Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, April 5, 2006
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Congressman Jon Porter
April 4, 2006
Porter Reacts to Proposed Yucca Mountain Legislation
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Third District Congressman Jon Porter issued the following statement in response to proposed legislation designed to hasten the opening of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which will be sent to Congress tomorrow:
“Since evidence of possible falsified science at Yucca Mountain surfaced last year, plans to turn the site into a nuclear dump have been stalled due to mounting safety concerns. How does the Department of Energy react? Instead of doing the responsible thing and rethinking their priorities, they push forward with legislation to expedite the Yucca Mountain Project. This, weeks after Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman himself deemed the Project ‘broken.´ This legislation is a desperate attempt by DOE officials to move the Project forward before more problems can be uncovered.’
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The Hill
April 05, 2006
Reid vows to block new push for Yucca Mountain nuke site
By Jim Snyder
The Bush administration has sent Congress a new Yucca Mountain bill, but it seems it will run into old political problems.
The Energy Department´s plan would expedite the licensing process for Yucca, which Congress approved in 2002 as the site of the permanent repository for the nation´s nuclear waste.
The measure also removes the current limit on waste of 70,000 metric tons. Originally scheduled to open in 2010, the project is years behind in development.
There are more than 50,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel that are now kept on site at more than 100 nuclear plants, according to the Energy Department. Every year, the nuclear industry, which accounts for around 20 percent of the electricity used in this country, produces roughly 2,000 more tons of waste.
The nuclear industry welcomed Energy´s effort, which is similar to administration efforts in past years that were blocked on Capitol Hill.
“It includes a number of industry´s expressed priorities,’ said Trish Conrad, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association representing the nuclear power industry.
Like most legislative efforts affecting the nuclear industry, this one could be a tough slog.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declared the bill dead on arrival earlier this week, the day before the White House sent the proposal to Congress.
“This bill has no future,’ Reid said.
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) gave it similarly bleak prospects. “This bill will go nowhere,’ he predicted.
A spokeswoman for Reid said the senator still believes that the site is unsafe.
But energy officials said the bill is needed to ensure that nuclear power remains a component of the nation´s fuel mix. The industry hopes to capitalize on new pressures to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, as it develops new technologies for new nuclear plants. Nuclear power plants do not release carbon dioxide.
A new license for a nuclear plant hasn´t been issued in more than two decades.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the bill would help provide “stability, clarity and predictability to the Yucca Mountain project.’
In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Bodman added: “Expanded use of nuclear power can reduce carbon emissions while also making the nation more energy independent.’
One industry priority the bill would address deals with “waste confidence.’ The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has ruled that it is confident that the problem of nuclear waste will be solved. Such a ruling is important in the license-application reviews of new plants.
The industry believes the waste-confidence standard opens so-called “next generation’ nuclear plants to lawsuits that would delay their completion. Public Citizen and other groups have, in fact, challenged the NRC declaration of confidence.
The bill submitted to Congress by the Energy Department asks lawmakers to find that “sufficient capacity will be available in a timely manner to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste resulting from the operation of the reactor and any related facilities’ even though the Yucca Mountain site has faced funding shortfalls and determined congressional opposition.
The mesure would effectively remove the NRC from the decisionmaking process on whether the government is confident that nuclear waste will be disposed of appropriately.
“That is going to be a political decision, not a scientific decision,’ said Michele Boyd, a legislative director for energy issues at Public Citizen. “It is very disconcerting, to say the least.’
Boyd also criticized the bill for its push to expedite the licensing process for Yucca, which includes overriding some environmental reviews that would now be required.
Another hot-button issue is likely to be the administration´s latest call that the Nuclear Waste Fund, a money pot established in 1982 to pay for disposal of spent reactor fuel, not be subjected to budget spending caps.
The fund, paid for by a small fee added to bills for nuclear-generated electricity, is expected to reach $19 billion this year, according to the NEI.
But congressional spending caps have meant that Congress has appropriated around $1 billion less than the Energy Department had requested for Yucca Mountain in recent years.
The legislative proposal would remove the amount of money the fund earns each year, around $750 million, from spending-cap considerations. Any amount appropriated over that for Yucca would still be included in the budget cap applied by Congress.
Critics have said removing a portion of the fund from congressional spending caps would undermine lawmakers´ oversight over the project.
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Las Vegas SUN
April 05, 2006
Tom Gorman on the sheer lunacy of adding 55,000 tons of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain when the first 77,000 tons are already called unsafe
As if it wasn't bad enough that Washington and the nuclear power industry want to plug Yucca Mountain with 77,000 tons of spent fuel rods, the Bush administration had the gall to announce Tuesday that it wants to throw another 55,000 tons or so into its bowels.
I mean, the administration can't assure our safety with its current plan to deposit 77,000 tons of nuclear power plant fuel rods at Yucca Mountain. And now it wants to stuff Yucca Mountain to the gills with high-level radioactive material?
But then, I know better than to expect logic from the president's people.
The proposal unveiled Tuesday calls for allowing Yucca Mountain to be filled to capacity. Federal scientists estimate the capacity at about 132,000 tons.
And the reason? So the government won't have to go out and find another site as the inventory of spent fuel rods builds up.
Well, you can't blame them for that. They know nowhere else in the country would allow a repeat of this Yucca Mountain fiasco. This is their only game in town, and their way of defending the indefensible is to thump their chest and try to bully us even more.
"This proposed legislation will help provide stability, clarity and predictability to the Yucca Mountain project," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Tuesday.
Huh? That makes no sense whatsoever. It was a prepared statement, which tells me that he needs to hire some better PR people.
Seriously, this is scary, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. If we were a child, this would be the case of an abusive parent who has been slapping and kicking us for years who, even as we complain, pummels us for good measure.
With this latest move, Yucca Johnny is going to have a lot of explaining to do to the kids who visit his Web site. Yucca yucca this, Johnny!
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade organization that fronts for the nuclear power plant operators, hired former Nevada governor Robert List a few years ago to extoll the potential economic benefits of storing their nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
His mission: explain how Nevada can make lemonade out of radioactive lemons.
As recently as Monday, over a lunch of shrimp, pasta and carrot cake, he tried to sell about 50 members of the Rotary Club on the merits of working with the government on allowing the use of Yucca Mountain.
There's no point fighting it, he said; let's use it as a bargaining chip to get some money for Nevada.
Well, that's like letting your spouse cheat on you because he'll buy you nice jewelry and take you on that cruise to make up for it. And now, despite all that contrition, you learn that your spouse isn't just cheating on you, but wants to line up more mistresses.
At Lawry's, when List asked the Rotary Club members if they believed that Yucca Mountain's development as a radioactive graveyard was inevitable, almost everyone raised their hands. Should we take the money and run, he asked? Yes, the Rotarians said.
Well, no we shouldn't.
I've got full confidence that our congressional delegation, led by Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign, will put a halt to this nonsense.
Yucca Mountain is wrong at 77,000 tons, at 132,000 tons and at any number of tons. The administration's increasing assault on Yucca Mountain will rekindle the fire in our belly to fight back.
Tom Gorman's column runs Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 259-2310 or at tom.gorman@lasvegassun.com.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 05, 2006
Administration bill aims to expedite nuclear waste repository
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration set out in a plan unveiled Tuesday to clear away potential obstacles in Nevada while speeding licensing and other groundwork for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
A bill being sent to Congress today seeks to strengthen the Department of Energy's authority over aspects of repository planning while expediting hearings the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would conduct to allow nuclear waste to be sent to the site, DOE officials said.
It would bolster DOE claims for precious water to operate a desert repository over objections written into Nevada law, according to officials.
It also seeks a head start to build a railroad across Nevada to the repository and to prepare other, non-nuclear features at the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, according to DOE officials and others who reviewed the measure.
A handful of other provisions -- some new and some old -- are contained in a "fix Yucca" bill that supporters said was part of an overhaul to get the repository back on track after years of setbacks and delays.
"Our proposal seeks to provide stability, clarity and predictability in moving the Yucca Mountain Project forward as quickly as possible," said Clay Sell, Energy Department deputy secretary. "It is good for national security, it is good for the environment, it is good for the economy, and we think it is very good for America."
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman is planning his first trip to Nevada in the next few weeks to visit Yucca Mountain and to meet with repository workers, according to DOE spokesman Craig Stevens.
Critics had been bracing for the bill. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said it contained little that was original and that it would be "dead when it gets here" to Congress.
"This bill will go nowhere," added Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., contending the Yucca project will be unable to shake questions about health, safety and the quality of its science work.
The bill's prospects in Congress this year are unclear. Senate Energy Committee chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has said time is running short to tackle such a comprehensive measure although he promised to introduce the Bush administration bill to get the ball rolling.
"We believe it is very important to get Yucca Mountain open so we can start moving waste from communities around the country, and it is our view that is a widely held position," Sell said. "We can make the case to get the legislation passed."
The measure contains most of what the nuclear power industry and other repository proponents had sought. But it does not contain two key elements that could have moved the project faster, according to DOE officials and others.
It does not address radiation health standards that are being rewritten at the Environmental Protection Agency.
It also does not authorize the movement of nuclear waste away from power plants and into temporary storage while work continues at Yucca Mountain.
Bob Loux, Nevada nuclear waste director, said the DOE bill if passed would "begin to move things along a little bit" for the project.
He added it also might make it more difficult for the state to wield lawsuits as a weapon against the project in the areas of water rights, hazardous waste regulation and land management.
"It doesn't eliminate all the possibilities of stopping the project but it would close a few loopholes," said Loux, who coordinates Nevada's official opposition to the Yucca Mountain Project.
Among other provisions, the "fix Yucca" bill would:
• Authorize infrastructure activities at the site before DOE obtains a repository building license, such as construction of a Nevada rail line.
• Declare the use of water for the repository to be "beneficial to interstate commerce" and "not detrimental to the public interest," contrary to a state law that Nevada officials have cited to deny permits.
"This provision would result in non-discriminatory treatment of the department," according to an analysis of a bill draft.
• Exempt nuclear waste containers and other packing material from regulation under federal hazardous waste law. DOE maintained the change would simplify regulations "without compromising environmental protection or safety," according to a bill summary.
• Repeal the 70,000 metric ton limit on Yucca Mountain capacity set by law.
With more than 60,000 tons of commercial and government nuclear waste already in storage and piling up at a rate of 2,000 tons a year, the material would fill the repository almost as soon as it is built.
The change would allow planners to contemplate storing up to 120,000 metric tons, which has been identified as the mountain's physical limit.
• Change accounting practices to enable Congress to allocate as much as $750 million to $800 million to the project each year without running afoul of congressional budget restrictions. The Bush administration proposed similar reclassification bills in earlier sessions of Congress but it failed to gain support.
• Formally designate 147,000 acres of land surrounding Yucca Mountain to be in the Energy Department's control. The land variously is managed by BLM, the Air Force and the Nevada Test Site.
• Require the NRC to deem that there will be enough nuclear waste storage available to accommodate the construction of new power plants or license renewals for existing plants.
The nuclear industry lobbied for the change in the NRC's "waste confidence rule" so further delays would not snag efforts to build new plants.
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Pahrump Valley Times
April 05, 2006
Bad 'Yucca Mountain Johnny'
By Steve Tetreault
PVT 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 Web site for the proposed nuclear waste repository.
Berkley charged that Johnny's job on the "youth zone" of the Web site "is to convince kids in Nevada that nuclear waste is okay and that the state of Nevada is a safe place to store nuclear waste.
"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 a teaching tool, Stevens said. The character has existed for nearly 10 years and has been on the DOE Web site for two years.
He can be found at www.ocrwm.doe.gov/youth/index.
"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 sends messages to children.
"The character as depicted makes you think that Yucca Mountain is a fine thing," Ruskin 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 that the 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.
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 among students.
In the county curriculum, eighth graders being taught Newtonian physics and introduction to nuclear physics would be most likely to visit the Yucca Mountain website for assignments, said Brad Evans, science department chairman at Grant Sawyer Middle School.
These students in their early teens don't notice the cartoons, said Evans, whose students recently completed a project on the repository that involved Internet research.
"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 website 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.
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Platts
April 04, 2006
Yucca Mt bill excludes interim storage language: DOE
Washington (Platts)--4Apr2006
The Department of Energy left interim storage language out of a draft bill on a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, it plans to send to Congress early Wednesday, Bush administration officials confirmed Tuesday.
The bill, Deputy Secretary Clay Sell said during a press conference Tuesday, seeks to provide the department with "stability, clarity, and predictability" in moving the repository program at Yucca Mountain, Nevada forward. Earlier Tuesday, sources told Platts the interim storage language would be left out of the draft bill.
BILL WOULD REPEAL 70,000 MT DISPOSAL LIMIT
Provisions in the draft bill would repeal an existing statutory requirement limiting Yucca Mountain's disposal capacity to 70,000 metric tons, allowing the repository to be licensed up to its full technical capacity, which some officials have said is at least double the current cap.
It retains the current three- to four-year statutory requirement for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision on whether to give DOE authorization to construct a repository, but adds a requirement giving NRC up to 18 months extra to act on a license amendment to allow DOE to receive and possess waste at the disposal site.
Under the DOE proposal, non-nuclear facilities associated with the repository, such as a planned rail spur to Yucca Mountain, could be built before NRC authorizes construction of the repository, DOE acting waste program director Paul Golan said.
The draft bill also would deem that the US will have adequate disposal capacity for utility spent nuclear fuel, eliminating the need for periodic NRC waste confidence reviews.
REID SLAMS BILL; SAYS IS 'DEAD WHEN IT GETS HERE'
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat-Nevada, predicted Tuesday the legislation will fail. He said the proposal would add billions of dollars to the cost of handling nuclear waste.
DOE has indicated the repository may not open before 2020, 22 years later than lawmakers originally intended to start storing waste there. "They know that it is not even on a life support system," he told reporters. "It is dead when it gets here."
For more information, take a trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://nucweek.platts.com.
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U.S. Newswire
April 05, 2006
Nuclear Industry Views Legislation as 'Very Positive Step' to Advance Yucca Mountain Project
To: National Desk, Energy Reporter Contact Nuclear Energy Institute, 202-739-8000 (business hrs.), or 703-644-8805 (after hours and weekends)
WASHINGTON, April 5 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following is a statement by the Nuclear Energy Institute's president and chief executive officer, Frank L. "Skip" Bowman, regarding the U.S. Department of Energy's submission to Congress today of legislation entitled the "Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act." The legislation is designed "to enhance the management and disposal" of used nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from U.S. defense programs at a geologic repository planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev.:
"The nuclear energy industry is pleased that the Bush Administration has presented Congress with legislation to facilitate implementation of the federal government's used nuclear fuel management program. The Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act is a logical next step to Congress's bipartisan approval in 2002 of the joint resolution that designated Yucca Mountain as the site for a state-of-the-art repository.
"The bill will help achieve the opening of the Yucca Mountain repository and maximize the myriad benefits that the nation receives from nuclear energy for the long term. Nuclear energy strengthens U.S. energy security by reliably providing electricity to one of every five homes and businesses.
"We view this legislation as additional evidence that the administration continues its strong support for nuclear energy as part of a diverse energy portfolio for our nation. This legislation also shows that the administration recognizes the importance of a responsible used-fuel policy. For more than 20 years now, electricity customers have paid funds through their monthly electricity bills into the federal Nuclear Waste Fund specifically for the development of a geologic repository for used nuclear fuel. This legislation will help the government keep faith with the American people while being a good environmental steward.
"This is a very positive step to help the federal government meet its statutory and contractual obligation to begin disposing of used fuel being stored at nuclear power plant sites. We are pleased that this legislation reflects many of the industry's expressed policy priorities for used nuclear fuel management:
-- It maintains a strong government commitment to the Yucca Mountain program, for example, through land withdrawal provisions, licensing process amendments and infrastructure activities;
-- It increases assurance that there will be adequate funding for the Department of Energy's used fuel management program by changing the budget treatment for the Nuclear Waste Fund;
-- It removes the artificial, 70,000-metric ton capacity limitation for the repository; and
-- It reaffirms on a broad policy basis the nation's confidence in geologic disposal of used nuclear fuel, eliminating the need for a regulatory determination of "Waste Confidence."
"We look forward to working with the Administration and Congress as the bill advances through the legislative process. We hope this process will begin as quickly as possible, with hearings scheduled immediately upon Congress's return from the Easter recess."
---The Nuclear Energy Institute is the nuclear energy industry's policy organization. This news release and additional information about nuclear energy are available at http://www.nei.org .
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NEI Nuclear Notes
April 04, 2006
Bodman on Yucca Mountain and GNEP
Eric McErlain
Off the wire from DOE, full text of Energy Secretary Sam Bodman's speech today to the United States Energy Association:
I´m pleased to be here today. It´s hard to believe that it´s been a year since I last met with you. At that time, I was new on the job. A lot has happened since I started at the Energy Department – record high gas prices, major energy legislation, record high gas prices, two major hurricanes in the Gulf, record high gas prices, new energy initiatives announced by the President, and record high gas prices. It´s safe to say I didn´t know what I was getting myself into!
But in all seriousness, it has been an exciting and challenging time to be Energy Secretary. And one of the things I enjoy about the job is events like these, is they provide not only a chance for me to share my views with you, but also for me to hear what´s on your minds, representing, as you do, businesses and organizations from across this great nation.
I´ve been living and working in Washington for about five years now. And though this city certainly takes some getting used to, I feel like I´ve had enough time to form some opinions about how things work around here. In my view, there is much to love about this place. At the top of that list I would put the tremendous dedication, energy and enthusiasm of the Federal workforce.
I believe this is particularly true of our Federal science and engineering workforce. What you have – what your tax dollars support – is some of the very best scientists in the world, working extremely hard (for less money than they could make elsewhere) on some of our country´s most vexing problems. We need them today as much as ever to help us confront challenges related to our national security, to our health and well-being, and to our economic competitiveness.
No one understands this better than President Bush. Throughout his administration, the President has argued that in order to maintain this country´s economic preeminence in an increasingly competitive world, we simply must maintain our scientific and technological superiority. He also recognizes that doing so requires a substantial and sustained investment going forward. And so, in his State of the Union Address, President Bush unveiled two new programs that will help this nation maintain its economic and scientific edge.
First, the American Competitiveness Initiative proposes a major increase in federal funding for basic science research, particularly for the physical sciences. And I´m proud to say that the Department of Energy will play a central role.
Our Office of Science is now the largest source of federal funds for basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. But in order to ensure that we remain the world leader in this area, the President has committed to doubling the budget of this Office over the next ten years. This includes an increase of half a billion dollars in the budget request for next year. Among other things, this will allow us to bring on an additional 2,600 researchers in 2007.
The President has made it clear that he believes that advances in science and technology will, among other things, help this country break its reliance on imported energy sources and hydrocarbons. And so, in conjunction with the Competitiveness Initiative, the new Advanced Energy Initiative proposes to significantly increase our national investment in alternative fuel and clean energy technologies in order to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy.
As part of the Advanced Energy Initiative, the President has asked Congress to increase funding for clean energy technologies by 22% in the upcoming fiscal year. With these funds, we at the Energy Department will accelerate our research into technologies that we believe hold the greatest promise to transform the way we power our transportation sector, our homes and our businesses.
The focus here is on technologies that are close to making a splash but need a final push. Over the past decade or so, a tremendous amount of work has been done on possible new energy sources. The Advanced Energy Initiative essentially proposes to pick some winners. This may not be the usual role for government, but we must do it if we are to meet the energy demands of the future. Our goal is to identify the most promising technologies – the ones that could have the greatest impact on the marketplace in the relatively near future – and then really go after them.
The way I think about it, we are looking for technologies that will breakthrough in my lifetime – say in the next 20 years or so. That may seem like a long time. But considering how complicated the science is, how long it can take to bring a technology to market, and how large and complex the problem is, this is really a reasonable – even aggressive – time frame.
Among other things, the Advanced Energy Initiative will accelerate the development of solar photovoltaics, a technology that converts energy from the sun into electricity in a highly efficient manner; improve the efficiency and lower the costs of new wind-power technologies; produce better batteries for use in hybrid automobiles; and develop cheap, practical ethanol made from plant fiber, which some scientists suggest could make ethanol cost-competitive by 2012 and displace up to 30 percent of current fuel use.
All of these initiatives hold great potential for ultra-clean and secure energy options.
Let me also say this: if we are to succeed in significantly reducing our dependence on imported energy, we must expand our use of nuclear power in this country.
The President, as you know, has been a strong supporter of nuclear power as a vital part of the nation´s energy portfolio because of its ability to delivery emissions free power at a reasonable cost.
Any sound nuclear energy policy, however, must take into account the eventual need to replace these plants that already given us longer service than planned. It must also find a solution to the question of how to deal permanently with spent nuclear fuel and other waste.
I am pleased to tell you that today that the Department of Energy is sending to Congress new legislation that will speed the process of opening the Yucca Mountain repository and make it an even more valuable national asset once it is up and running.
The bill we are sending to Congress represents a serious effort on our part to remove a number of legal and regulatory barriers that we believe stand in the way of making timely progress toward completing and opening the Yucca Mountain repository.
I´m also making plans to visit Yucca Mountain very soon to see for myself the mountain and to thank the people at the site for their hard work and dedication.
While we are moving forward with Yucca Mountain we are also pursuing another of the President´s initiatives to make nuclear energy a growing part of our overall energy portfolio again.
The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, is an effort to develop technological solutions that will help us reduce the volume of spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste that we will have to contend with in the future.
GNEP is aimed at developing new technologies for recycling spent nuclear fuel in a way that will increase the energy we extract from it and reduce the proliferation threat it can pose. We have been working on new ways of processing the spent fuel that do not create any separated plutonium. This new technology, called UREX, creates a fuel that we believe can be burned in new advanced reactors, generating energy and reducing the volume of waste that will ultimately require permanent disposal.
But as successful as the new recycling technologies may be—and we are very optimistic about them—the simple fact is this: Yucca Mountain is needed under any fuel cycle scenario. This Administration is committed to the success of the Yucca Mountain Project and we will not waiver from that position.
For our part, at the Department, we are working to build the safest, simplest repository we possibly can, based on sound science and quality work. But we will also need your help in winning support for this legislation that we believe will remove the constraints that have stood in the way of this vitally needed project. With your help, I know that we can clear these hurdles and make the Yucca Mountain repository a reality.
Thank you for having me.
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Salt Lake Tribune
April 05, 2006
Rolly: I-80 depot proposed for nuke transfer
By Paul Rolly
Tribune Columnist
The latest proposal by Private Fuel Storage to make possible its temporary nuclear waste facility at Skull Valley is to store, albeit briefly, nuclear waste in large cannisters near Interstate 80 on the way to Wendover.
Perhaps they can put an amusement park ride next to it for the kids.
Sen. Orrin Hatch says the wilderness area recently passed by Congress may have seemed on the surface to kill the possibility of the PFS facility, because it blocked most modes of transportation into Skull Valley. But the issue has not been settled.
Hatch, you might recall, was the lone member of the Utah delegation who remained supportive of the Bush administration's plan to build a permanent nuclear waste facility at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Sen. Bob Bennett, Reps. Chris Cannon, Jim Matheson and Rob Bishop, and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. all supported, instead, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's plan to scrap that idea and work toward reprocessing the spent fuel at the nuclear plant sites. In exchange, Reid, the powerful Senate minority leader, did not oppose the Utahns' plan to create a wilderness area around Skull Valley.
But Hatch says an existing road into Skull Valley could still be used to truck the waste from a rail line built up to the edge of the wilderness area. PFS has applied for a permit with the Bureau of Land Management to bring the waste by rail to Rowley Junction on I-80 along the way to Wendover. There, it would be kept temporarily in huge cannisters before being trucked on the existing road to Skull Valley.
The BLM, in deference to Hatch's loyalty to the administration, has granted an extra 90-day comment period, which ends May 8. Hatch aides urge a flurry of communication in opposition be sent to Pam, BLM Salt Lake City field office, 2370 S. 2300 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84119; e-mail: pam schuller@blm.gov; fax: (801) 977-4397.
Too much stress: Motorists commuting
to downtown Salt Lake City the past several weeks undoubtedly have noticed the hired hands dressed in costume, holding signs and waving at the cars promoting Liberty Tax Service during the tax return season.
So with all the divisiveness in this country over Iraq, illegal immigration, job outsourcing, the deficit, abortion, gay marriage, etc., it seemed appropriate the other morning to see the Statue of Liberty on State Street taking a smoke break.
Timing is everything? The Salt Lake City Downtown Alliance hired the Summit Group several months ago to develop an identifiable mark for businesses and others involved in the downtown area.
After conducting focus groups and other tests, the alliance folks chose a star, a grid of downtown and the words, "It's Still The Place." They recently sent invitations to the mark's big unveiling Thursday at 4 p.m. at the Salt Lake City Library.
So they were not amused when, after their invitations were sent, the State Tourism Board sent out e-mail invitations to its unveiling of the state's "Life Elevated" slogan one day before, which is today at 11 a.m. at the Wells Fargo Center.
---Paul Rolly welcomes e-mail at prolly@sltrib.com.
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Hanford News
April 05, 2006
DOE seeks to lift cap on Yucca waste storage
By The Associated Press and the Herald staff
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants to bury tens of thousands more tons of nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada than is now allowed - part of a package of new proposals meant to spur development of the long-delayed dump.
Legislation unveiled by Energy Department officials Tuesday proposes lifting the 77,000-ton storage cap on the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and allowing as much waste as the mountain can safely hold.
That figure has been estimated by federal environmental impact studies at 132,000 tons, but Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a letter to the Senate that it could rise even higher.
Some 55,000 tons of nuclear waste are already waiting at utility sites around the country. High-level radioactive waste from Hanford would also be sent to Yucca Mountain. Lifting the waste cap would postpone indefinitely the need for the Energy Department to find a site for a second nuclear waste dump, the department said.
The department also proposed dedicating money in a special nuclear waste fund, which is paid for by utilities, to the dump to try to ensure adequate funding. The bill also would allow federal officials, who hope to ship nuclear waste to the dump by rail, to pre-empt state and local transportation regulations.
"This proposed legislation will help provide stability, clarity and predictability to the Yucca Mountain project," Bodman said in a statement.
The bill will be introduced in the Senate by Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M. With time running out on the legislative calendar, it faces a fight from ardent Yucca Mountain dump opponent Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate minority leader.
Reid said Tuesday that the bill was "not even on life support. It's dead when it gets here."
The bill does not propose moving nuclear waste to interim storage sites while the Yucca Mountain dump is completed - something key lawmakers, including Domenici, want the department to consider. Domenici said Tuesday that he has to review the administration's legislation but may introduce his own bill as well.
Paul Golan, acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told reporters on a conference call that the department wanted to focus the legislation on measures to speed Yucca to completion.
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Lincoln County News
April 05, 2006
Maine Yankee Decries Nuke Disposal Inertia
By Greg Foster
A Maine Yankee and a state official minced no words last Thursday in criticizing federal delays that could cause postponement of the a 2012 opening of a national spent nuclear fuel repository in Nevada.
Company Spokesman Eric Howes reported that there is uncertainty about the future of Yucca Mt. in Nevada, period. He also said there is no clarity on the federal government´s overall plans for the removal and disposal of spent nuclear fuel in giving an overview of the current state of the national repository proposal to the Community Advisory Panel.
“Unfortunately, tonight we are not able to report any progress in spent nuclear fuel removal/disposal since last October,’ he said.
The short of it is that the federal Dept. of Energy (DOE) is continuing its plans to license a repository at Yucca Mt. but has no date for its opening and has no date when it will submit a license application to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. However, the DOE has indicated it will be submitting the application by summer, Howes said.
That is not the only thing Maine Yankee faces. Now a multi-billion dollar proposal, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, for a future model plant for reprocessing of high level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel has the possibility of taking too much of the focus away from the national repository project, they fear.
The proposal is the brainchild of the President George Bush´s Administration, the stated purpose of which is a comprehensive strategy to increase the United States and global energy security, encourage clean development around the world, reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation, and improve the environment.
Howes reported that the Administration has budgeted $243 million this year for the program. “It will cost billions of dollars and is decades away from being commercially viable,’ he said.
Besides that issue that affects Maine Yankee, the DOE has made it official that Yucca Mountain is to accept only fuel that is in canisters for permanent storage there rather then having the fuel removed and placed in the other storage containers, company spokesman Eric Howes reported.
That presents a problem for Maine Yankee, since its steel canisters in the concrete storage towers at the Wiscasset site are the transportable kind for storage in the dry casks and not for permanent storage unless somehow they can be placed in larger more permanent ones.
“They´ve gone back to where they were at 10 years ago,’ Howes said. “They believe it is simply a safer approach.’
Critics of the plan say that the shift could cause further delays in the project. Thus a timeline for Maine Yankee´s waste will be pushed further ahead in the future, they fear.
For the past several years, Maine Yankee has had a suit settlement pending for $160 million sought in damages through 2010 that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims tried in 2004.
Both Howes and the state´s nuclear safety advisor Charles Pray strongly called for some kind of interim disposal so that the company can get rid of hot fuel stacked up in 64 concrete dry casks at its storage facility at the former plant site.
Addressing the company´s Community Advisory Panel mainly concerned now with the disposal installation, the two men shared concerns about the new Bush Administration proposal for future reprocessing of spent fuel for use at new or currently operating nuclear power plants.
That is a distraction for what they see as a priority – the proposed national repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, they argued.
Pray is co-chair of the national Yucca Mountain task force and has attended several sessions regarding the issue in Washington, D.C. on the issue with the federal Dept. of Energy.
The DOE has applied for Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) permit to move ahead with plans for the repository, but the state and Maine Yankee want the DOE to look into a temporary measure for transporting the spent fuel on the former plant site in Wiscasset.
Maine Yankee has been for some time been looking at the prospects of spent fuel disposal at Private Fuel Storage, LLC in Skull Valley, Ut., which is a consortium of nuclear power utilities that has plans to build a storage facility there on a Goshute Indian reservation there.
The NRC issued a license for it Feb. 21 effective then, but it does not authorize the consortium to begin immediate construction until adequate funding is obtained. It also must obtain necessary approvals from other agencies.
In the meantime, there is a site in Savannah, Ga., which so far has been available for only nuclear waste and ironically for spent nuclear waste and fuel from power plant outside the United States.
“It does make sense to take it to Savannah and open it up to storing the fuel there,’ said Mike Meisner of Maine Yankee.
Why not there, say Maine Yankee officials, and they are pushing for some kind of federal action through the Congressional delegation to make that happen. Pray said all four members of the delegation have been very cooperative toward that end.
The company awaits word on the Bush Administration´s bill that is expected to contain something on the Yucca Mountain repository, but it was unknown at last week´s CAP meeting what specifically it would address and what related funds it would seek, Howes said.
For the fiscal year 2007, it is known that the DOE is requesting $544.5 million for the nuclear waste disposal program. The figure is $100 million more than the current $450 million budget but a decrease from the fiscal year 2005 $577 million budget.
Politically, Howes said that the state, Yankee companies including Maine Yankee and others are working on a letter from New England senators to Secretary Bodman urging the DOE to fulfill its obligations for removal and disposal of spent nuclear fuel. He said the letter also asks Bodman how the DOE intends to hand the spent nuclear fuel at plants like Maine Yankee with dry cask storage.
Howes also gave the CAP an update on its suit against the federal government. In 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that plaintiffs could not recover future damages and limited recovery to those damages that have actually been incurred.
As a result, Maine Yankee in December 2005 filed a pleading with the trial court seeking damages of $79 million it is claiming it incurred through 2002.
Maine Yankee expects that it will need to file a separate claim or claims for damages incurred after 2002, Howes said.
Storage facility update
In other business, John Niles, manager of the storage installation, reported on the status of the facility. He said that there has been 120 days since the last lost time accident and that the current focus is on record retrieval and storage.
As manager, Niles said he continues to meet regularly with local public safety and state office regarding security and emergency planning matters.
The new gatehouse is now complete and functioning well, and the last of the decommissioning soil pile was shipped from the site in November as well as the area having been radiologically surveyed and free released. That area remains under the NRC license and will undergo a final status survey when the installation is decommissioned after removal of the spent fuel, he said.
Niles also reported that the company expects to close soon on the sale to Central Maine Power Co. (CMP) of the microwave tower near Eaton Farm. CMP is in the planning stages of adding a new substation at the site of the previous Maine Yankee´s 115 kilovolt switchyard as part of its local transmission service
The next meeting of the CAP, which now mainly concerns the storage facility, will be sometime in late fall depending on new developments and/or issues current to Maine Yankee.
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Guardian
April 04, 2006
Bush Admin. Wants to Bury More Nuke Waste
By Erica Werner
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration wants to bury tens of thousands of tons more nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada than now allowed - part of a package of new proposals meant to spur development of the controversial and long-delayed dump.
Legislation unveiled by Energy Department officials Tuesday proposes lifting the 77,000-ton storage cap on the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and allowing as much waste as the mountain can hold. That figure has been estimated by federal environmental impact studies at 132,000 tons.
Some 55,000 tons of nuclear waste are already waiting at utility sites around the country.
The department also proposed dedicating money in a special nuclear waste fund to the dump, to try to ensure adequate funding. The bill also would allow federal officials, who hope to ship nuclear waste to the dump by rail, to pre-empt state and local transportation regulations.
Certain nonnuclear elements of the dump - including the rail line to get there - could be built before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issues a license needed to build the dump.
``This proposed legislation will help provide stability, clarity, and predictability to the Yucca Mountain project,'' Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement.
The bill will be introduced in the Senate by Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M. It faces a fight from ardent Yucca Mountain dump opponent Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate minority leader.
Reid on Tuesday said the bill was ``not even on life support. It's dead when it gets here.''
The bill does not propose moving nuclear waste to interim storage sites while the Yucca Mountain dump is completed - something key lawmakers want the department to consider.
Yucca Mountain was approved by Congress in 2002 and officials wanted it to open in 2010. Energy Department officials now say they hope to open it by 2020, but they won't give an exact date. They don't plan to apply for the NRC license until the 2008 fiscal year.
The dump, which has cost $9 billion so far, has suffered a series of setbacks. They include a criminal investigation into accusations that government scientists flouted quality control requirements, and a federal court's invalidation of the government's proposed radiation safety standards for the dump.
---On the Net:
Energy Department: http://www.doe.gov
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Reuters
April 04, 2006
Update 1-White House renews call for Nevada nuke waste site
By Chris Baltimore
WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site in the Nevada desert would be authorized to hold twice as much nuclear waste as currently planned under legislation the Bush administration said it will send to Congress on Wednesday.
U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman on Tuesday said the legislation "will speed the process of opening the Yucca Mountain repository and make it an even more valuable national asset once it is up and running."
But Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, an adamant opponent of the project, said the facility is "not even on a life support system."
"It's dead when it gets here," Reid told reporters.
Energy Department officials said the proposed legislation would not answer the thorny question of when the underground waste dump about 90 miles (150 km) northwest of Las Vegas would open its doors to accept waste from the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants.
The project, more than 10 years behind schedule, is still plagued by scientific foul-ups and political stonewalling.
Republican Pete Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and a nuclear industry proponent, said he will shepherd the bill through the Senate for the administration.
The proposal would eliminate the current 77,000-ton limit (70,000 metric tons) on waste allowed at the site, and allow shipments to rise to their technical capacity of 132,000 tons (120,000 metric tons), Energy Department officials said.
The administration proposal would also reserve about 147,000 acres of federally owned land to build a railway corridor to transport spent fuel to the Yucca Mountain site.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, which lobbies for nuclear operators, said that unless the storage limit was raised the repository would be fully allocated before the first shipment arrived.
Spent fuel from the nation's nuclear plants -- which supply about 20 percent of U.S. electricity -- is piling up, with over 50,000 tons (45,500 metric tons) of it stored at over 100 temporary locations in 39 states.
The Energy Department gave no date certain for when it will send its application to build the repository to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a key regulatory step.
Paul Golan, acting director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said the department will set an NRC application schedule this summer.
After receiving the application, the NRC would have up to four years to review it on safety grounds. Then, it would take the Energy Department and its contractors up to four years to build the site, department officials said.
The final step would be for the NRC to give the Energy Department final authorization to accept waste from nuclear operators, which would take up to 18 months under the administration's new proposal.
If the Energy Department sends its application to the NRC by the end of the year, its current schedule suggests that Yucca Mountain could begin accepting waste sometime in 2016.
(additional reporting by Tom Doggett)
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Nevada Observer
April 01, 2006
Yucca Mountain: Government Accountability Office Blisters Department Of Energy
Quality Assurance Problems Account For Major Difficulties
by Johnny Gunn
One would think that a federal agency would respond immediately to congressional subpoenas, but in the case of the Department of Energy (DOE) totally ignoring them works best. It took the State of Nevada Nuclear Projects Office to file requests through the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get the ball rolling, and DOE still hasn't responded. That type of supposed autonomy can only exist if someone very much higher than the Cabinet Secretary is giving the orders. And there is only one person higher.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, testifying before Congress, said recently that the Yucca Mountain project is "broken" and he blamed his department among others for the failure. But reading all the reports coming out of Washington, out of Yucca Mountain, out of Congressional subcommittees, and from news reports across the country, the system is more than "broken," those running it are all but criminally negligent. The idea of a national repository for nuclear waste from electrical energy plants around the country is so repugnant that in the current issue of National Geographic Magazine, in a series of in-depth articles on Nuclear Energy, the magazine doesn't even bring up the concept of Yucca Mountain. More than likely the reporters involved simply couldn't get a straight answer from DOE or anyone connected with the project.
Budget hearings are underway at this time and project DOE manager Golan continues to insist, "There is a clear national need for Yucca Mountain." He also said during opening remarks, "We are taking steps to ensure that we develop and construct the safest, simplest, and most straight forward repository that we possible can, based on sound science and quality work." His own boss Bodman repudiated those comments in his earlier statements to Congress. One foot has no idea what the other foot has already tripped over.
DOE announced that Bechtel Corp., which has been the on-site contractor for many years, has been replaced. They did not say that Bechtel had not lived up to contract terms, but simply replaced the giant company with the National Security Technologies, LLC associated with Northrop Grumman another major government contractor. Bechtel is also the contractor at troubled Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.
Nevada Congressman Jon Porter (R) is in receipt of a report issued during March by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), which says, "Quality assurance at DOE's planned nuclear waste repository needs increased management attention." The report cites failure after failure in DOE's attempts to get a licensing procedure underway. The report states flatly, "DOE has had a long history of quality assurance problems at the Yucca Mountain project." The most recent problems the report points out are employee e-mails that seem to indicate fraudulent information was used specifically to pass quality assurance procedures.
There is a federal investigation underway at this time dealing with those alleged fraudulent reports. Led by the Inspector General at DOE, the Inspector General at Interior and by the U.S. Attorney's office, the investigation could lead to criminal charges leveled at the DOE employees and possibly to others if the employees involved were in some way ordered or coerced into making fraudulent reports. E-mail messages from 1998 and 2000 allegedly discussed using two sets of books, one for quality assurance and one with actual data.
Porter has been relentless in efforts to get information from DOE including issuing Congressional Subpoenas. Yucca Mountain has not been licensed despite the fact the DOE has been on site since the 1980s. One snafu after another has the project in such a tangled mess that the Secretary of Energy himself told Congress it is a mess. The agency has yet to verify the accuracy of about 14,000 e-mails following disclosure of the tainted ones last year.
Nevada Attorney General George Chanos said at the time of the Nevada FOIA filing, "The federal government is required by law to share its important Yucca information with the host state." He was emphatic in saying, "We are entitled to such information under the Freedom of Information Act as well. DOE has refused to provide Nevada with this most important document for the past three years."
The document in question is the paperwork used by DOE to develop its request for licensing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is referred to as the draft license application. Nevada halted licensing procedures recently in court action when they challenged the length of time the high level nuclear waste could be considered safely stored. DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had said the storage needed to be safe for 10,000 years. A federal court said that was far too short a time and has told EPA to come up with much longer standards. Many in the scientific community believe the waste will reach its most deadly potential after about 200,000 years. There is no paper work available to indicate that the casks holding the waste could last that long under current Yucca plans.
Robert Loux is the Nevada Nuclear Projects head and 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 have been scientific studies recently that indicate failure of the casks before the 10,000 years from water and humidity infiltration."
DOE refused to turn over the papers calling for "special privilege" at the agency level. "There isn't a privilege in the world that should shield this from Nevada's citizens," Loux said. DOE has missed filing deadlines over and over in the last quarter century and officials don't believe they can have a license request available for possibly another ten years. GAO's report to Congressman Porter said, "DOE has been relying on costly and time-consuming rework to resolve lingering quality assurance problems uncovered during audits and after-the-fact evaluations."
Porter is chairman, subcommittee on the federal workforce and agency organization, committee on government reform and has been holding hearings on the Yucca Mountain project. It was the Porter subcommittee that discovered discrepancies in e-mails that indicated two sets of books were used, one for actual scientific data, one to be able to pass quality assurance standards. GAO's report states, "DOE faces quality assurance challenges in resolving design control problems associated with its requirements management process -- the process for ensuring that high-level plans and regulatory requirements are incorporated into specific engineering details." Some underground project work was halted in December 2005 due to problems with that process. The underground management was turned over to a federal agency recently as well.
GAO also questions whether DOE is capable of managing the operation. "Significant personnel and project changes initiated in October 2005 create the potential for confusion over roles and responsibilities." It was these types of problems that led to quality assurance problems years ago as well according to the report.
For a complete look at the GAO report as presented to Congress, go to http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/retrpt?GAO-06-313.
Yet another organization has come forward with a challenge to the concept of Yucca Mountain for storage of high level nuclear waste. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) says in their report issued March 28, "NIRS finds that all of the stated U.S. radioactive waste policies have failed, and/or hold no potential for success." For 12 years they say they have been promoting drastic changes in DOE policy toward nuclear waste. We believe, the reports says, "that an independent Blue-Ribbon Commission be established to start from ground zero and establish new, workable, scientifically-defensible radioactive waste policies."
The report was written by Kevin Kamps at NIRS, and he says "Had the U.S. done this 12 years ago, about seven billion dollars would have been saved that have been spent on a pyrrhic effort to open the proposed and unsuitable Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump." Many in congress and in Nevada have been touting the concept of reprocessing the waste into usable nuclear fuel for the electric generating plants. The report dismisses reprocessing as a radioactive waste management approach. "Reprocessing," the report states, "would not only not solve the radioactive waste problem, it would lead to new dangers to the environment and public health, and to increased risk of nuclear weapons proliferation."
For a complete look at NIRS and the report, go to http://www.nirs.org/monoline/nm643.pdf.
Regarding the Nevada lawsuit to get DOE to release their license application paperwork, Chanos said, "What are they trying to hide? If the repository is safe, you'd think they'd be anxious to prove it."
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Nevada Observer
April 01, 2006
Mercury Storage Plans Won't Go Away, State Agencies Wary Of Safety Plans
Governor Plans Fight, Says "Nevada Not The Nation's Dump Site"
As the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository debacle continues to unfold with seemingly daily problems coming to light the federal government now wants to store vast quantities of mercury in underground silos in Hawthorne, NV. Hawthorne is home to the Army Ammunition Depot and has housed bombs and other armament for years. The underground bunkers are built to withstand air raids and to the best of anyone's knowledge, there is very little if any water seepage.
Mercury doesn't fade away, doesn't rust into something inert, is a heavy metal that is very dangerous to humans, and the federal government owns more than 4,000 tons of the stuff, scattered across these United States. The federal government has been creating stockpiles of the metal since the 1950s.
Besides weapons storage, Hawthorne is also host to the Navy's Submarine Warfare Center. The base was opened in the 1930s, came very close to being closed during the recent spate of base closures, and is the chief employer in the city located just south of Walker Lake. Mining flourished for a number of years during the 1980s but has fallen off recently.
In its natural state, mercury is a liquid and must be super cooled before it becomes solid. It vaporizes, but only under intense heat. Because of its liquid state the fear of mercury spills getting into ground water systems will force some changes at Hawthorne if plans proceed.
There is a rail line into Hawthorne but plans indicate that the tons of toxic metal will be transported by truck. That would bring the metal through many rural neighborhoods in northern Nevada, none of which are immune to hazard waste being transported through their locations.
According to state officials including Governor Kenny Guinn other than voicing serious concern there isn't much the state can do to stop the shipments. The military plans to begin shipments sometime during 2007 depending on when the upgrades can be ready in Hawthorne. Guinn reiterated that "Nevada is not the nation's dump site," and said he plans to fight this as hard as possible, but doesn't have much hope in actually stopping the shipments.
One problem the state has with the storage plans is the fact that the Department of Energy and Department of Defense haven't been the best neighbors in the past, haven't had Nevada's best interests in their operations, and haven't been the best stewards of the land. The federal government including the Department of Defense, Department of the Interior, Agriculture Department, and Department of Energy owns more than 85 percent of the state.
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Deseret News
April 04, 2006
Energy secretary denies looking at Skull Valley
Company's nuclear storage pitch won't happen, Hatch says
By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News
WASHINGTON — The Energy Department is not interested in becoming a client of Private Fuel Storage, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told Sen. Orrin Hatch.
The statement, which mirrors what the department has expressed before, comes at the same time anti-nuclear activists flooded congressional offices this week to lobby against the department's new nuclear power program and its plans to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, while nuclear utility officials called for Congress to move forward on the project.
The department has previously said it is not interested in the nuclear waste storage site planned for Goshute Indian land in Tooele County, but Hatch said Bodman "made very clear that the administration does not support putting nuclear waste in Skull Valley."
Private Fuel Storage, a private company originally made up by investments from eight nuclear power companies, sent a letter to Congress proposing that the department move nuclear waste to its recently licensed facility or that it reimburse utilities that would decide to move their waste there until Yucca opened.
At a meeting at Energy Department headquarters Wednesday, Hatch said he and Bodman discussed strategy "for putting this plan to bed," although he would not go into details. Hatch said Bodman said there is "no interest whatsoever" from the department on moving waste to Utah.
"This was a 'Hail Mary' pass in the last seconds of the game but the problem is they have no receivers," Hatch said of PFS's request for the department to become its client.
Two of the original eight investors in PFS — Southern Co. and Florida Power and Light — have opted out of the program completely while Xcel Energy, which holds the largest percentage of the consortium, and Entergy Corp., will freeze future investments.
Representatives from seven companies met with Hatch Wednesday. Genoa FuelTech, which owns the Dairyland Power Reactor in LaCrosse, Wis., and is the home base for PFS Chairman John Parkyn, did not participate.
Other waste-related meetings took place here this week as the Alliance for nuclear Accountability's "DC Days" brought activists from all over the country including two from Utah: Vanessa Pierce, the program director for Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah and Mike Fife, a member of HEAL.
Pierce met with Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell on Tuesday, who expressed the same disinterest in PFS that Bodman did with Hatch.
The two Utahns also met with Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and staff members of the rest of the delegation to talk about the PFS project and other nuclear matters.
Pierce's main goal was to encourage Utah's senators to support an existing bill that would expand a federal program designed to compensate those ill from radiation exposure to government testing to northern Utah.
The compensation program has been around for almost two decades but only includes the 10 most southern counties in Utah, she said.
Pierce and Fife also wanted the delegation, particularly Bennett who has a seat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that writes the energy spending bill, to reject funding for the Energy Department's new nuclear power proposals.
The Global nuclear Energy Partnership, known as GNEP, would encourage more nuclear power plants be built as well as allow the United States to begin a nuclear waste processing program. The department requested $250 million for the program in February.
She said the biggest misconception of reprocessing is that power plants would be able to reuse all the fuel, but that is not the case. It can actually create more waste and not much of the reprocessed fuel can be used again safely.
"It delays the day of reckoning and just create a bigger price tag," she said.
Pierce fears that if PFS moves forward and reprocessing becomes a reality Utah will become "a nuclear waste version of California's Silicon Valley" with companies popping up that would want to reprocess waste stored at PFS or more types of waste going to EnergySolutions.
She did not hear everything she wants out of all the offices but she said "its good to keep the dialogue going."
Meanwhile, the nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition and the Yucca Mountain Task Force called on Congress Tuesday to move forward with its plan to permanently store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Both groups are strong Yucca supporters and said they want Congress to reconsider storing nuclear waste at Yucca before the underground repository would open.
LeRoy Koppendrayer, a member of the Minnesota Public Service Commission that heads the coalition, said PFS was a good idea for interim storage at one time, but utilities would need to get additional money if they decided to move it there. Money put aside for federal nuclear waste storage can only be spent on Yucca Mountain.
"That doesn't take PFS off the table, this doesn't say that possibly that PFS could be economically more feasible than some sites where it's sitting out in the meantime," Koppendrayer said, but Yucca is what the ratepayers have put billions toward and still have nothing to show for it.
E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com
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Brunswick Times Record
April 03, 2006
DOE's nuclear fuel storage policy shifts
Bob Kalish
Bob_Kalish@TimesRecord.Com
Maine Yankee officials await word on how the change might affect dry cask storage program.
WISCASSET — Maine Yankee officials "are concerned" by a recent policy change at the U.S. Department of Energy that would regulate the kind of canister spent nuclear fuel could be transported in to a proposed federal repository in Nevada.
The Department of Energy is pushing a new design called TAD for "transport, aging and disposal" that would become standard.
What worries Maine Yankee officials is that the federal energy agency, in announcing the new standards, has not specified what it will do with the nuclear waste already stored in dry cask storage containers, as is the case at the former Maine Yankee nuclear power plant.
"We are monitoring the situation," said Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes, during a quarterly meeting of the Community Advisory Panel on Thursday. "Our concern is that the DOE has not addressed the issue of what to do with spent nuclear fuel already in storage at Maine Yankee and about 30 other sites across the country."
Howes said the dry cask storage system used by Maine Yankee is licensed and approved by the Department of Energy, so there is little danger of Maine Yankee getting stuck with something federal regulators deem to be no longer appropriate.
"The problem is lack of information," he said. "The DOE just hasn't addressed the issue of what its plans are for dry cask storage, given this new policy about standardized canisters."
The Department of Energy has yet to set a schedule for when it will begin transporting spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain, but Howes said the agency is supposed to release the new schedule this summer.
The focus of the Department of Energy now is to develop the license application for Yucca Mountain, working with the nuclear industry to complete the preliminary design for the TAD, planning the facilities needed to receive spent fuel, developing transportation infrastructure and upgrading communication, according to Howes.
Meanwhile, Maine Yankee and other national nuclear energy groups have opposed a Congressional bill that would have the Department of Energy take title to the spent nuclear fuel now stored in various reactor sites, including Maine Yankee. The bill was sponsored by the Nevada and Utah delegations and has been referred to committee with no action being taken so far.
Maine Yankee did receive a letter from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December congratulating it on a successful decommissioning. At the same time, its suit against the federal government over the Department of Energy's failure to move spent nuclear fuel as required was ruled on by the U.S. Court of Appeals. The ruling stated that Maine Yankee could not recover future damages and limited damages to those that have actually been sustained.
Maine Yankee thus filed a claim of about $79 million for damages sustained through 2002.
Originally, the company had sought $160 million for damages through 2010.
A decision by a judge is expected later this year.
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DOE
April 4, 2006
DOE to Send Proposed Yucca Mountain Legislation to Congress
WASHINGTON, DC – Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman today announced that on Wednesday, April 5, he will send to the U.S. Congress a legislative proposal to enhance the nation´s ability to manage and dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Submission of this legislation fulfills a commitment contained in President Bush´s Fiscal Year 2007 budget.
“We need to ensure a strong and diversified energy mix to fuel our nation´s economy, and nuclear power is an important component of that mix,’ Secretary Bodman said. “In order to expand our nuclear generating capacity, we need a safe, permanent, geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain. This proposed legislation will help provide stability, clarity, and predictability to the Yucca Mountain Project and will help lay a solid foundation for America´s future energy security.’
The proposed legislation includes a comprehensive set of provisions that will facilitate licensing and construction of the geologic repository and will lead to the safe, permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste deep within the mountain.
Among other things, the proposed legislation would withdraw permanently from public use the land at and surrounding the Yucca Mountain repository site in Nevada, and would facilitate Congress´ ability to provide adequate funding for the Yucca Mountain Project. Permanent withdrawal is needed to meet a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing requirement for the Yucca Mountain repository and will help assure protection of public health and the environment. Funding reform is necessary to correct a technical budgetary problem that has acted as a disincentive to adequate funding.
The proposed bill would also eliminate the current statutory 70,000 metric ton cap on disposal capacity at Yucca Mountain, in order to allow maximum use of the mountain´s true technical capacity. This provision would help provide the safe isolation of the nation´s entire commercial spent nuclear fuel inventory from existing reactors, including life extensions.
Also included are provisions for a more streamlined NRC licensing process, and for initiation of infrastructure activities, including safety and other upgrades and rail line construction, to enable earlier start-up of operations. Other provisions are designed to consolidate duplicative environmental review.
Currently, more than 50,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored at more than 100 above-ground sites in 39 states; and every year, American reactors produce an additional 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel. In 2002, President Bush and Congress decided that Yucca Mountain was the best location for a permanent repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. This legislation will aid the federal government in carrying that decision forward, and will help the government meet its legal obligation to dispose of those materials.
As part of President Bush´s Advanced Energy Initiative, the department recently announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which would recycle spent fuel. GNEP is a comprehensive, global, nuclear energy strategy that will enable the expansion of emissions-free nuclear energy worldwide in a safe, environmentally clean, affordable manner that will minimize waste and reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation. Even with the potential waste minimization benefits of GNEP, the Yucca Mountain repository would still be needed to provide for the safe, permanent geologic disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
Media contact(s):
Craig Stevens, (202) 586-4940
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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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