Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 14, 2006
Porter cancels Yucca meeting
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- A House subcommittee on Monday canceled plans for a nuclear waste hearing next week that its chairman was trying to hold at Yucca Mountain.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., had planned to couple the March 23 hearing with a tour of the work site for the planned waste repository.
But Porter, chairman of the federal workforce and agency organization subcommittee, scrapped the hearing after logistics proved complicated, spokesman T.J. Crawford said.
The subcommittee was seeking to hold the public event on the secured government reservation 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, raising issues of transportation and access for members of the public and the media, Porter and DOE officials had said.
Instead, Porter will hold a news conference in Las Vegas that day to release a new Government Accountability Office report on Yucca Mountain, Crawford said.
Without the Yucca Mountain backdrop, "There is no point in rushing the actual hearing itself," Crawford said.
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Las Vegas SUN
March 14, 2006
Nevada governor not interested in replacing Norton
By Brendan Riley
Associated Press
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - President Bush may be looking for a Westerner to replace outgoing Interior Secretary Gale Norton - but Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn isn't interested in the job.
"He hasn't been contacted and he's not interested," Guinn spokesman Steve George said Tuesday, after relaying questions about the cabinet post to the Republican governor who's visiting troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait this week.
"Every time he's asked about another career, he says, 'I'm looking forward to retirement. This will be my third retirement. I'm ready,'" George added.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has said the Bush administration is "looking west" for a replacement for Norton, who was popular with industry but criticized by many environmentalists who accused her of sacrificing the environment to speed up energy development.
Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett will run the department until Bush names a replacement.
Guinn, elected to the first of his two terms in 1998 in his first bid for public office, has said he's "absolutely not" looking at a bid for another federal or state office. He'll be 70 when he steps down as governor at the end of the year.
Guinn is wrapping up his final year as the state's chief executive by starting a detailed budget draft that the next governor will inherit. He also is dealing with hundreds of appointments to boards, commissions and other posts, and is trying to improve coordination of various health care services.
Guinn has said he and first lady Dema Guinn also plan a tour that will take them around the state next summer.
While in office, the moderate Republican sought to overhaul government agency operations, diversify Nevada's casino-dependent economy and revamp budgeting and tax collections.
He also pushed for a major student scholarship program and spearheaded the biggest tax increase in state history before seeking a $300 million rebate to return excess revenues to Nevada residents.
Guinn also continued the state's long-standing opposition to federal efforts to locate the nation's nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
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KRNV
March 14, 2006
United Nations hands symbolic victory to Western Shoshone
Attorneys for the Western Shoshone Indian Tribe of Nevada say the United Nations has ruled in their favor.
Monday the tribe announced the UN has decided the human rights of tribal members are being violated by the United States government.
Attorneys say that's because of broken treaties over land rights and a nuclear waste project in Southern Nevada.
Robert Hager, attorney for Western Shoshone, "The United Nations has found that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is a violation of the human rights of the Western Shoshone, and so we would expect that the entire Nevada congressional delegation would use this decision in an effor to stop Yucca Mountain, if they are opposed to that project."
Attorneys say the UN is now asking the United States to work with the Western Shoshone to address their concerns and to end activities detrimental to Western Shoshone lands, such as Yucca Mountain, livestock grazing, and hunting and fishing.
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Las Vegas SUN
March 13, 2006
Bodman in a bind over 'broken' Yucca project
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - Watching Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, just 13 months into his job, observers might get the feeling he is already sick of dealing with Yucca Mountain, one of his department's toughest and longest-running challenges.
Bodman last week got in trouble with his own staffers after he told reporters the department had no intention of pursuing a temporary nuclear waste storage site while Yucca is being developed. (It turns out the department may pursue that.)
Then in appearances before congressional panels last week, Bodman had to search for new and different ways to say the troubled proposed nuclear waste repository program had been poorly managed.
He told lawmakers that Yucca was "broken."
He pleaded for more patience from Congress. He said he was trying to implement better management. He said "doubt" had been cast on Yucca's quality assurance program, which is designed to maintain its scientific integrity.
"It has been severely compromised because our contractor didn't do as good a job as a contractor should," Bodman said of Yucca.
He put some blame on the U.S. Geological Services for compromising quality assurance. "And perhaps mostly it has been compromised because we in the Energy Department didn't manage it very well."
Lawmakers on two House committees grilled Bodman on Yucca, including Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., who drew a few chuckles from the audience when he asked Bodman the painfully simple question that Yucca observers have been asking for years: "When do you think Yucca Mountain will be open?"
Bodman said, "That's kind of the $64 question."
Visclosky shot back: "It's about $500 million," a reference to Bodman's Yucca budget request for next year.
• • •
Last year more than 6,000 bills were introduced in Congress and only a tiny fraction ever were made law. But those odds don't stop lawmakers, including Nevada's own, from trying to live up to the job title.
Recently introduced: two provisions inserted by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., into a child safety and crime bill approved last week by the House. One provision allows school districts to submit fingerprints of job candidates to a national database, with the goal of avoiding the hire of criminals.
The other requires stricter penalties - at least 30 years in prison, or life, or even death - for anyone who kills a federally paid public safety officer.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., last week introduced a bill that would allow veterans to hire a lawyer earlier in disputes with the Veterans Affairs Department over benefits. Current law prohibits veterans from seeking counsel until after a sometimes lengthy administrative appeals process.
And Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., introduced a bill that would entitle wounded veterans to a pro-rated share of their retirement benefits
Currently, military service members have to work 20 years for the benefits.
"Some of these veterans have served 10 or 15 years, and had planned to keep serving until retirement," Reid said. "It's not their fault they got injured."
• • •
Democratic members of the House Education and Workforce Committee released new numbers last week they say show Bush budget proposals would trim $107 million in federal money from Nevada education programs in the next five years.
In that time, the state stands to lose $53 million for vocational and adult education programs; $31.3 million for special education; and nearly $23 million for school improvement programs under the No Child Left Behind Act.
• • •
Lawmakers routinely pepper reporters with press releases, which rarely contain much news. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., set a new standard last week for newslessness when his office issued an alert to the media to announce that he had been praised by someone named Pete Sepp, vice president for communications of the National Taxpayers Union. Sepp thanked Ensign for opposing an asbestos litigation reform bill.
Stop the presses ... "Senator Ensign deserves praise for having the courage to resist pressure from many of his colleagues, and to side instead with taxpayers in this debate," Sepp said.
• • •
During his weekly "stakeout" with reporters, Reid last week praised a Washington Post column by Norman Ornstein, who had chronicled how Congress over the years has spent less and less time in session, and typically meeting only Tuesday through Thursday.
Reid agreed: "Thursday now is where Friday used to be. Mondays are out of the picture. We don't do anything on Mondays."
Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at grove@lasvegassun.com.
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Granite Falls Advocate Tribune
March 13, 2006
Senator Kubly tours Yucca Mountain site
By Dave Smiglewski
Publisher
State Senator Gary Kubly recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the Yucca Mountain area in Nevada. Yucca Mountain is the proposed site for the federal government's nuclear waste depository. It is literally a tunnel being burrowed into a very large and remote mountain approximately two hours north of Las Vegas on U.S. government property.
Kubly traveled with other members of the Minnesota joint house and senate Legislative Electric Energy Task Force. The group's interest stems from the fact that Minnesota has two nuclear power generating stations currently on line. The stations, located at Monticello and at Prairie Island, near Red Wing, are currently producing and storing spent nuclear fuel rods which are highly radioactive. Both plants are owned by Excel Energy.
The task force and some staff traveled to the site, which is 12 miles from the nearest settlement, where they observed preliminary construction which is taking place at the highly-secured area.
The group also met with several Nevada officials and discussed the plan for Yucca Mountain. That plan has not been well-received in Nevada, Kubly said. He mentioned that only two members of the Nevada legislature voted to approve the plan in the first place and they were both defeated in the next election. The Nevada Attorney General has gone on record as saying that the site will not be opened as long as he is in office, Kubly stated.
It will be three years, according to Kubly, before Yucca Mountain is officially licensed and another four years after that before it will partially open. One hundred and three different sites around the country will provide the 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive nuclear waste to be stored there. It will take between 24 and 38 years to fill the site. Yucca Mountain will then have to be sealed and continuously guarded for over 1,000 years. Over $8 billion has been spent on the plan at Yucca Mountain so far and the finished product is projected to cost $60 billion. Minnesota's share of that is $538 million.
Aside from concerns about security and safety at the site, the other major worry is the transportation of the nuclear waste. It is highly radioactive and will travel mostly by rail via various routes through several large cities, many smaller communities and over dozens of rivers, many of which provide drinking water supplies for the surrounding areas. One of the rail routes proposed for the movement of the waste is through Willmar, Granite Falls, Marshall and on to Sioux City, Iowa. From there, it will go into Nebraska and across Wyoming into Utah and then south to Nevada to a yet-to-be constructed, several-mile-long rail spur to Yucca Mountain. Transporting the waste by rail, while offering the safest means for moving the dangerous cargo, is still a source of concern for many in the various communities and states in which the trains will travel.
Excel's nuclear power plant in Monticello recently filed for a certificate of need for on- site dry cask storage of spent radioactive nuclear fuel rods. That is the same storage method which is being used already at Prairie Island. The legislature will likely be asked to approve the Monticello storage during the legislative session in 2007. Kubly said he thinks that lawmakers may be inclined to examine the idea of re-establishing a Renewable Development Fund which could be used to again jumpstart renewable fuel energy production efforts similar to the wind and biomass mandates that the legislature demanded in return for the license to store fuel at Prairie Island several years ago. That led to the development of hundreds of high-capacity wind generators along the Buffalo Ridge in far southwestern Minnesota, as well as efforts to build a biomass electrical energy facility in Minnesota. The former proposed MnVAP alfalfa gasification facility that had been planned in Granite Falls was a response to that biomass mandate. The turkey litter-to-electricity power plant under construction in Benson is the result of that mandate.
"In some ways, it is difficult to be opposed to Yucca Mountain, because it will take our waste," Kubly said. Nevertheless, it is probably not the answer and will need to be studied further, he said, adding that the radioactive fuel and waste is a very large problem with nuclear energy and there are no easy answers.
Kubly went on to say that he favors the establishment of a Renewable Energy Standard that would provide a reliable and sustainable source for up to 25 percent of Minnesota's energy needs. This could relieve Minnesota of more of its dependence on nuclear and fossil fuels.
The task force will continue to work toward energy recommendations to be acted on by the legislature.
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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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