Yucca Mountain News Clips - Sunday, June 4, 2006

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, June 4, 2006
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 04, 2006

Court ruling creates concern

Whistle-blowers fear limits on their ability to expose wrongdoing

Sean Whaley and Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Government whistle-blowers in Nevada and their supporters are both disappointed and concerned over last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision that limits their ability to expose government wrongdoing.

Interviews with a number of employees and others involved in calling attention to the questionable actions of government agencies suggest that the ruling will lead to less reporting of misconduct.

"I think employees need to think carefully now about whether they should blow the whistle internally," said Jeff Dickerson, an attorney representing a University of Nevada, Reno professor in a whistle-blower case. "A lot of bad things happening in government will now not be exposed due to this decision."

Dickerson is representing professor Hussein Hussein, who raised questions about animal mistreatment at the institution. His case is ongoing.

Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, who filed a now-resolved whistle-blower complaint while working at the Community College of Southern Nevada, said there will always be "bad apple" employees who falsely raise issues about the agencies where they work.

"But you have to err on their side if they are reporting government wrongdoing," she said. "The public wants more transparency in government, not less."

Giunchigliani sought protection after she told college administrators of unauthorized trips that Topazia "Briget" Jones, a college employee, had taken to the 2003 Legislature to assist former Assemblyman Wendell Williams, D-Las Vegas. Jones also sought whistle-blower protection in the scandal. Giunchigliani no longer works for the college.

Now a candidate for the Clark County Commission, Giunchigliani pointed to allegations of special privileges being granted in the Clark County recorder's office and the questions raised about McCarran International Airport land exchanges as examples of why government misconduct must be brought forward.

Despite the ruling, Giunchigliani said the state's whistle-blower law does provide some protections that could limit the impact of the high court ruling.

The 5-4 ruling in Garcetti v. Ceballos issued Tuesday said that the First Amendment's free speech protections do not protect government employees from being disciplined for raising concerns in the workplace about possible wrongdoing.

The case involved a lawsuit filed by Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Richard Ceballos, who said he was disciplined after writing internal memos suggesting that a police officer may have lied to obtain a search warrant. The opinion overturned a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Ceballos.

"We hold that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline," said the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Earle Dixon, a former federal employee who was helping to lead the cleanup of a contaminated Nevada mine, said the ruling will have a chilling effect on public employees.

"It makes the workers feel insecure about bringing up problems that need to be solved," said Dixon, who maintains he was fired when he spoke out about the dangers at the toxic waste site. "A worker has to be real careful in taking up these kinds of initiatives."

But Dixon's attorney, Mick Harrison, said any chilling effect should be muted because other protections exist in federal statute. The ruling won't affect Dixon's case, which is ongoing, because he sought whistle-blower status under federal environmental law, Harrison said.

The whistle-blower protection act, which covers cases of waste, fraud and abuse, is also available to federal workers, he said.

"I would hate for workers to think this ruling has a chilling effect when they still have the right to file whistle-blower cases," Harrison said.

Department of Energy workers and contractors for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project and the Nevada Test Site also have whistle-blower safeguards that Nevada Sens. John Ensign and Harry Reid inserted in the 2005 Energy Act that President Bush signed last year.

"Nevadans, and all Americans, have a right to know about problems in their government," Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday in a comment released through his spokeswoman, Sharyn Stein.

"The best way to protect that right is to protect the government workers who know about problems and inform the public. Senator Ensign and I wrote an amendment to protect whistle-blowers for that reason, and that amendment has now been signed into law and won't be affected by the court ruling," Reid said.

Ensign, R-Nev., said through spokesman Jack Finn, "It is important to note that the fundamental right of government workers to inform the public of misconduct is intact."

Finn added that Ensign "believes we can and must protect the public's right to know while preserving a work environment in which every statement is not subject to litigation."

Nevertheless, a Yucca Mountain Project contract worker who was consulted on the amendment said the ruling means DOE management "will certainly be emboldened in their fight against legitimate whistle-blowers."

"This ruling appears to be the unintended consequence of government agencies continually rewarding bogus whistle-blowers," the worker, Kristi Hodges, said in an e-mail.

She was referring to employees who are encouraged by lawyers to file whistle-blower claims and have their cases heard in administrative courts to reap out-of-court settlements even though their complaints are fabricated.

"It's the consequence of organizations promoting blowing whistles above producing actual evidence of wrongdoing."

She called the decision part of a "backlash that lessens the ability of legitimate whistle-blowers to expose corruption and achieve the justice they deserve."

Stephen Schwartz, an independent writer and policy analyst, who is the former publisher and executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said from reading the ruling it appears supervisors could take actions against employees when they find a whistle-blower's comments to be "inflammatory" and contrary to the employer's mission.

"That's awfully vague and subjective and gives too much power to the supervisor to quash legitimate complaints. After all, if everything could be resolved through official channels, if supervisors always paid attention when employees pointed out illegal or unethical behavior, whistle-blowers wouldn't have a special word to describe them and wouldn't need legal protection."

Attorney Sangeeta Singal, who has represented a number of former Yucca Mountain Project and Nevada Test Site workers in whistle-blower cases, said she doesn't think the decision will affect rights of workers to file lawsuits with the Department of Labor under environmental whistle-blower acts.

"However, this case does send a very chilling message to whistle-blowers and potential whistle-blowers indicating that they are not protected by the First Amendment for reporting legitimate safety concerns to their employer or to outside government entities who may regulate the employer (and) monitor the safety at the NTS and Yucca Mountain.

"This case may be among the first in what appears to be an inevitable downfall of rights protections not only for employees, but for all citizens of this country, that the highest court of our nation may be bent on slowly but surely destroying piece by piece," Singal wrote in an e-mail.

She represented Jim Mattimoe, a former quality assurance manager for a Yucca Mountain contractor. He reported to Energy Department officials that the employee concerns program, which was designed to field concerns about the project without retaliation, was corrupt.

After exhausting his options to report corruption and misconduct of project officials through proper DOE channels including the project's top manager at the time, he was fired. The Department of Labor ruled in his favor that he was wrongfully terminated. He later sued the contractor but the case was settled out of court in 2003.

Had last week's Supreme Court ruling been in place at the time, Mattimoe, of Las Vegas, said he probably wouldn't have backed off of his effort to expose corruption and misconduct.

"Even with this rule I still would have gone forward," he said by telephone Thursday. "I do think it will discourage others though."

Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allen Benson noted that under the project's Safety Conscious Work Environment policy managers "expect and encourage employees to bring forward issues relating to safety or quality to be dealt with openly and without fear of retribution."

Benson said in an e-mail the Yucca Mountain Project "works in an atmosphere where science and safety are paramount. Our reporting systems are set up so that a concern can be confidential and can reach the highest levels of the project's management. We wouldn't have it any other way."

Benson was quick to note that project officials came forward and reported last year's controversy about e-mails from federal geologists that discussed falsifying documents to satisfy quality assurance requirements for their research on climate and water infiltration at Yucca Mountain. The problem was "self-identified," he said.

Whistle-blowers who expose fraud and abuse of federal funds under the False Claims Act are allowed, as an incentive, to recover a percentage of the money at stake, a procedure that's been in place since the Civil War era, according to Vanderbilt University professor Bruce Barry, who is writing a book on free speech.

But nonfederal whistle-blower laws apply differently from state to state, noted Barry, professor of management and sociology at Vanderbilt in Tennessee.

Last week's Supreme Court ruling, he said, "is not about whistle-blowing per se but about public employees' speech and when it's protected and when it's not."

"It narrows the ability of (government) employees who engage in free speech," Barry said, referring to Ceballos.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 04, 2006

Editorial: Yucca Mountain change of plan

It's the eastern rail route -- no, the northern!

The target date for the opening of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste entombment project shifts like the sands of the Sahara, swallowing and then exposing the bleached ruins of ancient cities lost to time. It's hard to remember or believe that -- according to initial federal plans and schedules -- the thing was supposed to be open and functioning by now.

In fact, Yucca Mountain has been delayed so long that if it were to open next year (it can't possibly, of course) and begin accepting spent nuclear fuel immediately, it would no longer hold all the material awaiting storage. So the DOE is now planning to double the size of a vast underground vault not yet built -- or even really started. Though even that won't provide enough room.

Oh well. How far along are they?

Let's just take the plan to actually get the canisters full of spent fuel to the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The 319-mile, $880 million rail line from Caliente (over by the Utah border), west to a point near Tonopah and then south to Yucca mountain -- designed to avoid hauling the fuel through urban Las Vegas or through the Nellis Air Force bombing range, will be completed ...

Oh, wait. It hasn't been started. And that $880 million price tag? Whoops. The DOE ran a new cost projection last fall, and decided that for the federal government to build 319 miles of rail line in this day and age will actually cost ... $2 billion.

So it's back to the drawing board.

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, the initial federal plan had been to ship the waste across northern Nevada through Elko and Winnemucca, then south to Hawthorne and Mina, and finally to build a new line, a mere 209 miles in length, along an old Southern Pacific Railroad bed -- a route that would cross fewer mountain ranges and (in today's dollars) cost about a billion less.

But the Walker River Paiute Tribe had objected to the waste shipments crossing their reservation, and that had put the kibosh on the northern route.

Now, lo and behold, the DOE says the tribe has withdrawn its long-held objections.

Presto! The northern route is alive again.

Now, mind you, if the DOE can come up with a way to save taxpayers a billion dollars, that's not small potatoes, and they're to be encouraged.

Though it does occur to the casual observer that -- since ongoing research (the part that hasn't been fudged) makes it appear increasingly unlikely the bedrock of Yucca Mountain can really provide "geologic containment" to protect the underlying water tables from radioactive contamination for anywhere near the first half-life of some of the stuff to be entombed -- the DOE might save the entire cost of the rail project by simply storing the stuff above ground at some location further east, where the depressed local economy might cause residents to welcome an influx of employment in the "waste dump storage security" sector.

Someplace like, oh, Panaca; Caliente; or the old Wendover Air Force Range.

Normally, it might seem silly to propose alternative plans for a project begun nearly 20 years ago.

But we didn't start it.

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Spartanburg Herald Journal
June 04, 2006

South Carolina's delegation must make Washington face plutonium problem

South Carolina's fears that it will become the semi-permanent plutonium dump for the nation are closer to coming true.

The federal government has been sending surplus plutonium from weapons facilities and dismantled weapons to the Savannah River Site.

The problem is that the site is not properly located, designed or built to handle long-term storage of this dangerous material.

The storage of plutonium there is supposed to

be temporary. The federal government had planned two paths to remove the plutonium from the state.

One was to build a facility at SRS that would reprocess the plutonium into fuel that could be used in nuclear power plants. But the U.S. House passed an energy bill last week that did not include funding for the reprocessing plant.

The second path to get this material out of the state was to finish the high-level nuclear waste disposal facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but lawsuits and political maneuvering have slowed that project as well.

South Carolina agreed to accept this dangerous material because Washington promised it would build the plant to reprocess it

and ship the rest to Yucca Mountain for proper disposal.

Even when these decisions were made in 2002, it was doubtful whether the federal government would carry through its plans. Any method of handling nuclear material is always hampered by political changes and litigation.

So the state's congressional delegation got a federal law passed setting steep financial penalties that have to be paid to the state if the plutonium stays here longer than it should.

Now is the time for the state's members of Congress to remind Congress of its obligations and to inform Washington that the state will demand full payment of any penalties if this material stays.

Stockpiling plutonium along the Savannah River is unsafe. It would be far better to place the material in a facility built and located for that purpose. It would be even better to reprocess it into a fuel that would generate energy for the nation and reduce its dependence on foreign oil.

South Carolina's members of Congress must spur their colleagues to act on this problem now.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 03, 2006

Yucca Mountain Rail Line : Paiutes have terms

Most important, tribe wants assurance that plan is safe

Steve Tetreault and Sean Whaley
Review-Journal

WASHINGTON -- While the Walker River Paiutes will allow the Energy Department to study shipping nuclear waste through their reservation, tribal leaders said Friday they will not sign off on the route unless they are convinced it is safe.

The study would include a new rail segment through the outskirts of the reservation north of Walker Lake so that shipments of radioactive spent fuel and also high explosive ordnance from the Hawthorne Army Ammunition Depot would be diverted away from the town of Schurz, according to tribal Chairwoman Genia Williams.

As part of the deal, the tribe also must be assured the Energy Department will ban truck shipments of nuclear waste on U.S. Highway 95 that bisects the reservation as it proceeds south to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository.

"Safety is the motivating factor for our decision," Williams said.

"Let me make it clear that we have not said yes to the route through our reservation until we fully evaluate comprehensive studies on a new rail route that would be constructed miles away from our main population center," she said.

The Walker River Paiute Tribal Council on April 13 reversed a 15-year policy of refusing to allow the federal government to explore a railroad path through the tribe's sovereign reservation for nuclear waste.

The council's decision has prompted DOE to revive an alignment it had studied in the 1980s and early 1990s that would carry shipments through Northern and western Nevada along existing rail, and on a new 209-mile rail line that could be built from Hawthorne to Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

A base route that was identified would cross Northern Nevada on Union Pacific rail, turn south at Winnemucca, pass east of Fernley, through the growing community of Silver Springs and Wabuska, through the Walker River reservation and to Hawthorne.

Rail improvements and construction would proceed to Mina and near or through Tonopah and Goldfield, and south to the repository site near Amargosa Valley.

Some of the path might run atop abandoned rail alignments that once serviced mining operations.

Although extensive environmental surveys would need to be performed, some transportation experts said the so-called Mina route looks to be shorter, less expensive and faster to build than a 319-mile corridor originating in Caliente in southeastern Nevada that is now being studied through an official environmental impact statement.

But the western route would carry nuclear waste through a larger portion of Nevada, and within 50 miles of Reno and Carson City.

The possibility drew a mixed reaction Friday from Nevadans in that area.

One state lawmaker questioned the wisdom of moving the hazardous material through even more of the state than would occur with other proposed routes.

But a Silver Springs resident said the route could bring economic opportunities for the small town 35 miles east of the capital.

"If you had to figure out how to ship the waste, it should be the most direct route," said state Sen. Mark Amodei, R-Carson City, who represents the Silver Springs area. "Increasing the number of miles it has to travel through Nevada would just increase the opportunity for mishaps."

Amodei, who has opposed using Yucca Mountain as a repository for the nation's nuclear waste, said the transportation issue has always had implications for Northern Nevada, although this newest idea could make it even more significant for area residents.

But Kay Bennett, a member of the board of directors of the Silver Springs Area Chamber of Commerce, said the route could prove economically beneficial to the community.

"They would have to upgrade that rail line, which would bring added business and industry to our community," she said. "We have some industrial property along that spur, and we are strategically located here at the intersection of U.S. Highway 50 and U.S. Highway 95."

The industrial land is reasonably priced compared to other areas of Northern Nevada, said Bennett, manager of the Silver Springs Airport.

The community would have to know more about the safety precautions for such a project before it could reasonably react, she said. But Bennett said the waste has to go somewhere, and there is the chance for Nevada to benefit economically if that place is Yucca Mountain.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., dismissed the promise that nuclear waste will bring economic improvements.

"For more than 20 years, Nevadans have heard tall tales of supposed fortunes to be made from Yucca Mountain, and these new claims about economic development are about as credible as an offer to buy a piece of the Hoover Dam or beachfront property in Pioche," Berkley said.

John Milton, chairman of the Humboldt County Commission, said transporting nuclear waste would be a concern to residents, particularly in the town of Winnemucca. There are concerns now when train cars with unknown cargo are sometimes left on sidings there for varying periods of time.

"Residents are concerned with what is being shipped now. If it was nuclear waste, they would really be concerned," he said.

The county has never taken an official position on whether Yucca Mountain should be used to store nuclear waste, Milton said.

DOE officials have not commented beyond acknowledging meeting with the Walker River Paiutes and confirming they are considering their options.

The department's general counsel reportedly is researching whether the Caliente environmental statement could legally be amended to include the western Nevada route.

The Energy Department's consideration of a nuclear waste shipping route through Northern and western Nevada was like waving a red flag in front of Nevada lawmakers in Congress who condemn most of DOE's activities at Yucca Mountain.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., believes a railroad path that would bring nuclear waste "even closer to highly populated areas is a reflection of DOE's arrogance," spokesman Jack Finn said.

"Obviously to Senator Ensign there is no acceptable route for high-level nuclear waste through Nevada," Finn said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said "it doesn't matter where the railroad goes because Yucca Mountain will never happen."

Reid suggested the Walker River Paiutes may see an opportunity for jobs and economic betterment.

"I have worked a lot with the Indians," Reid said. "They are economically working, looking for anything that might help with poverty."

In a statement Friday, tribal Chairwoman Williams said the tribe was motivated by the possibility that, if not by rail, nuclear waste would end up crossing the reservation on trucks traveling U.S. 95. The tribe has no control over the highway, she said.

DOE's transportation plan calls for some nuclear waste shipments to be made by truck while most would travel by rail.

Department spokesman Allen Benson said it could be possible for nuclear waste to pass through the Walker River reservation although it is too soon to say. DOE is allowed by regulation to use federal highways, he said, although the state has the ability to designate alternative routes.

"I fully understand that there may be opposition from other tribal communities and other Nevada communities to our decision but I must be concerned with the safety of our community if we are faced with high-level transportation directly through my community," Williams said.

Williams declined to be interviewed Friday, referring to the statement and to a May 4 letter the tribe sent to DOE.

In the letter signed by Williams, tribal leaders expressed concern about high-level explosives that pass by rail through Schurz from the Hawthorne depot.

They suggested construction of a new rail line that would redirect traffic to the reservation's northern outskirts.

Williams stressed the tribe was not agreeing to allow nuclear waste to pass through the reservation, "but to only allow the completion of the (environmental impact study) so that the tribe can make a more informed final decision."

The tribe also said it would need an unspecific amount of funding for consultants, attorneys, lobbyists, public relations personnel, emergency service workers and also travel reimbursements to attend meetings about the environmental studies.

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Pahrump Valley Times
June 2, 2006

Nye County will help with paving of Beatty's airport access road

'Very Generous,' Says Board Member Janet Rogers

By Phillip Gomez

Nye County, in partnership with the town of Beatty, is going to pave Airport Road in Beatty at a discounted cost of $240,000. The asphalt work will be for 1.5 miles from Highway 95 to the airport gate.

The commissioners tentatively approved the special project with PETT funding in order to take advantage of the bargain price on offer from Ted Contri, president of Mercer & Frazer Construction.

"It's a very generous offer," said Beatty Town Board member Janet Rogers.

The Board of Commissioners approved the funding request for reimbursement of the town at half the total cost in a 5-0 vote at a special session Friday. The town is picking up the other half of the cost, but Beatty still had to come back before the commissioners to make the formal request after July 1.

Mercer & Frazer was the contractor to repave Highway 374 over Daylight Pass to Death Valley, work that is still ongoing.

The company found itself with an excess of high-grade asphalt left over from the job and offered it to Beatty for $10,000 less than its value, according to Rogers. The company plans to close its plant on Airport Road next month.

The town agreed to take up Mercer & Frazer's offer in order not to lose the opportunity, but wanted the county to reimburse it as a special PETT project this year.

PETT is the annual Payment Equal To Taxes Nye County receives from the U.S. Department of Energy for serving as the host county for the Yucca Mountain Repository.

Airport Road continues on 2.1 miles, connecting to Highway 374. The Nevada Department of Transportation has had long-term plans to pave the road.

"It's been on NDOT's list of projects for a long time," said Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley.

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Contra Costa Times
June 03, 2006

Regulators told to review nuclear facility terrorist threat

Appeals court rejects security findings at power plant in San Luis Obispo County used to store radioactive waste

By David Kravets
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court blocked regulatory approval to store radioactive waste at a nuclear energy installation in Central California, ruling Friday that federal regulators must first consider the likelihood of a terrorist attack.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in the first ruling of its kind, disagreed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's 2003 finding that an attack was "remote and speculative" and therefore the possibility need not be seriously considered.

The challenge to the NRC's permit allowing the storage of more radioactive spent-fuel at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County was brought by the local group San Luis Obispo Mothers For Peace. The plant is building new stainless steel and cement storage facilities because the current waste repository at the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. site is filling up.

The court said the regulatory commission could not justify its so-called "top to bottom" security review of the nation's nuclear installations, while it simultaneously declared that the risk of a terrorist attack cannot be quantified, Judge Sidney Thomas wrote for the three-judge panel.

The decision comes as the Bush administration and Congress are renewing their interest in nuclear power as one avenue to avoid reliance on oil from the Middle East. A broad energy bill Bush signed last summer provides incentives for building nuclear reactors, and last week, Bush declared the nuclear power industry an overregulated business that needs a jump-start from Washington.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said the decision was a victory for California and residents in the shadow of the twin-reactor facility along the Pacific in San Luis Obispo County, about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

"President Bush and administration officials make constant public statements about the terrorist threat," Lockyer said. "Yet the NRC in this case concluded the danger of a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility is so minimal that the environmental effects of an attack did not have to be considered."

The Mothers for Peace group's attorney, Diane Curran, said the lawsuit was not intended as a tactic to shutter the facility.

"The whole purpose of this lawsuit, before they build a facility, they would have to protect it, they would have to look at ways they could protect it from a potential attack," Curran said.

Jeff Lewis, a PG&E spokesman, said the agency has enough existing space to store spent fuel, the radioactive byproduct of generating nuclear power, until 2010.

NRC spokesman David McIntyre said the agency was reviewing the decision "to determine its exact impact and our response to it."

Since 1986, he said, 38 operating and decommissioned power plants nationwide have won approval for new waste storage facilities. Fourteen more have said they want to add more capacity, he said.

The Department of Energy in 1998 was to have begun assisting utilities remove nuclear waste to a central repository, but the proposed location at Nevada's Yucca Mountain has been mired in litigation.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 02, 2006

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: DOE eyes old rail plan

Nuclear waste would travel western path

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Facing a $2 billion price tag to build a railroad from eastern Nevada to Yucca Mountain, the Energy Department wants to take a new look at shipping nuclear waste by rail through the western part of the state to the proposed repository site, local, federal and industry officials said.

Department officials want to examine a path along Union Pacific Railroad track south from Winnemucca, crossing east of Fallon, through the Walker River Indian Reservation to Hawthorne.

From there, a rail line would be built along an abandoned Southern Pacific Railroad bed to a location five miles north of Mina in Mineral County, then generally south through or near Tonopah and Goldfield and along the western edge of the Nellis Air Force Range to the Yucca site, according to alignments DOE identified in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Energy Department placed the Mina route on the back burner in 1991 when the Walker River Paiute Tribe served notice it would not allow nuclear waste to be moved through its reservation.

But the tribe recently withdrew its long-held objections, DOE officials said, prompting department lawyers to explore how the route might be re-evaluated for shipping high-level radioactive waste.

Transportation experts said early studies indicated a rail line 209 miles from Mina to Yucca Mountain could be much less expensive and faster to build than a 319-mile rail corridor originating in Caliente that DOE is characterizing in an environmental impact study.

In the fall, DOE revised its cost estimate for a Caliente rail line from $880 million initially to about $2 billion.

On the Mina route, experts said DOE could take advantage of alignments where rail once served thriving mining operations.

Also, the DOE would need to negotiate several mountainous areas crossing the range from Caliente, but the Mina alignment is largely within valleys except for a challenging grade at Railroad Pass, said Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant for Nevada.

"Given what we know about terrain, land use ownership and land use conflicts, if the Walker River Paiute Tribe allows (DOE) to transverse the reservation, then this route would certainly appear to be less difficult than Caliente," Halstead said.

The views of the Nevada consultant were echoed by several nuclear industry executives who asked not to be identified so as not to cross DOE.

"Bottom line is (the government) could save a billion dollars," Halstead said.

But nuclear waste from power plants in the East would travel across a larger swath of Northern and western Nevada under the Mina option. It could bring nuclear waste trains within 50 miles of Reno and Carson City where public interest in the Yucca Mountain project has not been as pronounced as in Las Vegas.

"I think this will exercise people in Northern Nevada much more than they have been," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Shifting focus to western Nevada also could complicate DOE relations with officials in Lincoln County such as Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips who have been the department's strongest allies in Nevada in hopes of landing a waste transfer station and other economic opportunities.

"I am not going to jump on that horse," Phillips said of the prospect that DOE might turn elsewhere. "We ought to let the process work its way out, and I will make a decision from there on what I would do or not do."

"Any route that would be reasonable must be investigated, so (DOE) is going to investigate," Phillips said.

DOE spokesman Allen Benson said the Walker River Paiutes told DOE by letter on May 4 that they were withdrawing opposition to studying nuclear waste transportation by rail across their reservation.

"We are considering the new information provided by the tribe and are analyzing our options," Benson said. "There have been some meetings with the tribe. We are once again in the process of looking at it, but until we know more, there is nothing more to say."

The Caliente corridor "is in the mix also," Benson said.

Industry and government officials said the DOE general counsel's office was researching whether the Caliente environmental impact study legally could be expanded to characterize the Mina route too.

One DOE official described the legal work as preliminary, and the department could take weeks or longer before it reaches any conclusions.

Gary Lanthrum, the DOE's transportation director for Yucca Mountain, was asked about the Mina route during a May 23 meeting in Pahrump that was attended by nuclear and transportation industry executives and officials from rural counties.

Lanthrum said the leadership of the Walker River Paiutes changed in December, and the tribal council subsequently withdrew its opposition, "and so the route can now be considered," according to notes kept by an attendee that were shared with the Review-Journal.

Genia Williams, who was elected chairwoman of the Walker River Paiutes in 2005, said DOE's account "is not entirely accurate." Williams said the tribe would comment further in writing, but a statement was unavailable by deadline.

Tribal officials have told DOE in meetings they want a new rail line built through the northern part of their reservation so that high-level explosives sent to the nearby Hawthorne Army Ammunition Depot and possible nuclear waste shipments would avoid the town of Schurz, according to the May 4 letter obtained by the Review-Journal.

The Walker River Paiutes thought that nuclear waste might be destined to travel through the reservation one way or another.

"We understand that if rail shipments are not allowed, nuclear waste may still be shipped through the reservation by truck," according to the tribe's letter, which was signed by Williams. "Our intent in allowing the (environmental impact study) is to determine if shipments on the railroad would be less dangerous than shipments by truck through Schurz."

Adding Mina to the environmental impact statement could add between eight months to a year to the study, which has been delayed for months, said a transportation industry official who asked not to be identified.

Government officials also are said to be awaiting the outcome of a lawsuit that Nevada filed against DOE over the Caliente corridor.

If the judges order DOE to make changes, that could open the way for the Mina route to be considered, said attorneys following the case.

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Las Vegas SUN
June 02, 2006

Editorial: Recalling a Nevada activist

Maya Miller's accomplishments make her name worth learning and remembering

Maya Miller's name may not be familiar to many Southern Nevadans. But the Washoe Valley woman who died Wednesday at the age of 90 was an icon for those involved in environmental issues, women's rights and other progressive causes.

Miller died at her home - a place that, according to the Associated Press, was "a gathering spot" for activists who often turned to her for support and advice. A fierce defender of the welfare of women and children, Miller's activism didn't always sit well with government officials.

While lobbying the Nevada Legislature on behalf of welfare mothers in 1971, Miller lambasted lawmakers for being rude to women. Security guards escorted her from the building.

Her anti-war advocacy during the Vietnam era landed her on then-President Richard Nixon's "enemies list."

Showing her loyalty to causes over groups, Miller resigned her post as a national board member of the League of Women Voters in 1969 after the group failed to support an anti-war resolution. She was founder of the Women's Campaign Fund in Washington, D.C., and was among the early supporters of Emily's List, a group that promotes women in federal, state and local political races. Most recently, she opposed plans to build a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

Miller's lifelong devotion to helping those whose interests otherwise fell through the cracks resulted in societal improvements that will endure long after her passing. As is her work, her name is worth remembering.

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Las Vegas SUN
June 02, 2006

Calls for halting nuclear programs

By Launce Rake
<lrake@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun

Representatives of two countries with long histories of atomic weapons testing programs called for the end of developing new nuclear weapons after a panel discussion Thursday in Las Vegas.

Ambassador Kanat Saudabayev from Central Asia's Kazakhstan told a group at Las Vegas' Atomic Testing Museum that his country, a former republic of the Soviet Union, endured 456 nuclear explosions in the region of Semipalatinsk, which is similar to Nevada's Nuclear Test Site.

Saudabayev joined Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and veterans of the American nuclear program in the discussion on the shared legacy of the testing programs.

One difference, Saudabayev noted, was that Semipalatinsk is in a densely populated part of his country. The Nevada Test Site, about 60 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is in mostly unpopulated federally controlled desert.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union stopped nuclear testing in the early 1990s, and Kazakhstan became independent in 1991. While the Nevada Test Site continues to be an active center for national defense work, Kazakhstan has stopped such work at the Semipalatinsk test site. At the time of its independence, the country had the world's fourth-largest nuclear arsenal, but it has since dismantled all of its atomic weapons.

The ambassador, who has represented Kazakhstan since 2000 in Washington, said his country and the United States would continue cooperating to stop nuclear proliferation by countries and terrorist groups.

He did not mention Iran, Kazakhstan's neighbor, however. The Bush administration and allies are concerned that the Islamic republic is on its way to developing its own nuclear weapon, although Iranian officials say they are only pursuing a peaceful nuclear power program. Kazakhstan is also predominantly Muslim.

Following the discussion, Saudabayev, through a translator, carefully phrased his government's position on Iran's nuclear ambitions: "We are concerned in principle with proliferation of nuclear weapons in any country ¦ The issue of Iran needs to be an issue of discussion and negotiation in the international community."

He similarly cautioned against a nuclear weapons development program in the United States. That issue resurfaced recently with the announcement of a planned Defense Department test - now postponed - that would detonate 700 tons of conventional explosives at the Nevada Test Site. Federal officials said the Test Site blast could aid in the development of either a conventional or nuclear weapon.

Berkley said following the panel that the planned detonation, originally scheduled for today but now indefinitely postponed, may not return: "I'm hearing it's dead."

She noted that there were environmental concerns from the state of Nevada and activists around the West. "I'm very pleased the feds have backed off on this," she said. "They could not meet the environmental standards of the state of Nevada.

"They were not in compliance and could never be in compliance."

Also participating in the panel discussion were seven others, including Mary Dickson, a Salt Lake City resident and activist with Downwinders United, a group that participated in a lawsuit to stop the planned blast at the Test Site. That group believes nuclear testing has exposed millions to sickening radioactive fallout.

"We know what fallout did," she said. "It's impossible to know how many Americans were affected by nuclear testing. Too many people have died and continue to die."

Not everyone on the panel agreed.

Nick Aquilina, a member of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation and a former Test Site manager, declined to join the others on the panel in signing a statement condemning nuclear testing and calling for an end to nuclear proliferation.

He told the audience of about 100 people at the session that the work at the Test Site helped build a nuclear deterrence that prevented a third world war.

Other than the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, he said, "one has not been used in anger since."

Launce Rake can be reached at 259-4127 or at lrake@lasvegassun.com.

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Ely Daily Times
June 02, 2006

State to give WPC 94 miles of highway

By Pete Fowler
Ely Times Reporter

The Nevada Department of Transportation is projecting a possible budget shortfall as early as next year. The department announced plans to abandon about 700 to 800 lane-miles of roadway in the state to county control, 94 lane-miles of which are in White Pine County.

Possible financial compensation was mentioned to take care of the unwanted routes.

“We understand that you're not interested in taking on a state highway without compensation,’

NDOT Director Jeff Fontaine told county commissioners last Wednesday.

Much of NDOT's financial struggle can be attributed to rapid growth in the state, adding about 100 new cars to the freeway system every day, Fontaine said. He estimated an 80 percent increase in vehicle-miles traveled by 2020. Truck traffic through Nevada to California and possibly the proposed Yucca Mountain repository is expected to be a major factor in the increase.

The NDOT postponed two contracts due to budget concerns. A resurfacing project through McGill and sidewalk, curb and gutter work was postponed, and work on U.S. Highway 93 in Elko County was postponed. $2.5 million is budgeted for 2007 projects in the county including mostly chip seal work on U.S. 93, U.S. 6, U.S. 50, Spring Valley Road, Shoshone Road, Duck Creek Road and Baker Road.

In other business:

--Chairman Brent Eldridge responded to former Ely Mayor Bob Miller's letter read into the record during the May 10 meeting. He criticized the commission and the Nevada Department of Taxation for not selling water rights applications to the SNWA. Miller also is a candidate for County Commission Seat 3.

“I am not in favor of losing water. I am in favor of being practical when asking for money for something you don't own or control,’ he wrote in the letter.

Miller also mentioned 50 acres of land by the golf course which he said should have been sold.

Eldridge read a response to the letter: “Simply taking money for the county's water applications and water that may be exported to Clark County is inappropriate.’ He added that environmental protection was the foremost concern, and if an agreement was reached in that area, the commission might move to financial considerations.

Sale of the land by the golf course was proposed last year, but the Nevada Department of Taxation pulled the land from sale, saying it was more valuable than the county realized. It could benefit the county more if properly marketed, Eldridge said.

In other business, the county commission:

--Approved hiring a Deputy Clerk and temporary election workers in the County Clerk's office.

--Approved interlocal agreements with the City of Ely. The contract was changed to one year instead of two, and a cost of service study will be conducted to better quantify what the county and city provide one another.

--Supported drafting of an ordinance for a county wide wellhead protection program to help protect drinking water supply.

--Approved hiring an individual at $20 per hour to do EMS ambulance billing. Billing had been stopped since May 1 due to a previous employee leaving.

--Eliminated a TV District tax. County commissioner John A. Chachas had expressed concern that citizens were being taxed and not receiving adequate service for their money.

--Decided to offer the airport manager's contract up for anyone to apply for. The current manager's contract had expired. There was a dispute over finances in the contract. Airport Manager Dan Callaghan said he had been overbilled $10,000 for insurance over a period of years.

--Filed protests of Sierra Pacific Power's water rights applications in Steptoe and Butte Valleys. Commissioners seemed somewhat surprised that Sierra Pacific filed applications over the county's applications. There was concern that Sierra Pacific's applications might interfere with LS Power's proposed coal-fired power plant project.

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Nuclear Engineering
June 01, 2006

GNEP: the right way forward?

American nuclear policy produces a lot of initiatives. Does the latest and greatest have what it takes to become reality?

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) proposed by US president George Bush in February 2006 has received a great deal of publicity, much of it centred on the apparent change in US strategy towards reprocessing used fuel, rather than continuing on the march towards repositories (see NEI May, p18). There is, however, much more to the initiative than this and it is worthwhile to examine the obvious ways in which it addresses many of the awkward issues currently faced by the nuclear industry. But at the same time, there are undoubtedly some serious difficulties on the road ahead to ensuring the concepts become a serious reality.

There is some debate as to where the real motivation for GNEP lies in the US administration as its announcement seemed somewhat sudden and there are accusations (in common with the new initiative on nuclear trade with India) that not enough consultation, both within and outside the USA, had taken place first. It is possible, however, to see a gradual move in thinking within the country since about 2001 towards the advantages of reprocessing and GNEP merely makes this explicit. For several years, there has been interest in new forms of reprocessing which do not separate plutonium from uranium (in fact recovering both together), and which segregate other actinides from fission products, enabling the actinides to be burned. Indeed, the US budget for 2006 already includes $50 million to develop a plan for "integrated spent fuel recycling facilities." Nevertheless, the GNEP announcement can certainly be depicted as a major shift in official US policy, which has been wedded to the ‘once-through´ fuel cycle since the Carter Administration of the late 1970s.

The two most important areas addressed by GNEP are the concerns about proliferation of nuclear weapons and the difficulties the industry continues to experience in developing coherent policies for used fuel management.

The challenges of new countries using nuclear technology and the variability of political will when confronted with situations such as Iran´s suggest that moving to some kinds of intrinsic proliferation resistance in the fuel cycle is timely. One key principle is that the assurance of non-proliferation must be linked with assurance of supply and services within the nuclear fuel cycle to any country embracing nuclear power. Impetus had already been given to this by Mohammed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA, who pointed to the need for better control of both uranium enrichment and plutonium separation at the UN General Assembly in October 2005. "We should be clear," he said, "that there is no incompatibility between tightening controls over the nuclear fuel cycle and expanding the use of peaceful nuclear technology. In fact, by reducing the risks of proliferation, we could pave the way for more widespread use of peaceful nuclear applications." This echoes the rationale of the NPT because as well as constraining the 'do-it-yourself' inclinations of individual countries, "multilateral approaches could offer additional advantages in terms of safety, security and economics," he said.

There remains the issue of who runs these multilateral initiatives – certainly Russia or the USA can be the inspiration but it seems preferable for the process to be under IAEA control or co-ordination so that they might guarantee the supply of nuclear fuel and services for bona fide uses, thereby removing the incentive for countries to develop indigenous fuel cycle capabilities. It is clear that GNEP must work within existing international arrangements.

There are already several approaches under discussion by an expert group convened by the IAEA including: developing and implementing international supply guarantees with IAEA participation, for example with the IAEA as administrator of a fuel bank; promoting voluntary conversion of existing facilities to multinational control; including the non-NPT signatories (such as India and Pakistan) and creating new multinational, possibly regional, fuel cycle facilities for enrichment, reprocessing and used fuel management, based on joint ownership. A further idea is to reinforce existing commercial market mechanisms of long term fuel supply contracts, possibly involving fuel leasing and the take-back of used fuel, so obviating the need for fuel cycle facilities in most countries.

The other important matter addressed by GNEP is used fuel management. A significant part of the incentive of advanced reprocessing technologies is to reduce volumes of high-level wastes and simplify their disposal. This does not, however, mean that waste repositories such as Yucca Mountain will never be needed – they must still be planned for and developed, but the quantities of material destined for them will be much reduced. The difficulties encountered with establishing Yucca as an operating repository have undoubtedly influenced the move towards GNEP. The likelihood of having to establish several Yuccas in the USA alone, if there is a significant boom in nuclear power in the 21st century, has obviously concentrated a lot of official thinking. Thinking expansively, Yucca may no longer now be seen as a repository for the used fuel currently in storage at reactor sites throughout the USA, but as a facility for the receipt of the final wastes from future reprocessing activities. In other countries too, there also seems to be a shift in attitudes about the value of used fuel that could eventually have repercussions for many national waste management programmes. Some facilities currently envisaged as final disposal repositories may only be used for interim storage of spent fuel that will eventually be reprocessed and recycled, hence the trend to retrievability. But this is running some way ahead – the current plan in the USA remains to get Yucca Mountain licensed as a repository for the used fuel as it currently exists, as without this end solution it will be hard to license new reactors.

In moving towards longer term storage of used fuel with the expectation that it will eventually be reprocessed, it is important to demonstrate that the industry is not just passing the buck to the next generation. Used fuel must begin to be somehow presented as an asset, as a key foundation for fuelling the next generation of reactors, without the need to mine greater quantities of the finite uranium resource than necessary. Over 2 million tonnes of uranium have been mined since 1945, both for military and civil nuclear programmes. It makes sense in the future to use as much as possible of what were formerly regarded as wastes from previous nuclear operations as true fuel assets in new reactor types.

This leads to a further important part of GNEP, which is the link with the Generation IV programme and other advanced reactor initiatives. Reactor systems with full actinide recycling as part of a closed fuel cycle will produce very small volumes of fission product wastes without the long-lived characteristics of today's used fuel, and will have high proliferation resistance. The ‘classic´ closed fuel cycle with aqueous (Purex) reprocessing and recycling of plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel is not intrinsically proliferation resistant. There are, however, already significant quantities of separated civil plutonium, reprocessed uranium and depleted uranium in inventory and these may well be used when the new reactor designs become reality. Although it is almost certain that fresh uranium will still have to be mined, the quantities will be much lower than required by the current generation of reactors. Although the nuclear industry is convinced that there are more than adequate uranium reserves and resources to fuel any conceivable growth path of nuclear energy this century, the higher uranium prices which are likely to be necessary to develop all the new mines will make recycling uranium and plutonium from used fuel relatively more attractive in an economic sense. When uranium prices were depressed by the ready availability of secondary supplies, there was a widespread perception that uranium would be very cheap forever, making recycling hard to justify. There is now recognition that new uranium mines require substantial capital inputs which must be recovered by adequate prices, also giving a fair return to the mining company. So despite the recent tend towards higher uranium prices, it is possible to look forward to an even lower fuel price element in the economics of the next generation of reactors. Low and relatively stable fuel prices are already a significant advantage of the current generation of evolutionary reactors against alternative fossil fuel generating modes, but the future looks even better.

Finally, it can be argued that GNEP makes a contribution to the idea, explicit within the NPT, of the leading nuclear nations spreading the benefits of nuclear technology to other countries. After the provision of many research reactors in the early days, the USA and the other nuclear weapons states have done relatively little in this regard. It may also be argued that the economies of scale in enrichment and reprocessing plants and eventually waste repositories, suggest that there should be only a small number of facilities worldwide. Although developing national facilities may appear to meet some immediate local objectives, in the long run it would be better from the economic standpoint to re-deploy the resources elsewhere and buy, with guarantees, from abroad. The current national repository solutions that are posed certainly make little sense either economically or politically. But moving to an international regime requires substantial changes to the rules of nuclear commerce as they currently stand.

This leads to the first of the difficulties in getting GNEP up and running. Some will argue that it is very ambitious on several counts – the new technology required, the timescales quoted and particularly the wholesale changes to the current international arrangements. Yet these are clearly in need of reform – they have worked rather well in the early days of nuclear power, but if a much more expansive future is foreseen, with thousands of reactors being built to satisfy the world´s need for cheap power, potable water and hydrogen, some fundamental reforms are needed. Tinkering with the existing arrangements will not be enough.

There are also some concerns about the extent to which following GNEP will upset existing nuclear research programmes in particular countries, and also the current plans for the fuel cycle. There are always strong vested interests in continuing along the same path. In Japan, for example, there are fears that having just re-established their nuclear programme on a twin platform of new reactor construction combined with the reprocessing of used fuel at Rokkasho and subsequent recycling of plutonium in light water reactors, GNEP may prove to be a diversion. Having struggled to obtain public acceptance for reprocessing and subsequent recycling, the implication within GNEP that a much superior reprocessing technology is just around the corner may pose local difficulties. That it may eventually bring foreign used fuel to Japan is a very hot political potato.

On the other hand, some have claimed that GNEP really doesn´t go far enough. If we´re going to complete a ‘once per century´ reform in international nuclear arrangements, GNEP may look too closely at present day proliferation and waste concerns, rather than the challenges of reaching a more expansive nuclear future. Its concentration on ‘burner´ rather than ‘breeder´ reactors fits in with the proliferation concerns, but does less to promote the vision of thousands of future reactors. If we´re going to have an energy world fuelled largely by hydrogen, we need to create a better link between today and the future, but GNEP only goes a limited distance in this.

One barrier to the creation of multinational fuel cycle facilities, with attendant guarantees of supply in exchange for strict adherence to safeguards, is the view held by some countries that they ought to develop full fuel cycle facilities because of security of supply or import-saving reasons. Transport of nuclear fuels from continent to continent has also become difficult, to add to concerns about the reliability of various suppliers, so there is some argument for developing facilities ‘at home´. For example, countries possessing significant uranium resources are inclined to develop them and then think about developing other areas of the fuel cycle too. Hence Brazil´s involvement in uranium and enrichment, to fuel its own reactors and, less obviously, the views now regularly expressed in Australia that it should “add value’ to its uranium sales by converting and enriching too. Becoming regional fuel cycle centres under full IAEA safeguards may cover these aspirations as the number and location of these is yet to be specified. The economic case with economies of scale suggests, however, that there should be relatively few large facilities worldwide.

An alternative view of GNEP may see it as somewhat discriminatory and potentially anti-competitive. By restricting parts of the fuel cycle to particular countries, albeit with fair rights of access to nuclear materials, there is a risk of maintaining or even reinforcing the existing NPT arrangements that have always upset certain nations, notably India and Pakistan. Similarly, by maintaining a market stanglehold on, for example, enrichment facilities in the existing countries, it can be argued that the market will be uncompetitive and lead to excessive profits being achieved by those who are so favoured. The more expansive nuclear vision surely needs it to become a more ‘normal´ business as far as public acceptance is concerned, with as few special provisions and restrictions as possible. So somehow a reasonable balance has to be established, which hits many possibly competing objectives.

Finally, it is clear that GNEP must overcome a number of difficulties of coordination in both the USA itself and also internationally. Nuclear policy within the USA often gives the impression of ‘too many initiatives and too little action´ and it is not surprising that Congress sees fit to allocate or withdraw funding in seemingly inconsistent ways. The overall nuclear programme needs to be made more coherent, with full integration of the plans for new reactors, used fuel management and the more visionary goals of GNEP. The full funding requested for GNEP has unfortunately already been cut, which doesn´t bode well. Similarly, on the international stage, GNEP must be integrated with what is happening under IAEA auspices and also the plans announced by president Putin for international fuel cycle facilities located in Russia. Although it is good that several parties are thinking along the same lines, it is necessary for the plans in so important an area to be properly coordinated without national interests holding too much sway.

Author Info: Steve Kidd is Head of Strategy & Research at the World Nuclear Association, where he has worked since 1995 (when it was the Uranium Institute). Any views expressed are not necessarily those of the World Nuclear Association and/or its members

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Press-Enterprise
June 02, 2006

Court orders feds to weigh nuclear facility terror attack

By David Kravets
The Associated Press

San Francisco

A federal appeals court blocked regulatory approval to store radioactive waste at a nuclear energy installation in Central California, ruling Friday that federal regulators must first consider the likelihood of a terrorist attack.

The challenge to the NRC's permit allowing the storage of more radioactive spent-fuel at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County was brought by the local group, San Luis Obispo Mothers For Peace. The plant is building new stainless steel and cement storage facilities because the current waste repository at the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. site is filling up.

The court said the regulatory commission could not justify its so-called "top to bottom" security review of the nation's nuclear installations, while it simultaneously declared that the risk of a terror attack cannot be quantified, Judge Sidney Thomas wrote for the three-judge panel.

The decision comes as the Bush administration and Congress are renewing their interest in nuclear power as one avenue to avoid reliance on oil from the Middle East. A broad energy bill Bush signed last summer provides incentives for building nuclear reactors, and last week Bush declared the nuclear power industry an overregulated business that needs a jump-start from Washington.

California attorney General Bill Lockyer said the decision was a victory for California and residents in the shadow of the twin-reactor facility along the Pacific in San Luis Obispo, home to 45,000 people about 200 miles north of Los Angeles.

The Mothers for Peace group's attorney, Diane Curran, said the lawsuit was not intended as a tactic to shutter the facility.

"The whole purpose of this lawsuit, before they build a facility, they would have to protect it, they would have to look at ways they could protect it from a potential attack," Curran said.

Jeff Lewis, a PG&E spokesman, said the agency has enough existing space to store spent fuel, the radioactive byproduct of generating nuclear power, until 2010.

NRC spokesman David McIntyre said the agency was reviewing the decision "to determine its exact impact and our response to it."

Sine 1986, he said, 38 operating and decommissioned power plants nationwide have won approval for new waste storage facilities. Fourteen more have said they want to add more capacity, he said.

The Department of Energy in 1998 was to have begun assisting utilities remove nuclear waste to a central repository, but the proposed location at Nevada's Yucca Mountain has been mired in litigation.

The case is San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 03-74628.

--Editors: David Kravets has been covering state and federal courts for more than a decade.

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Asian Tribune
June 02, 2006

Worries about nuclear waste

A Science Commentator
Syndicate Features

Even chances of the so-called civilian nuclear cooperation ‘deal´ between as India and the US becoming a reality remain uncertain it may be a good thing to start paying attention to the problem of nuclear waste management. Though India has said it will not want any change in the original ‘deal´ with the US, one alternation that it might not mind is insertion of a specific clause that requires the US to assist India in safer disposal of nuclear waste. In the event of the ‘deal´ clearing all the hurdles it is certain that the use of nuclear energy in India will increase many fold and with it will increase the problem of safely disposing the used nuclear fuel. While nuclear energy is considered to be the ‘cleanest´, countries that have built nuclear reactors have to worry about ways of disposing of the ‘waste´ as it does not become inert after use and the danger of radiation remains for thousands of years.

Under the India-US nuclear ‘deal´, India will be obliged to open some of its nuclear reactors, designated as ‘civilians´ and devoted exclusively for energy generation, to rigorous international inspection. While some in the country oppose any kind of international inspection of our reactors, it may at least make it possible to better assess the extent of nuclear waste that the country will generate and then plan their disposal in the best possible way. Despite being a very costly business, it cannot be said that the manner of disposal of nuclear waste eliminates all the fears of radiation hazard and its serious consequences.

The government has questioned reports that have appeared from time to time about radiation leaks at our reactors though the critics have pointed to certain unusual diseases afflicting people in the areas near the reactors. There has been no serious radiation incident—or accident-- in India, unlike the west. The first such serious incident was reported way back in 1957 in the UK when a nuclear facility at Windscale had caught fire. The more ‘famous´ incidents were reported from Three Mile Island in the Pennsylvania state of the US in 1979 and Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986.

The world has today 450 nuclear plants, which produce 16 percent of world´s electricity. At least 24 nuclear plants are under construction in 10 countries, most of them in China and India. This means that India is also going to accumulate a huge amount of used but radioactive uranium, which will require safe burial—if such a thing is possible—at enormous costs. To get an idea of costs involved in safe burial of nuclear waste, consider this. Some time ago, Britain had announced a programme to clean up the nuclear waste in the country and decommission of 19 or 20 plants. The cost estimated initially was 56 billion pounds, which was later revised to over 70 billion pounds.

Most of the nuclear waste is generally buried or disposed of near the plant site. But about 20 years ago, authorities in the US decided to use the Yucca Mountains in Nevada as the central repository for the growing stockpile of the country´s nuclear waste. The idea was dropped because of both the prohibitive costs involved and also because of the stiff local opposition. On top of that were safety concerns, though advocates of nuclear power point out that far fewer people have died due to radiation than the number of people who have died in wars and road accidents!

Three main issues have to be taken into consideration when constructing a nuclear plant: the chances of a radioactive accident, disposal of nuclear waste and the vulnerability of the plant to terrorist attack. While the first two issues have been a worry for long, the fear of terrorist attack on nuclear facilities has lately begun to look very real. India perhaps also faces another hazard. Though acutely short of its own uranium mines, there have been reports in the past of uranium disappearing from India´s only uranium mines in Jadugoda.

A more serious aspect was highlighted in a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, presented to parliament two months back (March 2006), which pointed to a nine-year delay in installing a sophisticated nuclear waste disposal system at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. The department of atomic energy had placed orders for the full system but not all the parts of the system were received at BARC. Even for an incomplete system the cost had shot up from the original Rs 38 lakh to Rs 52 lakh. The delay or incomplete supply of the system may be blamed on red tape or bureaucratic procedures but such an approach cannot be condoned if it relates to prevention of radiation hazard.

Because of the oil crunch, the instability in the oil-rich West Asia and increasing use of oil for politics, nuclear power generation may be said to have received a fresh lease of life with opposition to it becoming less visible than was the case in previous years. Nations like the US and Japan are frantically trying to develop the fusion technique to meet the energy needs of the world. But that is some years away.

One of the biggest worries today is global warming which is largely the result of burning of fossil fuels. Many fear that doomsday may not be far if global warming is not arrested at once. But nuclear energy leads to no carbon dioxide emission and is a highly concentrated form of energy. One pellet of uranium generates energy equivalent to something like 600 litres of oil.

There is the other side of the coin, apart from the obvious radiation danger. The transport sector may continue to emit carbon dioxide because of its continued dependence on fossil fuels. This danger may be particularly high in countries like India and China, which are only now witnessing a passenger car revolution. This danger will be eliminated only if the transport sector is able to discard the use of greenhouse gas emitting fuels.

It needs to be pointed out that the ageing nuclear plants in the world are considered a greater pollution hazard than the newer ones. Used nuclear fuel can remain radioactive for almost eternity and there can be no excuse for mismanagement in their disposal. In the US the nuclear waste is stored in underground steel-lined tanks and thick concrete walls. But when some of these old tanks had started to leak there was an outcry that it had contaminated groundwater. No country can take chances if there is any danger of contamination of groundwater, certainly not India where water seems to be becoming almost as scarce as oil.

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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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