Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, March 26, 2006
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Las Vegas SUN
March 26, 2006
Benjamin Grove describes the joys and sorrows of covering D.C. and the challenge of moving on
WASHINGTON - I was changing my infant son at 3 a.m. recently, and as I pitched a diaper in the pail I wondered what happens to all those nasty things. I thought: This country needs a high-level waste repository for all my kid's dirty diapers.
I chuckled at my little joke - a reference to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Only the Las Vegas Sun's sleep-deprived Washington reporter would think that's funny.
After nearly seven years in this job covering Yucca Mountain, as well as Nevada's five congressional lawmakers and other Nevada news from the nation's capital, this is my last story. My wife and I are moving to Minnesota to be closer to family. My last day was Thursday. It was a strange gig.
• • •
One thing Washington reporters learn first is that the "news" and the truth are not the same.
The news here has layers. The first layer gets reported “ it is what Washington's armies of press handlers distribute to us; it is what the policy makers tell us at press conferences. When reporters have time and inclination, they dig deeper. On occasion we uncover layers that are closer to the truth “ the full narrative, its context, the motivations of the players, what it means to people outside Washington.
The relationship between reporters and government press officers is a strange dance. There are a few exceptions, but many press officers believe their first job is to make their bosses look good. It is not to tell the public the unvarnished truth. They do not view reporters as a conduit for getting information to the public. Often we are treated as a foil to be engaged and misdirected.
There is so much spinning in Washington that reporters are sometimes stunned by honesty. We write about it as if it is an endangered species ("In shockingly candid remarks today, Sen. So-and-So said ¦").
One day a few years ago, several reporters chased down former Yucca chief Margaret Chu in an Energy Department hallway after a budget briefing. After a few questions, she told us Yucca wouldn't open until 2012 at the earliest. Of course, we all knew that “ it likely will be 2015 or later “ but that was the first time anyone at the department had acknowledged that the department's 2010 target date had slipped.
Reporters looked at each other in disbelief, and wondered aloud: Why would she tell the truth like that? It wasn't that Chu was dishonest, but she was a government bureaucrat and they rarely answer tough questions directly.
Chu announced her resignation three days later.
I was always interested in the tales of back room maneuvering. Back before Congress voted once and for all on Yucca Mountain, I heard a story I could never get anyone to talk about on the record. The story was about a senator who was struggling to get enough votes for a bill he introduced. An aide asked if he had Sen. Harry Reid's support. The senator said he did “ he had played his "Yucca card," promising Reid he'd vote against Yucca if Reid would support his bill.
I often thought of that grammar school lesson about how a bill becomes a law. Two decades later, I saw that lawmakers do not vote based solely on an issue's merits. They also act based on the horse-trading deals they made, party pressure, how their vote might "play" in the media, and special interest influence.
If that sounds cynical, I would add this: Despite the partisan politicking and the scandals, most lawmakers are good people.
Most get into public service for the right reasons.
But as the years go by, some get distracted by fundraising, partisan battles, committee seniority. They get distracted by attention and power. They start talking like politicians. They overuse words like vetted, impact, panacea, circumspect, and phrases like "in the field," "on the ground," "moving forward," "forward-leaning."
Some lawmakers stay truer to themselves than others.
In my humble opinion, the least phony of the Nevada lawmakers is Rep. Shelley Berkley. She speaks her mind more than most.
Rep. Jim Gibbons was the stiffest politician. But he could be genuine. He once told me about how he had tried to comfort his son Jimmy during the anthrax scare in Washington. He dropped that TV-anchorman voice and spoke with tenderness.
Of Nevada's five lawmakers in Congress, I knew Rep. Jon Porter least well. Porter always struck me as a good guy who was trying to do good work in Congress, but who was always a little preoccupied with impressing party leaders.
Sen. John Ensign was straightforward whenever I talked to him, and clearly he's a charismatic rising GOP star in the Senate. But his aides didn't seem to like him talking to the media. He had the most secretive office.
It's hard to sum up Harry Reid. He sent me several hand-written notes over the years, including a sympathy card after my grandma died. It struck me as both the move of a savvy politician and a sincere gesture.
What's most interesting about Reid, of course, is not who he is and where he is from (few in Washington have been spared his Searchlight spiel). The most interesting question is: Where is the Minority Leader taking the Democratic Party?
• • •
Certain memories of working in Washington will stick with me.
Just a month after Sept. 11, I wrote about running a marathon that snaked past the burned out side of the Pentagon. Runners wept.
After the Senate anthrax scare, I had my nasal passages swabbed.
I tailed protesters in the blazing August heat through the streets of Philadelphia during the 2000 Republican convention, then stood in the bitter cold outside the U.S. Supreme Court where justices were deciding the fate of the presidential election.
And I took a ride with Berkley in a black sedan that was racing to the Capitol for a vote. I interviewed her as we lurched around in the backseat. Police stopped us for going the wrong way on a one-way and the driver and cop exchanged tense words. Berkley never stopped talking. Never even paused.
I remember meeting President Clinton, looking bone-weary in the final days of his second term.
But the people who really stand out to me did not have fancy titles.
When the International Spy Museum opened here in 2002, I toured it with a retired real-life spy. He was soft-spoken, unassuming - nothing like the James Bond imaginings of Hollywood. He talked about the personality traits of a spy “ the willingness to take huge risks for no credit, not even an occasional pat on the back. He talked about some narrow scrapes during his years in North Africa, South America and Europe.
When we parted I shook his hand. He was missing a finger.
I am always amazed by people who talk to the media about the loss of a loved one. I talked to the gracious parents of 21-year-old Army Ranger and Boulder City High graduate Matthew Commons just a few hours after they buried their son at Arlington National Cemetery. He was killed in Afghanistan.
"I really respected my son and to hear him say, 'I want to be a teacher like you,' that's a prideful experience," Greg Commons told me. His mother, Patricia Marek, managed to share a few laughs and warm memories after the funeral. "At some point the reality will hit and I will realize that I don't have him to talk to, that I won't have my best friend anymore," Marek said.
• • •
The biggest news event of my time here, of course, came on Sept. 11, 2001.
Minutes after Flight 77 plunged into the Pentagon, I rushed to the Capitol to track down Nevada's lawmakers, and I ran into a friend who said it was rumored more planes could crash “ perhaps on Capitol Hill. In a city that often feels detached from reality, that moment was truly unreal.
Lawmakers and their staffs had evacuated their office buildings. Congressional aides and a few lawmakers shuffled aimlessly in the park north of the Capitol, fruitlessly trying to make cell phone calls that jammed networks couldn't process. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said, "America is going to be changed forever."
I tried to take the Metro train back to my office, but the station was closed. Traffic gridlocked. Sirens wailed. I walked 14 blocks to my office and wrote a story on deadline that reported that Nevada's lawmakers had evacuated their offices and were safe. But nobody in Washington felt that way.
• • •
Since 1999, I have watched Nevada issues ebb and flow in Washington “ federal money issues, land issues, gaming issues.
But one issue “ Yucca Mountain “ never goes away.
I spent countless hours every year in Yucca meetings, covering panels with names like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, where slow-tongued, gray-haired scientists and policy eggheads pored over Yucca's most obscure details.
To spice things up I hit the road. I spent a few days driving through New Jersey with Yucca critic Kevin Kamps, who was hauling a mock nuclear waste container with an SUV and preaching the dangers of waste shipping. On other assignments I visited nuclear power plants to better tell the industry's side of the story.
I see the nuclear industry's side: Congress promised to haul waste away to Yucca beginning in 1998, then reneged on the contract - the federal government broke its promise. Industry officials with impressive scientific backgrounds believe research proves Yucca is a good site for a national nuclear waste dump.
But I see Nevada's point: Humankind has never tried to store so much of something so dangerous for so long “ how can it be safe? I am highly skeptical of big-ticket Energy Department projects. Many fail. A Yucca failure would be a spectacular one.
• • •
As I get older, what I may remember most about my years at the Sun will be that it was the job I had when I was a young man. It was the job I had when I lost a beloved grandmother, a good dog, and, in a very strange day, my appendix during emergency surgery.
I was working for the Sun when my mom successfully battled cancer, and when my sister joined the Peace Corps in Bolivia.
It was the job I had when I met my wife. I started at the Sun in 1998 in Las Vegas, as the education reporter. Not long after, city hall reporter Denise Cardinal and I skipped out early one Friday afternoon and went pool hopping at the Flamingo. The rest is history.
Now we have a son named for the late Sun Executive Editor Mike O'Callaghan. We're calling him Cal for now. It's a big name to grow into.
If I could sound one final note in this little swan song it would be to thank readers who sent me feedback over the years. I appreciated that “ even the e-mails that told me to stick it. Other readers corrected my syntax and grammar.
Because of them I will never again use the logic-defying phrases "endless columns of data" or "docked off the coast."
I often ended e-mail responses to those folks with the same phrase:
Thanks for reading.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 25, 2006
Yucca probe forwarded
Federal prosecutors reviewing evidence
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors are reviewing evidence gathered by investigators into whether scientists falsified quality assurance documents at Yucca Mountain, officials confirmed Friday.
Inspectors general for the Interior and Energy departments sent a report to U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden in Las Vegas in the past month, said Roy Kimes, a spokesman for Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney.
"The investigative work has been done, and the report has been forwarded to the Department of Justice," Kimes said. "It is not considered finalized until we get an indication from DOJ that they are going to prosecute or not going to prosecute."
Neither Kimes nor Denise Smith, a spokeswoman for Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman, would discuss details.
Smith said "it is possible" that evidence of wrongdoing was discovered, but communications between investigators and prosecutors do not necessarily signal the probe is near an end.
"As evidence is uncovered, there are dealings with the U.S. attorney's office, and oftentimes the U.S. attorney may have us do additional work or not depending on what is found," Smith said.
Inspectors were asked to determine possible criminal activity by federal employees after the disclosure in March 2005 of provocative e-mails.
In the messages, which were written between 1998 and 2000, several workers discussed possible alterations of quality assurance documents that backed up their water infiltration models at the nuclear waste site.
Natalie Collins, an aide to Bogden, said she would not confirm or deny the federal attorney's involvement in the matter.
A person familiar with the process said, "I wouldn't think they would send something over (to Bogden) that they didn't think ought to be considered for prosecution."
On Thursday, Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., told reporters that a Justice Department evaluation "was forthcoming."
"They want to find out if it was done maliciously or done in error," Porter said of the allegations of document mishandling. "They want to find out if there was any criminal activity."
Porter heads a House subcommittee that has been conducting a separate probe of quality assurance at Yucca Mountain and issues related to the e-mails.
The Yucca project was rocked and investigations were triggered when the e-mails were disclosed by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and by Charles Groat, then-director of the U.S. Geological Survey.
The messages circulated among a small number of employees. The primary authors later were identified as USGS hydrologists Joseph Hevesi, Allen Flint and Lorraine Flint.
Hevesi appeared before Porter's subcommittee in June and offered explanations for some of the messages. He testified under oath that he did not alter documents or data. The Flints, who are married, were questioned by subcommittee investigators but have not commented publicly.
The Energy Department recently completed an audit of the work performed by the USGS scientists. A report issued Feb. 17 concluded the science was valid but the research would be redone by Sandia National Laboratories to meet quality assurance standards.
The hydrologists remain employed at the USGS, spokeswoman A.B. Wade said. Agency officials have said any possible disciplinary action was being postponed until completion of the inspectors general probe.
Review-Journal writer Keith Rogers contributed to this report.
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Las Vegas SUN
March 24, 2006
Nevada calls for results of probes into Yucca Mountain e-mails
By Ken Ritter
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The federal government should release the results of yearlong investigations into whether laws were broken by scientists at the nation's planned nuclear waste dump, a Nevada official said Friday.
A spokeswoman at the Energy Department inspector general's office said the matter was being reviewed by federal prosecutors, and an Interior Department official said an investigation there was continuing.
"It's critical to know whether the law's been broken at Yucca Mountain," said Bob Loux, chief of the Nevada state office working to stop the project. Loux asked for results of the twin investigations in a letter Thursday to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and outgoing Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
Energy Department investigators probing allegations of criminal activity have turned information over to the U.S. Attorney's office but no official report has been issued, Energy Department spokeswoman Denise Smith said Friday.
U.S. Geological Survey spokeswoman A.B. Wade said she couldn't characterize the scope of an Interior Department investigation. The USGS is a branch of the Interior Department.
"We're waiting for the results of the inspector general report before determining the appropriate course of action, if any," Wade said.
Loux's call for action came after Bodman told a House subcommittee March 8 that his department was trying to fix a "broken" project. On Thursday the General Accounting Office released a report that said the project's quality assurance needed improvement.
The state also filed a lawsuit this week invoking the Freedom of Information Act to try to obtain Energy Department documents that state officials say will show the planned nuclear dump cannot safely hold the nation's most radioactive waste.
Loux said it had been more than a year since it was disclosed that e-mails written from 1998 to 2000 suggested scientists falsified data that helped persuade President Bush and Congress to approve the Yucca Mountain site in 2002.
The Energy Department plans to ship some 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel now stored in 39 other states to the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Nevada argues that the radioactivity of the waste would far outlive the manmade and geologic measures taken to entomb it, and contaminate the air and the groundwater.
---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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Las Vegas SUN
March 25, 2006
Editorial: Quittin' time for Yucca Johnny
Web site for children promoting Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump misses the mark
Just when it seemed that the Energy Department couldn't get any more desperate or extreme in its push to bury high-level nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, out steps Yucca Johnny.
According to a story in Friday's Las Vegas Sun, the agency's latest propaganda scheme is a Web site that tells children in kindergarten through 12th grade why the government thinks it is a good idea to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste in Nevada.
"What if we took out the garbage, but let it pile up in our yards?" Yucca Johnny asks. "Over time, our neighborhoods would become very unhealthy places to live."
So we dump our garbage in the neighbors' yard instead? Yucca Johnny doesn't say that, but it's what the Energy Department proposes to do. Nevada is to be the nation's unlucky neighbor.
Allen Benson, external affairs director for the Yucca project, told the Sun that such federal "Youth Zone" Web sites typically are used to explain federal programs to children. "Our job in the Youth Zone is to present factual information on the project at a level the kids can understand," he said. What Yucca Johnny doesn't say is that the Energy Department's version of the facts is the problem, not the solution.
We have laws against using cartoon characters to sell slot machines and cigarettes (think Joe Camel) because children might embrace concepts that are bad for them. Why would we accept using a cartoon to sell them on the idea of burying all of the nation's high-level nuclear waste less than 100 miles from their hometown?
Children don't need a cartoon character to tell them what is easily understood by most people: Nuclear waste is dangerous. Don't let anyone bury it in your back yard.
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Las Vegas SUN
March 24, 2006
Yucca Johnny targets youngsters' hearts, minds
By Launce Rake
<lrake@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
The Energy Department has worked for years to educate adults on the value of a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Now it is also targeting children.
A federal government Web site hosted by an animated "Yucca Johnny" suggests that the waste must be stored somewhere. And for Yucca Johnny's druthers, that "somewhere" is about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the federal government wants to store 80,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste deep inside Yucca Mountain.
"What if we took out the garbage, but let it pile up in our yards?" Yucca Johnny asks on the Web site, www.ocrwm.doe.gov/youth/index.htm. "Over time, our neighborhoods would become very unhealthy places to live. So we have sanitary workers pick up our garbage and properly dispose of it in landfills.
"Right now, nuclear waste is piling up in a lot of places around the country ... We must be responsible for our nuclear waste and put in a place where it can never harm people or the environment."
Yucca Johnny speaks in a drawl lifted from the comic sidekicks in old horse operas, certainly not like the native accents found in Nevada - where elected state and federal officials and conservation groups, among others, want no part of the nuclear waste. They say the proposed $60 billion repository would allow the waste to seep into the environment.
So now, they've got Yucca Johnny in the cross hairs. Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, an environmental advocacy group, compared the Web site to techniques used by child molesters.
"They're grooming," she said. "Child molesters start out by grooming their targets, their intended victims. This is outrageous. It's disgusting, is what it is."
Allen Benson, director of external affairs for Energy's Yucca Mountain Project, said the goal of such "youth zone" Web sites is to educate and inform. In the case of Yucca Johnny, the purpose is not to push the project, he said.
"You'll find youth zones on all government Web sites," Benson said. "It's not unusual. Our job in the Youth Zone is to present factual information on the project at a level the kids can understand.
Johnson said her group is drafting a curriculum to balance the department's message. A Citizen Alert program in the schools would focus on recycling and environmental stewardship, she said.
"We want young people to understand that we're here to protect this land for future generations," she said. "We're not going to talk Yucca Johnny in the early grades."
Launce Rake can be reached at 259-4127 or at lrake@lasvegassun.com.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 24, 2006
New report shows Yucca stuck in old errors, Porter says
Some of the same issues today raised in 2004
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
A new report by government auditors released Thursday by Nevada Rep. Jon Porter says Energy Department managers failed to bolster the quality of scientific work at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project and have resorted to a "costly and time-consuming rework" to fix problems.
Porter, a Republican who chairs a subcommittee that is scrutinizing flaws with the project, said he will hold a hearing April 26 to discuss and define specific problems to which the Government Accountability Office report alluded in vague, general terms.
He said, however, that "a good share" of the report probably was based on revelations last year about e-mails sent among U.S. Geological Survey scientists on the project who made references to "fudge factors" and falsifying quality assurance documents to meet deadlines.
"We keep focusing on these documents to make sure, if there was any falsified information, we want to know how it has impacted the project and the science itself," Porter said at a briefing outside the Yucca Mountain Information Center near Meadows Mall.
He said an inspector general's probe into the USGS e-mail flap now is being examined by Justice Department attorneys.
"They want to find out if it was done maliciously or if it was done in error. They want to find out if there was any criminal activity," Porter said.
The 55-page GAO report said the Department of Energy "has been relying on costly and time-consuming rework to resolve lingering quality assurance concerns. For example, to address problems with the transparency and traceability of scientific work in technical documents, DOE implemented, in the spring of 2004, a roughly $20 million, 8-month project called the Regulatory Integration Team."
The effort involved about 150 full-time employees from the department, the USGS and a number of national laboratories including the Sandia lab and the labs in Los Alamos, N.M., and Livermore, Calif.
Porter said recurrent problems with the Yucca Mountain Project, such as being off schedule and fraught with cost overruns, is costing taxpayers "billions of dollars" over the current expenditure of $9 billion since scientific work began in the 1980s. The total systemwide cost through closure of the planned repository is expected to be $58.5 billion.
"We have 30-plus states that are trying to find a place to put nuclear waste," he noted.
"If this was a private-sector project, Wall Street would shut it down and local governments would shut it down because it does not have quality assurance in place," he said.
Porter said some of the same problems that were identified in a 2004 GAO report continue to plague the project, particularly in implementing quality assurance controls that are designed to ensure that the data is traceable, transparent, credible and reliable to keep the public and the environment safe from contamination.
"When we talk about quality assurance, we're not talking about a widget at some factory. ... We're talking about nuclear waste and how it impacts the health and safety and welfare of Nevadans and the American people," he said.
Allen Benson, a spokesman for DOE's Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas, said all the issues raised in the new GAO report "have already been identified by the department, and they've either been fixed or are on their way to being fixed."
"The department remains committed to following our obligation under the law to license, construct and operate Yucca Mountain as the nation's permanent repository for spent fuel," he said.
On March 8, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told lawmakers that the Yucca Mountain Project was "broken, and we are trying to fix it."
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Peace Journalism
March 24, 2006
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
A national network of organizations working to address issues of nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup
* * * M E D I A A D V I S O R Y * * *
WHAT: News Briefing on the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Budget: Threats to the environment, national security and non-proliferation, featuring a new analysis of Department of Energy (DOE) spending by a former Office of Management and Budget examiner
WHEN: Monday, March 27, 2006 - - 10:00am
WHERE: Room HC-8 U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC
WHO: Leaders of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), representing the concerns of communities downwind and downstream of U.S. nuclear weapons facilities.
- Marylia Kelley – Executive Director, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, an expert on DOE weapons programs who lives next to Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory
- Tom Carpenter – Director, Nuclear Oversight Program of the Government Accountability Project, which monitors the effectiveness of DOE Cleanup programs, particularly at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation
- Carah Ong – Washington Office Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which analyzes the international impacts of U.S. nuclear initiatives such as the Global Nuclear Energy Program, Reprocessing and the recent U.S. India Nuclear Agreement
WHY: Scores of activists from across the nation will be presenting their concerns about U.S. nuclear weapons policies and budget priorities in dozens of meetings with leaders of Congress and Administration from March 27 - 29 as part of ANA´s DC Days. Other DOE sites represented include Fernald, Mound, Idaho National Lab, Los Alamos, Nevada Test Site, Rocky Flats, Sandia, Savannah River, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and Yucca Mountain
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Las Vegas SUN
March 23, 2006
GAO: Quality assurance problems still hamper nuclear waste dump
By Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Quality assurance problems still hinder progress at the nation's proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada a year after the discovery of alleged paperwork fraud by project scientists, congressional investigators said Thursday.
A reorganization by the Energy Department last October - seven months after the discovery of e-mails indicating government hydrologists falsified documentation of their work to satisfy quality assurance standards - has yet to put the problems at Yucca Mountain to rest and might create new issues, a report by the Government Accountability Office said.
The questions might lead to more delays before the Energy Department can submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to open the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the report said. It's not clear when the dump, approved by Congress in 2002 to store 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste, could open, except that it won't be before 2012.
"After more than 20 years of project work, DOE is again faced with substantial quality assurance and other challenges to submit a fully defensible license application to NRC," said the report, requested by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who released it in Las Vegas. "Unless these challenges are effectively addressed, further delays on the project are likely."
At a news conference in front of a Yucca Mountain project office in Las Vegas, Porter pointed to the title of the 55-page report - "Yucca Mountain: Quality Assurance at DOE's Planned Nuclear Waste Repository Needs Increased Management Attention." He said he hoped it would spur questions at an April 26 hearing he plans to hold as chairman of the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization subcommittee.
"We're putting people at risk," Porter said. "If this was a private sector project, Wall Street would shut it down, and so would local government because of safety concerns."
Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens in Washington said the department was aware of the issues and already had fixed them or was working toward it.
"At Yucca Mountain, we foster an atmosphere that points out ways we can improve our work and get our job done more effectively," Stevens said in a statement. "This department remains committed to following our obligation under the law to license, construct and operate Yucca Mountain as the nation's permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel."
Among other problems, the GAO report cited high turnover of project managers. It said that nine of 17 key management positions have turned over since 2001 and among the managers lost was the director of quality assurance.
The report also said that despite spending substantial time and money resolving quality assurance issues - including a $20 million initiative in 2004 - the Energy Department has not developed effective management tools to detect problems and make sure they're solved. The report recommended strengthening quality guidelines and analysis of problems and making them more consistent.
"Time and time again, this report covers quality assurance," Porter said, "which is the health and safety of Nevadans and the American people."
Last October DOE announced a "new path forward" to improve Yucca Mountain, including redesigning storage containers to minimize handling of nuclear waste, and designating an independent national laboratory to oversee scientific work. The report said the changes will require additional scientific work and could create new management and quality assurance challenges.
"It is too early to determine whether DOE's new effort will resolve quality assurance issues and move the project forward to the submission of a license application," the report said.
A criminal investigation by the Energy Department inspector general is under way into the document falsification, which was allegedly done by U.S. Geological Survey employees from 1998 to 2000. DOE also is reviewing some 14 million e-mails to see if they raise quality assurance concerns, and redoing the scientific work by the Geological Survey hydrologists, who were studying the movement of water through the underground site.
More than 50,000 tons of nuclear wastes destined for the dump is waiting at 72 sites around in the country, mostly at commercial power plants.
---On the Net: Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
---Associated Press reporter Ken Ritter contributed to this report from Las Vegas.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 23, 2006
Nevada chases Yucca Mountain documents, sues
Agency keeps drafts of application secret
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- A dispute between Nevada and the Department of Energy over Yucca Mountain documents escalated Wednesday into a federal lawsuit.
Attorney General George Chanos filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Reno that seeks to force the government to make public draft versions of an application for a nuclear waste repository at the Nevada site.
The filing marked at least the ninth lawsuit Nevada has pursued related to the project. Decisions are pending in several of the cases.
Chanos said the Energy Department improperly denied the state's request under the federal Freedom of Information Act for license versions prepared by contractors in July 2004 and September 2004.
DOE earlier turned down two requests by Gov. Kenny Guinn for the documents.
"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," Chanos said.
"What are they trying to hide?" Chanos said.
DOE officials have maintained the documents are legally shielded from disclosure.
"We believe that we are under no legal obligation to give out the draft license application," DOE spokesman Craig Stevens said. "Once the license application is submitted to the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), it will be made public."
In denying Nevada's request, DOE said it was citing an exemption in the information law that permits agencies to withhold certain internal memos to protect "open and frank discussions" during decision-making.
DOE said the law also shields documents prepared "in anticipation of litigation."
The department has resisted attempts by others to gain access to the draft license paperwork, including a subpoena issued last year by the House Government Reform Committee.
The draft application is said to consist of roughly 5,800 pages organized into 70 chapters laying out a case that radioactive spent nuclear fuel could be safely stored in tunnels that would be bored within Yucca Mountain.
State officials have said they think the documents contain information that would help them challenge repository safety. Gaining access to the material would help Nevada-hired experts to build their case.
"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 Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
The documents were prepared when the Energy Department was closing in on a self-set December 2004 deadline to file a repository application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The department abandoned that timetable in the fall of 2004 after federal judges invalidated part of the repository's radiation safety standards.
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Nevada Appeal
March 23, 2006
Nevada sues for release of secret Yucca document
Geoff Dornan
Appeal Capitol Bureau
gdornan@nevadaappeal.com
Nevada sued the U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday for release of what state officials describe as a "key document pertaining to the safety of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository."
Attorney General George Chanos filed the lawsuit in federal court seeking release of the draft license application for the repository prepared in 2004.
"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 Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Chanos said the government is required to share Yucca information with Nevada.
"DOE has refused to provide Nevada with this most important document for the past three years," he said.
Chanos said that is despite two requests by Gov. Kenny Guinn to the energy secretary, a follow-up request to President Bush, subpoena demands by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., litigation before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a Freedom of Information Act request and several administrative appeals.
DOE has claimed throughout that the document is protected by legal privileges.
"There isn't a privilege in the world that should shield this from Nevada's citizens," Loux said.
"What are they trying to hide?" Chanos asked. "If the repository is safe, you'd think they'd be anxious to prove it."
• Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.
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Las Vegas SUN
March 22, 2006
Ensign seeks re-election to Nevada Senate seat
By Kathleen Hennessey
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada Sen. John Ensign officially began his bid for a second term on Wednesday by calling for cuts in government spending, stronger public support for the war in Iraq, tougher immigration laws and steady leadership.
"We need leaders who don't just wet their finger, stick it up in the wind and say, 'which way are the public polls going today,'" the Las Vegas Republican told a crowd of more than 100 supporters. He made a similar campaign kickoff appearance in Reno later Wednesday.
Ensign served two terms in the House of Representatives before winning election to the Senate in 2000. He touted his efforts to bring a veteran's hospital to southern Nevada, his support of legislation that opened up federal land in Nevada to development and parks, and his efforts to block nuclear waste from being stored at Yucca Mountain. The Republican is known for his strong working relationship with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who defeated him in his first Senate try in 1998 by a mere 428 votes.
Speaking from notes, the 47-year-old veterinarian praised President Bush's leadership, called on Nevadans to support the war in Iraq and warned of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, which he called an "evil form of Islam that is perverting a great religion ... and wants to destroy the United States."
"We cannot lose our courage. The only way that these insurgents, that al-Qaeda and the rest of them around the world, the only way that they win is if America is divided," he said.
Ensign acknowledged Republicans seeking re-election are facing increasing opposition to the war and wariness about the economy - concerns he chalked up to unrealistic expectations about how quickly U.S. troops would be recalled and "a perception problem."
"That's why it's critical the president is out there talking about it and keeping people inspired. But it's not just the president's job, it's our job, Republicans and Democrats," he said.
Ensign's only declared opponent, Jack Carter, the Democratic son of former President Carter, said he plan on capitalizing on Ensign's support of Bush.
"He's been extremely connected with (Bush) the entire time he's been in office and he's helped a lot of the policies that the country does not like," Carter said.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a Democrat, also has said he's considering running.
Ensign said Internal polls show him to have a double-digit lead over both men.
Ensign told supporters he wanted to enact laws that "stem the tide" of illegal immigration. He said he supports adding 10,000 border patrol agents, improving technology and building more detention centers for arrested illegal immigrants.
He did not mention a guest-worker program, the most politically divisive element among the immigration reform proposals scheduled for debate in the Senate next week. He has said he supports such a program.
"We're a nation of immigrants, but we're also a nation of laws. It is absolutely critical if we're going to have a commonsense legal immigration policy that we stop the flow of illegal immigrants by controlling our borders," he said.
The senator said his concern about deficit spending led him to vote against the budget and a measure to increase the national debt ceiling. He blamed increase entitlement spending for the ballooning budget and said he'd consider increasing tax cuts passed by Congress in 2001.
"The right kind of tax cuts are good for the economy. ... they bought us out of recession and it is not only time that we look at whatever other tax cuts we can do, but that the tax cuts that we already passed, we need to make those permanent."
Carter accused Ensign of newfound fiscal conservatism.
"The time to cut spending is when you're voting for spending bills, it's not when you're voting against the debt limit,' he said.
Ensign, who spent $4.8 million to beat Democrat Ed Bernstein in 2000, has a significant advantage in the money race so far. He raised $426,000 for his re-election during the last three months of 2005, ending the year with $2.37 million in cash on-hand, according to his federal campaign finance report.
Carter raised $241,600 during the same period, lent himself $25,000 and reported $223,600 cash on-hand.
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KVBC
March 23, 2006
Jon Porter to outline weaknesses of Yucca Mountain
Nevada Congressman Jon Porter will talk Thursday about some of the weaknesses at the Yucca Mountain repository. Porter asked the Government Accountability Office to update its report last year.
The report comes just two weeks after Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the Yucca Mountain Project has been poorly managed and is broken.
Wednesday the State of Nevada filed a new lawsuit against the Department of Energy over the Yucca Mountain Project.
The suit filed by Attorney General George Chanos claims the agency is hiding a key document pertaining to the safety of the proposed nuclear waste dump.
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Platts
March 22, 2006
Nevada sues DOE, Energy Secretary Bodman over Yucca Mountain
Washington (Platts)--22Mar2006
Nevada has sued DOE and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman in an effort to obtain two versions of the department's draft license application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The lawsuit, filed today in US District Court for the northern district of Nevada, said that DOE has no legal basis for withholding that information. Robert Loux, executive director of the state's nuclear waste office, said, "We want to see this document because we believe it will show that the repository is unsafe after 10,000 years, if not before. There isn't a privilege in the world that should shield this from Nevada's citizens." Nevada, which opposes the repository, went to court after failing to obtain the document through other avenues, including two requests to DOE from Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, a Republican, and a follow-up request from him to President George W. Bush; a Freedom of Information Act request filed with DOE; and litigation before a special NRC licensing board. DOE has maintained the information is subject to various legal privileges and does not have to be released.
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Jurist
March 23, 2006
Nevada sues US government to gain documents on Yucca Mountain waste site
Holly Manges Jones
The state of Nevada [government website] filed a lawsuit [press release] against the federal government Wednesday, seeking documents related to the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump [advocacy website], including documents which allegedly contain information that the proposed site cannot meet radiation safety standards [JURIST report] mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [official website]. The Nevada Attorney General [official website] is seeking access to a draft application completed by contractors to obtain a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) [official website] to allow the dump. The state claims it is entitled to the documents under the Freedom of Information Act [text] and has made previous attempts to object to the draft application, including requests to President George Bush and the US Secretary of Energy.
A spokesman for the US Department of Energy [official website] said the department has already posted millions of pages of information regarding the planned dump [DOE materials] on the Internet, and that it is under no legal obligation to publicly release the application until it is formally sent to the NRC. The Energy Department had originally set 2010 as the year for the dump to open but licensing hearings are expected to take several years before the site can be approved. This is the fourth lawsuit that Nevada has filed to try and block the nuclear waste dump [JURIST report]. Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects [official website] has further information on the Yucca project. AP has more.
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Monticello Times
March 22, 2006
Plant manager expresses confidence in cask storage
By Eric O´Link
News Editor
The issue of radioactive waste storage at Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant has not generated much of a stir in the Monticello area.
As the plant moves through the approval process for the extension of its operating license, and permission from the state to build a waste storage facility on its grounds, the majority of those who live in the area have expressed their support for the plant.
However, if Tuesday´s Chamber of Commerce lunch was any indication, they do have questions.
Brad Sawatzke, the MNGP plant manager, was invited to this month´s Chamber lunch to talk about waste storage at the power plant. He also answered numerous questions.
Last year, Xcel Energy filed a request with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the operating license of its Monticello plant by 20 years, to 2030. The plant´s current, original license expires in 2010. Xcel has said that keeping the Monticello plant open is more environmentally and fiscally responsible than building new coal or gas power plants, should the Monticello nuclear plant be closed.
Xcel also asked the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to grant a certificate of need for a concrete vault waste storage facility on the plant grounds. Regardless of whether the plant´s license extension is granted, waste storage of some kind will be needed as the plant nears the end of the decade.
Of the 103 nuclear plants in the United States, Monticello is one of the oldest, Sawatzke said. Since the plant opened in June 1971, it has generated more electricity than any other plant of a similar size in the world, he said.
Monticello provides more than 600 megawatts of base load, or continuous, electricity–enough to supply 10 percent of the energy for Xcel´s customers in the five-state area.
But the amount of waste– created as a byproduct of the heat generated by the nuclear reactor–is “surprisingly small’ for the amount of power generated, Sawatzke said. All of the uranium ever used for generation at Monticello would fill a 10-by-10-foot cube, he said. In comparison, he said a similar requirement of fuel from a coal-fired plant would cover the Monticello plant´s 1,400 acre site under 16 feet of coal.
The waste created by the Monticello plant poses a problem: It is dangerously radioactive; it cannot be handled or be in contact with humans. It must be shielded at all times.
Currently, the plant´s refueling pool provides a temporary storage for the spent fuel rods, already used by the reactor and now radioactive. Water, Sawatzke said, is a surprisingly good shield. The pool is nearly filled, however, and continued power generation will require removal of some of the fuel rod assemblies.
“The fuel pool was never meant to be a permanent storage location for the fuel,’ he said.
This is not the first time the fuel would be emptied, he added. The pool was emptied once in the 1980s, after the plant required a reluctant General Electric to fulfill its part of a contract and remove the spent fuel rods that the plant had “rented’ from the company.
General Electric once thought reprocessing the rods might have been a viable option, Sawatzke said, but plans for spent fuel rod reprocessing were squashed by the Carter administration.
The uranium used for nuclear power generation is of a lower grade; it does not have weapons capabilities, Sawatzke said. But when spent fuel rods are re-processed, plutonium is extracted. The plutonium could be applied to weaponry uses.
Rather than risk a recycling industry that creates plutonium, U.S. nuclear plants have had to contend with waste storage issues. The federal government is in charge of taking waste from all U.S. plants and storing it in a federal repository.
The government is building a repository at Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert, but the project has run years behind schedule. Sawatzke said the current estimate puts the multi-billion-dollar Yucca Mountain opening in 2015.
“I´m not confident they´ll make that date, but I am confident that they will get the facility finished,’ he said.
Until then, MNGP is preparing for storage that it says is temporary. The current plan calls for a concrete vault structure built at the plant, capable of holding 30 sealed casks. Each cask, with 35-inch thick walls, would hold 61 fuel assemblies.
“It will stay there until the federal government takes it over...which is their charge,’ Sawatzke said.
When another waste storage site, presumably Yucca Mountain, is available, the casks would be removed from the vaults and loaded onto train cars for shipment. Sawatzke said the casks would not have to be re-opened.
He added that the plant had been complimented on the completeness of its application for a certificate of need for the waste storage facility.
“Our submittal, we were told, was one of the best submittals they´ve ever had,’ he said.
A decision from the state as to whether to grant the certificate of need for the waste storage facility is expected this fall. Sawatzke said he was “confident’ that the state would grant the certificate.
One of the audience members at Tuesday´s lunch asked Sawatzke about safety concerns at the plant.
Sawatzke said, as a former reactor operator, that he was “intimately familiar’ with the plant.
“I´ve raised my family about a mile down the road,’ he said, “and I´ve never thought twice about it.’
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Rutland Herald
March 23, 2006
Commentary
Yankee is a plus for Vermont
By Milt Eaton
The good news is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Public Service Board approved the up-rate of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to the benefit of Windham County, Vermont and all of New England. The bad news is the recent public hearing on the re-licensing of Vermont Yankee, showed Vermont politics at its worst. An anti-nuclear crowd, representing a vocal minority of the faithful, berated officials from the NRC while embarrassing and degrading our community in the process.
However one feels about Vermont Yankee, Vermonters can and should have a broader discussion about our realistic energy future. In fact, the time has clearly come for officials from the New England Coalition and other vehement anti-nuclear faithful to commit to a rigorous, fact-based discussion about Vermont Yankee in the context of what is happening in Vermont, New England and the world.
Perhaps the reason that the militant anti-nukers, often referred to as the "experts" or "watchdogs," do not want such a discussion is they sense they will lose based on facts and merits. Indeed, as the NRC begins an approximate 30-month process to review the re-licensing application of Vermont Yankee, it is important to dispassionately ask three basic questions.
Is the plant safe?
Vermont Yankee has just undergone the most extensive review ever conducted by the NRC to assess an "up-rate" or power increase. Over two years, more than 11,000 staff-hours went into this assessment, as well as an additional 900 hours for a related engineering assessment. This assessment involved the NRC, Entergy, and Vermont Yankee.
Plant safety is something everyone demands and the re-licensing review is thorough and exact from a safety standpoint. Like it or not, America's nuclear power industry has an outstanding safety record. This is especially true compared with all other forms of energy production. There has not been a single fatality in more than 50 years of nuclear energy production from exposure to radiation.
The safety discussion should include both the day-to-day operations of Vermont Yankee, as well as the storage of spent fuel. Opponents to Vermont Yankee often give the impression that were the plant to close, safety issues would be resolved. Yet the delay in opening a federal repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain means that the waste will stay in Vermont for some time, even if the plant were to close in 2012 at the end of its current license.
Is the power needed?
Vermont Yankee provides 70 percent of the power generated in the state and one-third of the state's electricity supply. Electricity demand is rising and supplies are tight. The chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and president and CEO of ISO-New England, the operator of the state's transmission grid, have both warned that New England faces the near-term prospect of periodic rolling blackouts, similar to what impacted California in 2001, unless capacity in both generation and transmission are expanded to meet the growing demand.
Vermont Yankee's power is critically important because it is base-load, consistently generated electricity, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Renewable power is a supplemental, necessary for our long-term energy portfolio, but it cannot provide this consistency.
Also, let's keep in mind that Vermont is not an easy place to build any new power facilities. There has not been a new major power source constructed in more than 20 years. Renewable projects today often face as strident opposition as Vermont Yankee from NIMBY ("Not In My Backyard") activists.
With the insatiable thirst for electricity in our state, it is no wonder that demand is rising at over 1 percent per year. Unless we want to go back to the days before Thomas Edison, it is hard to question the near-term and long-term need for Vermont Yankee's power.
Is nuclear power an optimal alternative for Vermont?
For more than three decades Vermont Yankee has made the state a better place to live and from an environmental standpoint the cleanest state in the country. Nuclear power curtails greenhouse gas emissions that would occur from using wood, coal or natural gas fuels.
Nuclear power further benefits Vermont's environment because it cuts back on toxic chemical emissions that would come from coal plants wherever they are located. It also mitigates the need for massive construction of windmills, which, compared to Vermont Yankee, need a sizable amount of land as well as higher costs and/or subsidies to generate the equivalent power.
Further, Vermont Yankee's low-cost power, at 3.95 cents per kilowatt hour, is by far the least expensive in the state and critical to Vermont's economy. The plant and corporate offices employ more than 500 hard-working Vermonters and provide more than $70 million annually to the state and region through payroll, taxes, and the local purchases of goods and services.
For all these reasons, I conclude Vermont Yankee should be re-licensed when the NRC review is successfully completed. Furthermore, the debate about its future should be conducted with decorum and mutual respect. Let's all listen and take the heat out of the debate.
Milt Eaton, a member of the Vermont Energy Partnership, is a former Vermont secretary of development and community affairs and official with the U.S. Department of Energy.
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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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