Yucca Mountain News Clips - Monday, April 3, 2006

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, April 3, 2006
---------------------------

Treasure Coast Palm
April 03, 2006

Spurgeon prepares to re-energize nuclear power

ED BIERSCHENK

ORCHID — In his new position with the U.S. Department of Energy, Dennis Spurgeon plans to do all he can to spur a rebirth in the nuclear power industry.

The retired industry executive was scheduled to be sworn in today as the assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy, a newly created position within that agency.

In an interview Thursday, Spurgeon discussed his views on the nuclear industry, why it fell out of favor, and why he feels its time to start building more plants — a position still vigorously opposed by many environmentalists concerned about safety and disposal of nuclear waste.

While Spurgeon said safety is always a concern, he contends nuclear plants from the very beginning have been very secure facilities. In regard to spent fuel — which he doesn't consider nuclear waste — Spurgeon spoke of reusing this material that might otherwise have to be stored thousands of years in a repository.

Reprocessing of such material has been advocated by various political leaders, especially those in Nevada opposed to a proposed Yucca Mountain repository for nuclear waste.

Dennis Spurgeon

• Scheduled to be sworn in today to the post of assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy at the Department of Energy.

• Previously served as an executive with several companies. A graduate of the Naval Academy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he served as a captain in the Navy.

Energy conservation

Spurgeon agrees that conservation is needed and the U.S. can do better in that regard through more energy efficient products and producing vehicles that get better gas mileage.

"But still when you put that all together and you get it all done, to improve the standard of living here and around the world you are going to consume more energy; and our choice is how we are going to produce that energy."

Nuclear energy

"I believe nuclear energy is the single most important source of energy that we have that can produce base load electric power without emitting greenhouse gases and, therefore, can be extremely important to our country's future.

"That's not to take anything away from the other renewa´ble energy sources. We need them all. We need every bit of solar energy we can produce, we need every bit of wind en´ergy, we need every bit of ge´othermal energy. But when you add all of those together, they still don't have the capa´bilities to produce the quanti´ties of electricity that we need for our economy."

Global impact

"You have many areas of the world — and we're just seeing it in China — where, as economies grow, for them to produce the goods and serv´ices, they need energy. Then their people all of a sudden want to have the benefit of a higher standard of living and with that higher standard of living you need to be able to produce the energy that will al´low them to have it. You can correlate the standard of living and energy consumption."

New plants

"I think we will see hundreds (of new plants), but it's not hundreds all of a sudden, but over the next 10-20-30-40 years."

His role

"I am going to do everything in my power to help this indus´try build new plants in this country. That's my job. I'm not here to go around as some kind of government inspector that's trying to hold people up. Mine is the opposite. I'm going to ask people what's keeping them from building a plant, and then I'm going to try and find a way to try and remove that roadblock."

Q&A

Q: Why has the nation largely turned away from nuclear power?

A: Spurgeon said when he first went to Washington in the 1960s there was great optimism about the role nuclear energy would play in the nation's future.

"There were many nuclear plants ordered, and we were anticipating by the end of the last decade, by 2000, we would have some 300 to 400 nuclear plants in use in the United States; and those were the projections and that's how we were going to be able to meet our energy demand."

Instead, Spurgeon said there has not been a new nuclear plant ordered in the past 30 years. He points to three issues that caused the reversal:

• The 1973 oil embargo dramatically increased the price of gasoline, home heating oil and ultimately electricity, and caused people to conserve. When the utilities needed to generate less electricity, they scaled back their construction plans and many of their orders for nuclear plants were canceled or stretched out.

• In the late 1970s, interest rates soared, causing nuclear energy to become more costly and less competitive, resulting in scaling back of plans to build new plants.

• "Then you have Three Mile Island. Now, Three Mile Island — from a public-health standpoint — had a negligible impact. No one got a high exposure of radiation or any such thing from Three-Mile Island; but from an industry standpoint, it had a devastating effect.

"Because now everything comes to a stop while you re-evaluate the safety systems in reactors, and there were a great many changes that were made and required on new plants under construction."

These new requirements stretched out the construction projects, causing costs to go up and nuclear energy became less competitive, said Spurgeon.

Q: President Bush and others have talked of this being a time of nuclear renaissance. Do you think people feel that way?

A: Spurgeon said he received a lot of support from people at a recent party in Orchid where people voiced their belief in the need for more nuclear energy.

"It's very much in the forefront now, I think, of people's thoughts. Some of the environmental community that might have been quite opposed are now beginning to realize that you cannot just say no to energy because you are going to have to have it. So how do you produce energy in the most environmentally sensitive way?"

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

Centre Daily Times
April 03, 2006

Opinion

Laying waste to nuclear myths

By Gilbert J. Brown

During the ongoing debate on nuclear waste, at least four fallacies seem to have become accepted as truths. At a time when America can't afford to foreclose any carbon-free energy option in meeting the increasing demand for electricity, untruths could become an excuse for obstructionist foot-dragging on nuclear energy. I offer the following four myths and the realities.

Myth No. 1:Spent fuel is nuclear waste.

The uranium fuel used in nuclear power plants to produce electricity becomes "spent" after it has given up a fraction of its potential energy through the fission process. About 52,000 metric tons of it are being stored at power plant sites in the United States.

Spent fuel is an extremely valuable resource, not waste. It contains uranium and plutonium that can be extracted and recycled to make reactor fuel for generating electricity. This would extend uranium resources and help nuclear power meet the nation's increasing need for clean energy. Countries including France and Great Britain have been doing such reprocessing for decades. The processors and users of the resulting uranium and plutonium fuel have maintained an exemplary safety record.

Myth No. 2:U.S. utilities never intended to have their spent fuel reprocessed.

Many did. In fact, reprocessing technology invented in the United States was used to recycle fuel during the 1970s. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter banned its use, on grounds that plutonium removed from spent fuel might get into the hands of irresponsible governments and lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We stopped, but France and others did not. Although President Ronald Reagan overturned the ban in 1981, reprocessing has not been considered cost-effective in the United States. That could change, with rising energy prices and advanced technologies.

The absence of reprocessing in the United States, however, has placed nuclear power plants in the position of storing more spent fuel than expected, for longer than originally intended. Decommissioned reactors such as Yankee Rowe and Maine Yankee also must store their spent fuel. The government was legally required to take possession of the spent fuel by 1998, but it still has not done so. Now, efforts are under way to establish a national storage site for the spent fuel.

Myth No. 3: If reprocessing is revived in the United States, there would be no need for a deep-underground waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Reprocessing would remove the reusable uranium and plutonium, which makes up more than 95 percent of the spent fuel, and thereby significantly reduce the amount of material that can truly be called nuclear waste. These remaining waste products still will need to be stored in the Yucca Mountain repository. That said, one advantage of reprocessing is that it removes the need for any additional repositories after the first one is built.

Myth No. 4: The government cannot afford to pursue both reprocessing and construction of the Yucca Mountain repository.

The cost of developing reprocessing will be stretched out over many years, or even decades. It will need to be both proliferation-resistant and economical, and will require focused research, development and demonstration. In the meantime, progress is being made on licensing and construction of the Yucca Mountain repository. That project needs to be completed, so nuclear waste from both power plants and the defense program can be stored there.

Because nuclear power produces no greenhouse emissions and is essential in the battle against global warming, we must move ahead with research on reprocessing for the long term, but not try to bring it back prematurely or divert funds from the Yucca Mountain project. We can indeed take care of the wastes. In the short term, we need to develop more nuclear power.

--Gilbert J. Brown (gilbert_brown@uml.edu) is a professor and coordinator of the Nuclear Engineering Program at University of Massachusetts Lowell.

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

Salt Lake Tribune
April 03, 2006

Yucca planning to apply in 2008, open 2020

Controversy: Director says the goal is to open the plant in the shortest and safest way possible

By Erica Werner
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The official who oversees Yucca Mountain said last week that he expects the Energy Department to submit a license application for the nuclear waste dump during the 2008 fiscal year and open the facility in Nevada by 2020.

But Paul Golan, who took over last May as acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, acknowledged that the contentiousness over Yucca Mountain will never be put to rest.

''This will always be a controversial program. It always will be. Even after it's done,'' Golan said in an interview with The Associated Press.

''And what we're trying to do is point the ship in the direction - safer, simpler, more reliable,'' he said. ''And by our actions demonstrate that this is a path that will allow the repository to open in the shortest amount of time and the safest, most reliable way.''

Since taking over, Golan has announced plans to seal nuclear waste at reactors in canisters that could be put directly into the ground to minimize possible safety risks. He's announced that work by government scientists who apparently flouted quality control standards is being redone, even though he's not found flaws with the science itself.

Now Golan's department is preparing to unveil legislation to smooth the path for completing the project. Energy Department officials have said the bill will contain provisions to ensure funding for Yucca Mountain and to create a permanent site for the repository by withdrawing from public use the land where it is dug into the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Golan said the much-anticipated bill probably will contain other changes too, but he wouldn't say what. He said the department ''has an open mind'' on the idea of interim storage of nuclear waste at other federal sites until Yucca Mountain can be completed.

Golan refused to say when the bill will be released. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in early March it would be ready within the month, and Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said this week he'll likely file his own bill if the administration doesn't produce one quickly.

Already 55,000 metric tons of commercial and defense waste is accumulating at sites around the country, and Yucca Mountain is authorized to hold only 70,000 tons unless there's a legislative change. Golan said the department is beginning the process - mandated by law - of preparing to report to Congress on the need for a second nuclear waste repository.

But acknowledging the political controversy any such proposal would encounter, he joked, ''You don't want it in your backyard?''

Energy Department officials have said their planned legislation, along with the administration's new plan to study reprocessing nuclear waste - something that stopped in the 1970s because of proliferation concerns - could delay the need for a second dump indefinitely.

''If we can actually get a little bit better on closing the fuel cycle here, that's going to be very important in minimizing the volume of future waste that we're going to have to deal with,'' Golan said.

Golan's past assignments have included managing cleanup of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado, and he keeps a well-thumbed copy of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act within easy reach in his office.

No matter what happens, he said, Yucca Mountain will be needed.

''It's not a question of if. We've already established a need for a geologic repository,'' Golan said.

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

Bradenton Herald
April 03, 2006

Nuclear plants are the answer

Energy problems have become a way of life. It's time to take stronger corrective action instead of pussyfooting around. There are many angles to these problems and they did not develop overnight; there also are many solutions. Our lust for oil is the greatest problem, and also, our dependence on natural gas and coal is abominable.

What are the answers? Conservation is a must. Also, solar energy, wind power and ethanol are all-important alternatives, but their large-scale production is not enough to solve our problems. Nuclear energy is absolutely necessary, a must.

In a joint statement on global warming, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences last year issued the following key points prepared by 11 leading international science bodies:

• Significant global warming is occurring.

• It has caused increases in sea levels, retreats of glaciers and changes in many biological systems.

• Most warming in recent decades can likely be attributed to human activities, largely from developed countries.

• Action taken now to reduce the build-up of greenhouse gases will lessen the magnitude and rate of climate change.

• Failure to implement reductions now will make the job more difficult in the future.

Our political officials in Washington, D.C., don't seem to be doing anything or very little to lessen global warming.

In regard to nuclear energy, new technologies are expected to be tested shortly by the federal government. If this technology works, it could vastly reduce the amount of spent nuclear waste to be buried at Yucca Mountain. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is a convert for nuclear power. So is Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. He is quoted recently as saying, "Nuclear issues are being forced on us by the realities of life." And, "we are being blackmailed by those who produce fossil fuels that we import, and more traditional domestic energy production poses risks to the environment."

Even Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., appears to be coming around his thinking because of a possible reduction in the amount of spent fuel to be stored at Yucca Mountain. It has been determined that Yucca Mountain is suitable for long-term isolation for spent nuclear fuel. This facility will remain open and closely monitored for 100 to 300 years. If there is ever a problem, casks containing the used fuel can be removed and the problem corrected.

Public support for nuclear energy is high. A survey done by Bisconti Research Inc. last summer showed 72 percent of registered voters approved of nuclear energy, 71 percent of self-described environmentalists, 66 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Republicans and 78 percent of independents.

The demand for energy is increasing and will continue to do so in the future. Last year it was reported that China is set to build 40 nuclear generating units within 15 years. Although the United States has the largest number of nuclear units, 19 countries get a greater percentage of their total electricity from nukes than we do.

We need to move ahead now in the installation of nuclear plants and greatly reduce our thirst for oil.

Clarence G. Troxell of Parrish is a retired executive in the utilities industry.

Clarence G. Troxell

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

Pottstown Mercury
April 03, 2006

Exelon unveils plans to store spent fuel rods

Mike Castiglione
mcastiglione@pottsmerc.com

LIMERICK -- With storage space for spent fuel at Exelon´s Limerick Generating Station running low, and the government´s answer for a national storage facility perhaps more than a decade away, the plant is moving forward with a solution of its own.

The spent fuel rods, which contain some radiation and are stored underwater inside the nuclear plant, would be housed above ground on the plant´s property.

Exelon officials released information about their "dry cask storage system" at a recent Pottstown Environmental Advisory Council meeting.

"Existing storage capacity for spent fuel at Limerick is running out," Project Manager Kevin Carrabine said. "We have no place left to turn using the existing storage option, which is spent storage pools inside the power plant."

As a result, Exelon will build a dry cask storage facility within a secured area on its Limerick plant site. Construction of the project could begin later this year. The new storage system will be in use by 2008.

Across the country, 34 other commercial power plants use the dry cask system, including four other Exelon nuclear facilities. Fifteen additional plants are looking into dry cask storage technology.

Under federal mandate, the Department of Energy must provide a permanent repository for the spent fuel produced by the nation´s power plants. That repository, proposed at Nevada´s Yucca Mountain, was supposed to be ready by 2012 but has been delayed by environmental concerns and political opposition.

Spent fuel is in the form of half-inch uranium pellets, which are stacked in 12-foot fuel rods. A group of 64 fuel rods makes up what´s called a fuel assembly. The stainless steel dry casks can hold 61 of these fuel assemblies. The storage pad will hold 24 casks, which will store spent fuel until 2013. The pad can be expanded to hold additional casks until 2020.

Officials are hopeful Yucca Mountain will be ready by 2015, but critics of nuclear energy say that is an optimistic estimate. The project was first proposed during the Carter administration and has missed several key deadlines for completion.

Should the repository be delayed beyond 2020, Carrabine said the issue would become a matter of real estate, meaning more space would need to be added to store additional spent fuel.

"There will be no effect on the public for spent fuel storage," Carrabine said.

Carrabine said the pad would be under continual security surveillance.

"With the geographic area that is around Limerick Generating Station and the layout of the site, we believe it is extremely secure," Exelon spokeswoman Beth Rapczynski said.

Carrabine referenced a video where a cask inside a transportation canister was struck by a locomotive at 80 miles an hour. That same cask was then subjected to three hours of jet fuel fire with "no breach of the transportation canister."

Members of a community group objected to the assertion that the casks were unbreachable.

As proof, Alliance for a Clean Environment referenced other videos, specifically footage of a 1998 U.S. Army weapons test that shows a missile blasting a hole through a cast-iron cask wall from a 2-mile distance.

"(The casks) are durable for the types of missiles that we´re required to analyze for regulations," said Bill Bracey, a spokesman for Transnuclear, the company designing the casks. "It would be a very hard target to hit from two miles out. These pads are very small targets for aircraft, if you look at the scale of the size of them compared to the targets hit on Sept. 11."

Critics in attendance raised additional questions about security and Exelon´s long-term plans should a national repository not be ready by 2020.

"I left the meeting feeling quite uncomfortable," Susan Burke said. "It is clear to me that Exelon has no long-term plan."

Exelon is planning to hold public forums to familiarize area residents with its plans for spent fuel storage.

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

Las Vegas SUN
April 02, 2006

Hal Rothman has a message for outgoing Interior Secretary Gale Norton: Keep your mitts out of our kitty

Southern Nevadans have so many reasons to dislike departing Interior Secretary Gale Norton that I cannot imagine that she would want to give us another, but she has.

On her way out the door from the gang that couldn't govern straight, Norton renewed her call to take 70 percent of the money generated from land auctions under the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA) and use it to defray the national debt. You have done too well, she whines, and you don't deserve the $2 billion we've raised from the sale of lands around you.

Wait a minute! A Cabinet official in the most profligate administration in American history has the audacity to tell us what to do with the proceeds from SNPLMA? That takes a lot of nerve! The government that spent the American economy into oblivion now proposes frugality at the expense of Clark County. Stuff it, Madame Secretary.

The SNPLMA was drawn up for specific purposes. The law was to mitigate the impact of the development that would occur on the lands auctioned. It created a developable footprint in Southern Nevada, allowing us to avoid a number of thorny environmental issues, and it divides the proceeds in specific ways - 5 percent to the state's general education fund, 10 percent to the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the remainder for quality-of-life and environmental purposes in the Las Vegas Valley and at Lake Tahoe.

It also put an end to the ongoing fraud that had occurred with what are called in-lieu exchanges, circumstances in which lands that the federal government desires in other places are traded for developable land in the Las Vegas Valley. Without pointing fingers, let's just say before the SNPLMA, the process stunk.

The SNPLMA has been a windfall for Southern Nevada, no doubt. The run-up in land value that has accompanied the auctions has generated infinitely more money than anyone expected. With some of that land going for as much as $700,000 an acre, there is a lot more to mitigate the impact of growth in the valley.

At the same time, there is a lot more to mitigate. Growth and the rising cost of land has created a host of social problems, not the least of which is the almost complete absence of affordable and attainable housing in greater Las Vegas. With the average household income at around $50,000 and the mean home price in the vicinity of $300,000, it is safe to say that the average Las Vegas family cannot afford the average home.

Even more, it doesn't take a genius to see that the strain on our infrastructure is growing. Even as we build roads and schools, parks, and the whole array of other things our rapidly growing community needs, we are forced to rely on our own devices for a great deal of the work.

If you look carefully when you cross Interstate 15 headed west on the Las Vegas Beltway, you'll see the blue federal interstate sign give way to the Clark County beltway signs, desert tone in color. At that point, local dollars pay for that road, a remarkable achievement. No other community in America has undertaken such a task and accomplished it.

But that road serves people who live on land a good part of which became available for development under the SNPLMA. Local and regional government pays for countless other services that are necessary because of the development of that land. That's why we need the money and why we sought the law in the first place.

So, Congress made a law and Nevada got the better of it. After aboveground atomic and nuclear testing and the fiasco of the Yucca Mountain project foisted upon us by something called the "Screw Nevada" bill, isn't it about time we caught a break?

Where I come from, a deal is a deal. You make it, you live with it. In Nevada's sordid 20th-century history with the federal government, we finally won one. No doubt. There's $2 billion in the kitty and it's ours. If you want it, Secretary Norton, come try to take it away. We will hold you and your free-spending friends accountable.

The SNPLMA should be the litmus test for Nevada politicians, the third rail of our dialogue. Anyone who wants to take even a dime of this money away from Clark County should be tarred and feathered and returned to the Bush administration, postage due.

Hal Rothman is a history professor at UNLV. His column in the Sun appears Sunday.

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

Nevada Appeal
March 31, 2006

Reid calls for Yucca budget cuts, not increases

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday the Department of Energy's budget request for Yucca Mountain should be cut, not increased.

The energy department is asking for $50 million more than last year for the nuclear dump project.

He told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee the $544 million budget for Fiscal Year 2007 is "bloated" especially in view of the numerous scientific problems at the site. Reid said those include a 2004 Court ruling which threw out EPA's radiation protection standards for Yucca because they were not strong enough to protect the public from radiation and failed to follow the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.

He said numerous scientific and quality assurance problems with transportation plans, corrosion of casks and other issues have caused the department to suspend work on the surface facilities and containers. In addition, he said DOE has revealed documents and models of water infiltration at Yucca Mountain have been falsified.

In response, he said, the administration has confirmed it is preparing a legislative package to remove health, safety and legal requirements - "a clear admission that the project is a public health, safety and scientific failure."

"It should be clear to anyone that the proposed Yucca Mountain project is not going anywhere. Yucca Mountain will never open," Reid told the subcommittee.

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

Lahontan Valley News
April 01, 2006

Why does Nevada get nuclear waste?

Editor:

The prospect of having America's nuclear garbage dumped at Yucca Mountain is terrifying. All those states reap the benefits of nuclear energy while Nevadans will be endangered by their waste. If it's so safe, why don't we dump it in facilities near the White House, Congress and Capitol Hill? How about dumping it in Texas by Bush's ranch? If it's safe enough for Nevadans, surely Bush wouldn't be concerned having it by his house and family.

Jeanine Ford
Fallon

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

Las Vegas SUN
March 31, 2006

Yucca Mountain chief predicts application in 2008, dump by 2020

By Erica Werner
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The official who oversees Yucca Mountain said Friday that he expects the Energy Department to submit a license application for the nuclear waste dump during the 2008 fiscal year and open the facility in Nevada by 2020.

But Paul Golan, who took over last May as acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, acknowledged that the contentiousness over Yucca Mountain will never be put to rest.

"This will always be a controversial program. It always will be. Even after it's done," Golan said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"And what we're trying to do is point the ship in the direction - safer, simpler, more reliable," he said. "And by our actions demonstrate that this is a path that will allow the repository to open in the shortest amount of time and the safest, most reliable way."

Golan said the much-anticipated bill probably will contain other changes too, but he wouldn't say what. He said the department "has an open mind" on the idea of interim storage of nuclear waste at other federal sites until Yucca Mountain can be completed.

But acknowledging the political controversy any such proposal would encounter, he joked, "You don't want it in your backyard?"

"If we can actually get a little bit better on closing the fuel cycle here, that's going to be very important in minimizing the volume of future waste that we're going to have to deal with," Golan said.

No matter what happens, he said, Yucca Mountain will be needed.

"It's not a question of if. We've already established a need for a geologic repository," Golan said.

---On the Net: Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov

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

Las Vegas SUN
April 01, 2006

Editorial: Politics of nuclear waste

Safety holds little concern as federal officials, utility managers push for Yucca opening

The Bush administration is working on a plan to expedite the opening of Yucca Mountain and intends to unveil it this month, according to a report from McClatchy News Service's Washington bureau. Details of the plan, under review by federal agencies, are not known.

What is known, however, should be of concern to every Nevadan. The Energy Department, in charge of the project to bury the nation's high-level nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain, has confirmed discussing various ideas for inclusion in the plan.

Among them is removing the congressional cap of 77,000 tons of the deadly waste that can be buried in the mountain. This is consistent with a call in February by the Nuclear Energy Institute - a Washington-based organization that lobbies on behalf of nuclear power plants - to bury as much as 115,000 tons at Yucca.

Additionally, federal officials are considering declaring Yucca Mountain an interim site for storage, meaning waste could be hauled there immediately to await a presumed opening. This would contravene Congress' original intention that no state with a site under consideration for a permanent storage facility would have to accept waste on an interim basis.

Also under consideration is taking away the power of Congress to appropriate money for Yucca Mountain through the setting of annual budgets. Ratepayers in states with nuclear power plants have been paying into a waste-storage fund that amounts to about $25 billion. The idea would be to allow the administration to appropriate the funds directly, as it sees fit.

The administration's plan has the support of energy officials around the country. The news service's story reported a meeting in Washington last week of utility executives from Minnesota, Maine and South Carolina.

LeRoy Koppendrayer, chairman of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, was quoted as saying, "We're way behind already (in opening Yucca Mountain, which was mandated by Congress to begin accepting waste by 1998). The ratepayers' money is there. Let's use it. Let's get the job done."

It is this kind of simplistic, foolish thinking that Nevada has been fighting for 20 years. Yes, the money is there, but that is far from the point. The point is safety. Nevada has shown time and again that Yucca Mountain cannot be proved to be an effective barrier against radioactive contamination of the environment. That is why, owing to lawsuits filed by Nevada, Yucca Mountain is now in limbo.

Interestingly, the administration is trying to sell the plan to Congress by saying if members approved it, a 2007 legal deadline for beginning to look for a second waste-storage site in another state will probably be long delayed. Translation: Stick it to Nevada, and you won't have to face the prospects of an unsafe nuke dump coming to your state.

Oh, the politics. Oh, the travesty.

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

Knoxville News Sentinel
April 01, 2006

OR group gets DOE contract

Associated Universities division to study likely nuclear waste repository

By Richard Powelson
powelsonr@shns.com

WASHINGTON - The Department of Energy said Friday it is awarding at least $6 million to a federal energy division at Oak Ridge to study and comment on plans for the nation's permanent nuclear waste repository slated for Nevada.

A division of Oak Ridge Associated Universities won the two-year contract based on its expertise in scientific and technical review, said DOE spokesman Craig Stevens.

DOE is compiling several million pages of technical documents to make the case to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license an area at Yucca Mountain, Nev., for thousands of years of storage of used radioactive fuel from nuclear power plants and other facilities, Stevens said. The documents require peer review by experts in various fields to ensure accuracy.

The federal government is years behind in having an approved site ready to accept used nuclear fuel.

TVA won a lawsuit against DOE two weeks ago that calls for the energy department to pay TVA $34.9 million in damages.

A judge ruled DOE did not meet the 1998 contractual deadline to accept fuel waste from TVA's nuclear plants and TVA had to provide alternative storage.

That fuel was intended to be stored at Nevada's Yucca Mountain Repository, but controversy over the location of the facility has delayed its opening even though it has been approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush.

DOE was supposed to store spent nuclear fuel from TVA's Browns Ferry plant in northern Alabama and the Sequoyah plant near Chattanooga.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, who represents the Oak Ridge area, said in a written statement: "This is great news and the best selection DOE could have made. Oak Ridge Associated Universities has more than 15 years of experience doing peer and merit reviews."

Pam Bonee, a spokeswoman for Oak Ridge Associated Universities, said five to 10 staff members in Oak Ridge will be working with experts in industry and many universities on the Yucca Mountain contract.

"We have an extensive network" of expert contacts across the country, she said, and worked with 1,600 reviewers last year in 49 states.

DOE's design contractor is working on a revised plan in which waste would be packaged in standard containers for shipment to Yucca Mountain, located in a desert about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and stored long term in the same containers.

Richard Powelson may be reached at 202-408-2727.

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

Quad City Times
April 01, 2006

Fed commissioner visits the nuclear facility in Cordova

By Kay Luna
Quad-City Times

CORDOVA, Ill. —He barely got seated at the long table, and right away, Edward McGaffigan wanted to talk about how impressed he is with the Quad-Cities nuclear power plant here.

That´s a big deal, coming from one of just five U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners charged with setting nuclear power policy for the entire nation.

From its ultra-tight security to new initiatives for storing spent-fuel and preventing nuclear reactor problems, McGaffigan said the Exelon Quad-Cities Station appears to be a “very, very safe facility,’ after touring the plant Friday.

“I´m very impressed with what I saw today,’ he said.

This was the Quad-City plant´s first visit from a Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner since 2002.

Commissioners occasionally tour nuclear plants across the nation, familiarizing themselves with industry issues. Their visits are not mandated; they can choose which plants to visit, and when, said Jan Strasma, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC.

“It´s an opportunity for us to talk about the plant and talk about the issues,’ plant manager Tim Toulon said.

This type of visit is relatively new to 57-year-old McGaffigan, who said he has visited only a few nuclear power plants during his 10 years as commissioner — and those were early in his career. With tears in his eyes, McGaffigan said health and family issues kept him close to home in Arlington, Va., for a long time.

Now, he´s starting to make the rounds, traveling to the Quad-Cities Station specifically to learn about vibration issues causing problems with nuclear reactors at several plants — including this one.

The station´s two nuclear reactors have experienced two unscheduled shutdowns since December because of abnormal wear to their safety mechanisms. Company officials said those problems most likely were caused by higher vibrations from an extended power uprate — an additional 100-megawatt power surge — that started in 2002 to allow the reactors to create more electricity, officials said.

The plant reduced power to limit the vibration, but now the NRC and Exelon believe the problem will be resolved over the next month, during the Unit 2 reactor shutdown now under way. Workers plan to replace 12 acoustic sidebands, which the plant manager said work “like a muffler, so to speak.’

“It´s like blowing through a coke bottle,’ McGaffigan added. “They´re trying to change the tune.’

The vibration issue has not been “safety-significant’ at the station, but is something other nuclear power plants also are dealing with, he said. The local plant is at the cutting edge of resolving the problem, he added.

“They have done a very good job,’ he said.

McGaffigan also is impressed with the massive increase in security since he was last in a nuclear power plant in 2002. He said the Quad-Cities Station has added security that goes beyond the NRC´s regulations, declining to give an example for security reasons.

“Security at the site is extraordinary,’ he said, adding that he believes it is “typical of the industry.’ “Exelon here is not skimping on doing the right thing and going the extra mile to protect the public.’

The commissioner stressed that his visit was not related to the recent radioactive tritium leak announcement from an Exelon plant in the Chicago area.

Federal regulators recently ordered inspections of all Illinois nuclear power plants after a brief emergency at one facility, and the discovery of a series of tritium-containing wastewater leaks between 1996 and 2003 at Chicago-based Exelon´s Braidwood Generating Station, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago.

On-site NRC investigators have started that inspection process, although Exelon officials and the NRC commissioner said none of the leaks posed a health or safety threat.

“There are no health and safety risks significant to anything that´s been discussed at the Exelon sites thus far,’ McGaffigan said. “It really is a pretty insignificant issue.’

From now on, McGaffigan said he expects nuclear plants to disclose “any drop’ of tritium released. However, he fears the issue is distracting the industry from other, more serious issues — like the reactors´ vibration problems at the Quad-Cities Station.

“That´s infinitely more important than the tritium issue,’ he said. “That´s where the focus should be.’

The commissioner also said he was impressed with the plant´s new outdoor spent-fuel storage facility set up on site, which is similar to others at power plants across the country.

However, he believes the nation would be better off with centralized storage for spent fuel, like the proposed Yucca Mountain site near Las Vegas. McGaffigan said he expects to see a licensing proposal filed with the NRC about that location no earlier than fiscal year 2008.

“They´re moving in the right direction,’ he said.

Kay Luna can be contacted at (563) 383-2323 or kluna@qctimes.com.

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

Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 31, 2006

Reid sees more cuts for Yucca Mountain

Savings might help fund geothermal research

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid said Thursday the Energy Department should expect a new round of budget cuts for Yucca Mountain, with savings going for geothermal research and other projects.

The Nevada Democrat's comments at a Senate budget hearing signal the launch of an annual campaign Reid wages to pare spending on nuclear waste disposal in an effort to slow the Yucca project long enough until critics can stop it outright.

Every year since 1994, Congress has scaled back the president's spending request for the Nevada program by tens of millions of dollars and sometimes more.

DOE officials have acknowledged the perennial shortfalls have contributed to delays at Yucca Mountain, which is eight years behind schedule.

This year, the Bush administration has asked Congress to allocate $544.5 million for Yucca Mountain, making it a big ticket item that is going to be scrutinized as lawmakers juggle funds for a variety of energy programs, Reid said.

"Some very difficult choices will have to be made," Reid said.

He predicted Congress will restore Bush budget cuts to heating assistance programs and "clean coal" research.

Reid is senior Democrat on the energy and water subcommittee that writes spending bills each year for DOE and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said after the hearing he agreed that Yucca Mountain probably would sustain a budget cut. He did not specify how much.

Speaking to DOE officials who outlined their budget, Reid said he was mystified by the decision to terminate federal spending for geothermal projects.

Nevada is considered rich in the underground heat resource and is a major target for investors.

"It is safe to say that there will be a geothermal energy program" in fiscal 2007, Reid said.

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

Las Vegas Review-Journal
March 31, 2006

Cartoon Man

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Joe Camel, and now Yucca Mountain Johnny?

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., connected the icons on Thursday in calling on the Department of Energy to erase the square-jawed cartoon miner from its taxpayer-funded Web site for the planned nuclear waste repository.

Berkley charged that Johnny's job on the site's "youth zone" is to "convince kids in Nevada that nuclear waste is OK and that the state of Nevada is a safe place to store nuclear waste."

Text on Johnny's site states: "We must be responsible for our nuclear waste and put it in a place where it can never harm people or the environment."

Critics say Yucca Mountain is not that place.

"What really bothers me is the message that Yucca Mountain Johnny is giving our schoolchildren is akin to Joe Camel telling our school kids that smoking is healthy," Berkley said in a House speech delivered while standing next to an enlargement of the character.

The R.J. Reynolds tobacco company ended an advertising campaign featuring Joe Camel in 1997 under pressure from Congress and public health groups. Although the company denied it, the character was widely associated with the promotion of Camel cigarettes to children.

The Energy Department does not plan to bury Yucca Mountain Johnny, said spokesman Craig Stevens, who rejected the comparison as "preposterous."

Yucca Mountain Johnny is not propaganda but rather a teaching tool, Stevens said. The character has existed for nearly 10 years and has been on the DOE Web site for two years without drawing comment or complaint, he said.

He can be found at www.ocrwm.doe.gov/youth/ index.htm.

"Yucca Mountain Johnny has been educating thousands of students and adults around the world on complex science issues including nuclear physics, hydrology, geology and engineering," Stevens said.

But Yucca Mountain Johnny -- depicted with an open, smiling face and strong jaw -- also appears to be selling trust, said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, an advocacy group that studies how the media conveys messages to children.

"The character as depicted makes you think that Yucca Mountain is a fine thing," he said. "He looks like a trustworthy guy. That is the image the DOE is trying to put forth here about Yucca Mountain, but as a matter of policy that is deeply subject to question.

"If Yucca Mountain Johnny was depicted as an atom bomb, it would make a different point," Ruskin said.

This is not the first time the that Energy Department outreach on Yucca Mountain has run afoul of critics.

In 2001, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., got a bill passed that temporarily blocked the department from advertising public tours of the repository site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Reid maintained DOE was using the tours to lobby for Yucca Mountain. The advertising ban expired a year later and was not renewed.

The mention of the cartoon earlier this month on wonkette.com, a popular blog, focused attention on the character and led Nevadans who oppose Yucca Mountain to conclude the state was being insulted.

On Thursday, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., registered a Yucca Mountain Johnny complaint with the Energy Department through an aide, spokesman Jack Finn said.

Other Nevada lawmakers echoed the call for the department to terminate the character.

"To sell the Yucca Mountain Project to our children through the use of a cartoon character is an irresponsible and desperate act," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.

But a Clark County science teacher questioned Yucca Mountain Johnny's reach.

In the county curriculum, eighth-graders being taught Newtonian physics and introduction to nuclear physics would be most likely to visit the Yucca Mountain Web site for assignments, said Brad Evans, science department chairman at Sawyer Middle School.

These students in their early teens don't notice the cartoons, said Evans.

"They would be more concerned about the information they could find on the site rather than the character," he said. "They would look at it and think it was silly."

Evans added students recognize that information on the government's Web site is "slanted" on the project.

"They seem to be more astute as far as that goes," Evans said, adding that a savvy student running a Google search of "Yucca Mountain" would discover 6.4 million other potential sources of information about the repository.

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

Pahrump Valley Times
March 31, 2006

Yucca advances earth sciences technologies

By Steve Tetreault
PVT Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Spray-on metal coatings that could resist corrosion for half the cost of expensive alloys. Timesaving electron beam welding that could seal canisters in a single pass. Longer lasting disc blades that might be able to cut through 2,000 feet of rock before wearing out.

New technologies and research funded by the Department of Energy for Yucca Mountain show promise to deepen understanding of the proposed Nevada nuclear waste site and potentially save millions of dollars, according to scientists taking part in the studies.

Much of the work being conducted in science incubators are in the early phases and could take years to explore, officials said. But DOE officials say fruit-bearing elements eventually could be incorporated into the waste repository designs.

"The benefits are potentially enormous as far as performance and cost standpoints," said John Wengle, director of the Office of Science and Technology.

Wengle and other DOE officials and research team leaders delivered presentations last week at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would conduct license hearings for the proposed repository.

Some of the participants said research outcomes could allow DOE to hone repository safety calculations or fill gaps in research. There was no discussion of what might happen if follow-on research turned up potential showstoppers for the project.

Researchers assembled by the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, for instance, are taking a new thrust at the physical characteristics of Yucca Mountain and how water might seep through its cracks and fissures into repository emplacement drifts.

"Our work is really a demonstration the Yucca Mountain site is a real good site for disposal of nuclear waste," said Bo Bodvarsson, director of the earth sciences division at the Berkley lab. "This portfolio is going to help us demonstrate a significant increase in repository performance."

But as work proceeds, the Energy Department is drawing questions as to whether the follow-up research might just complicate repository licensing, which would be built on studies the department conducted over the past 20 years.

How does DOE plan to integrate new features into a highly complex undertaking that faces scrupulous review, DOE officials were asked at the session by NRC staff and members of an NRC advisory commission.

"Clearly there is much more to the story than we have heard so far," said Lawrence Kokajko, deputy director of the high-level waste repository safety division in the NRC's Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.

Bob Loux, a repository critic, said "It seems to me there is a huge disconnect between the science program and the Yucca project.

"If they are developing good ideas in science, they ought to have bought enough time to incorporate those into the program. Otherwise why do it?" Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said in a telephone interview.

The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management is spending $21.3 million on Yucca follow-up work this year that is spread among the national laboratories and close to 20 universities and research entities.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the University of Nevada, Reno, Nye County and Nevada-based Desert Research Institute are among the groups receiving funding.

Besides the earth science studies, major topics include efforts to understand how waste-bearing containers will corrode, and how spent fuel will behave once it is emplaced in the repository and starts to decay.

"We are developing a community of experts who will address issues unknown at the moment but will inevitably arise as the project moves forward," said Rodney Ewing, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Michigan.

"At the end of the day if you are telling a story out to hundreds of thousands of years, the credibility of the storyteller is important," Ewing said.

Among technologies being examined, DOE and the Defense Department are teaming on development of iron-based amorphous metal coatings that are said to be highly corrosion resistant, DOE official Jef Walker said.

The iron-based coating material could be procured for $8 a pound and sprayed onto waste containers, while costs for nickel-based Alloy 22 are double that or more, Walker said. DOE's current design calls for placing Alloy-22 sleeves on waste packages entering the mountain.

Walker declined to estimate how much money might be saved but conceded the amount was "substantial, possibly staggering."

Similar metal coatings could be applied on tunnel boring machines to reduce wear and tear on cutting implements, Walker said. The cutting discs now must be replaced after slicing through 500 feet of rock.

"We would like it to last 2,000 feet, the length of an emplacement drift," Walker said.

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

Pahrump Valley Times
March 31, 2006

Bechtel out at the Nevada Test Site

By Phillip Gomez
PVT

The Nevada Test Site's principal management and operations contractor for the past 11 years, Bechtel Nevada Corp., will no longer be in the driver's seat after July 1. The decision is expected to affect a small number of Bechtel employees living in Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas and the more than 200 who live in Pahrump.

The Department of Energy's semi-autonomous agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration, announced earlier this week the selection of National Security Technologies LLC, to replace Bechtel.

The transition to the new contractor is to begin Saturday.

As NTS contractor, Bechtel Nevada comprises both Bechtel Nevada and Lockheed Martin Nevada Technologies Inc. More than half of Bechtel Nevada's employees work in the Las Vegas area or at the nearby Nevada Test Site, according to the company's Web site.

Bechtel employs 267 persons who reside in Pahrump, according to media contact Leann Inadomi.

A clause in the contract provides for continued employment to most employees wanting to keep their jobs, according to National Nuclear Security Administration spokespersons. The majority of Bechtel employees, about 2,900 in number, will be retained in the transition, but some 100 key personnel will not be, said Inadomi.

Bechtel is also the principal contractor for the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain Repository on the edge of the NTS near Lathrop Wells in Amargosa Valley, the contract for which is unaffected by NNSS's new contract with NSTec.

The terms of NSTec's contract are for the next five years with potentially five additional years after that. NSTec is to manage operations at the 1,375-square-mile facility established in 1951 as the nation's premier atomic proving grounds.

Global defense behemoth Northrop Grumman Corp., the managing partner in NSTec, is headquartered in Los Angeles. Others in the joint venture are AECOM, CH2M Hill and Nuclear Fuel Services.

Northrop Grumman, with approximately 125,000 employees and operations in all 50 states and 25 countries, plans for about 3,000 employees in its technical services division to work on the contract.

The government puts out bids on a regular basis, said media contacts for the NNSA. A little over a year ago bids were reviewed and NSTec was selected for offering the best proposal.

Under the contract, NSTec will be responsible for managing and operating the NTS, Nellis Air Force Base and satellite facilities in North Las Vegas. In addition, nuclear laboratories, air force bases and scientific offices across the nation will fall under the new contractor's management auspices, including Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in Livermore and Santa Barbara, Calif.

NSTec's Test Site work will include management of the nuclear explosives safety team, which supports the Department of Energy's efforts to prevent or slow the spread of nuclear weapons and to bolster the department's counter-terrorism mission.

The contract also states that NSTec provide technical support in hazardous chemical spill testing, emergency response training and conventional weapons testing.

Some of NSTec's specific duties will include remote field experiments; physical and environmental science; design and fabrication of electronic, mechanical and structural systems; remote and robotic sensing; management of multi-laboratory facilities; engineering, construction and mining operations; chemical, explosives and hazardous materials systems and technologies; and waste management for various categories of waste.

The NNSA is responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, reliability and performance of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear testing; works to reduce global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the U.S. Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and abroad.

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

Pahrump Valley Times
March 31, 2006

County Commission Preview

Williams' promotion to manager to be finalized

By Phillip Gomez
PVT

The Nye County Board of Commissioners meets briefly on Monday, and again on Tuesday for its regular meeting, this time in Tonopah, teleconferenced to Pahrump.

The meetings get underway on both days at 8:30 a.m.

Monday's meeting is to officially promote Planning Director Ron Williams to be the county's new "assistant county manager." The schedule also calls for ratifying Williams' contract and discussing the creation of up to an additional two county administrative positions.

The commissioners will convene in their conference room at 1510 E. Basin Ave in Pahrump.

At the same meeting commissioners are scheduled to discuss and act on the appointment of Wiley Jung as interim comptroller and to ratify his contract.

The commissioners also plan to discuss and give direction to staff regarding revisions to the job descriptions of both the county manager and the comptroller.

The commissioners are then to appoint persons to serve on a selection committee for the recruitment of a permanent county manager and comptroller.

Tuesday's meeting has two prominent agenda items, beginning with a presentation at 11 a.m. of the proposed contract with Hogle-Ireland to "hard zone" the Pahrump Valley according to the Pahrump Regional Planning District's master plan. The cost of combined phases of the project is $617,225, to be paid from the sale of excess county land.

The other outstanding item is a proposed donation to the town of Pahrump of $300,000 for its fairgrounds project in south Pahrump. Another $250,000 donation is proposed for the purchase of 25-acre-feet of water rights for the barren site.

Other items on the agenda include the following:

• Approval of the lease of office space in Tonopah and at the Job Connect in Pahrump for the Veterans Affairs service representatives recently appointed by the commissioners.

• Appointment of a successor to ex-Comptroller Marie Owens on the senior citizens advisory committee.

• Discussion and possible action on the continuing contract with Ann Barron for her work on economic development in the county.

• The county's consultant-rich office for oversight of the Yucca Mountain Repository will get richer yet when 17 new scientific consultants come up for approval, plus the augmentation of one long-term consultant's contract by $8,000.

The overall increase in costs for professional services comes to $14.68 million, ranging from Cash Jaszczak's small increase of $8,000 to an unknown amount for the University of Texas at El Paso.

• The new International Building Codes are up for review with recommendations from the county's building official related to their implementation in the Pahrump Regional Planning District.

• Final subdivision maps are scheduled for approval of the Tivoli Subdivision and Paradiso Villas. Respectively, they comprise a 71-residential lot subdivision and a 47-lot subdivision located on the north and south sides of the north loop of the Mountain Falls Parkway.

• Amargosa Valley is apparently feeling the development pressures from over the range in Pahrump, the valley now undergoing considerable parcel divisions. Eight parcels comprising 120 acres are proposed for subdivision into 16 five-acre parcels.

Tentative and final large parcel maps propose subdividing approximately 240 acres into six 40-acre parcels. Another request is to subdivide nine acres into two four-acre parcels and one 1-acre parcel.

A large parcel of 149 acres is proposed for subdivision into one four-acre parcel, one 62-acre parcel and one 83-acre parcel.

A 27-acre parcel is proposed for subdivision into 12 one-acre parcels and one 15-acre parcel.

Finally, a 47-acre parcel is proposed for subdivision into one 37-acre parcel and two five-acre parcels.

In public works, a $19,342 agreement with an engineering consultant is up for approval: The work involves the closure of the old Tonopah and Round Mountain landfills.

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

Platts
March 30, 2006

Domenici to cut Yucca Mountain's FY-07 cash, may submit own bill

Washington (Platts)--30Mar2006 Senate appropriators are expected to cut fiscal year-2007 funding for the Department of Energy's proposed nuclear waste repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada after key members of an appropriations subcommittee said Thursday the $544 million being sought for that program was too high.

"That has got to come down," the subcommittee chairman Pete Domenici, Republican-New Mexico, said following a hearing on the DOE fiscal 2007 budget request.

The panel's ranking Democrat, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, told reporters as he left the hearing he didn't know how the long-delayed program could spend that much money. Reid opposes DOE plans to build a nuclear waste disposal facility at Yucca Mountain, roughly 100 miles outside Las Vegas.

Separately, Domenici said in his opening statement at the hearing he would introduce his own nuclear waste bill if the department didn't present draft legislation to the Senate and House soon. Domenici declined to reveal details of his bill.

DOE has been promising a draft bill since early February.

Domenici said during the hearing Thursday he would introduce a DOE bill out of courtesy to the administration, but that didn't necessarily mean he would support the entire bill.

For more information, take a trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://nucweek.platts.com.

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

Working for Change
March 31, 2006

Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com

Tomgram: Privatizing the apocalypse

Frida Berrigan on a for-profit nuclear world

Every now and then, amid all the grim stories in our world, you run across one that rings a special bell for you. Frida Berrigan's today is that for me. In fact, consider this week at Tomdispatch as a discordant hymn to the privatization disasters of the Bush administration. Michael Schwartz began it with his account of how the draconian economic privatization program Bush administration officials enacted on prostrate Iraq in 2003 led directly to the catastrophe of the moment in that country. We know as well that, under this administration, the Pentagon has been on its own privatization binge, turning what were once essential military activities over to Halliburton, its subsidiary KBR, and other private firms in a wholesale fashion.

In addition, the Pentagon and the Bush administration have been on another kind of binge, privatizing national (and international) security. From New Orleans to Iraq, rent-a-mercenary companies are having a for-profit field day based on the woes of others. According to P.W. Singer, author of Corporate Warriors, for every hundred U.S. soldiers in our first Gulf War, there was one private "security contractor." This time around, it's closer to one in ten. It has been estimated that there are up to 20,000 guns-for-hire, Iraqi and Western, working in that country, the second largest (if also motliest) force in the "coalition of the willing."

Such private companies are above the law in Iraq, and their trigger-happy hirees don't hesitate to create mayhem. In part because their own casualties can largely be kept private, such companies have done much to reduce the political costs of going to war in the United States, while raising the stakes in Baghdad. In a February 2004 New Yorker article, retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner told journalist Jane Mayer, "When you can hire people to go to war there is none of the grumbling and political friction" associated with mustering a larger public fighting force.

Increasingly this sort of questionable "security" is making itself felt at home as well. The premises of the Homeland Security Department are now guarded by the private security firm, Wackenhut Services, Inc. (hired through a contract with the U.S. Navy). Among other goofs, its personnel reportedly mishandled a potential anthrax attack on Homeland Security headquarters. ("An envelope with suspicious powder was opened last fall at the headquarters. Daniels and other current and former guards said they were shocked when superiors carried it past the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff's window without evacuating people nearby.") Meanwhile, Wackenhut guards at the Energy Department, according to its inspector general, "had thwarted simulated terrorist attacks at a nuclear lab only after they were tipped off to the test; and... had improperly handled the transport of nuclear and conventional weapons." This is what for-profit national security can mean on a small scale.

Now, transfer that thought to the ultimate weaponry -- our nuclear arsenal. Sounds like the sort of nightmare you'd only find in the Wackenhuttiest of dystopian sci-fi novels, but read on and imagine our nuclear future in those same trustworthy privatized hands.

Tom

Privatizing the Apocalypse

By Frida Berrigan

Started as the super-secret "Project Y" in 1943, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has long been the keystone institution of the American nuclear-weapons producing complex. It was the birthplace of Fat Man and Little Boy, the two nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Last year, the University of California, which has managed the lab for the Department of Energy since its inception, decided to put Los Alamos on the auction block. In December 2005, construction giant Bechtel won a $553 million yearly management contract to run the sprawling complex, which employs more than 13,000 people and has an estimated $2.2 billion annual budget.

"Privatization" has been in the news ever since George W. Bush became president. His administration has radically reduced the size of government, turning over to private companies critical governmental functions involving prisons, schools, water, welfare, Medicare, and utilities as well as war-fighting, and is always pushing for more of the same. Outside of Washington, the pitfalls of privatization are on permanent display in Iraq, where companies like Halliburton have reaped billions in contracts. Performing jobs once carried out by members of the military -- from base building and mail delivery to food service -- they have bilked the government while undermining the safety of American forces by providing substandard services and products. Halliburton has been joined by a cottage industry of military-support companies responsible for everything from transportation to interrogation. On the war front, private companies are ubiquitous, increasingly indispensable, and largely unregulated -- a lethal combination.

Now, the long arm of privatization is reaching deep into an almost unimaginable place at the heart of the national security apparatus --- the laboratory where scientists learned to harness the power of the atom more than 60 years ago and created weapons of apocalyptic proportions.

Profane Problem or Prolific Profit?

Nuclear weapons are many things to many people -- the sword of Damocles or the guarantor of American global supremacy, the royal path to the apocalypse or atoms for peace. But in each notion, they are treated as idols -- jealously-guarded, shrouded in code, surrounded by sacred secrecy. That is changing.

Private companies have long played a role in the nuclear complex, but it's been a peripheral one. For example, Kaiser-Hill, a remediation company, is cleaning up radioactive waste at Rocky Flats, the Denver, Colorado complex that manufactured nuclear weapons. At Idaho Falls, another company, CH2M, is mopping up the mess left behind after the construction of 52 nuclear reactors. BWX and Honeywell formed a new company along with Bechtel to manage and operate the Pantex Plant in Texas which assembled nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. At least ten different subcontractors are involved in managing the Hanford nuclear complex. But the famed nuclear laboratories, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia -- where the high priests of nuclear physics are free to explore the outer realms of their craft -- have long been above prosaic bottom-line or board-room considerations. Until this year, that is.

At Los Alamos, the University of California has already been replaced by a "limited liability corporation," says Tyler Przybylek of the Department of Energy's Evaluation Board; and, more generally, the writing is on the containment wall. Nuclear laboratories are no longer to be intellectual institutions devoted to science but part of a corporate-business model where research, design, and ultimately the weapons themselves will become products to be marketed. The new dress code will be suits and ties, not lab coats and safety glasses. Under Bechtel, new management will lead to a "tightly structured organization" that will "drive efficiency," predicts John Browne, who directed the lab at Los Alamos from 1997-2003. "If there is a product the government wants," he concludes, "they will necessarily be focused on that. A lot more money will be at stake."

Los Alamos was the first to go. Now, the management contract for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is on the auction block as well.

Bechtel's Boondoggles

Many say strong corporate oversight will correct a legacy of embarrassing missteps at Los Alamos. The keystone of the nuclear complex, it has been dogged by missing classified computer disks, cost overruns on its expensive new projects, and an outspoken cadre of scientists who found their voice on LANL: The Real Story, a blog where once deferential employees blew off steam and exposed lapses in lab management.

The idea is that, under private management, this legacy of money wasted and dreams deferred can do an abrupt u-turn. But the question is: Can Bechtel (or any other private military contractor) usher in a new era of nuclear responsibility? Pete Domenici, Republican Senator and Chairman of the powerful Energy and Water Committee, thinks so. In January, he claimed that "this great lab will thrive under the management team led by Bechtel."

But a look at Bechtel's record might not inspire others to Domenici's confidence. The California- based construction giant has a long history of big projects, big promises, bigger budgets and even bigger failures.

In Boston, Bechtel was put in charge of the "Big Dig," the reconstruction of Interstate 93 beneath the city. In 1985, the price tag for the project was estimated at about $2.5 billion. Now, it is a whopping $14.6 billion (or $1.8 billion a mile), making it the most expensive stretch of highway in the world. Near San Diego, citizens are still paying the bills for cost over-runs at a nuclear power plant where Bechtel installed one of the reactors backwards.

In 2003, Bechtel took this winning track record to Baghdad, where it blew billions in a string of unfinished projects and unfathomable errors. The company reaped tens of millions of dollars in contracts to repair Iraq's schools, for example, but an independent report found that many of the schools Bechtel claimed to have completely refitted, "haven't been touched," and a number of schools remained "in shambles." One "repaired" school was found by inspectors be overflowing with "unflushed sewage."

Bechtel also has a $1.03 billion contract to oversee important aspects of Iraq's infrastructure reconstruction, including water and sewage. Despite many promises, startling numbers of Iraqi families continue to lack access to clean water, according to information gathered by independent journalist Dahr Jamail. The company made providing potable water to southern Iraq one of its top priorities, promising delivery within the first 60 days of the program. One year later, rising epidemics of water-borne illnesses like cholera, kidney stones and diarrhea pointed to the failure of Bechtel's mission.

Outside of its ill-fated reconstruction contracts in Iraq, Bechtel is not known as a large military contractor, but the company has been quietly moving into the nuclear arena. It helped build a missile-defense site in the South Pacific, runs the Nevada Test Site where the United States once performed hundreds of above-and underground nuclear tests. Bechtel is also the "environmental manager" at the Oak Ridge National Lab, which stores highly-enriched uranium, and is carrying out design work at the Yucca Mountain repository where the plan to store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste has environmentalists and community activists up in arms.

At Washington State's Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, Bechtel is working on technology to turn nuclear waste into glass. But the estimated costs of building the facility to do that have doubled in one year to about $10 billion while the completion date slipped from 2011 to 2017. Members of Congress have proposed that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission take over management of the project from Bechtel because of its cost overruns and delays.

Proliferation's New Meaning

Given this track record, it's hard to make the case that Bechtel assumes the helm at Los Alamos out of an altruistic, even patriotic, desire to impose clean, lean corporate management on a complacent institution long overfed at the public trough. The question remains: Why this urge to privatize the apocalypse?

To answer that question, you have to begin with the post-Cold War quest of the nuclear laboratories for a new identity and raison d'être. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the loss of the other superpower as a nuclear twin and target, and an international shift in favor of nuclear disarmament sent Los Alamos and the whole U.S. nuclear complex into existential crisis: Who are we? What is our role? What do we do now that nuclear weapons have no obvious role in a world of, at best, medium-sized military enemies? Throughout the Clinton years, these questions multiplied while the nuclear arsenal remained relatively stable. More recently, with a lot of fancy footwork, a few friends in Congress, and the ear of a White House eager to be known for something other than the Long War on global terrorism, the labs finally came up with a winning solution that has Bechtel and other military contractors seeing dollar signs.

They found their salvation in a few lines of the Nuclear Posture Review, released in January 2002, where the Bush administration asserted: "The need is clear for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex that will be able, if directed, to design, develop, manufacture, and certify new warheads in response to new national requirements; and maintain readiness to resume underground testing if required."

There's gold in that there sentence. During the Cold War, spending on nuclear weapons averaged $4.2 billion a year (in current dollars). Almost two decades after the "nuclear animosity" between the two great superpowers ended, the United States is spending one-and-a-half times the Cold War average on nuclear weapons. In 2001, the weapons-activities budget of the Department of Energy, which oversees the nuclear weapons complex through its "semi-autonomous" National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), totaled $5.19 billion; and a "revitalized nuclear weapons complex," ready to "design, develop, manufacture, and certify new warheads," means a more than billion-dollar jump in spending to $6.4 billion by fiscal year 2006.

And that's just the beginning. The NNSA's five-year "National Security Plan" calls for annual increases to reach $7.76 billion by 2009. David Hobson, Republican congressional representative from Ohio, calls this kind of budgeting "the ultimate white-collar welfare," saying that the weapons complex can be "viewed as a jobs program for PhDs."

He's right. That's a lot of money for a few labs and a few thousand scientists. And private military contractors large and small are all over it.

Entering Acronym Land

To justify this huge jump in spending, the nuclear laboratories have cooked up plans for an alphabet soup of projects as part of the SSMP, scientists are pushing -- to mention just a few of the acronyms on the table right now -- ASCC, MESA, the RRWP, the ICFHY campaign and the RNEP.

In the interest of not putting everyone to sleep, we can take a closer look at just a few of the Bush administration's proliferating nuclear projects. Under the umbrella of Stockpile Stewardship Management (SSMP), scientists are working to safeguard the stockpile of nuclear weapons and materials so it is not ravaged by time and neglect. The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program (RRWP) will exchange existing warheads for more "reliable" (read: more powerful) ones. There are plans underway to develop the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) and other "useable" new nuclear weapons supposedly to meet new threats by new enemies -- "rogue states" like Iran -- in future preemptive anti-proliferation wars. Under each of these programs are many other acronym- heavy, cash-rich programs that seem to lead nowhere -- except toward further nuclear proliferation.

The Inertial Confinement Fusion and High Yield Campaign is just one of the more outlandish and expensive of these projects. It proposes using lasers to replicate what happens inside an actual nuclear explosion in weapons labs. Sounds simple enough, right? The Nuclear Ignition Facility -- where the lasers will do their work -- is the single largest project in the NNSA budget and, according to analyst Christopher Paine, "quite possibly the most expensive experimental facility ever built." The Department of Energy projects $3.5 billion in costs for this alone, but the independent environmental group, the National Resources Defense Council, puts the figure higher yet -- at $5.32 billion -- and that money will be spent before anyone can even demonstrate that the system works.

The Age of Nuclear Terror?

Do nuclear weapons have a role in the "Age of Terror" -- other than as potential weapons for terrorist groups? In a new and ever-shifting environment of emerging regional powers and wars that transcend national boundaries, the Bush administration is taking a have-it-both-ways approach: It is pushing aggressive non- proliferation policies for chosen enemy nations and embracing a policy of accelerated nuclear proliferation for itself. How much harder will it be in the future to dissuade other powers from building nuclear weapons when the American nuclear industry and its weapons labs have switched even more fully into private mode and the profit-motive is increasingly at stake in global nuclear planning? These and many other questions unfortunately remain unasked. Yet, a new era of nuclear weapons for profit threatens to turn Armageddon into a paying operation.

During the height of the Cold War, when competition between the nuclear laboratories seemed to rival the superpower stand-off, a Lawrence Livermore scientist posted a sign that read: "Remember, the Soviets are the Competition, Los Alamos is the Enemy."

In a new era of potential corporate antagonism over apocalyptic weaponry, will there be a sign at the Bechtel-run nuclear lab emblazoned with: "Remember, the Terrorists are the Competition, Lockheed Martin is the Enemy"?

Frida Berrigan (berrigaf@newschool.edu) is a Senior Research Associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center. Her primary research areas with the project include nuclear-weapons policy, war profiteering and corporate crimes, weapons sales to areas of conflict, and military-training programs. She is the author of a number of Institute reports, most recently Weapons at War 2005: Promoting Freedom or Fueling Conflict. Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project.

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

Knoxville News Sentinel
March 31, 2006

OR selected for nuke review work

By Richard Powelson
powelsonr@shns.com
March 31, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy said today it is awarding at least $6 million to a federal energy division at Oak Ridge to study and comment on plans for the nation´s permanent nuclear waste repository slated for Nevada.

A division of Oak Ridge Associated Universities won the two-year contract based on its expertise in scientific and technical review, said DOE spokesman Craig Stevens.

The federal government is years behind in having an approved site ready to accept used nuclear fuel.

TVA won a lawsuit against DOE two weeks ago that calls for the energy department to pay TVA $34.9 million in damages.

A judge ruled DOE did not meet the 1998 contractual deadline to accept fuel waste from TVA´s nuclear plants and TVA had to provide alternative storage.

That fuel was intended to be stored at Nevada´s Yucca Mountain Repository, but controversy over the location of the facility has delayed its opening even though it has been approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush.

DOE was supposed to store spent nuclear fuel from TVA´s Browns Ferry plant in northern Alabama and the Sequoyah plant near Chattanooga.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, who represents the Oak Ridge area, said in a written statement: "This is great news and the best selection DOE could have made.

Oak Ridge Associated Universities has more than 15 years of experience doing peer and merit reviews."

"We have an extensive network" of expert contacts across the country, she said, and worked with 1,600 reviewers last year in 49 states.

DOE´s design contractor currently is working on a revised plan in which waste would be packaged in standard containers for shipment to Yucca Mountain, located in a desert about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and be stored long-term in the same containers.

Richard Powelson may be reached at 202-408-2727.

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