Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Business Wire
March 22, 2006
Nevada Sues to Obtain Key Yucca Document
CARSON CITY, Nev.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 22, 2006--Nevada today sued the U.S. Department of Energy, claiming the agency is hiding a key document pertaining to the safety of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The suit, brought by Attorney General George J. Chanos under the Freedom of Information Act, was filed in federal court for the northern district of Nevada. The document is the government's draft license application for the repository, prepared by DOE's contractors in 2004 for upcoming Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing proceedings. Those proceedings have yet to begin.
"The federal government is required by law to share its important Yucca information with the host state," Chanos said, "and we are entitled to such information under the Freedom of Information Act as well. But DOE has refused to provide Nevada with this most important document for the past three years."
Chanos outlined a host of measures Nevada has taken to secure the document, including two requests by Governor Kenny Guinn to the Secretary of Energy and a follow-up request to President Bush, pending unfulfilled subpoenaed demands by Representative Jon Porter, litigation before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing hearing board, a Freedom of Information Act request, and administrative appeals within DOE. All those requests were rebuffed, with DOE claiming the draft license application was subject to various legal privileges.
"We want to see this document because we believe it will show that the repository is unsafe after 10,000 years, if not before," said Robert Loux, executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects. "There isn't a privilege in the world that should shield this from Nevada's citizens." In July 2003, a federal appeals court ruled that DOE must demonstrate repository safety for a period much longer than 10,000 years.
To secure a construction permit for the repository, DOE will have to submit a license application to the NRC, commencing several years of formal hearings on various technical and legal challenges expected by Nevada. DOE had completed a draft license application and planned to submit it to NRC by December 2004. But legal victories by Nevada and technical shortcomings at the project made that deadline impossible to meet, and no new deadline has yet been set.
"What are they trying to hide?" Chanos added. "If the repository is safe, you'd think they'd be anxious to prove it."
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Las Vegas SUN
March 22, 2006
Nevada files new federal lawsuit in Yucca Mountain fight
By Ken Ritter
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing the federal Energy Department of withholding documents that state officials say will show the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository can't be built safely.
The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Reno, is the fourth federal lawsuit the state has pending against the plan to bury 77,000 tons of the nation's radioactive waste in Nevada.
The suit seeks the release of a 2004 draft application prepared by contractors for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to open the repository.
"The federal government is required by law to share its important Yucca information with the host state, and we are entitled to such information under the Freedom of Information Act as well," Nevada Attorney General George Chanos said in a statement. "But DOE has refused to provide Nevada with this most important document."
An Energy Department spokesman in Washington, D.C., said the agency has made public on an Internet network "millions of pages of information" about the Yucca Mountain project, but was under no legal obligation to release its draft license application.
"Once the license application is submitted to the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), it will be made public," spokesman Craig Stevens said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.
"This department and this administration remain committed to the licensing, construction, and operation of Yucca Mountain as the nation's permanent geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel," Stevens said. "This lawsuit will not deter us."
The state's three-page complaint lists measures that Chanos said Nevada has taken to secure the draft license application, including requests by Gov. Kenny Guinn to the secretary of energy and to President Bush; subpoenaed demands from Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.; litigation before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing hearing board; a Freedom of Information Act request; and Energy Department administrative appeals.
All those requests were rebuffed, Chanos said.
"What are they trying to hide?" he said. "If the repository is safe, you'd think they'd be anxious to prove it."
Bob Loux, chief of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects and administrator of the state fight against the repository, said the state believes the document will show that the repository cannot meet Environmental Protection Agency radiation safety standards.
The Energy Department had planned to open the repository by 2010. But it missed a self-imposed deadline to apply for a license by the end of 2004, and licensing hearings are expected to take several years.
Last week, the acting director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management that oversees the project said the site should open in the next decade.
The process has been stalled by budget shortages, opposition by Nevada lawmakers including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a controversy over whether scientists falsified quality assurance data and by a court-ordered rewrite of EPA radiation standards.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which ordered stricter standards, also heard oral arguments last October and is expected to rule soon on a state claim that the Energy Department overstepped its authority, violated environmental rules and needs to rewrite its plan for shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.
Nevada also has asked the court to review Nuclear Regulatory Commission rulings, and another lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas that would deny state groundwater supplies to the arid desert site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
---On the Net:
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
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Reuters
March 22, 2006
Nevada sues Energy Dept over nuclear waste plan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The state of Nevada on Wednesday sued the Bush administration to compel it to publicize key documents on its plan to build a long-delayed nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert.
Nevada Attorney General George Chanos sued U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman and the Energy Department to require them to publicly release a draft application to build an underground waste dump in the Nevada desert about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The Energy Department had originally intended to file that application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2004 but the project has been plagued by scientific foul-ups and political stonewalling.
"Defendants have no legal basis for their actions in withholding the right of access to such documents," Chanos wrote in the complaint, filed in a Nevada federal court.
"What are they trying to hide?" Chanos said in a statement. "If the repository is safe, you'd think they'd be anxious to prove it."
An Energy Department spokesman said the government has no legal obligation to share the draft license application until it files it officially at the NRC.
Congress has decided that Yucca Mountain should be the resting place for the waste from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants and "this lawsuit will not deter us from that commitment and our obligation under the law," department spokesman Craig Stevens said.
In coming weeks, the Bush administration is expected to send its latest legislative proposal to Congress, with the aim of moving the stalled plan forward. Republican Pete Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and a nuclear industry proponent, will lead that effort in Congress.
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Pahrump Valley Times
March 22, 2006
Endangered pupfish critical, on life support
By Robin Flinchum
Special to The PVT
A lot is resting on the backs of some 84 tiny, shiny blue-brown fish swimming in a crack in the earth called Devil's Hole inside the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.
As the population of these historically controversial and endangered desert pupfish continues to dwindle, federal, state and local scientists are scrambling to discover the reason and find a way to bring them back.
A dramatic flooding and landslide incident, in which both naturally occurring silt and the displacement of scientific monitoring equipment combined to decimate between one-third and two-thirds of the Devil's Hole Pupfish population in September of 2004, left pupfish numbers at an all time low.
So the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service, both jointly responsible for the small, mysterious warm water pool called Devil's Hole and the all-important fish that call it home, along with the Nevada Fish and Wildlife Office, convened a panel of scientists to come up with solutions.
In an effort to increase public involvement and awareness of the imperiled pupfish, many of these scientists will be holding an open forum at 7 p.m. in Pahrump's Bob Ruud Community Center on March 30.
"Originally, we hoped the population would replenish itself," explained National Park Service ranger Nancy Hadlock. The carefully monitored fish population has dipped and recovered before, but not this time. The last count, conducted by a pair of divers in the deep waters of the cavern last September, was estimated at 84.
Devil's Hole is a small pool with a constant 92-degree temperature in the crevasse of a rocky hill. Today it is fenced off with chain link, barbed wire, and heavy locks. The 40-acre parcel of land it sits on belongs to Death Valley National Park and the 22,000 acres surrounding that comprise the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, created in 1984 to protect these fragile fish.
When population surveys of the pupfish first began in 1972, the count usually hovered somewhere in the area of 324 fish, with an all-time high count of 553, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife statistics. But in 1997, the population began to diminish steadily and scientists have been unable to discern the reason.
"We really just don't know why," said Bob Williams, field supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Office. But it is crucial that they continue their efforts to find out. Some dramatic incidents like the 2004 landslide and a sloshing of the water in the cavern resulting from seismic activity during a severe earthquake in Mexico have had obvious effects. But even under ideal conditions, the fish are not thriving, Williams said.
"There's no dam that's causing this problem, no water diversion, no spawning problem identified. It's a daunting task and it's time to let the public know what's at stake."
These tiny fish are no more than an inch long and live for less than a year. The Devil's Hole species (cyprinodon diabolis) is one of several cyprinodons found in the Death Valley desert region and in the Mexican Caribbean. Two others exist inside the Ash Meadows Refuge (cyprinodons nevadensis mionectes and pectoralis) and three in Death Valley National Park (cyprinodons salinus, milleri, and nevadensis nevadensis). But what makes the Devil's Hole fish a priority is not just its tiny population, occurring naturally in no other part of the world but this small, rocky hole, but also its controversial history.
The Devil's Hole Pupfish, a species that may be as much as 60,000 years old, were declared an endangered species in 1967, one of the very first to receive that designation. By then the tiny fish had already served as conservation models when a presidential proclamation set aside Devil's Hole and annexed it to Death Valley National Monument as part of a preservation effort on behalf of the fish in 1952.
In 1972, when development around the Devil's Hole annex in the Ash Meadows area threatened water levels in the cavern, the federal government brought a lawsuit against the developer.
Four years later the court ruled that the Devil's Hole Pupfish had prior water rights and that a minimum level must be preserved in the Hole in order to ensure their protection.
This decision would ultimately have a major impact on the surrounding areas and set a nationwide precedent for wildlife conservation efforts. Now, federal agencies entrusted with the care of endangered species in areas such as Death Valley National Park and the Ash Meadows Refuge have some recourse when water sources are threatened. The Devil's Hole decision has played a role in subsequent issues including the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository because of its connection to the aquifer that feeds regional water sources.
The Devil's Hole Pupfish is "a lighthouse species," said Death Valley National Park's Terry Baldino. "When it winks out, what happens to the species further down? Every species in the environment is affected, including us, because we live in this environment."
Although scientists have been studying the Devil's Hole fish for more than 30 years, "we still have a lot of unanswered questions," Baldino said. "The loss of this species is a loss of knowledge."
And a loss of something the federal government has expended considerable resources to protect. But even if the worst happened and the Devil's Hole fish disappeared, said Death Valley National Park Superintendent J.T. Reynolds, Devil's Hole itself would be worthy of protection. "We're fortunate to have a window into this important aquifer. If we can use and manage this resource in a sustainable way, we can get a lot more answers about (land-water-species) relationships."
The cavern is at least 500 feet deep, though some say its ultimate depth cannot be measured. Two recreational divers disappeared there during the 1960s and no trace was ever found of them. The chain link fence surrounding the hole was erected soon after. Today, the fence protects water monitoring equipment as well as cameras watching for both natural predators and vandals, and is rigged with an alarm system.
Large-scale development in both Nye and Clark counties is an ongoing cause of concern for wildlife and public lands managers and now, for the first time, Nye County is sitting down at the table for discussions about the future of Devil's Hole.
James Marble, director of Nye County's Natural Resources Office, attended a press conference at Devil's Hole last week. Marble said his role was to help "strike a balance between stewardship of the natural resources and the quality of life" for residents of Nye County.
But while the population of Devil's Hole declines, forward thinking scientists do have a few more pupfish up their sleeves. In 1972, a pupfish refugium was created near Hoover Dam and a small number of the fish were removed from Devil's Hole to this environment to create a backup population. Two more refugia were established inside Ash Meadows and each one has a population also hovering between 80 and 125 fish, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's Bob Williams.
However, one of the Ash Meadows refugia was infiltrated by another cyprinodon species, creating a hybrid fish, Williams said.
While the tiny fish swim in the clear blue waters, unaware of the massive efforts being undertaken on their behalf, the Nevada Fish and Wildlife Office, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Death Valley National Park Service and scientists recruited from as far away as Mexico are putting their heads together and planning for the future.
Anyone interested in learning what all the fuss is about is encouraged to attend the public meeting on March 30. A pupfish conference is also scheduled to take place in Death Valley at the Furnace Creek Visitor's Center on April 30.
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New York Times
March 20, 2006
Utilities Offer Energy Dept. Site for Waste
By Matthew L. Wald
WASHINGTON, March 19 — A group of nuclear utilities that is planning to build a private nuclear waste dump on an Indian reservation in Utah has offered to sell space there to the federal government. The move could help the government avoid billions of dollars in potential legal damages over its failure to build its own repository.
This month the utilities, eight companies from around the country, won a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to open a repository at Skull Valley, on land leased on a Goshute Indian reservation, about 60 miles west of Salt Lake City.
The utility consortium, called Private Fuel Storage, does not have the permits it needs to transport waste to the site, however, and the State of Utah is trying to block those.
The Energy Department signed contracts in the 1980's with each of the nuclear operators, promising to accept their spent fuel beginning in January 1998, in exchange for a payment of a tenth of a cent for each kilowatt-hour they generated.
The project now appears to be at least 20 years behind schedule, and the department faces approximately $50 billion in damage claims from the utilities, many of which have resorted to building giant casks adjacent to their reactors to store the old fuel.
In a letter to the chairmen and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate Energy Committees, Private Fuel Storage said it could begin taking fuel within three years, at a cost of about $61 million a year. In the letter, which was sent in December but released last week, the company estimated the Energy Department's costs to maintain the fuel at the reactor sites at about $500 million a year.
The fuel is currently kept at 72 sites whose storage costs vary widely. At some sites, the reactors have been retired and torn down, and maintenance and security personnel remain in place simply for the fuel. At others, while construction of the casks was expensive, the cost to maintain them is small.
Of the eight utility partners, three have announced that they have no immediate need for off-site waste storage.
The consortium proposed either that the Energy Department take title to the fuel and pay for storage, or let the utilities continue to own the fuel but reimburse them for the storage costs. It suggested legislation to reassure Utah that even if the government's proposed repository, at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, never opened, the Goshute site would not become permanent.
Representative David L. Hobson, the Ohio Republican who is chairman of the energy and water subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, has been pushing for dry-cask storage, possibly as a prelude to chemical processing of the wastes to extract useful material before burial. And last month, the Bush administration endorsed such chemical processing, through a partnership. But the cask idea has not gone far with the Energy Committees.
"The view right now on Capitol Hill is that this is a free-market project, and let's see if the market sends business their way," said Marnie Funk, a spokeswoman for the Senate Energy Committee.
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WebWire
March 20, 2006
Nortel Government Solutions Delivers E-Government Digital Courtrooms to Nuclear Regulatory Commission
MARCH 20, 2006, Nortel Government Solutions has delivered two state-of-the art e-government digital courtrooms to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to help its Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (ASLBP) simplify conduct of complex adjudicatory proceedings.
NRC cases are often exceptionally complex and require ASLBP administrative judges, staff representing the NRC, and other parties to have quick access to a large number of documents. The new digital courtrooms, located in Rockville, Md. and Las Vegas, address this by providing electronic evidence presentation, digital audio and video transcripts, and electronic capture and display of evidence. This enables immediate electronic access to documents, and live video and audio feeds to ensure the widest possible public access to NRC proceedings.
Due for introduction in upcoming cases as judges and attorneys are trained, the digital courtrooms from Nortel Government Solutions are designed to aid the ASLBP with routine cases as well as more complicated proceedings like anticipated hearings on new reactor licenses.
They are also expected to help with a potential adjudication regarding a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) license application for a commercial nuclear reactor waste storage facility at Nevada´s Yucca Mountain, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
This proceeding - over three to four years as called for by Congress - could become one of the largest and most complex administrative hearings in U.S. history. The digital database available to these two courtrooms is capable of storing and providing electronic access to the millions of pages of evidence and thousands of hours of testimony that may accumulate.
E-government digital courtroom technology from Nortel Government Solutions has applications for court systems throughout the country in addition to the NRC.
"The NRC´s digital courtrooms will serve as a showcase for courtrooms at all levels of government," said Chuck Saffell, chief executive officer, Nortel Government Solutions. "Earlier electronic courtrooms helped organize materials, while others linked audio and video streams. This is the only one to integrate everything into one multimedia system with real-time access to information for all participants."
Nortel Government Solutions served as the prime contractor and systems integrator for the NRC, with Media Edge and ExhibitOne providing hardware, software and integration services to the project. Media Edge, a division of Exceptional Software, focuses on the rapidly evolving Internet multimedia market. ExhibitOne is the nation´s leading provider of audiovisual technologies, serving clients around the country in federal, state and enterprise markets.
About Nortel Government Solutions
Nortel Government Solutions is a network-centric integrator, providing the services expertise, mission-critical systems and secure communications that empower government to ensure the security, livelihood, and well being of its citizens. Headquartered in Fairfax, Va., Nortel Government Solutions offers a one-stop shop for solutions designed to improve workforce productivity, reduce operating costs, and streamline inter-agency communications. Nortel Government Solutions is a U.S. company wholly-owned by Nortel. For more information, visit www.nortelgov.com.
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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