Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, March 9, 2006
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Las Vegas SUN
March 09, 2006
Yucca Mountain construction won't start for 5 years, Bodman says
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - It will be at least five years before construction can begin at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal facility, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said this week, as lawmakers grilled him about delays possibly affecting the creation of new power plants.
During a House subcommittee meeting on Energy Department spending Wednesday in Washington, D.C., lawmakers said the lack of proper waste disposal facilities could endanger efforts to license new power plants at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"I think we have a very serious problem here," said Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind.
Bodman appealed for patience.
"We really had a process that was broken, and we are trying to fix it," he said. The nuclear industry "is being patient with me. I ask for your patience as well."
Asked by Visclosky when Yucca Mountain was going to open, Bodman said: "I would guess at least five years before we are in a position to put a shovel in the ground to build it."
Bodman, who became energy secretary in January 2005, was questioned about continuing delays in the repository program, and about why the department was not seeking to establish interim storage sites where thousands of tons of radioactive spent fuel now piling up at power plants in 39 states could be kept.
Subcommittee chairman David Hobson, R-Ohio, said he was willing to help, "but we can't do it if you don't have a plan."
The Bush administration has been preparing legislation to speed work on Yucca Mountain, but it has been delayed in negotiations between the Energy Department and the White House.
The department has spent roughly $8 billion to research and begin development of the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
President Bush and Congress approved the project in 2002 with a target date for opening in 2010. But there have been a series of setbacks, leading project officials in recent months to push back the target date to 2012 or later.
A federal appeals court in July 2004 threw out a key radiation health standard, and a Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not validated an electronic document database that was a required precursor for NRC licensing.
Inspection audits by the department and by congressional investigators have raised questions about the quality of work being conducted by DOE and its management contractor, Bechtel SAIC.
Nevada critics of the repository said management is only part of the problem. They maintained that Yucca Mountain is fundamentally flawed for safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
"I'm glad to hear he's finally admitting that Yucca has serious problems," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. "I agree with him on the first part: Yucca Mountain is broken. But he's wrong about the second part; science has shown that Yucca cannot be fixed."
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., renewed a call for the department to abandon Yucca Mountain and to invest in dry cask technology to keep waste secured at power plants.
"What we really need is a fresh start on our nuclear waste policy, but that can never come so long as Yucca Mountain remains the Bush administration's sole focus," Berkley said.
---Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 09, 2006
'Fix' vowed for Yucca
Energy chief admits past process 'broken'
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told lawmakers on Wednesday that the Yucca Mountain Project was "broken," and he appealed for patience as he vowed to get it fixed.
Bodman said blame could be shared by the nuclear waste repository contractor, other federal agencies and the Department of Energy itself, "who did not manage it very well."
"We are attempting to manage it better," Bodman said. "My hope is by demonstrating a thoughtful process, we will be able to reclaim your support and that of the nuclear industry.
"We really had a process that was broken, and we are trying to fix it," said Bodman, who became energy secretary in January 2005. The nuclear industry "is being patient with me. I ask for your patience as well."
Bodman issued his appeal as he came under renewed pressure from members of a House subcommittee that sets annual spending for the Department of Energy.
The Cabinet member was questioned about continuing delays in the repository program, and about why DOE was not seeking to establish interim storage sites where thousands of tons of radioactive spent fuel now piling up at power plants in 39 states could be kept in the meantime.
Lawmakers said inability to make headway could endanger efforts to license new power plants at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The new projects could fail to meet NRC criteria for waste disposal, they said.
"I think we have a very serious problem here," said Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind.
Subcommittee chairman David Hobson, R-Ohio, said he was willing to help, "but we can't do it if you don't have a plan."
The Bush administration has been preparing legislation to speed work on Yucca Mountain, but it has been delayed in negotiations between the Energy Department and the White House.
Asked by Visclosky when Yucca Mountain was going to open, Bodman said: "That's sort of the $64 question."
"I would guess at least five years before we are in a position to put a shovel in the ground to build it," he said.
Nevada critics of the repository effort said Wednesday that management is only part of the problem. They maintained that Yucca Mountain is fundamentally flawed for safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
"I'm glad to hear he's finally admitting that Yucca has serious problems," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said of Bodman. "I agree with him on the first part: Yucca Mountain is broken. But he's wrong about the second part; science has shown that Yucca cannot be fixed."
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., renewed a call for DOE to abandon Yucca Mountain and to invest in dry cask technology to keep waste secured at power plants. "What we really need is a fresh start on our nuclear waste policy, but that can never come so long as Yucca Mountain remains the Bush administration's sole focus," Berkley said.
If anything, Bodman was pressed by lawmakers on the spending panel to move in the other direction, toward temporary storage away from power plants where spent fuel assemblies are stored in pools of water and in above-ground casks.
"We are laying all our eggs in one basket," Hobson said, referring to Yucca Mountain. "I think there will be great resistance to continue to leave those rods laying around those communities."
Bodman said he did not believe DOE had authority to establish interim storage before Yucca Mountain was licensed, but Hobson disagreed.
"You don't need Yucca Mountain to move spent fuel out of Chicago or out of Toledo," Hobson said.
Bodman said the matter was being discussed further within the Bush administration. "We are very open-minded on interim storage," he said.
The Department of Energy has spent roughly $8 billion to research and begin development of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
President Bush and Congress approved the project in 2002, but there since has been a series of setbacks.
A federal appeals court in July 2004 threw out a key radiation health standard, and a Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel soon after invalidated an electronic document database that was a required precursor for licensing.
Inspection audits by the department and by congressional investigators have raised persistent questions about the quality of work being conducted by DOE and its management contractor, Bechtel SAIC.
Most recently there have been stop-work orders related to project design and to research on canister corrosion.
Almost exactly a year ago and several weeks after Bodman was confirmed as energy secretary, the program was rocked further by the disclosure that several U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists in e-mails discussed possible falsification of quality assurance documents concerning water infiltration at the site.
The research was a building block in DOE's case that Yucca safely could contain nuclear waste, and the department spent a year and more than $1 million to check the allegations.
Talking to the subcommittee, Bodman noted that DOE had expected to have filed a repository license application before he was confirmed, only to face new challenges.
"I have arrived and have taken on responsibility for a process that has been severely compromised," he said. "I inherited what I inherited, and I am doing my best to see that we comply with the law and satisfy our obligations. We have got to have Yucca Mountain, and I have got to make it work."
Bodman said he has taken steps to right the ship, installing a new manager who has initiated a redesign of the repository's surface complex in a bid to simplify waste handling. Also, Sandia National Laboratories has been given responsibilities for quality control, he said.
Bodman promised that by the summer he would give lawmakers a new schedule for when DOE expects to seek a repository license.
"I expect that when we have a new schedule, that on the date that we apply for a license we will be in the position to look you in the eye and to make the case that we are on top of this and that we know what we are doing," he said.
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American Spectator
March 09, 2006
TAS Live
Take One for the Team
By Max Schulz
In recent years Nevada politicos like Governor Kenny Guinn, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, and Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign, along with the major newspapers, have proclaimed the Silver State's united opposition to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository about an hour and a half out of Las Vegas. Every self-respecting Nevadan, it seems, naturally must be against Yucca.
Well, maybe not everyone. It seems that Reid and Co. overlooked a free thinker named Crystal Wosik.
Miss Wosik is better known as Miss Nevada. She was her state's proud representative to January's Miss America pageant, which took place, coincidentally, in Las Vegas. In a bid to breathe some life into the dying Miss America spectacle, pageant organizers moved the event out of Atlantic City for the first time in its 85-year history. Searching for better ratings, they traded the rundown squalor of a Jersey shore boardwalk for the glitz and glitter of the Vegas strip.
According to the Reno Gazette Journal, Miss Wosik was asked during the interview session (which did not air on television) her opinion of the controversial plan to store the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Bucking the trend established by just about every major elected official in the state, Miss Nevada replied that the waste must go somewhere, and Yucca Mountain appeared to be the best place in the country for it. It was an eminently reasonable, even courageous, position to take.
Until the follow-up.
The pageant Savonarolas pounced. They asked what if something terrible happened, some sort of catastrophe where people died.
Well, she reportedly replied, sometimes you "just have to take one for the team."
Take one for the team indeed. Such selflessness and generosity of spirit helped ensure Crystal would not be not crowned Miss America.
So she went down in flames. But in so doing, Miss Wosik provided a valuable service, suggesting the fissures that might exist in the state's supposedly unified resistance to filling Yucca Mountain with nearly 80,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel.
I had Crystal's Yucca Mountain apostasy in mind during a trip to Las Vegas conducted just two weeks after the Miss America pageant. Having long known what the state's political establishment had to say about the matter, I was curious what the average Las Vegan -- if there is such a thing -- thought about Yucca. If my limited sampling is any indication, the answer is not much at all.
"Yucca Mountain?" asked a blackjack dealer at the Bellagio in response to my inquiry. "That's in Idaho, right?" I told him it was not far from Las Vegas. He said he had only been in Sin City for a year.
Others I asked could identify the Yucca Mountain controversy, but nobody seemed too upset over the possibility the repository might get built. "The politicians are making hay over it," a cocktail waitress at the low-rent Barbary Coast noted. I had queried her as she brought me an early morning drink. "But I don't think it's much of a problem. The scientists will bury that stuff pretty deep." Her candor earned a big tip.
My admittedly unscientific survey netted not one person who could be described as being exercised over Yucca.
Perhaps that is not surprising. For years Nevada -- and Las Vegas in particular -- played up its role as ground zero of the nation's nuclear weapons efforts. Before the moratorium on nuclear testing was instituted in 1992, more than 1,000 nuclear detonations were conducted there. Most took place at the government's test site near Las Vegas. About 100 of these were atmospheric tests; the rest were detonated underground, leaving an eerie set of pockmarks along the desert floor.
During the 1950s, the Nevada Test Site averaged an aboveground explosion every five weeks. They were bona fide tourist attractions. Casinos ferried high rollers out in early morning limousine rides to watch the mushroom clouds tower over the landscape. So important was the atom bomb to defining Las Vegas that in 1958 Clark County incorporated a mushroom cloud into its seal. According to a 2005 PBS feature on Las Vegas, the Sands Hotel and Casino even held an annual Miss Atomic Beauty contest.
Miss Atomic Beauty! Now that's a pageant Crystal Wosik should win hands down.
Max Schulz is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This article appears in The American Spectator's March 2006 issue. To subscribe, please click here.
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E&ETV
March 09, 2006
Energy Policy: Energy Secretary Bodman outlines plans on Yucca, nuclear waste and oil security
The Energy Department recently announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), an ambitious, international plan to recycle spent nuclear fuel. But lawmakers on Capitol Hill are raising questions about the cost and feasibility of the GNEP program, and what it could mean for the long-delayed Yucca Mountain repository. During today's OnPoint, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman explains his thinking on GNEP, Yucca Mountain legislation and the interim storage of nuclear waste. Plus, Bodman addresses high oil prices and President Bush's pledge to lessen the U.S. "addiction" to foreign oil.
Transcript
Brian Stempeck: Hello and welcome to OnPoint. I'm Brian Stempeck. Joining us today is Sam Bodman, the secretary of the Energy Department. Also with us is senior reporter Mary O'Driscoll. Mr. Secretary, thanks a lot for being here today. We appreciate it.
Samuel Bodman: I'm happy to be here, Brian.
Brian Stempeck: I want to start off, you recently announced, from the department, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.
Samuel Bodman: Right.
Brian Stempeck: Basically a broad plan, a very ambitious goal, very expensive long-term project.
Samuel Bodman: Right.
Brian Stempeck: Give us a sense on how this came about.
Samuel Bodman: Oh gosh, we've been focusing on the whole question of management of spent fuel really since I got to the department about a year ago. And I asked our deputy, Clay Sell, to look into the matter. He'd really specialized in nuclear matters during part of his prior career. And so we went to work on it. I had sort of the senior oversight of it, but the real work was done by Clay and his colleagues. And they developed an approach that we think makes a lot of sense. We presented it to the advisers to the president, then to the president and got his sign off on it. So we're quite enthused about it.
Mary O'Driscoll: One of the major complaints that we're hearing about this very ambitious program is that you are making some real significant changes in U.S. policy on reprocessing waste. And then managing the reprocessing and, as you call it, the recycling of waste.
Samuel Bodman: Right.
Mary O'Driscoll: Just through an annual budget and appropriations process and not through any kind of large scale debate or discussion about the change in approach on this kind of issue on Capitol Hill. How do you respond to that?
Samuel Bodman: Well, I think we're going to get plenty of response and debate on Capitol Hill about this matter; at least it would appear that that would be the case. GNEP is intended to recycle spent fuel and at its core we have a situation where we have over a hundred commercial nuclear reactors in this country. They've been accumulating spent fuel. Our department has the responsibility for taking title to that spent fuel. And we have been working on a program for the ultimate disposition of the waste in Yucca Mountain. That's sort of one path. The other path is what we call GNEP, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which we believe has the potential -- and we're still saying potential because we don't know -- but it has the potential of recycling that waste. When you have spent fuel, Mary, 90 percent of the energy that was in there when it was brand new fuel is still there. It's in a different chemical form and it needs to be removed and recycled. The problem that we have with other means of recycle is that one gets pure plutonium, which can be used by people who wish to do harm to others, terrorists and the like. So this technology enables us, we believe, to recover plutonium with a mixture of other transuranic elements, which we think will prevent the use by terrorists for proliferation purposes.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. I wanted to ask, to get to that in a minute, but I wanted to ask, you're talking about two tracks here. You've got the Yucca Mountain track and you have the GNEP track, but you're saying that, you have said in the past that they are linked together. I wanted to know how closely they're linked together. You told a group of reporters last week, for instance, that you were not going to pursue any kind of interim storage until you had a license, interim storage waste until you had a license for Yucca Mountain at hand. But doesn't that kind of create a problem where you've got, you don't know what you're going to be doing with the waste because both Yucca Mountain and this Global Nuclear Energy Partnership are pretty long-term programs that aren't going to really show any development for a while?
Samuel Bodman: Well, Yucca Mountain is a longer term program than we'd like to have it, sure. But it is not nearly as long term as GNEP is going to be. And so we're going to have to deal with -- whether GNEP goes forward or not, we have to have Yucca Mountain. And we need to have a final repository. If we are only successful in moving forward with Yucca Mountain and we're not successful with GNEP, now which it remains to be a question that perhaps we can talk about later, if that's the case, we will proceed with Yucca Mountain. And proceed to store the fuel there as we now plan to do. We had, we will be filing legislation related to Yucca Mountain. You alluded to that. And the primary focus of the legislation will be first land withholding and secondly, a financial or fiscal reform of the program in order for us to fund it in a more effective way. I think I got a little bit ahead of myself the other day when I said that there will not be inclusion of any discussion of interim storage. I'm still unclear about that, frankly, and it's still a matter that's still being debated. So I'd rather not go further with it until we finish the internal debate within the administration.
Brian Stempeck: There seems to be a growing sense from some camps that all the attention being paid towards GNEP is making it a higher priority than Yucca Mountain. Almost in a sense the department is turning its back on Yucca Mountain. Do you think that's an accurate assessment at all?
Samuel Bodman: Oh no. We're very committed to Yucca Mountain. We have to be for the reasons that I mentioned. Yucca Mountain is the law of the land. It's been passed by Congress, signed by the president. It's been reviewed by Congress, reviewed by the president. So this is something that we are committed to do, among other reasons, as I said, it's the law of the land. And so we will pursue it. We are committed to looking at GNEP. The goal here, over the next three years, is to do enough work that we can narrow the cost bands. And that we can make a determination of, if you will, on a go or no go basis, as to whether we should go forward with the global nuclear partnership. That's the issue.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK, and you're also talking about $3 to $6 billion before you figure out whether to make that final, that go or no go decision. So that's an awful lot of money to be spending on something like that, isn't it?
Samuel Bodman: No. If I may, the cost over the next three years, it's about $250 million that we have asked for '07. It'll be, I think, it's $700 million for '08. And, oh like maybe $800 or $900 million for the next year. That effort will put us in a position, we believe, during '08 to make a decision. If we can't, we'll, we will do everything we can do while this administration is here. And bundle it all up and hand it to the next administration who comes in. But it's, we believe it makes great sense to pursue this. The $3 to $6 billion that you mentioned, that's the capital costs over a period of time for the three components --
Mary O'Driscoll: OK.
Samuel Bodman: -- of GNEP, which is the separation of the spent fuel and the culling out, if you will, of the transuranics that can be recycled, the development of a fast reactor, which can burn the transuranic materials and the third part, which is the fuel device that will, or manufacture of fuel elements from the transuranic that are removed so that they can be put into the nuclear reactor.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK, one question, I wanted to kind of track back to Yucca Mountain. Senator Domenici has been telling reporters, actually today, that he does not see any Yucca Mountain legislation coming out this year. You've talked about the need to reform the funding for Yucca Mountain.
Samuel Bodman: Right.
Mary O'Driscoll: Getting better access to the nuclear waste trust fund.
Samuel Bodman: Right.
Mary O'Driscoll: And a need to jumpstart the program and get things back on track.
Samuel Bodman: Right.
Mary O'Driscoll: And also the nuclear industry is very eager to be able to find some way to get the waste off their sites --
Samuel Bodman: Right.
Mary O'Driscoll: -- and into an interim site or some place, so that they don't have to keep storing it on there. Are you concerned that Senator Domenici is saying "not this year"? That it might have to be pushed off until next year?
Samuel Bodman: Senator Domenici is a much greater expert on the legislative calendar and procedures than I am and so I would be concerned, truly, if he mentions that. We hope to be able to deliver up soon, I would hope within the month period of time, the proposed legislation that has been signed off on by the administration. And we hope that we can get action on it this year. We'll see how that works out.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK.
Brian Stempeck: I want to switch subjects to the world oil markets. We recently had the president of OPEC on our program. He said the idea of $60 per barrel on oil is actually a fair price, a price he doesn't think is hurting the world economy. I wanted to see if you agree with the OPEC president's assessment of the world oil markets?
Samuel Bodman: Well, first I make it a policy, in this job in particular, but in general I would say not to forecast oil prices. You know, I think a fair price is something that both buyers and sellers find acceptable. I would say, in terms of our being the primary buyer or the largest buyer of oil in the world, $60 is a pretty high price, at least as far as we're concerned, as far as the president's concern. That's why we've made a number of proposals, the president has, in his State of the Union address and the subsequent budget announcement, budget proposal that we made to Congress to develop alternative forms of energy, that hopefully could lead to a reduction in the pressure on oil markets. So we're hopeful that we could see a reduction in prices below the $60 level, but I wouldn't say anything more than that. We're going to work hard to try to, to try to reduce that pressure. We have real issues, Brian, because we have, for the first time in my lifetime, we have, I'm seeing an inability of the suppliers to keep up with demand. And that's what's driven prices up into this $60 to $70 range, which is, I've seen attendant increases in gasoline costs that are really felt by American consumers. And so the president of OPEC is quite right that the economy seems to be holding up pretty well. But clearly the margin for error and slippage in the economy has been reduced by this head wind that we're facing. And so we're hopeful of reducing the price.
Mary O'Driscoll: I wanted to know, the president in his State of the Union address talk about reducing our dependence on foreign oil or oil from the Middle East.
Samuel Bodman: Right.
Mary O'Driscoll: Which then in your remarks afterwards was amended a little bit to, you know, that's not exactly what he was saying. What can you tell us is the real goal of the State of the Union address to getting off of foreign oil? I mean, what is the real goal here that you're looking at? Because it got a little muddy there in the discussions --
Samuel Bodman: Yeah.
Mary O'Driscoll: -- after the State of the Union.
Samuel Bodman: Yeah, I think the best way I would put it is that, would be to create enough alternative sources of motor fuels that we could relieve the pressure on our gasoline by, of order 5 million barrels a day and do that over the next 20 years. That's kind of how I think about it. And there are those who would attribute that to the Mideast. We, in fact, import oil from literally all over the world. And I think the president was trying to deliver a message, a goal, if you will. And the way I think of that goal is to reduce the consumption of oil by 5 million barrels a day. If you do that I think we'll see some real diminution of the pressure on oil. And the largest, or the best candidate to help accomplish that would be ethanol and the manufacture of ethanol from cellulose, which is part of the research program that the president put forth in that State of the Union.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK.
Brian Stempeck: One last question for you, Mr. Secretary, because we're running out of time. There's a lot of instability in the world oil markets right now, in Nigeria, in Saudi Arabia, the attempted attack there.
Samuel Bodman: Right.
Brian Stempeck: The situation on Iran with nuclear power and a potential shut down of oil exports there as well. In the event of a major supply crisis, what is the White House's plan of response? Beyond just going to the strategic reserves, what other plan does the White House have in the event of a major supply crisis?
Samuel Bodman: There is going to be clearly a response if any one of these events occurs; if we were to see a shutdown of Nigerian oil on world markets, if we were to see a shutdown, for whatever reason, of Iranian oil or of any major producer. There, I believe, would be a significant increase in price that would be attendant thereto. Increased prices would help reduce consumption. We would have available to us the strategic petroleum reserve, which is some 700 million barrels of oil, that would,l if it were 100 percent of the oil that we needed it would last us, I think, for two or three months. But given the fact that this would be a partial shutdown, I think we would get good support over the course of a year. So we would have some time to adjust, but there's no doubt we would be looking at higher prices. And I think that with higher prices we will see an even more aggressive stimulation of alternatives. And that would be the primary response. But the government does not have, I wish there were a magic bullet that I had as the secretary of Energy, or that the president had, that could impact this. But I don't believe there is one.
Brian Stempeck: All right, Secretary Bodman, we're out of time. Thanks so much for being here today.
Samuel Bodman: Happy to be here.
Brian Stempeck: I'm Brian Stempeck. This is OnPoint. Thanks for watching.
[End of Audio]
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Deseret News
March 09, 2006
PFS chief says foes can't stop nuclear waste
Utah updates challenge; $100M deal for Goshutes?
By Suzanne Struglinski and Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News
WASHINGTON — A Nuclear Regulatory Commission license in hand, Private Fuel Storage's chairman said Wednesday that the consortium of utilities is moving forward with its plans for a high-level nuclear waste disposal site in Utah's Skull Valley — and he doesn't think opponents can stop it.
"Yes, there is hope for our future," John Parkyn said, holding up the license at an NRC conference in Maryland, drawing applause from the crowd.
In other developments:
• The state of Utah this week filed an updated challenge to the PFS proposal in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. It challenges the NRC's license, issued to PFS last month.
• And Time magazine is reporting that PFS would pay the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians up to $100 million over 40 years for the right to operate its proposed repository on the band's reservation.
However, neither Skull Valley Band chairman Leon Bear nor PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin would confirm the figure to the Deseret Morning News.
In Maryland, Parkyn told the NRC conference he is seeking additional utilities with nuclear plants interested in moving waste to the PFS site, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. And he downplayed any chances Utah's congressional delegation, governor and other opponents have at stopping PFS's plans.
That includes the recent creation of the Cedar Mountains Wilderness Area, approved by President Bush in January. The wilderness area gives federal protection to land adjoining the Utah Test and Training Range and includes PFS's preferred route for a rail line that would be built to move nuclear waste through Skull Valley to the storage site.
The congressional delegation had earlier pointed out that the wilderness designation did not stop the project outright but at least could remove a transportation option. PFS could still use a trucking option, although it still needs permission to use public land to build a transfer facility to truck the waste.
But Parkyn maintains that the wilderness area does not rule out using another rail route.
"That doesn't mean you can't put a railroad there, whether Sen. (Orrin) Hatch understands that or not. It certainly would make getting that land lease for the purpose harder.
"We will get the fuel to the site because it's a legal commodity, and we now have a license to receive it," Parkyn said.
Parkyn said the Cedar Mountain reserve is not a real wilderness either, arguing that the wilderness is in the mountains and that the delegation just "drew a bubble" around the mountains to block the nuclear waste — an argument he says could matter later down the line.
Parkyn believes other utilities will join the PFS consortium to save money and that ultimately the federal government will come on board as well.
In some cases, it would cost utilities more to keep storing waste at their plant sites — especially at nuclear power plants no longer in use — than it would to move it to Utah, Parkyn said. Although he would not disclose specific amount, he said PFS is a more cost-effective option because there is one set of security, insurance and other costs split a number of ways versus one utility having to pay for its own on site storage itself.
Companies interested in using PFS to store waste would pay a per-cask-cost, a percentage based on how much waste they would have to store there. Parkyn agreed that there are still some obstacles for the project to overcome, but individual utilities face their own sets of problems having to store waste at their plant sites, so PFS is still a viable option. He said 72 plant sites have separate costs that can be consolidated into a small share of one site.
"It's an individual choice," Parkyn said of the utilities.
The proposed PFS site in Utah would be an interim storage location. It was conceived because the Energy Department has yet to open the permanent government-owned nu- clear waste site planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada. That site is plagued by its own set of delays and controversies. Federal law prohibits storing waste in Nevada before Yucca gets a license, and a federally owned interim waste site would need to be approved by Congress.
Parkyn said "nothing official" has taken place with the Energy Department on getting PFS to become a federal interim site, but it is "logical to not replicate it." It took PFS almost nine years to get a license, so PFS believes the government could use its site instead of creating its own.
"They (the Energy Department) know that we are here, and a lot of us have worked hard on this," Parkyn said.
'Toxic opportunity'
Meanwhile, the Time magazine article, "Utah's Toxic Opportunity" by reporter Margaret Roosevelt, has prompted discussion about how much the Goshutes in Tooele County could benefit from the project.
Jason Groenewold, director of the anti-nuclear group Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, said the $100 million figure is "pennies on the dollar, compared to liabilities the nuclear industry faces for keeping this waste where it's generated. . . .
"Given that the liabilities and risks are going to be the highest for those that live in Skull Valley, they got the short end of the stick."
But Bear, the tribe's chairman, said PFS payments would allow the band to improve health care and housing. In 2000 Census reports, the tribe's population was listed at 90, not all of whom may be members of the Skull Valley Band.
The Time article, though dated March 13, is not included in the March 13 print edition available on newstands in Utah but is available on the magazine Web site. It does not show up as a link but appears when the word "Goshute" is typed in the magazine's search engine. Time magazine did not immediately answer an e-mail query seeking to clarify why Utahns could read the article on the Internet but could not find it in the magazine, though it was reportedly published elsewhere.
Asked about the $100 million figure, PFS's Martin said, "They have always considered the amount of the lease confidential. It has never been released publicly that I'm aware of."
In fact, she added in a telephone interview, she did not know the amount.
Bear also said he didn't know how much money will be involved. "When you start talking about profits . . . , I can't speculate on that," he said Wednesday.
The agreement between the Skull Valley Band and PFS "has to do with profit sharing," Bear added, "and how do I know what the profit's going to be? I know the facility's going to cost quite a bit to build," he added.
In a June 2000 article, the Deseret Morning News reported the cost of the PFS facility would be $3.1 billion, counting construction, operations and decommissioning. Since then, Congress passed the wilderness act that derails a planned rail spur line to the site. Because of that, a separate plant apparently would have to be built to unload protective casks from rail cars and load them onto trucks for the trip to the reservation.
Asked how the tribe will benefit from PFS, he said, "We're talking about putting housing up there, police station, small tribal clinic." Another possibility is health insurance for every tribe member, he said.
Bear said the band's health provider is in Fort Duchesne, Uintah County, 250 miles away. "It's hard for our people to get out there.".
For and against
Most members of the band are in favor of the project, Bear said. "We just had our meeting a couple of weeks ago, and everybody's anticipating when this is going to happen."
People wanted to know, "now that we got the license (referring to the license that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued to PFS), how come they're not building it? I just told them that you got to understand there's a lot of other things that's got to happen before they start moving dirt around."
Among these are approval by the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Who knows what bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., are going to do? Bear asked.
Asked if he was hopeful that the project will be built, he said it was like his father always said, "If it's going to come here, it's going to come here." The facility will be built on the reservation "if that's where it's intended to go," Bear said.
Margene Bullcreek, a member of the Skull Valley Band who lives on the reservation and who opposes the project, said she does not know the terms of the agreement with PFS.
She and other opponents have been saying "this contract is not valid because we don't know what's contained in there," she said in a telephone interview.
"Hopefully, it's not going to happen," she said of the project.
The project would store "more than half of the nation's (nuclear) waste on our small, little reservation, and there's no guarantee this is as safe as they say it is, because of the man-made accidents," she said. "Why should we give up our sovereignty, our indigenous land to store this waste?" Bullcreek asked. She worried that if some irreversible incident took place, "what's going to happen to us? Are we going to relocate?"
The $100 million cited, assuming it is a correct figure, is not the only amount to be paid to Utah entities. In September 2005, this newspaper quoted Martin as saying the utility consortium could pay Tooele County up to $250 million in lieu of property tax over the project's 40-year life.
E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com; bau@desnews.com
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 08, 2006
Congress won't act on Yucca legislation this year, senator says
By Steve Tetreault
Stepehens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Senate Energy Committee said Tuesday he did not think Congress would act on legislation this year to help establish a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said it is getting late to carry on a nuclear waste debate during a congressional session that figures to be shortened by elections this fall.
"It seems to me to be very difficult to get it done this year," Domenici said in a remark published by Environment & Energy Daily, an Internet publication that reports on Congress.
Domenici's spokeswoman could not be reached Tuesday to confirm his comment, which also was reported by Congress Daily. The senator spoke to reporters after a committee meeting.
The remarks by a senator who is considered influential on nuclear issues comes as the Bush administration continues to negotiate internally over a proposed bill intended to jump-start the stalled Yucca program.
Sources say officials at the Department of Energy and at the White House continue to differ on key elements of the bill, which is expected to spark debate and opposition from repository opponents.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Tuesday he hoped it would be ready "within the month."
Bodman on Friday said the Bush administration would not seek permission from Congress in the bill to establish interim sites where nuclear waste could be located from power plants until Yucca Mountain is completed.
On Monday, administration sources said Bodman "spoke too soon" and that interim storage still was being negotiated.
Meanwhile Tuesday, Democrats said the administration's contradiction of Bodman may signal "the beginning of the end" for the energy secretary.
"Given the Bush administration's emphasis on loyalty and its record of marginalizing dissenters, this development does not bode well for Secretary Bodman," said a statement distributed by the Democrats' "war room" established by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
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Engineering News-Record
March 08, 2006
Nuclear: EPA Yucca Mountain Rule Seen By Year's End 3/13/2006
By Tom Ichniowski
The Environmental Protection Agency expects to issue new radiation standards by the end of 2006 for the planned nuclear waste repository under Nevada´s Yucca Mountain, William Wehrum, acting assistant administrator for air and radiation, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on March 1.
EPA last year proposed limiting exposure outside the repository to 15 millirem over 10,000 years, rising to 350 millirem within 1 million years. In 2004 a federal appeals court rejected an earlier EPA proposal, which didn´t extend past 10,000 years.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) predicts further lawsuits. She says EPA´s extension of the time period and increase in exposure level won´t survive a court challenge.
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Scripps Howard
March 08, 2006
Program to turn plutonium bombs into fuel hits snags
By Lisa Zagaroli
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- As President Bush seeks to ensure that other countries wanting to use nuclear energy do so without creating weapons-grade material, the United States' plan to reduce its own stock of bomb-quality plutonium is behind schedule and has more than tripled in cost.
The program, referred to as MOX for the mixed oxide blend that would be converted into energy, has been slowed for a host of reasons, including partner Russia's unwillingness to agree to U.S. terms on liability as well as delays and cost overruns in the design phase of the plant at the Savannah River Site in Aiken County, S.C.
There is likely to be a several-year gap between the end the ongoing and first-ever test of MOX at Duke Energy's Catawba nuclear plant at Lake Wylie, S.C., and the time the utility can count on using the mixture for 40 percent of its electricity output, because the United States won't be producing the mixture for nearly a decade.
"My optimism has been in a steady state of decline," said William Hoehn, Washington office director for RANSAC, an independent organization that promotes a threat reduction agenda between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
The United States and Russia settled on the non-proliferation program in 2000, agreeing to simultaneously reduce the amount of plutonium they have from dismantled bombs by 34 metric tons each.
They would do so by blending the plutonium with uranium that commercial nuclear power plants use to generate electricity. MOX blends have been used for decades in countries such as France, but never before using weapons-grade plutonium.
To ensure that the mixture would work safely and effectively, the United States asked a company in France to create a blend with U.S. weapons plutonium. The Catawba nuclear facility began testing it in June, and it is working as predicted, said Rita Sipe, a spokeswoman for Duke Energy in Charlotte, N.C.
Of the 193 "lead assemblies" in the Catawba reactor, only four are using MOX. The test is scheduled to run a normal fuel cycle of three to four years. Afterward, Duke had hoped to gradually add more MOX until about 40 percent of its assemblies contained the uranium and plutonium mix scheduled to be fabricated at the Savannah River Site.
But Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told lawmakers last month that the planned fuel manufacturing facility in Aiken County, a 310-square-mile site near the Georgia border, isn't likely to begin producing MOX before 2015.
Bodman's letter to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his department would "continue to explore ways to accelerate its schedule for this important mission."
Construction on the Savannah plant had been scheduled to begin this May, but the National Nuclear Security Administration wouldn't verify the timing last week, saying only that it would begin "in 2006."
U.S. officials blame the delay primarily on Russians' reluctance to take on any liability associated with their MOX plant that the Americans plan to help them build and finance.
"We have had two years delay on that while we have argued over the terms of liability and we finally have resolved that matter last summer," Bodman told a Senate committee last month. "I do not have a signed piece of paper that says the Russians have signed off on this, but I'm hopeful."
"Until we get that done, I'm a little bit of a doubting Thomas on it," Bodman added. "So we continue to work with them."
Former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he thinks the MOX program will continue to progress with "diplomacy" with the Russians.
"It's certainly a very important priority for the non-proliferation objectives of both the United States and Russian republic," Abraham said in a phone interview.
"The notion of having large quantities of weapons-grade-level plutonium is obviously not desirable to either side," said Abraham, who last week signed on as chairman of the board of Areva Inc., which fabricated the MOX in France that is being used at Catawba.
The Russian delay is only a small part of the problem with the MOX program, according to a scathing audit by the Department of Energy's inspector general released in December. The report indicates the MOX program has been plagued with huge cost overruns, mismanagement and lack of oversight.
The original budget estimate in 2002 was for $1 billion. Less than four years later, the cost has climbed to $3.5 billion, and the plant won't be producing MOX until 2015, six years after initially anticipated.
"As of July 2005, NNSA had spent $453 million _ nearly half of the $1 billion design and construction budget, on just design activities, and had only completed 70 percent of the design work," the audit said.
"We found that weaknesses in project management and limited administration of the contract contributed to the cost growth," it added.
Bodman told lawmakers the cost increase was due in part to a "huge run-up in steel and concrete" prices.
"That's not the totality but in significant measure the reason for the up-tick in costs," he said. "Each time we delay one of these big projects, it's a billion-dollar decision."
Bodman said that by year's end, he'd submit a revised cost and schedule update to Congress.
In the meantime, the Savannah River Site, already a steward of the nation's nuclear stockpile, has been collecting more of the nation's plutonium reserves.
One of the community's biggest concerns had been that the plutonium would get shipped to South Carolina but never be disposed of as planned.
Aiken County has filed a lawsuit to stop the Department of Energy from shipping more plutonium to the site, which was built in the 1950s to create materials needed to make bombs.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as a House member co-authored a measure that would force the federal government to pay penalties to the state for having to store the plutonium longer than expected. But when the Russian liability delays surfaced, he agreed to give the department an additional three years to process the fuel before it has to pay the state $1 million a day until it removes the plutonium it transferred to Savannah.
The new effective date for the fines is Jan. 1, 2014, at least a year before Bodman says the planned plant will produce fuel.
Hoehn, of RANSAC, said he was surprised by the deadline being moved because it was "the one stick to wield against" the federal government that the state had.
"It's important to have the accountability mechanism," he said.
The delay will also mean a slower startup of fuel MOX usage by Catawba, which will have to revert back to 100 percent uranium after the test is complete while it awaits MOX production from Savannah, said Julianne Smith, a spokeswoman for the nuclear security administration.
The developments come at a time when nuclear energy has begun to emerge as a more viable energy option in Washington as well as abroad due to growing concern that the world is too reliant on oil from unstable nations as well as heightened concern about environmental emissions from coal and oil.
President Bush last week was in India settling a deal that would allow that country, which has nuclear weapons technology, to buy nuclear fuel and commercial nuclear technology in return for international inspections of its civilian reactors.
Bush also recently announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which he envisions as a plan for the United States to essentially lease nuclear energy to countries that need it for power, and then retrieve the spent fuel so there would be less risk that it be turned into weaponry.
Though nuclear fuel is emissions free, serious questions remain about its long-term disposal at Nevada's Yucca Mountain or any other repository.
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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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