Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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Las Vegas SUN
April 12, 2006
The kiss of political death?
President Bush is coming to Las Vegas later this month in support of Rep. Jon Porter
Many Republicans in Congress, now raising money for their midterm election campaigns, realize that they invite President Bush to their districts at their own risk. They are afraid of the backlash from Bush's national and international stumbles, such as Iraq, Social Security, domestic spying, ports security, deficit spending and Hurricane Katrina.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., has even more to be concerned about. Bush has gone back on his campaign promise to Nevada, that "sound science" would dictate his decision on Yucca Mountain. But for the six years he's been in office, politics and pressure from the nuclear power industry have been Bush's only guides.
His latest plan is to fast-track Yucca Mountain and stuff more than 132,000 tons of nuclear waste into it, when 77,000 tons have been the limit in the past.
Bush also wanted last year to rewrite the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act so that hundreds of millions of dollars a year belonging to Nevada could be diverted into the federal treasury to partially compensate for his cut-taxes-and-spend policy.
Nevertheless, Bush will be in Las Vegas on April 24 for a Porter fundraiser at the Venetian. At least no one can accuse Porter of not being a risk-taker on this one.
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San Diego Union Tribune
April 12, 2006
No takers found for drill that bored Yucca Mountain test tunnel
By Benjamin Grove
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS – In the classic children's book, “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel,’ Mike promises that his beloved but outdated machine Mary Anne can still dig a cellar in a single day.
And she proves it, carving out a perfect hole for the new Popperville town hall – only to realize she dug herself in so deep there was no escape. So Mary Anne stayed there and adapted to a new role as the building's furnace, and as a kind of museum piece.
So it is with the machine that dug the five-mile exploratory tunnel in Yucca Mountain, a gigantic $13 million drill bit that sits at the site unused – and for sale with no takers – nine years after its job was done.
The Tunnel Boring Machine is becoming a monument to the project itself. Historians may one day consider The Machine a testament to our ability to dream and build big, or maybe an aging symbol of a failed idea.
In the mid-1990s, as The Machine rumbled, there was more excitement about Yucca Mountain. The nuclear industry was flush with optimism that it would soon have a place to bury the spent radioactive fuel that comes out of reactors.
Some public officials were confident they were pursuing the best, most technologically advanced solution to the nation's nuclear waste problem – burying 77,000 tons of it in tunnels under the mountain 90 northwest of Las Vegas.
Energy Department officials spoke of Yucca as a project unlike any the world has ever known. It was no less than a test of man's ambition – and hubris, some said.
But the desert ridge had yet to be excavated so scientists could examine its innards. The Machine would give researchers entree to the inside of the mountain to study the rock and test its reactions to heat and moisture.
So the government bought a massive piece of machinery befitting the size of the $58 billion repository project – one of the biggest drill bits in the world at 860 tons, 25 feet wide.
The Machine arrived in pieces on 50 trucks from a plant in Kent, Wash. It was reassembled at the foot of the mountain, and on a September day in 1994 it began to gnaw.
Powered by 12 motors and 3,800 horsepower spinning 48 separate 17-inch “cutter wheels,’ The Machine did its job well.
For two and a half years it chewed at the rock, three shifts a day, five days a week. On occasions it reached a top speed of 18 feet per hour. It consumed tons of rock and a $130 million budget.
In April 1997, the 1.7 million-pound gopher emerged victorious from its five-mile, U-shaped hole. The moment was dubbed, “The Daylighting.’
Then-project manager Wesley Barnes pumped his fist with pride. Workers cheered.
Not long after, the department treated The Machine to a bath of fresh white paint.
But the glory faded. And with its work complete, The Machine was unceremoniously discarded not far from the tunnel's South Portal.
It sits there still.
The Energy Department has tried to get rid of it. Most of its attachments, which had included trailers and gantries that made the entire apparatus longer than a football field, were sold as scrap a few years ago.
The Energy Department offered The Machine to other government agencies. The feds tried to sell it commercially. But it wasn't like unloading a 1994 Subaru.
One potential buyer offered a few hundred thousand dollars, but the department refused to be low-balled.
“The scrap alone is probably worth that,’ department spokesman Allen Benson said.
Today, The Machine is a highlight of the Yucca Mountain tour.
Visitors are awed by its size. Some Energy Department employees argue that it should be put on permanent display.
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Pahrump Valley Times
April 12, 2006
Energy Secretary to visit Nevada this week
PVT Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman will visit Nevada later this week with tours set Thursday for Yucca Mountain and the Nevada Test Site, DOE sources said.
Details were to be announced Tuesday for Bodman's first trip to the state since becoming a member of the Bush Cabinet in January 2005. It was scheduled to coincide with the department sending Congress legislation last week to speed development of the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
A department official said Bodman will arrive in Las Vegas on Wednesday evening, spend Thursday at the installations and fly out on Friday.
Bodman plans to make himself publicly available during his trip, a DOE official said, but details were not in place on Monday.
It also was unclear whether he will include stops at DOE's Yucca Mountain office in Summerlin or the North Las Vegas management office for the Test Site.
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Las Vegas SUN
April 11, 2006
Gibbons fuels nuclear debate
He opposes Yucca; supports new plants
By J. Patrick Coolican
Las Vegas Sun
Rep. Jim Gibbons again announced his opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository last month, predicting the demise of the nuclear energy industry for failing to adequately solve its waste problem.
But legislation, which was intended to speed the construction of new nuclear plants and was supported by the Nevada Republican and signed by President Bush, appears to be having an effect with a wave of new nuclear plants possible.
"It is no longer a matter of debate whether there will be new nuclear plants in the industry's future," a March report by Fitch Ratings, a financial research firm, said.
"Now, the discussion has shifted to predictions of how many, where and when."
For instance, Duke Energy of Charlotte, N.C., is moving forward with a construction and operating license application for a site in Gaffney, S.C., spokeswoman Rita Sipe said. The emergence of new nuclear plants was reported in Monday's New York Times.
The issue is likely to come into focus with a visit to Yucca Mountain this week by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, who will be pushing the Bush administration's latest plan on Yucca.
Some Yucca opponents believe Gibbons, who also leads the polls in this year's governor's race, is being inconsistent by supporting new nuclear plants while opposing Yucca.
"What's the 10,000-year solution to the problem?" asked Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, an environmental group that opposes Yucca. "What are we going to do with this stuff? We don't have the science that is affordable and will make the waste safe."
Gibbons, who as governor would have a significant bully pulpit at his disposal, said in an interview Monday that he favors technological fixes to the nuclear waste problem. Specifically, he advocates reprocessing spent fuel and a technology called transmutation.
In reprocessing, a chemical process separates out plutonium and fissionable uranium from spent fuel rods. Although the process will leave less waste than before, there's still a high-level waste byproduct that has to be stored, according to the Energy Department.
Gibbons said the remaining waste could be stored at nuclear plants and wouldn't have to be shipped to Nevada. Environmentalists say that's still a short-term fix.
Transmutation is an experimental technology that would reprocess spent fuel and then reduce the time some of the elements in spent fuel would remain radioactive.
The technology is decades away, according to the Energy Department.
Opponents of nuclear weapons proliferation also oppose reprocessing, as it is a common method for turning waste from nuclear power plants into plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear bombs.
Plutonium is not highly radioactive and is stored in a concentrated powder form, making it easier to steal, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Also, the organization noted in a position paper on reprocessing that if the United States turns to reprocessing, other countries are likely to follow.
"The United States cannot credibly persuade other countries to forgo a technology it has newly embraced," the paper said.
J. Patrick Coolican can be reached at 259-8814 or at patrick.coolican@lasvegassun.com.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 11, 2006
Energy secretary's visit to state sparks criticism
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman will visit Nevada this week, with tours set Thursday for Yucca Mountain and the Nevada Test Site, department officials said.
Details were to be announced today for his first trip to the state since being confirmed as energy secretary in January 2005.
The trip was scheduled to coincide with the Department of Energy sending Congress legislation last week to speed development of the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
A department official said Bodman will arrive in Las Vegas on Wednesday evening, spend Thursday at the installations and fly out Friday.
It was unclear whether he would visit the Yucca Mountain office in Summerlin or the management office for the DOE-operated test site in North Las Vegas.
Bodman plans to make himself available for media questioning during his trip, a department official said.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., a Yucca critic, said the welcome mat would not be put out for Bodman. She challenged the secretary to talk to Nevadans about escalating costs and quality assurance shortcomings in the project.
"This trip is nothing more than a taxpayer-funded publicity stunt designed to build support for the Bush administration's latest legislative package, which eliminates the cap on how much waste can be sent to Yucca Mountain, destroys local control over water rights and guts important public health and environmental safeguards," Berkley said.
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Platts
April 11, 2006
Spending cut likely in Senate
Washington (Platts)--12Apr2006
Two key Senate appropriators made it clear last month that they plan to cut DOE's $544 million request for the repository program in fiscal 2007, which begins October 1.
"That has got to come down," said Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that controls DOE spending. Domenici's comment came after a subcommittee hearing in which several members criticized the DOE budget request for cutting spending on clean coal and other energy programs.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat and a fierce opponent of the DOE repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, told reporters he didn't know how the much-delayed program could effectively spend that much money.
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NewsBlaze
April 11, 2006
Secretary of Energy to Visit Yucca Mountain
On Thursday, April 13, 2006, Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman will visit the Department of Energy's (DOE) Yucca Mountain site. Following a tour of the site, Secretary Bodman will host a press conference at Yucca Mountain's north portal to discuss the new legislation sent by DOE to the U.S. Congress on April 5, 2006, for accelerated construction of the nuclear waste repository.
NOTE: Media interested in attending the press conference should contact the Yucca Mountain Project Site Public Affairs Office, (702) 794-1411, by NOON PDT on Wednesday, April 12, to register and provide information for admittance to the Nevada Test Site. Media should plan to arrive at DOE's Las Vegas Information Center by 7:15 AM PDT on Thursday for the bus escort to the site.
WHO: Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman
WHAT: Press Conference following visit to the Yucca Mountain Project
WHEN: Thursday, April 13, 2006
10:15 AM PDT
WHERE: Meet at Las Vegas Information Center
4101 B Meadows Lane
Las Vegas, NV
Press Conference Location
Yucca Mountain site
North Portal
Source: U.S. Department of Energy
judythpiazza@gmail.com
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OneWorld
April 11, 2006
Native Americans Want 'Bunker Buster' Test Stopped
Haider Rizvi
OneWorld US
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 10 (OneWorld) - Native Americans want U.S. authorities to cancel plans to detonate 700 tons of explosives on what they say is tribal land in Nevada.
The planned explosion, scheduled for June 2 some 90 miles from Las Vegas, is aimed at aiding U.S. efforts to develop ''bunker buster'' weapons capable of penetrating solid rock. Officials have suggested the test would constitute the largest non-nuclear, open-air blast in the test site's history.
Federal officials have described such efforts as essential to the administration of President George W. Bush's self-styled ''war on terror'' but to leaders of the Shoshone, also known as the Newe people, the planned detonation is just the latest in a decades-long history of experiments at the Nevada Test Site to shake the earth and raise a dust cloud.
''We are opposed to any further military testing on our lands,'' said Raymond Yowell, chief of the Western Shoshone National Council.
The site of the latest proposed test sits on the land recognized under the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley as part of the tribe's national territory, Shoshone leaders said, and the U.S. military therefore has no right to use it.
The U.S. government disagreed and has asserted its ownership of the land.
''Without going through a lot of detail, the issue of ownership of the land area occupied by the Nevada Test Site, and for that matter very large sections of Nevada and Utah, is very complex (going back to the Ruby Valley Treaty) and in our eyes has been resolved,'' said Kevin Rohrer, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which operates the test site.
The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1985 that the Shoshone had been paid in full for the land under the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946 ''and thus the land is property of the United States Government,'' Rohrer said in an email.
''My understanding is that funding has been set aside in a trust account for compensation but there is disagreement among Western Shoshone on whether they should accept the funding,'' he added.
Shoshone elders rejected the government's position and last month won a victory in their fight to reclaim territory when the Geneva-based UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said in a report that Washington's claim to the Western Shoshone land ''did not comply with contemporary human rights norms, principles and standards that govern determination of indigenous property rights.''
Among other things, the panel cited special concern over the existence of nuclear waste dumped on tribal territory without consulting and over the objections of the Western Shoshone people. The 18-member panel also asked Washington to ''freeze, desist and stop'' actions being taken against the Western Shoshone Nation.
In the ruling, CERD also cited concern over weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site as well as efforts to build a high-level nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain.
Tribal elders said Washington's plans to proceed with the June test in the face of the UN panel's findings was a slap in the face of the international and Native American communities.
''This is a direct violation of the CERD's finding and an affront to our religious belief,'' Yowell said. ''Mother Earth is sacred and should not be harmed.''
The U.S. military tested nuclear weapons at the Nevada site from 1951 until 1959. Some analysts have said they believe that even after signing the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1963, the U.S. continued to conduct underground tests in the area for several years.
Scientists have said that exposure to radiation from nuclear testing caused an increased incidence of leukemia and cancer in areas adjacent to the Nevada Test Site.
All necessary permits to conduct the test have been obtained from Nevada state agencies, test authorities have said, but there has been no indication that they sought Shoshone approval.
The test has been named ''Divine Strake,'' adding to the outrage felt by many Native Americans, who say the test site sits on sacred land.
''It's a mystery why they call it 'divine','' said Carrie Dann, a grandmother and executive director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project. ''Isn't 'divine' used for your deity, God, your sacredness? Why don't they call it 'Hell Strake?'''
''When you are working testing weaponry of destruction of life, you should not associate it with 'divine','' Dann added. ''We want this insanity to stop. No more bombs and no more testing.''
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Spartanburg Herald Journal
April 11, 2006
Environmentalists oppose nuclear power generation but also battle alternatives
A pair of environmental groups have announced their intention to oppose a planned nuclear power plant in Cherokee County.
A spokeswoman for one of the groups, Women's Action for New Directions, proclaimed that the Upstate doesn't need a nuclear power plant, that there are "better alternatives."
But environmental activists oppose the alternatives as well.
Should we build an oil-fired power plant? No. That would increase our dependence on Middle East oil and release the gases that lead to global warming.
Should we build a coal-fired power plant? No. They cause acid rain and global warming.
How about hydroelectric power? No. Those dams disrupt the environment and ruin the natural ecosystems of rivers.
Maybe wind generation? No. Environmentalists are opposing a wind farm made up of many windmills at sea off Nantucket in Massachusetts because the windmills would ruin the view in the area and disrupt the environment.
Hard-core environmental activists routinely oppose any attempt to generate power, yet they like to live in well-lighted homes with air conditioning, refrigeration and televisions.
Nuclear power is one of the cleanest and safest forms of energy we can use. We have a history of safely running commercial nuclear power plants in this country.
The anti-nuke activists will deny this. "Remember Three Mile Island" is their rallying cry. It is important to note that Three Mile Island is this country's most serious nuclear accident, yet it did not kill or injure anyone or result in any measurable environmental damage.
The groups that announced their opposition to the Cherokee plant cited the accident at Chernobyl, but that is irrelevant. The Chernobyl accident involved a Soviet plant that was not designed, built, maintained or operated according to U.S. standards.
The only genuine issue surrounding nuclear power is the disposal of spent fuel. Environmentalists worsen this problem when they oppose the facility designed to handle this need at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The Upstate will need additional plants to generate the electricity it will demand in the future. Nuclear power has worked well for this region over the past several decades. There is no reason we should rule out nuclear power for the next several decades.
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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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