communities in a 50-mile radius,'' Johnson said.

---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN -
March 06, 2006

Getting to the bottom of Yucca Mountain

860-ton drill a monument to waste?

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

WASHINGTON - In the classic children's book, "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel," Mike promises that his beloved but outdated machine Mary Anne can still dig a cellar in a single day.

And she proves it, carving out a perfect hole for the new Popperville town hall - only to realize she dug herself so deep there was no escape.

So Mary Anne stayed there and adapted to a new role as the building's furnace, and as a kind of museum piece.

So it is with the machine that dug the 5-mile exploratory tunnel in Yucca Mountain, a gigantic $13 million drill bit that sits at the site unused - and for sale with no takers - nine years after its job was done.

The Tunnel Boring Machine is becoming a monument to the project itself. Historians may one day consider The Machine a testament to Man's ability to dream and build big, or maybe an aging symbol of a failed idea.

In the mid-1990s, as The Machine rumbled, there was more excitement about Yucca. The nuclear industry was flush with optimism that it would soon have a place to bury the spent fuel that comes out of reactors.

Public officials were confident they were pursuing the best, most technologically advanced solution to the nation's nuclear waste problem - burying it in tunnels under the mountain.

Energy Department officials spoke of Yucca in lofty terms as a project unlike any the world has ever known. It was no less than a test of man's ambition - and hubris, some said.

But the desert ridge had yet to be excavated so scientists could examine its innards. The Machine would give researchers entre to the inside of the mountain to study the rock and test its reactions to heat and moisture.

So the government bought a massive piece of machinery befitting the size of the $58 billion repository project - one of the biggest drill bits in the world at 860 tons, 25 feet wide.

The Machine arrived in pieces on 50 trucks from a plant in Kent, Wash. It was reassembled at the foot of the mountain, and on a September day in 1994 it began to gnaw.

For two and a half years it chewed at the rock, three shifts a day, five days a week. On occasions it reached a top speed of 18 feet per hour. It consumed tons of rock and a $130 million budget.

In April 1997, the 1.7 million-pound gopher emerged victorious from its five-mile, U-shaped hole. The moment was dubbed, "The Daylighting."

Then-project manager Wesley Barnes pumped his fist with pride. Workers cheered.

Not long after, the department treated The Machine to a bath of fresh white paint.

But the glory faded. And with its work complete, The Machine was unceremoniously discarded not far from the tunnel's South Portal.

It sits there still.

The Energy Department has tried to get rid of it. Most of its attachment, which had included trailers and gantries that made the entire apparatus longer than a football field, were sold as scrap a few years ago.

The Energy Department offered The Machine to other government agencies. The feds tried to sell it commercially. But it wasn't like unloading a 1994 Subaru.

One potential buyer offered a few hundred thousand dollars, but the department refused to be low-balled. "The scrap alone is probably worth that," department spokesman Allen Benson said.

Today, The Machine is the highlight of the Yucca Mountain tour.

Visitors are awed by its size. Some Energy Department employees argue that it should be put on permanent display.

Truth is, The Machine is already becoming a kind of monument to Yucca.

It is either a symbol of the promise of the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository and Man's ability to engineer it, or a relic of a rusting idea the government keeps repainting, trying to restore its luster.

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

---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN
March 06, 2006

Editorial: Radiation standards a farce

Government scientists say with straight faces that Yucca can be safe for 300,000 years

The Environmental Protection Agency last week said it can do the impossible - issue a final radiation standard for Yucca Mountain by the end of the year. We say impossible because the radiation standard, by federal court order, must protect the public for roughly 300,000 years. For that matter, the bumbling U.S. Energy Department has proven that it would be incapable of safely transporting and burying 77,000 tons of nuclear waste for any period of time.

A radiation standard sets the amount of radioactivity allowed to be emitted in any one year from Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. This is the site under study - and under construction - by the federal government as the nation's sole burial spot for high-level nuclear waste.

It is currently in limbo for a variety of scientific reasons, but mainly because of a federal court challenge by Nevada. The state argued that the EPA had set a radiation standard to protect people over a 10,000-year period, when a much longer time period was required.

When Congress approved Yucca Mountain in 1987, it ordered the EPA to rely on calculations by the National Academy of Sciences in setting the length of time for the standard. The academy said the standard should be set for the peak life of the radiation, which is about 300,000 years. The federal court found that the EPA hadn't followed Congress' direction, forcing the agency to come up with a new standard.

Radioactivity is measured in rems. Last August the EPA proposed a new standard for Yucca that would allow the emission of 15 millirems a year for 10,000 years (a chest X-ray is about 10 millirems), then 350 millirems a year for a million years beyond that. It is this proposal, or a refinement, that the EPA will release as its final recommendation by the end of the year.

Obviously, it is absurd to believe that a standard will be preserved for even 10,000 years. Cro-Magnon man lived in Southern Nevada 10,000 years ago. What our state will be that far into the future is anyone's guess. But let's say that humans are still here, and that Las Vegas has expanded to Yucca Mountain by then. The level of 350 millirems is three times higher than what is allowed to be emitted from today's nuclear plants. Maybe the EPA thinks humans will be radioactive-loving mutants by then.

Nonetheless, the absurdity of permanently burying nuclear waste continues to be discussed by federal officials - all with straight faces.

---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN
March 06, 2006

Nevada veterans take to Capitol Hill to air budget complaints

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

WASHINGTON - Nevada veterans will be in the nation's capital this week to lobby for fairer funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

White House and VA budget officers have been under fire in recent years for submitting inadequate budget proposals. In an embarrassing reversal last year, the agency defended its budget request, but later went to Congress to request an emergency budget boost of $1.2 billion when it became clear the agency had underestimated expenses.

Many veterans groups would like to see lawmakers grant the agency a more reliable stream of money every year, rather than subject the VA to the whims of annual congressional budget setting.

Bush administration critics this year have alleged the White House intentionally low-balled its VA budget request for fiscal year 2007 to make its deficit-reduction numbers look better, fully expecting that Congress would increase the budget at a later time.

Carl Owens, president of the Nevada chapter of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, said he finds it hard to believe that the government isn't doing a better job of funding the VA as veterans stream back from Iraq and other battlefields in the war on terror.

Owens will join other veterans from around the nation trekking to Washington. He plans to meet with Nevada lawmakers and attend a meeting with VA Secretary Jim Nicholson.

Owens said he was concerned about the White House proposing cuts for prosthetics and spinal cord injury research.

"There's a shortfall every year," Owens said. "I don't think the administration understands that this is not just a problem now, but it's a problem that will be there long down the line."

• • •

How big a role did Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D Nev., play in Hackett-gate?

Not very big, he says.

As part of their effort to win a Senate Democratic majority, Reid and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., not long ago helped convince Iraq war veteran and Democrat Paul Hackett to run against Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, according to Hackett.

Then Reid and Schumer goaded him to pull out after Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, got into the race, Hackett said. Brown's entry meant both candidates would have had to spend a lot of money and energy in the primary campaign, and Reid and Schumer believed it would be best if Brown could focus solely on DeWine, Hackett said.

Hackett dropped out of the race two weeks ago, and his supporters directed their wrath at Reid and Schumer, especially in the blogosphere.

Reid downplayed his role, although he admits he talked to Hackett.

"But I certainly never said, 'You should get out of the race,' " Reid told an MSNBC columnist Feb. 14.

When asked if he had gone so far as to discourage donors from giving to Hackett, Reid said, "absolutely not."

But Hackett was irked. He got his full version of the story on the record in a column last week in the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the beginning, "The calls kept coming," Hackett wrote.

"Schumer and Reid said, 'Your country needs you.' "

He wrote that Reid and Schumer's wives even called Hackett's wife with the same message. Later, "Schumer and Reid, the guys who said my country needs me, had a change of heart," Hackett wrote.

• • •

A Sun story last week described how all of the major players in the long-running drama of Yucca Mountain were assembled for a status hearing Wednesday in the Senate on the proposed nuclear waste repository: The Project Manager (Energy Department), The Nevadans, The Lawmakers, The Experts, and The Regulators.

But the story left out another player in the saga: The Reporters, noted Brian O'Connell, a long-time Yucca observer and director of the nuclear waste program with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

O'Connell e-mailed his addition: "This assemblage of weary scribes could almost write their stories in advance once they see the witness list, as though they were the 'writers' for the little play.

"They scoop up the prepared statements tossed at their feeding table. During the actual hearing they are checking their Blackberries.

"After the politicians make their statements, the 'first panel' of government witnesses are brought to the witness table for their lawyer-vetted testimony and the evading of hard questions. When the chairman shows some mercy, the wounded are carted off as the next panel is called.

"This is the signal for most of the reporters to exit stage left to go back and file their stories."

• • •

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., had rave reviews for her new neck, enhanced by plastic surgery in August.

"For the last couple of years whenever I was on TV all I could do was look at my neck," Berkley told interviewers Steve Friess and Miles Smith, who host an online audio "podcast" show.

The interview was also picked up by The Drudge Report and recounted in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.

"I have the neck of a 20-year-old and a 50-year-old body," Berkley said.

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

---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN
March 04, 2006

Letter: A different take on Yucca Mountain

The Las Vegas Sun got it wrong in its Feb. 27 editorial, "Dangerous Yucca proposal."

Congress and the president confirmed Yucca Mountain as the site for a deep geologic repository in 2002 based on 20 years and $8 billion in scientific analysis. This analysis evaluated increasing Yucca's capacity by two-thirds and found the increase to be safe. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed this work. More recently, an additional independent review found the research related specifically to water infiltration technically sound.

The industry has a proven record of safely transporting used fuel - more than 3,000 shipments in this country over the past 40 years. And, the ability to safely transport used fuel was recently supported by a National Academy of Sciences report.

Active work on Yucca Mountain continues. The Energy Department's project head, Paul Golan, said he expects new target dates for filing the licensing application and commencing operations will be announced this summer. This work ultimately will be judged in a rigorous Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process, where decisions will be made based on facts, not unsupported claims.

Both common sense and concrete science show that Yucca Mountain is safe, is the best option for safely storing used nuclear fuel and is proceeding toward a successful conclusion.

Steven P. Kraft, Washington, D.C.

---------------------------

Las Vegas SUN
March 05, 2006

Jon Ralston offers advice to keep Dawn Gibbons from sticking her foot in her mouth

Sometimes in politics, the best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is to shut up.

Take the case of Dawn Gibbons, the ex-assemblywoman who hopes to replace her governorship-seeking husband, Rep. Jim Gibbons, in the House. I recently reported that Ms. Gibbons is having a fundraiser this month headlined by House Transportation boss Don Young. He is a potent force in Congress and has helped Nevada on some issues over the years, and Nevada has reciprocated by raising money for him over the years.

But that's not what makes this March 29 fundraiser so noteworthy. What makes the event interesting is that it is being hosted at the offices of The Capitol Hill Consulting Group, which has a panoply of clients, among them the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), whose boss, Tom Kuhn, just loves Yucca Mountain.

Kuhn is also an intimate of President Bush, and that relationship was widely seen as one of the reasons the president gave short shrift to sound science and accelerated the project. Kuhn came to EEI after a stint as the head of the American Nuclear Energy Council (ANEC), which morphed into the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), which is the major lobbying outfit on Yucca.

When I raised the issue of these connections last week, the Gibbons campaign tried the best offense. The Capitol Hill Consulting Group is only letting the campaign use its offices, not contributing money to the event, and its members have never talked about the dump with EEI, the pitch went. Rep. Young voted right once on the dump and he chose the location, the spin continued. And, as her consultant wrote to me in an e-mail, "Dawn Gibbons opposes the Yucca Mountain project. Period."

Ah, if only I could just put a period there, as that supposedly inarguable air of finality implied I should. If only I could just let it go.

Alas, I can't.

I suppose I could just forget that EEI, despite protestations to the contrary, has been an advocate for burying nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain for many years. In fact, according to the NEI Web site, NEI was formed by merging ANEC with other entities, including "the nuclear division of the Edison Electric Institute." Any attempt by the Gibbons folks to distance EEI from NEI or its agenda is disingenuous at best and a flat-out falsehood at worst.

I suppose I could also forget that six years ago, the chairman of EEI, John Rowe, and who not coincidentally is a board member of NEI, testified in favor of accelerating the opening of the dump at Yucca Mountain. And I suppose I could just forget that if you lobby for a trade group such as EEI, which has an agenda often coincident with NEI, you have to wear the entire agenda, not just parts of it.

Let's suppose, for the sake of Ms. Gibbons, that I agree to overlook all of that. Fine. But the tie that binds often are ties that bind . The Capitol Hill Consulting Group also has represented a company called Entergy, which is the second largest nuclear plant operator in the country and a fervent advocate of the dump. Entergy has applied to build one of the first new nuclear power plants, so my guess is the company will be supporting the new push to bust the cap on the amount of waste that can be stored at Yucca Mountain.

I suppose I could wonder if The Capitol Hill Consulting Group might be helping with that effort. I suppose I could wonder if the outfit hosting the Gibbons event might talk to its client about nuclear waste issues that it claims it never raised with EEI. I suppose I could even wonder if any of the company folks who might pass by the room where the March 29 event is taking place might put a few "Nuclear Waste is OK" brochures inside the event.

But I won't. I'm perfectly content to shut up about this issue now and not even mention any of the poor lobbying company's other clients that might be of interest to Gibbons' potential constituents. Really, I am happy to shut up.

I wonder if the Gibbons campaign is, too.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program "Face to Face With Jon Ralston" on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the daily e-mail newsletter "RalstonFlash.com." His column for the Las Vegas Sun appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com.

---------------------------

Platts
March 03, 2006

Yucca Mountain faces challenges says former Energy Dept. official

Washington (Platts)--3Mar2006

The repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, faces institutional, political, and legal challenges that have been driven in part by "historical regional equity and fairness concerns," said a former Energy Department official.

Lake Barrett, a former acting director of the Yucca Mountain project, told officials at a nuclear waste conference in Tucson, Arizona, this week that he believed that "if political solutions can be found to these fundamental Nevada concerns, ... that other technical, regulatory, management and budget issues can be adequately addressed."

Waste legislation expected to be introduced in Congress this year could provide a vehicle to "address these policy issues," said Barrett, who heads L. Barrett Consulting. In an apparent reference to the department's new fuel-cycle initiative, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, Barrett said he believed "that the current global situation and advanced nuclear technologies can be integrated to play an important role in revising current policy in an acceptable way for everyone."

He cautioned, however, the country must proceed with a repository, adding that advanced fuel-cycle technologies "are decades away from meaningful implementation and are not in themselves a waste disposal solution."

For more information, take a trial to Nuclear News Flashes at
http://www.nuclearnews.platts.com.

---------------------------

Senator Jim DeMint
March 01, 2006

DeMint Calls on Administration to Open Yucca Mountain

March 1st, 2006 - WASHINGTON, D.C - Today, at a hearing held by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) called on the Department of Energy to move forward and open Yucca Mountain for storage of the nation´s nuclear waste.

“Yucca Mountain is a vital component of America´s energy security, and must open for nuclear waste,’ said Senator DeMint. “For too long, South Carolina has ‘temporarily´ housed a great deal of our nation´s nuclear waste. Opening Yucca Mountain´s repository immediately is essential to ensuring that the nuclear waste currently kept in South Carolina will be removed and permanently stored in a safe and secure location.’

“Yucca has been extensively studied for more than 20 years and we´ve poured billions of dollars into it. Yet, today it still stands empty.’

“Instead of storing nuclear waste above ground at 131 sites in 39 states, it is infinitely safer to consolidate the waste into one desolate location and bury it deep underground. Science and commonsense both dictate this solution and Yucca fits this description.’

“The people who are opposed to Yucca Mountain are the same people who have always been opposed to nuclear energy in America. They would rather shut down an abundant, emission-free source of energy to satisfy their own agenda.’

“The administration needs to act now and open Yucca Mountain as soon as possible,’ said Senator DeMint.

South Carolina facts:

• Roughly 3,174 metric tons of civilian waste are stored in South Carolina.

• About 3,000 metric tons of High-Level defense waste at the Savannah River Site are supposed to go to Yucca Mountain

• South Carolina nuclear energy consumers have paid over $1 Billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund to build Yucca Mountain. Only Illinois and Pennsylvania have paid more.

• 55% of South Carolina´s energy comes from nuclear facilities.

---------------------------

Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 05, 2006

Porter might meet at proposed dump site

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., is exploring the idea of having a hearing later this month at the Yucca Mountain repository site, a scenic if unconventional backdrop for a congressional meeting.

Porter aides asked the Department of Energy this week what it would take for the House federal work force and agency organization subcommittee to have a March 23 hearing at the nuclear waste study area.

A DOE official said Friday as far as he could tell it would be the first public meeting at the repository.

"It's possible, certainly," DOE spokesman Allen Benson said.

An information center holds 75 people and is steps from the north portal, the gaping mouth of the repository's 25-foot diameter exploratory tunnel.

But, Benson added, "It's 100 miles from Las Vegas, a two-hour ride each way. There are security requirements to get onto the site, and aside from that, there are certainly limited facilities."

The repository is on the southwest corner of the Nevada Test Site. Visitors customarily are required to submit their names and Social Security numbers for clearance in advance.

The subcommittee's inquiry was informal and Porter, its chairman, will decide in a few days whether to pursue the idea, spokesman T.J. Crawford said.

Crawford downplayed the potential visual attraction of Porter leading a meeting at the mountain.

"The focus needs to be on planning the content of the hearing, so logistics-wise this needs to be wrapped up soon," Crawford said.

In the meantime, Porter also has reserved the County Commission chambers at the Clark County Government Center, Crawford said.

Porter has said he scheduled the hearing to disclose new problems his investigators have found.

He said he also will unveil a report from the Government Accountability Office about Yucca Mountain quality assurance.

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