Yucca Mountain News Clips - Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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Las Vegas SUN
April 18, 2006

New DOE strategy won't help Yucca situation

By Bob Loux

Whatever else one may say about the Energy Department's handling of the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste dump, you have to give DOE credit for being consistent. Consistently wrong and incompetent, that is.

The new group in charge of DOE's Yucca Mountain program is no exception. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and his hand-picked acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Paul Golan, have managed in a few short months to take an already teetering project and finally push it off the scientific, political and fiscal abyss.

For years, the Yucca project has been plagued by problems (or more accurately, realities that DOE refuses to face) that have brought the program to a screeching halt.

These include Yucca Mountain's inability to meet health and safety standards, failure to develop and submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, corrosion-prone waste containers, the inability of the site to meet hazardous waste regulations, a seriously inept radioactive waste transportation program, conflicts with Western states' water laws (i.e., the denial of water by Nevada for Yucca Mountain), serious land use conflicts, risks posed by military aircraft operations and a host of other factors that make Yucca entirely unsuitable and unlicensable.

Golan's and Bodman's solution is to ignore the central problem with Yucca (the fact that site is inherently unsafe and unsuitable) and attempt to get Congress to bail DOE out by riding roughshod over federal and state health, safety, transportation and environmental requirements. DOE submitted legislation to Congress in early April that would do just that.

But the Bodman-Golan debacle gets more bizarre. A few months ago, Golan announced, with considerable fanfare, that DOE was completely restructuring the Yucca program in an attempt to turn the Yucca repository into a "clean" facility.

Golan claimed his "Transportation, Aging and Disposal" system would simplify the design and operations of a repository by allowing deadly spent fuel and high-level waste to be transported, stored and disposed of in the same canister, without having to handle the waste again once it has been loaded into the new transportation and disposal system at the reactor location.

Great idea, except for the fact it had already been rejected in the 1990s as impractical and too costly.

A significant percentage of existing nuclear plants are already storing spent fuel in welded containers in an array of different dry storage installations. The problem is those storage containers are not compatible with Golan's new transportation and disposal system.

What's more, DOE is relying on the ability to control temperatures underground at Yucca as a way of trying to deal with the large amounts of water that will corrode the waste packages and rapidly transport radioactive materials to the accessible environment. The new transportation and disposal concept does not lend itself to such thermal management and sends DOE's already jerry-built performance models into a tailspin.

To make this problem go away, Golan and his team of new-thinkers are proposing to simply invent a whole new geology for the site by concocting very low water infiltration rates and slow water movement. Never mind that the science doesn't support such assumptions.

What these initiatives have in common is a fundamental and fraudulent denial of the simple fact that Yucca Mountain is a wholly unacceptable place to dispose of deadly and long-lived nuclear waste.

Bodman's proposed legislation and Golan's restructuring of the Yucca project are aimed at covering up this essential fact, and they continue a long string of failed DOE initiatives over the past two decades that have sought to fashion a silk purse out of this Yucca Mountain pig's ear.

Bob Loux is the executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state agency that directs Nevada's efforts to oversee and oppose the federal government's plans to build a high-level nuclear waste repository in Nevada at Yucca Mountain.

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Las Vegas SUN
April 19, 2006

DOE plans $100 million in Yucca infrastructure improvements

By Erica Werner
Associated Press

DOE plans $100 million in Yucca infrastructure improvements

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Energy Department is planning about $100 million in repairs, new buildings and roads, a fire station and other improvements at the site of planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, a department official said Wednesday.

The planned upgrades - to facilities used by the 225 full-time employees who work at the dump site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas - are needed to repair equipment and buildings that have fallen into disrepair or were never completed because of budget shortages, said Scott Wade, director of DOE's office of repository development in Las Vegas.

As the opening date of the project has been delayed, structures intended to be temporary have remained in use longer than planned, he said.

"We lack some of the basic emergency response capabilities, fire and such," Wade told a meeting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's advisory committee on nuclear waste.

"Decisions were made not to complete some of the original design for those onsite structures," Wade said. "It was probably poor decisions that were made."

A fire in February burned down a trailer at the dump entrance - one of about 120 temporary structures in place, Wade told committee members. The fire, caused by a heating system malfunction, occurred during a weekend and had burned out by the time workers found it, but it underscored the need for better emergency response.

The closest fire engine is 45 minutes away, in Mercury.

In a presentation to the advisory committee, Wade outlined plans to:

-improve underground systems in the eight miles of tunnels at the dump site, including better fire detection and lighting systems;

-build a new guard house at the start of the road to Yucca Mountain;

-add a new or better access road;

-construct permanent warehouses to replace temporary structures;

-improve power generation, communications, and cement production facilities;

-build a fire station that can house a six-person crew, at a cost of $4 million to $8 million.

He said the underground plans already have been approved but some of the aboveground work needs environmental reviews. Some $45 million in the 2006 budget could go to the plans.

If the Energy Department gets a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the dump, new facilities will be required to support construction of the dump itself.

DOE plans to apply for the NRC license in 2008 and hopes to open the dump by 2020 - two decades late. Yucca Mountain is supposed to hold 77,000 tons or more of nuclear waste.

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Nevada Observer
April 19, 2006

Congress In Receipt Of New Yucca Mountain Legislation

Questions And Criticisms Not Answered -- Energy Officials Plan Nevada Visit

by Johnny Gunn

The Department of Energy (DOE) has sent new legislation to Capitol Hill regarding the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository, and Nevada officials ask why the serious questions aren't addressed. The government sponsored legislation suggests the total amount of high level nuclear waste be increased well beyond what has been considered capacity, and yet none of the safety questions regarding casks, water mitigation, transportation, even length of time the casks might be safe before being subject to failure are in the proposal.

In addition says Bob Loux of the Nevada Nuclear Projects agency, the questions of fraudulent reports being used to prove safety have not been answered. Loux said the plans as outlined in the legislation are designed to take away all arguments that the state may have regarding Yucca Mountain, and on top of that to almost double the amount of hazardous waste to be stored. Present plans have about 70,000 metric tons scheduled for the depository if it is ever licensed and opened. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman in testimony before Congress is asking that 120,000 metric tons should be the capacity.

"Among other things," a report from the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency says, "the bill removes any capacity restriction on waste that can be buried at Yucca." The report states that this will "allow waste from future reactors and from all over the world to traverse the nation's transport corridors to Nevada."

In remarks prepared by the agency, Loux said, "DOE appears to have followed the old adage, when you can't get a grip on the current problem, enlarge it." The bill is referred to as the "fix Yucca" bill by the administration, and according to Nevada officials the project is dead and can't be fixed. Loux said, "This project will never open. It is scientifically doomed, and no longer makes any policy sense."

Bodman announced during the week of April 10 that he would be coming to Nevada to inspect the Yucca Mountain project. On his arrival he had nothing new to offer according to state officials. "Bodman simply reiterated all the old arguments, the ones that have been shown to be more of the problem than the answer." The legislation introduced by DOE is designed to speed up the licensing procedure at Yucca, according to DOE but it has raised far more questions than it has answered. One major argument with the legislation is how DOE plans to get and use water for the facility.

Water rights in Nevada are handled by State Engineer Hugh Ricci and there are set procedures for acquiring those rights. DOE in their federal legislation says in Section 8 of the bill, that water use for Yucca is to be beneficial to interstate commerce in quantities sufficient to accomplish the purposes of the Act. They further state the legislation would prohibit Nevada from enacting or applying a law that discriminates against that use. According to Loux, DOE plans to simply take whatever it wants and the state be damned. "This is unconstitutional," Loux said. Water rights have always been considered part of a state's rights to regulate. "This bill preempts Nevada's ability to regulate the state's water resources."

DOE has been denied water rights in the past and now it looks like they will just take the water. The aquifer sits primarily in Nye County but may also be under parts of Clark and Esmeralda Counties. There has always been a fear that water mitigation would corrode or otherwise invade the casks holding the nuclear waste releasing high levels of radiation, not just into the atmosphere but also by way of water from the surface feeding into that aquifer. That would contaminate millions of gallons of otherwise clean drinking water for much of southern Nevada.

None of the questions dealing with safety and health issues were part of the new legislation. Congressman Jon Porter (R-NV) has been conducting hearings to determine just how much alleged fraud has been involved in quality assurance work at Yucca Mountain. At least three hydrologists have been found to have said they used two different forms when seeking quality assurance. One form with the actual figures, one form manipulated so as to meet quality assurance standards.

Porter has gone so far as to issue Congressional Subpoenas to acquire as many as 14,000 other e-mails and DOE has refused to respond. Following introduction of the new DOE legislation, Porter said, "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." Porter, a Republican represents Congressional District 3 and is up for reelection this year. He continued in his press release, "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."

The safety of transporting thousands of tons of high level nuclear waste from all over the country is not addressed in the legislation either. Instead, Section 4 would authorize the DOE to construct that 317-mile rail line from the Utah-Nevada border to Yucca Mountain without anyone being able to argue the safety issue. The state, Indian tribes, political subdivisions would be preempted from the argument.

Energy Secretary Bodman in his rush to create this nuclear waste repository is walking all over state's rights, evading questions of safety, and in some minds attempting to create a single nuclear waste fiefdom for the department according to state officials. The legislation softens or changes the concept of "normal environmental reviews," to the point that they would be irrelevant. Any environmental problems that might exist, according to parts of Section 4 would "not provide grounds for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reject construction authorization," that is, the license DOE needs to get Yucca Mountain operating.

There is a major push from the nuclear energy industry to create and open new nuclear power plants in the country, and of course this would immediately add to the amount of waste being generated. While the current administration has asked for funding to study the possibility of reprocessing the waste into useable fuel, that might be years down the line. However there is an equal push to leave the waste where it is, at the power plants around the county until reprocessing or some other means of reducing the waste is found.

Nevada Senators Harry Reid (D) and John Ensign (R) have been adamant in their opposition to the new legislation. Reid said this bill has no future while Ensign said this bill will go nowhere. Bodman believes the bill will make the licensing procedure much easier, and in testimony said the legislation will provide clarity to the Yucca project.

The Energy Department is about 20-years behind schedule in getting Yucca Mountain licensed. According to Nevada's congressional delegation this current legislation is not going to help them at all. They predict the attempt to take away state's rights dealing with water rights allocations will take at least a decade to make its way through the nation's court system. Until quality assurance standards are brought out in public, until the public understands that fraud may have been the case, this legislation is going to have a difficult journey through Congress according to Porter. The DOE has not been forthcoming in trying to prove that their quality assurance standards are safe and within industry standards.

Loux said in a prepared news release, "Nuclear fuel and waste can be managed safely at reactor sites for hundreds of years." He further noted that neither the EPA nor the NRC has yet issued a licensing standard for Yucca after their old standards were overturned by a federal appeals court three years ago.

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Nuclear Engineering
April 19, 2006

DOE to send proposed Yucca Mountain legislation to Congress

US energy secretary Samuel Bodman has sent a legislative proposal to the Congress that includes a comprehensive set of provisions that will facilitate licensing and construction of the geologic repository at Yucca 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, a measure needed to meet a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing requirement. The legislation would also facilitate Congressí ability to provide adequate funding for the project, with reform 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 tonne cap on disposal capacity at Yucca Mountain, and includes 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.

The news followed the selection of Oak Ridge Associated Universities/Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education to provide independent expert reviews of scientific and technical work on the Yucca Mountain Project as part of a $3 million contract for the rest of 2006. At least another $3 million in funding is available in 2007, the Department of Energy´s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) announced.

“By bringing in Oak Ridge for independent reviews to assess our technical work, we ensure the highest level of expertise and credibility as we move the project forward,’ OCRWMís acting director Paul Golan said.

Currently, more than 50,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel are stored at more than 100 above-ground sites in 39 states.

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Salt Lake Tribune
April 19, 2006

Ex-Envirocare joins battle against nuke storage site

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune

EnergySolutions announced Tuesday it would fight fire with fire, marshaling its plans for nuclear-waste processing to fight another company's plans to store used nuclear-reactor fuel in Tooele County's Skull Valley.

The Salt Lake City company, which owns the rights to reprocessing technology used in Britain, said it would begin broadcasting TV and radio advertisements this week that criticize the Skull Valley project while promoting recycling as a better answer for nuclear waste.

"Recycling is the right thing to do for America and will make the [Private Fuel Storage] proposal for Utah obsolete," said EnergySolutions CEO Steve Creamer.

EnergySolutions, known for most of its 18 years as Envirocare of Utah, owns and operates a mile-square disposal site for low-level radioactive and hazardous waste about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. Last fall, it began buying other nuclear-service companies and now holds contracts to manage nuclear waste at power plants, minimize nuclear waste and clean up contaminated sites.

Private Fuel Storage (PFS) is a consortium of utilities with nuclear reactors that won a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last fall to build and operate a kind of long-term parking lot for nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. While some Goshutes see the project as a solid economic-development opportunity, other members of the tiny tribe have been joined in their opposition to the project by Utah state officials, environmental activists and a majority of Utahns.

Through the campaign, EnergySolutions appears to be allying itself with many Utahns and the state's politicians against a common foe, the PFS project. More than two dozen current and former lawmakers attended a news conference announcing the anti-PFS campaign Tuesday, along with U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett and U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, both Utah Republicans.

Sue Martin, spokeswoman for PFS, noted that many companies that now have contracts with EnergySolutions are members of the storage-site consortium or are its likely clients.

"Why they would wage a campaign against their own clients, I would not know," she said.

"We're not at all opposed to recycling," she added. "But the fact is, we have the most viable interim solution [for high-level nuclear waste] at this stage."

Congress plans to spend $20 million this year to study nuclear-waste recycling and a projected $20 billion in future years to build the nation's first new generation recycling plant. EnergySolutions is among 40 companies and communities that have expressed interest in the program.

The Salt Lake City company said earlier this month it would not propose the recycling plant for its home state.

Jason Groenewold, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, called nuclear reprocessing "fool's gold" that has a long history of failing, even with the technology EnergySolutions bought from a British company in February. He noted that plutonium has been found in the teeth of children who live near the Sellafield plant in Britain and robots are being used to clean up the most recent operations accident there.

"The only thing that is proven about reprocessing is that it doesn't work," he said. "It creates enormous risk to the public health. It costs an arm and a leg, and it does not solve the disposal problem."

Creamer said the problem at Sellafield was due to improper operations and not poor design. He also said that while the Energy Department projects it will be at least 15 years before reprocessing is running, he hopes EnergySolutions can do it in 8 to 10 years.

-fahys@sltrib.com

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 18, 2006

Reid endorses UNLV bid for DOE contract

Initiative focused on reprocessing used nuclear fuel

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid on Monday endorsed efforts by scientists at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to participate in the Energy Department's newest nuclear waste program.

Reid, D-Nev., said he supported officials associated with UNLV's environmental research arm who have said they might bid for a contract from the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a DOE initiative for reprocessing used nuclear fuel.

"This is an open process. People from all over the country will be bidding on this," Reid said. "I don't see why they shouldn't do research. I think they should try to get (grants) if they are there to be gotten."

Reid said involvement by Nevada entities in the so-called GNEP program "gets a little more touchy down the road" if DOE were to focus on the state to play a larger role in the project.

But for now, he said, "we need to do more research on reprocessing until we can find out what can be done" with the technology.

The UNLV research arm carries Reid's name -- it is the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies. Through his seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, the senator has earmarked funds to support work administered by its researchers, including at least $10 million last year in an energy and water bill.

In February, the center's nuclear science division director, Anthony Hechanova, and Donald Baepler, who was the center's original director and who now is retired, were among the principals in a new research entity that Baepler said might bid for an upcoming GNEP contract.

The Energy Department is expected later this spring to invite bidders for contracts of about $5 million apiece to conduct site studies for a test-scale nuclear waste reprocessing factory. The Nevada Test Site has been among the rumored locations, along with sites in Idaho, South Carolina and Tennessee.

The possibility that Nevada researchers might participate in GNEP has raised eyebrows among some opponents of Yucca Mountain who said it could complicate their efforts to keep nuclear waste out of the state.

But although he is an ardent critic of Yucca Mountain, Reid said that in his view research-only does not cross the line to compromise the state. He said it was nothing new for Nevada institutions to take part in nuclear waste research with the Energy Department.

"We have been doing research stuff for years dealing with nuclear waste," Reid said. "It doesn't mean just because they do research that it is bad."

The Reid Center for Environmental Studies administers a cooperative agreement between DOE and Nevada schools for Yucca Mountain research.

In 2005, scientists affiliated with the center and with UNLV, the University of Nevada, Reno, and the Desert Research Institute worked on 21 projects valued at $43.2 million, according to DOE figures.

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Washington Post
April 18, 2006

Nuclear Power: Think Smaller?

Among many thoughtful comments on the last post, Debater Sully asks us to consider scaled-down plants that power just one small city, saying they would be "safer and easier to control."

It's an intriguing suggestion. So, let's consider.

Regardless of whether Sully's assumption about safety is accurate, the primary issue is cost. Seems like it would be more difficult to build several small nuclear reactors than one large one; in a large plant, the reactors would share infrastructure, such as the water source, while multiple smaller plants would require infrastructure to be built many times over.

Then again, perhaps it is just as expensive to construct and maintain reactors regardless of their size or concentration. Anyone have any insights into this?

Another consideration would be that more sites would mean more "not in my backyard" objections. Picture the overflowing city council meetings, the neighborhood petitions, the lawsuits. In the face of such resistance, finding suitable sites for these reactors could take years.

Debaters, what do you think of the idea?

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Salt Lake Tribune
April 18, 2006

Goshute nuke plan foes urge public response

Hatch says deluge of comments is the best chance to keep Utah from becoming a nuclear dump

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has fielded more than 1,000 comments so far on its application to allow high-level nuclear waste to be hauled over federal land in Tooele County.

Pam Schuller, the agency employee who is processing the comments, said she has seen an increase in comments recently. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch and the Salt Lake Area Chamber of Commerce have stepped up their public campaign to generate more comments before the BLM ends its comment period on May 8.

Hatch, the chamber and other opponents of the Skull Valley waste storage, have made a point of reminding Utahns about the deadline and what they say is the last best chance to derail the waste project.

"Wherever he goes, he talks about it," said Heather Barney, a spokeswoman for Hatch. "This is a very important opportunity that Utahns have been given to influence the outcome of this situation."

Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of utility companies that have nuclear plants, received a license to build the Skull Valley site last fall from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If built as planned on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, the site would be a kind of long-term parking lot for steel and concrete containers of used but highly radioactive reactor rods, up to 44,000 tons of them.

Six of the eight PFS members said last fall that they do not need the temporary storage and plan to dispatch their waste directly to Yucca Mountain, the long-stalled underground repository being proposed by the U.S. Energy Department.

But PFS is pushing forward with its plans. And it needs approval from the BLM for a right of way to build a transfer station on the north side of Interstate 80. Another pending request, for a 32-mile rail spur, was PFS's first option but appears to be dead because of wilderness legislation Congress passed last year.

In a recent opinion article, Hatch once again urged Utahns to weigh in the BLM, even giving out Schuller's contact information and e-mail address.

"This is a threat to our security in Utah," he said.

"We have a solid case, but we need to make it - repeatedly and resoundingly."

Although PFS is a Chamber of Commerce member, chamber leaders issued a position statement earlier this month denouncing the waste-storage plan.

"The chamber also urges all businesses, community, civic, and religious leaders, and local, state, and federal elected and appointed officials to likewise oppose the siting on or storage of, temporary or otherwise, PFS nuclear waste upon or through BLM land [ . . . and urges them . . . ] to contact the BLM immediately and express their opposition directly and in plain terms," the policy statement said.

Sue Martin, PFS spokeswoman, noted that some Utahns have contacted her to note they will be submitting comments to BLM in support of the storage project. She said chamber leaders had not requested a presentation on the project.

"We do encourage people to send comments one way or the other," she added.

The BLM's Schuller noted that her agency will be looking at six specific criteria to determine whether the application should be granted. The criteria include such questions as whether the request is compatible with BLM laws, regulations and the public interest.

"There's just an awful lot to be considered," said Glenn Carpenter, BLM's Salt Lake City office manager.

-fahys@sltrib.com

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 17, 2006

ERIN NEFF: The arbitrary science of Yucca Mountain

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman looked like an unwilling tourist Wednesday when he stepped into the Review-Journal's building for an editorial board meeting.

It was his first trip to Las Vegas, and he had the air of someone who hates gambling but comes along for the ride with a spouse who can't leave the machines.

His first stop in town was at the Atomic Testing Museum. Bodman said he was pleasantly surprised with the museum because, "I frankly hadn't looked forward to that."

Bodman should have saved his low expectations of Nevada for his first visit to Yucca Mountain on Thursday. He's a scientist, after all. And the political junk that continues to pass for science certainly couldn't have pleased the MIT-trained engineer.

Judging from his body language and his animated responses to some questions at the editorial board meeting, it's clear that Bodman will continue the Bush administration's time-honored tradition of trumping science at all cost. The secretary casually responded to a question about his department's new legislation, the bill that would essentially double the size of Yucca Mountain's capacity for the most toxic substance on Earth.

It's the bill that would eradicate the state's fight against the federal government for the use of water at the site. It's the bill that would result in hundreds of additional transcontinental rail and road shipments of waste we don't produce. And it's the bill that seeks to skirt the current rules the government is supposed to play by.

"The law as it now stands was set up ... with an arbitrary figure," Bodman said, referring to the 77,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste Yucca Mountain is permitted to store.

So his department would like to set a new figure. His new acting director for civilian nuclear waste management, Paul Golan, added: "The repository should be allowed to potentially take up what it's technically able to hold."

Talk about arbitrary.

Bodman made it clear the added capacity is needed because of the administration's push to spark construction of new nuclear reactors. Bodman detailed a litany of incentives to spark such development and bemoaned the fact that only four new reactors are slated to be built.

"We need 14, or 24, or a large number," Bodman said.

Under existing law, Yucca Mountain will be maxed out on the waste it can handle before it even opens. That's why the repository needs to take more waste, and that's why the department will be applying, probably next year, for a second repository.

Bodman wanted to come across as a pragmatist, the new man on the street who inherited a "broken" project and is now working to right the ship.

"I have been disappointed in what I inherited with respect to the practices and everything used in the past," the secretary said.

He told The New York Times in February that he couldn't fathom a guess at what Yucca Mountain ultimately would cost.

Bodman and Golan explained the department's new procedures, new management style and how they are cleaning up the "culture."

They talked about development of a new type of storage cask, with the poll-tested, sunny name "clean canister."

But how, exactly, are they going to move waste from existing canisters to the new "clean" ones that can be buried at Yucca Mountain?

I asked them if they now have any handle on the cost. Bodman pointed to Golan and said: "I'm not going to have that until he has his plan."

Nothing arbitrary about that, either.

The most recent cost estimate, made back in 2001, said the Yucca Mountain repository would hit the $60 billion mark. The current proposed opening of 2012 could easily cause that number to double. Nevada's congressional delegation suspects Yucca Mountain will be a $300 billion baby.

Think of all the reprocessing research that could buy.

Bodman repeatedly played the noble servant role, saying he's merely doing what Congress has told him to do. "I'm obliged to do this by law. It's my task to carry it out," he said.

But he didn't care much when I threw a cog in his "just following the law" argument by asking: "But you'd like to change the law?"

"Look, that's not a big deal," he started.

"It's a significant difference," I interrupted.

"It is a significant difference," Bodman said. "But I do not consider this a major part of the legislation. It is a part, to be sure."

You see, Bodman's agency would probably prefer to change the part of the law that requires the department to go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval of the repository's license.

After all, Bodman said more than once: "I know science. ... This project will be done according to good science, or it will not be done."

Been there. Heard that before.

This legislation, introduced two weeks ago, would cut off Nevada's main lines of opposition.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been successful in cutting the project's funding, so the Energy Department wants to squeeze every little ounce of room out of the repository that it can. Pressure's building from the nuclear industry and from a public looking for cleaner energy.

Bodman also bristled when Review-Journal reporter Keith Rogers told him Citizen Alert wanted him to answer questions at a public forum in Nevada.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, throwing up his hands. "I'm here."

In addition to the museum, the Review-Journal offices and Yucca Mountain, Bodman also visited Nellis Air Force Base and the Nevada Test Site during his trip. Let's hope the scientist saw some real science -- not just an experiment on a place he doesn't care too much about visiting.

Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.

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Energy Central
April 17, 2006

The Enduring Battle to Climb Yucca Mountain

It will be a long climb before Yucca Mountain is used as a permanent nuclear waste site. Questions abound over the quality of scientific and engineering work performed there, adding to a hostile atmosphere that could long delay any opening.

Certainly, there's a strong feeling that if Yucca Mountain goes, so goes the future of nuclear energy in general. One of the issues plaguing the fate of such power is where to store spent radioactive fuel. Those in the industry say that on-site storage was only meant to be temporary and that a permanent site is ultimately the answer. And Yucca, with its dry heat and isolation, is the ideal spot. That's, of course, a stark contrast to how those in Nevada feel, who argue that the risk of any radioactive waste escaping and endangering the local communities is too great.

Most recently, the General Accountability Office has weighed in. The congressional watchdog agency says that the U.S. Department of Energy is faced with quality assurance matters and is unable to submit a full-proof application for license. The department had planned to turn in such an application in 2004 but has been derailed because of lingering questions about scientific and engineering work. Now, it says that it is shooting for 2008 in which to hand in its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"I am convinced the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump will never be built because the project is mired in scientific, safety and technical problems," says Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid from Nevada.

Congress had approved in 2002 the permanent nuclear waste site that is located 90 miles from Las Vegas. The plans were to store 77,000 tons of spent fuel there, although a bill now pending in Congress would raise that limit to 132,000 -- something Reid said is dead even before it would hit the Senate floor. With all the court challenges and various delays, the soonest Yucca could open would be 2012. Some even say it might be 2020 -- if at all, and again, a potential dagger to a bright future for nuclear energy.

More than 55,000 tons of spent fuel at 72 separate sites is now awaiting possible transport to Yucca Mountain. The watchdog agency said that the project is beset with high turnover and that the Energy Department has yet to develop the management tools to solve issues in an effective manner.

The Bush administration takes issue with that negative assessment, noting that last year it drew up plans to redesign waste storage containers and appointed an independent scientific firm to monitor all progress. "This department remains committed to following our obligation under the law to license, construct and operate Yucca Mountain as the nation's permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel," says Craig Steven, a spokesman for the Energy Department.

Challenges Galore

Besides scientific and engineering challenges, even more lawsuits are pending -- the fourth now in effect. Nevada has just sued the Energy Department and alleged that the government is withholding documents. The state specifically wants to see a release of the draft application that it intends to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The government is unwilling to release the 2004 application, noting that it has instead made public thousands of pages on the Internet and all relating to its Yucca project. Once the application is finalized and ultimately submitted -- 2008 is now the target -- it will be done in the full view of the American public, it says.

While the Energy Department says it won't let that lawsuit deter it from pursuing a permanent storage facility in Nevada, state officials there are pressing numerous officials including the president of the United States to comply with their wishes. Their argument: If you have nothing to fear, then let loose of the draft.

"The federal government is required by law to share its important Yucca information with the host state, and we are entitled to such information under the Freedom of Information Act as well," Nevada Attorney General George Chanos said in a statement.

Meantime, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is expected to decide on a different suit. In this case, Nevada is saying that the Energy Department has run afoul of environmental laws and abused its authority when it drew up its blueprint to transport the spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain. At the same time, another state suit would forbid the project from using the area's ground water supplies.

Opponents of opening Yucca Mountain to nuclear waste deposits say that beyond the issues tied to public health there are also questions related to national security. Moving 77,000 tons of waste is a logistical nightmare that would involve 53,000 truck shipments or 10,000 rail shipments over 24 years.

"It is time to look at alternatives so we can safely store nuclear waste," says Sen. Reid. "Fortunately, the technology for a viable, safe and secure alternative is readily available and can be fully implemented within a decade if we act now. That technology is on-site dry cask storage. Dry casks are being safely used at 34 sites throughout the country right now. The Nuclear Energy Institute projects 83 of the 103 active reactors will have dry storage by 2050."

The Bush administration is fighting all the suits and has vowed to press on. In fact, the Energy Department is submitting legislation to Capitol Hill to raise the limit on the amount of nuclear waste that would be stored at Yucca Mountain to 132,000 tons. It's also asking lawmakers to allow the federal government the right to pre-empt state and local transportation laws in an effort to expedite the movement of the waste.

"This proposed legislation will help provide stability, clarity and predictability to the Yucca Mountain project," says Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, in a statement.

The president says that "sound science" is on its side and that it has the will to see the Yucca project through to its finish. But it is up against some strong opponents that include key congressional leaders. If the country decides that nuclear energy's prominence should grow, a national repository will get built.

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UNLV The Rebel Yell
April 17, 2006

Survey finds radiation among U.S citizens

By Patricia Velasco

Professor Charles Weiner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discussed atomic testing and its relation to Yucca Mountain at the Barrick Museum Auditorium last Monday.

"I want to provide some historical perspectives on continuing struggles over control of information and the extent and consequences from radioactive fallout," Weiner said.

According to Weiner, in 2001, the Centers for Disease Control conducted a survey, finding that virtually every person in the United States has been affected by atomic fallout since 1951.

The consequences have ranged from human radiation experiments and tests on the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — who thought they were being treated — to the storage of radioactive waste, both of which Weiner discussed.

"In the beginning, there was the bomb, and with that bomb, changed everything," he said.

According to Encarta Encyclopedia, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed an estimated 100,000 people.

Weiner quoted Albert Einstein: "The bomb has changed everything, except the way we think."

According to Weiner, when nuclear physics first started in the 1930s, it possessed positive medical applications for cancer, but by 1938, scientists discovered nuclear fission, the splitting of an atom for energy.

"What started as an open life science turned into a secretive death science," he said.

In 1946, the government started the Atomic Energy Commission (now called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission), a civilian agency whose mission was to design and test for the military, while also promoting the peaceful application, the "silver lining of the mushroom cloud," as Weiner called it.

Despite its mission, concern for radioactive contamination heightened, and the government did its part to suppress the information.

Weiner spoke of a photographer he met who filmed a documentary in Hiroshima and approached Warner Bros., who rejected his film, saying the public was not ready.

Weiner said that in 1963, the AEC asked Dr. John Goffman of UC Berkeley to study the health effects of radiation. Goffman found that health effects from nuclear radiation were 20 times worse than what was publicized by the government.

Earlier, the AEC began collecting bone samples from medical school cadavers after milk from California was discovered to have the highest amount of Strontium-90, a byproduct of nuclear fission, Weiner said.

According to Weiner, Strontium-90 replaces calcium in bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. Another byproduct is Iodine 31, which acts like regular iodine and heads to the thyroid gland, causing different kinds of cancer.

One of the hotspots of nuclear contamination was St. Louis, so its people founded the Committee for Nuclear Information to get their own information.

In what Weiner refers to as the "Baby Tooth Survey," the members, many of whom were female leaders and PTA mothers, collected 250,000 baby teeth for 10 years to test levels of Strontium-90.

According to Weiner, the political response included the AEC declassifying their information.

In 1963, the Test Ban Partial Treaty was passed, which banned atomic testing in water and above ground.

"In order for the public to participate, they need to have scientific literacy," Weiner said, referring to the people of St. Louis.

According to Tony Guzman, assistant director of outreach for Citizen Alert, "It was only through their actions that we found out what was going on … we need to demand the truth."

Guzman said Citizen Alert is a statewide, non-profit organization founded in 1975 to battle for environmental justice, issues like Yucca Mountain and the chemical testing to take place 80 miles north of Las Vegas on June 2.

Guzman said Citizen Alert's concern is that the chemical explosives could stir up previous radioactive fallout.

"The burden of proof is on us, not them [the government]," Guzman said.

At UNLV, Citizen Alert works with the newly-founded Students Take Actions for New Directions.

Josh Clark, president of STAND, said their goal is "to help educate students." Clark said STAND also believes the public is not being told the whole truth.

"We're trying to bridge the gap between activists and experts," Clark said.

For more information, visit citizenalert.org, or e-mail Clark about STAND at joshuajacobunlv@yahoo.com.

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Indian Country Today
April 17, 2006

Western Shoshone oppose planned 700-ton detonation

Brenda Norrell
Indian Country Today

ELKO, Nev. - Western Shoshone opposed the Pentagon's planned 700-ton detonation on aboriginal Western Shoshone land, as a delegation of Western Shoshone returned from Geneva, Switzerland, with support from the United Nations for protection of their human rights and territory.

James Tegnelia, director of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, confirmed that the United States plans to detonate 700 tons of explosives at the Nevada Test Site on June 2.

While the Pentagon calls it ''Divine Strake,'' Western Shoshone said there is nothing divine about a massive explosion on their traditional lands.

''I believe when you are working testing weaponry for destruction of life, you should not associate it with 'divine.' We want this insanity to stop - no more bombs and no more testing,'' Western Shoshone grandmother Carrie Dann, executive director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, said.

As Nevada and Utah congressmen pressed the Pentagon for answers, critics of the Bush administration say the blast is related to an effort to build a nuclear bunker-buster.

''It is abundantly clear, at least to me, that the military has not given up the idea of a nuclear penetrator,'' Christopher Hellman, policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, told the Las Vegas Sun newspaper.

Hellman said that Congress killed funding for the nuclear bunker-busting program last year. However, he said, ''they want it'' and would continue those efforts.

Western Shoshone said the test would be in direct violation of the recent decision of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. CERD, in the decision made public March 10, urged the United States to ''freeze,'' ''desist'' and ''stop'' actions and threats against the Western Shoshone.

The committee stressed the ''nature and urgency'' of the situation and informed the United States that it warrants immediate attention under the committee's Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure.

The CERD decision explicitly cited ongoing weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site as well as efforts to build an unprecedented high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Chief Raymond Yowell, of the Western Shoshone National Council, said Western Shoshone are opposed to any further military testing on Shoshone lands.

''This is a direct violation of the CERD finding and an affront to our religious belief [that] mother earth is sacred and should not be harmed. All people who are opposed to these actions by the U.S. should step forward and make their opposition known.''

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, also questioned the detonation in a letter to Tegnelia.

''Although I understand that this test is not a nuclear test, I am greatly concerned that you have not provided the public with adequate assurances that the test is not being conducted in order to further misguided attempts to build new low-yield nuclear devices,'' Matheson wrote.

The Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency does not deny that the test was described last year as a planning tool for development of a tactical nuclear weapon.

Earlier, Tegnelia told Agence France Presse that the result of the 700-ton detonation would be a ''mushroom cloud.'' However, he later retracted the statement.

''I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons.'' Tegnelia also said it would be the ''largest single explosive that we could imagine.''

While the military denies that it is a nuclear test, it will still be many times more powerful than the smallest weapon in the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

The Divine Strake blast will be five times larger than the military's largest conventional weapon, the Massive Ordinance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Pete Litster, executive director of Shundahai Network, said ongoing weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site violate international law.

''They violate the standing treaty between the U.S. government and the Western Shoshone people. They also violate the spirit of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The test site is located on Western Shoshone territory, and must not continue to be misused in bold violation of standing agreements between the U.S. government and the Western Shoshone Nation.''

Although approval for the test was sought and obtained from the state of Nevada in January, the test detonation could be cancelled. The Western Shoshone National Council, the Western Shoshone Defense Project and Shundahai Network urged a united effort to halt the detonation.

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DigitalJournal
April 17, 2006

Oil-Addicted U.S. Looks to New Sources of Energy

By Zulima Palacio

It is estimated that the world's consumption of energy will increase by 60 per cent over the next 20 years. And the United States already has problems in the way it meets its current energy needs. President Bush says the country is addicted to oil, and is urging alternative fuels. And half of U.S. electricity is generated by coal, which is responsible for over 80 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, a contributor to global warming.

There is an energy source that could help meet future needs, but it is one that has been off-limits for years.

This is uranium in its natural form. And this is the sound of radiation.

This is a pellet of uranium like the ones used in nuclear reactors. Ray Golden is the Communications Manager at the San Onofre Nuclear plant in California. "This one little pellet is the energy equivalent of 150 gallons of gasoline, there is no other technology in the world as concentrated as uranium," he said.

There are only 103 active plants in the U.S., yet they still represent nearly 20 percent of the country's energy production. But nuclear power scares many people, thanks to the dramatic nuclear accidents of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in March of 1979 and Chernobyl in Ukraine in April of 1986.

It has been almost 30 years since a permit was issued for a nuclear plant in the United States. Now, things are changing, according to Adrian Heymer, Director of New Plant Deployment at the Nuclear Energy Institute.

"I think it is going to grow tremendously. We believe we'll start construction in 2010. There are nine companies moving forward, preparing licensing applications. They will start to be submitted in 2007 through 2009," Heymer said.

The nine new nuclear plants will be built mostly in the southeast of the U.S. Another five companies are evaluating their possibilities. Each reactor will cost in the billions of dollars.

Mr. Heymer says it will be costly. "In simple terms it comes down to a little over $2.5 billion," he said.

The high price of generating nuclear energy at plants such as San Onofre, half way between Los Angeles and San Diego in California, could be higher still, if we consider the risk and potential dangers that surround nuclear plants. There are three main safety issues: the potential for a radiation accident, the production of nuclear waste, and the plants' vulnerability as terrorist targets.

Ray Golden works for the San Onofre plant. "I cannot stand here and say on any given day that this plant will never have an accident and if it has an accident it will release radiation and if it releases radiation it may increase the incidence of cancer of people living near by, I can't say no to that," he said.

During the last 20 years no serious accidents have been reported around any reactor in the U.S. Safety measures have been a very expensive priority.

However, it is the production of nuclear waste in the form of millions of used, highly radioactive, uranium pellets that continues to be a major concern. Paul Gunter is the Director of the Reactor Watchdog Project for Nuclear Information in Washington.

"We are constantly playing a game of Russian roulette with nuclear power, where risk and probability of an accident are ever present," he said.

The first cup full of nuclear waste generated 50 years ago is still mismanaged. We don't know what to do with it. It will be a problem passed from one generation to the next."

"This is a very serious technology and it has a legacy which is the used nuclear fuel that is going to be radioactive for tens of thousands of years. But the benefit to me far out weighs the risk, even if this means leaving this legacy to future generations," Golden added.

According to scientists, some nuclear waste can remain radioactive for millions of years. In the U.S., nuclear waste has been stored near nuclear facilities, mostly in underground steel-lined tanks and thick walls of concrete. But some tanks are getting old and now are leaking high-level nuclear contamination into groundwater, like at Hanford in the State of Washington.

Over the last 20 years, the government has been talking about Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a central repository for the growing stockpile of nuclear waste. But the expense required, local opposition, and safety concerns have prevented the project from starting.

And then there is the vulnerability to terrorism. Adrian Heymer, from the Nuclear Energy Institute, says the industry has spent billions of dollars on plant security. "Since September 11/01 we have spent $1.2 billion on improvements and modifications to the plants to make them safer," he said.

But Paul Gunter says nuclear plants are still vulnerable. "Radio active waste, the risk of nuclear accidents, the vulnerability to terrorism that uses these sites which are sitting ducks to spread radiation across the land, all of these add up to what the real cost of nuclear power is and is really a cost that is not worth bearing," he said.

Even though nuclear power is controversial, many countries have concluded it is necessary. Nearly 450 nuclear plants generate some 16 percent of the world's electricity today. Twenty-four new plants are under construction in 10 countries, mostly in India and China.

- VOA News

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Las Vegas SUN
April 16, 2006

Editorial: A messenger visits Yucca

The man in charge of U.S. energy policy brings the Bush/Cheney message to Nevada

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman visited Southern Nevada for two days late last week on a trip highlighted by a tour of Yucca Mountain. Although his white hard hat was inscribed "Secretary Bodman," it could just as easily have said "Vice President Cheney," or "President Bush." Bodman is not an independent-thinking policymaker who relies on facts and science. Rather, he is an administrator who travels the country parroting the White House.

Speaking to reporters after emerging from Yucca Mountain's five-mile tunnel that so far has cost $9 billion, Bodman spoke as if he were reading verbatim from the collected talking points of Bush/Cheney. It was a sad sight, considering how promising his academic career had begun. In the late 1960s he was a chemical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Although he went into the financial and political fields after that, leading to deputy positions in the Bush administration's Commerce and Treasury departments, we had dared hope after he was nominated for his current job in December 2004 that he would offer the president straight advice on Yucca Mountain based on science.

Such hope is quickly dashed by the Bush administration. Bodman's remarks to reporters showed that he is fully on board with the real energy secretaries, Bush and Cheney. He said the White House's new legislation on Yucca Mountain is wise policy.

"The legislation will allow us to provide stability, provide clarity, as well as predictability to the Yucca Mountain project," Bodman said. What the legislation actually portends is a porous mountain overstuffed with nuclear waste, a Congress taken out of the funding picture and a nightmarish transportation scheme.

Bodman said putting Yucca Mountain on a fast track will enable more nuclear power plants to be built. In fact, if the federal government is successful in opening Yucca, it would be filled with existing and future waste from the current nuclear power plants. Where would waste from new plants go?

Bodman even reiterated the old Bush/Cheney saw that Yucca won't open if it can't be made safe, proving that he believes Nevadans are still gullible six years after Bush's infamous "sound science" promise.

Work on Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, should be stopped cold.

There are no scientists in the world, much less administrators and politicians, who can truthfully say that more than 132,000 tons of nuclear waste can be buried there and pose no safety risks for hundreds of thousands of years.

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Augusta Chronicle
April 16, 2006

AIKEN - A citizen envoy group from Aiken County will travel to Yucca Mountain this week to see firsthand the repository where 36 million gallons of radioactive waste at Savannah River Site is supposed to be buried.

The trip to Nevada is being organized by the Energy Communities Alliance, a Washington, D.C.,- based organization that lobbies on behalf of people who live near 13 Department of Energy sites, including SRS.

Aiken County Councilman Chuck Smith; Eric Thompson, a former executive director of the Lower Savannah Council of Governments; and Mike Butler, a one-time SRS employee, will represent Aiken County.

The federal government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to prepare the mountain range to receive thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel. Radioactive fuel used to run commercial power plants and waste from Energy Department sites currently is stored at installations throughout the country.

Yucca Mountain was supposed to start receiving waste in 1998, but that has been continuously delayed because of legal and scientific challenges. Officials now say it won't open until 2012.

Radioactive material at SRS is a sore point for the county council. It has sued the Energy Department, asking it to stop shipping plutonium to the site until it can clearly show how it will leave. The suit remains unsettled.

"I don't even think the DOE knows fully what is going on," Mr. Smith said. "We're going to take a leadership role and make sure we have the facts."

The Aiken County envoys will meet with their peers near Yucca Mountain, which is about 90 miles from Las Vegas, and will likely tour the site, Mr. Smith said.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman toured the burial ground last week. He introduced federal legislation April 5 aimed at getting Yucca Mountain open, including a call to increase how much waste could be stored there.

"In order to expand our nuclear generating capacity, we need a safe, permanent, geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain," Mr. Bodman said at the time.

Such statements don't do much to appease Mr. Smith.

"Quite frankly, their track record is not that good," he said of the Energy Department. "In fact, it's lousy."

Reach Josh Gelinas at (803) 648-1395, ext. 110, or josh.gelinas@augustachronicle.com.

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The Age
April 17, 2006

By Helen Caldicott

The noted American writer Mary McCarthy once famously observed of the equally noted but politically discredited playwright Lillian Hellman: "every word she utters is a lie, including 'and' and 'but' ". As we have seen over the past 10 years, the same can be said of the Howard Government from the children-overboard scandal to "there will never be a GST" to "yes, there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq". Now - joined by misguided and misinformed members of the ALP and a few scientists who should know better - the Government is embarked on another mendacious, ill-advised, and downright dangerous enterprise: transforming Australia into a nuclear-powered, uranium-exporting nation, deploying as a rhetorical fig leaf the spurious message that nuclear power is emissions-free, green, and safe and will save Australia - and indeed the world - from the effects of global warming. Let's pull away that tattered fig leaf and look at the facts.

The global warming carbon dioxide (CO2) gas is released at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle - from uranium mining and milling, from uranium enrichment, from construction of huge concrete reactors, and from the transport and long-term storage of intensely radioactive waste. Nuclear power plants generate only one-third as much CO2 as a similar-sized gas-fired plant. But because the supply of highly concentrated uranium ore, which is relatively easy to mine and enrich, is limited, the energy eventually required to mine and enrich uranium will greatly increase. If today's global electricity production was converted to nuclear power, there would only be three years' supply of accessible uranium to fuel the reactors. Uranium is therefore a finite commodity.

CO2 is not the only global warming gas emitted by nuclear power. The Pacudah enrichment plant in Kentucky, which processes uranium from many countries, including Australia, annually leaks 93 per cent of the CFC-114 gas released by the US. Banned under the Montreal protocol, CFC is a prodigious destroyer of the ozone layer and it also is a potent global warming agent.

Furthermore, nuclear reactors routinely emit large amounts of radioactive materials, including the fat-soluble noble gases xenon, krypton and argon. Deemed "inert" by the nuclear industry, they are readily inhaled by populations near reactors and absorbed into the bloodstream where they concentrate in the fat pads of the abdomen and upper thighs, exposing ovaries and testicles to mutagenic gamma radiation (like X-rays).

Tritium, radioactive hydrogen, is also regularly discharged from reactors. Combining with oxygen, it forms tritiated water, which passes readily through skin, lungs and gut. Contrary to industry propaganda, tritium is a dangerous carcinogenic element producing cancers, congenital malformations and genetic deformities in low doses in animals, and by extrapolation in humans.

In the age of terrorism, nuclear reactors are inviting targets. It is relatively easy to induce a reactor meltdown by either severing the external electricity supply, by disrupting the 3 million litres a minute intake of cooling water, by infiltrating the control room, or by a well co-ordinated terrorist attack. Surprisingly, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has failed to upgrade security at the 103 nuclear reactors since the September 11 attack. A meltdown at the Indian Point nuclear power plant 56 kilometres from Manhattan could render that city uninhabitable for thousands of years if prevailing winds blew in the right direction.

Above all, nuclear waste is the industry's Achilles heel. The US has no viable solution for radioactive waste storage. A total of 60,000 tonnes are temporarily stored in so-called swimming pools beside nuclear reactors, awaiting final disposal. Yucca Mountain in Nevada, transected by 32 earthquake faults, has been identified as the final geological repository. Made of permeable pumice, it is unsuitable as a radioactive geological waste receptacle and recent fraudulent projections of the mountain's ability to retard leakage by the United States Geological Survey have rendered this project to be almost untenable.

Already, radioactive elements in many nuclear-powered countries are leaking into underground water systems, rivers, and oceans, progressively concentrating at each level of the food chain. Strontium 90, which causes bone cancer and leukaemia, and cesium 137, which induces rare muscle and brain cancers, are radioactive for 600 years. Food and human breast milk will become increasingly radioactive near numerous waste sites. Cancers will inevitably increase in frequency in exposed populations, as will genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis in their descendants.

Each typical 1000-megawatt reactor makes 200 kilograms of plutonium a year. Less than one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. Handled like iron by the body, it causes liver, lung and bone cancer and leukaemia. Crossing the placenta to induce congential deformities, it has a predilection for the testicle, where inevitably it will cause genetic abnormalities. With a radiological life of 240,000 years, released in the ecosphere it will affect biological systems forever.

Because only five kilograms of plutonium is critical mass, countries importing our uranium to fuel their nuclear reactors could, theoretically, manufacture plutonium for many nuclear bombs each year. The under-resourced International Atomic Energy Agency admits that it is physically impossible to prevent a determined country, whether a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or not, from using imported uranium or its byproduct, plutonium, to make nuclear weapons.

A truly informed national debate about the production, export, and use of Australian uranium is imperative as China, Taiwan and India line up to receive our yellowcake.

Time is short. Once the waste is produced, its legacy will affect all future generations.

Helen Caldicott is president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.

A truly informed national debate about the production, export, and use of Australian uranium is imperative as China, Taiwan and India line up to receive our yellowcake.

Time is short. Once the waste is produced, its legacy will affect all future generations.

Helen Caldicott is president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.

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Congressman Jon Porter
April 13, 2006

Porter Questions Bodman´s Yucca Visit

HENDERSON, NV – Third District Congressman Jon Porter issued the following statement in response to Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel Bodman´s visit to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain:

“It amazes me that this is Secretary Bodman´s first visit to Yucca Mountain since being confirmed as Energy Secretary in January of 2005. One would assume he has already taken the time to visit one of DOE´s largest and most costly projects, which he himself has deemed ‘broken.´

“I also find it perplexing that Secretary Bodman´s visit comes after DOE introduces legislation that would accelerate the opening of the country´s largest nuclear waste dump, which should never be built in the first place. Shouldn´t the Secretary tell us what is being done to fix the ‘broken´ Project before signing off on legislation that affects every man, woman and child in Nevada?’

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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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