Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, June 8, 2006
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 08, 2006
Jun. 08, 2006
Consultant estimates Yucca Mountain costs
By David McGrath Schwartz
Review-Journal
The Yucca Mountain repository would cost local agencies $385 million before the proposed nuclear waste site opens, and another $3.7 billion over 24 years after it opens, according to a consultant helping Nevada and local governments fight the proposal.
The numbers, presented to the Las Vegas City Council on Wednesday, update estimates made in 2001 when Urban Environmental Research found that $369 million would be needed to equip and train emergency personnel who would respond to an accident at Yucca Mountain or one involving transportation of waste to the site.
Urban Environmental Research Managing Partner Sheila Conway said the estimates come out of work done in coordination with various cities' fire departments and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, using staffing levels prepared by the Department of Homeland Security.
"Local governments don't have resources to address what needs are going to be," Conway said.
Mayor Oscar Goodman emphasized that the preparation of the numbers should not be taken as a sign of capitulation.
"I don't think anything we're doing here should be considered a waiver," he said. "I don't want anybody to think that by exploring emergency centers, somehow we're abandoning opposition."
Goodman said he also talked to a Homeland Security official to urge the agency to oversee any transportation of nuclear waste. "I don't trust the Department of Energy when it comes to Yucca Mountain and Las Vegas," he said. "They put their spin on it."
The projected costs for all of the public safety agencies was arrived at by using the proposed start of shipping at 2010. Factored in were increased staffing levels for the possibility of an emergency, added equipment such as radiation detectors for all emergency vehicles, and training costs.
The costs reflect "any additional cost to these agencies ... directly attributable to the repository's siting and the related ... transportation shipping campaign," according to the report.
Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the proposed site of a repository to hold the nation's nuclear waste. The U.S. Department of Energy wants to use the mountain to bury 77,000 tons of radioactive waste.
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 7, 2006
Carver sees new RR route as positive
By Mark Waite
PVT
An announcement that U.S. Department of Energy officials will study a rail route from Hawthorne to Yucca Mountain to ship high level nuclear waste was greeted as good news by some Nye County officials.
A Warm Springs rancher, however, was not at all happy.
DOE wants to study a plan to ship the high-level nuclear waste along existing Union Pacific Railroad tracks along the Interstate 80 corridor to Winnemucca, then down to Hawthorne, where a new rail line would be built south through Mina and near the U.S. Highway 95 corridor. The Caliente corridor would be a route from southeastern Nevada looping around the Nevada Test Site and down along the U.S. Highway 95 corridor. The Hawthorne corridor would travel farther west of communities like Tonopah and Goldfield.
The Hawthorne route was one of a handful of options to build a railroad, but it was placed on the back burner in 1991 when members of the Walker River Paiute Tribe were opposed. The DOE said the Walker River Paiute Tribal Council April 13 reversed its policy of refusing to explore the rail route through the reservation.
The building of a rail route from Hawthorne would require building 209 miles of track instead of 319 miles from Caliente in southeastern Nevada. The Caliente route is projected to cost $2 billion.
"I am so happy about this. It will be the least disruptive and least expensive," Nye County District One Commissioner Roberta "Midge" Carver said. Her district includes wide stretches of northernmost Nye County.
Carver said the Caliente route would involve traversing three mountain ranges, cutting into solid rock.
"Everywhere they would be going they would be going through a rancher's water," she said.
Carver said DOE officials lied to county residents when they said the land withdrawal for the railroad would be only 360,000 acres. In adding up the squares for the land maps showing the land withdrawal, it adds up to 609,000 acres, she said.
Allen Benson, director of the office of institutional affairs for the DOE Yucca Mountain Project, said previously the corridor wouldn't include all 640 acres in each section, explaining part of the discrepancy.
The Caliente route would go right through 663,000 acres of grazing allotments used by Warm Springs rancher Joe Fellini. He normally grazes about 2,000 head of cattle, but said the numbers are down this year due to the drought.
"The way they (DOE) always figure, we're the least amount of people. Let's put it here. Foreign countries reprocess that stuff," Fellini said.
"The way they did it was wrong. If they want to run it through here they should've talked to everybody that had property rights," he said.
Fellini said the Caliente corridor would cut through 40 miles of land where he has grazing allotments and 17 water sources.
"When they proposed the Caliente route they never contacted us. It's unreal. I don't think they should be here. They contaminated so much of our goddam country," Fellini said.
His wife Sue Fellini said they hired attorneys after news broke of the Caliente route proposal with a message for the DOE: "We're going to sue your butt the minute you come over that summit!"
The Hawthorne route would traverse rail bed for former rail routes, like the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, which was completed in 1907.
"I've always been in favor of something other than what they've chosen," Carver said. "The Hawthorne route is more viable, hundreds of miles of rail bed are still intact."
Nye County District Two Commissioner Joni Eastley, who represents Tonopah, Beatty, Amargosa Valley and parts of Pahrump, didn't hold out much hope the railroad would boost economies of the small towns along the route.
"Hawthorne has a rail yard, an airport and they're still struggling," she said.
"The Board of County Commissioners resolved twice to support the Caliente route. I voted with the board to support the Caliente route because it was the best of the options available to us and the Mina route had never been part of the original EIS.
"It didn't matter with the Mina route or the Caliente route because they both come past Tonopah. If you're talking a strictly economic or fiscal aspect I never agreed with the Caliente route because of the cost it would take to put it in," Eastley said.
But she added, "The reason I am such a proponent of the Mina proposal, it gives the least amount of impact to mining and ranching in this part of the county."
When the DOE held an open house in Amargosa Valley in May 2004 to gather input about the Caliente route, Ed Goedhart, manager of the Ponderosa Dairy in Amargosa Valley asked, "Isn't the shortest distance between two points a straight line?" He was referring to the Chalk Mountain corridor, which would've cut right through Nellis Air Force Base.
Another possible route under consideration at one time was the Carlin Corridor, from Interstate 80 south. Other routes that were rejected would've connected Yucca Mountain with rail routes along the I-15 corridor via Jean.
Jeff Taguchi, a former Nye County Commissioner representing a consulting group, pushed the Hawthorne rail route at the May 2004 open house months after he stepped down from the commission. He pushed for continuing the Hawthorne rail line south to the I-15 corridor instead of a one-way, dead end rail line.
"We're talking about economic development. All rail ends at Yucca Mountain which is Nye County. Any rail that dead ends is not a good thing," said Nye County Commissioner Gary Hollis, the county commission's liaison on nuclear waste, "We've always been of the opinion that the rail should be used for dual purposes."
Hollis chaired a recent daylong technical workshop on Yucca Mountain in Pahrump at the Community College of Southern Nevada. "There was very little said about the Hawthorne corridor," he said.
But Hollis had more of a fatalistic attitude.
"I've been hearing rumors for the last year. It's really not up to Nye County, either route goes through Nye County," Hollis said. "It's something we don't have much control over."
Back in 2004, Taguchi said it would be disastrous for tourism along U.S. Highway 95 communities if the nuclear waste had to be shipped by truck until the rail route was completed.
Members of the Walker River tribe want a study to look at a rail segment traveling through the outskirts of the reservation away from Schurz, the main tribal town at the north end of Walker Lake. The tribe also wants assurances there won't be truck shipments, through the reservation, Tribal Chairwoman Genia Williams told the Las Vegas Review-Journal recently.
"It's just too early to tell what DOE is going to do," Hollis said.
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Pahrump Valley Times
June 7, 2006
Dennis Myers
Remembering Maya Miller 1915-2006
One of the drawbacks of Nevada's turbulent population is that its journalists often have little institutional memory to offer the public. It's difficult, for example, to fully tell the Yucca Mountain story without knowing 50 years of Nevada's relationship with the federal government on nuclear issues.
In 2002 I was working in a television newsroom when Howard Cannon died. He had been Nevada's most powerful U.S. senator, but almost no one in the newsroom knew his name. I had to fight to get an obituary on the air.
So I was pleased when the death of Maya Miller got some prominent attention. Even then, though, it did not adequately tell the tale of how she helped change Nevada.
Maya was the daughter of a Shell Oil executive, and as a result lived a very comfortable life on the oil stocks she inherited. That didn't keep her from working - her salary as an English instructor at the University of Nevada in 1946 was $800 - but it meant that she did not live with the difficulties many people do. That made many of her political activities all the more surprising.
For a long time she was a sort of society activist, involved with safe groups like the League of Women Voters, which she served as state president and a national board member. I remember reading an interview in which she explained how she ended up picketing the U.S. Census office in Reno in 1970 after a black women was denied a census taker's job. The League held a meeting, she said, and it was decided that one member could carry a picket sign. It seemed so delicate and polite.
But before the seventies were finished, she was one of Nevada's best known political activists, and many of her activities were not one bit polite. For one thing, she was arrested at that census protest and convicted of obstructing police and resisting arrest.
It seemed a turning point. She resigned from the board of the League of Women Voters when the group failed to oppose the Vietnam War. And she became deeply involved in the politics of welfare, lobbying at the Nevada Legislature for better treatment and more respect for welfare recipients to help them get off public assistance.
In this cause, Maya was aligning herself with one of the legislators' favorite targets, and it was a frustrating experience. It all came to a head with a well-known 1973 incident when legislators meeting with the welfare group had lunch brought in. They ate in front of the welfare group, which included some actual welfare recipients, and then offered the leavings to them. Maya grabbed the leftover hamburgers and fries and threw them on the floor.
You'd have thought she had thrown a bomb. Outrage filled the air. Legislators voted to bar her from the building unless she apologized. Faced with loss of her lobbying privileges, she gave one of the most grudging apologies ever penned: "I am sorry for the litter, but I cannot tell you I am sorry for my impatience or my sense of outrage at the violence Nevada does daily to its poor children. As I saw in the lounge on Friday watching men eat and talk while women listened and watched I was overwhelmed by the sense of those poor women's patience." The legislature never quite got over her. A couple of decades later I was passing a legislative security guard when the transceiver on his belt came alive: "Be aware - Maya Miller is in the building."
Later in the year at the Watergate hearings Maya's name showed up on one of Richard Nixon's enemies lists, used to target people for income tax audits and such unpleasantries. Soon afterward, one of Nevada's U.S. senators announced his retirement and she decided to run. (I was her press secretary.) Her insurgent, anti-Nixon candidacy was more successful than anyone expected and was within striking distance of a Democratic primary victory when Nixon resigned. Her poll rankings started falling and she lost, but even then she took 30 percent of the vote.
A few days after that election Maya and her daughter Kit traveled to a hearing in Germantown, Maryland, where they testified against storage of nuclear waste in Nevada - a wholly unremarkable stance today, but near-heresy then. One outcome of her senate campaign was the state's first anti-nuclear political group, Citizen Alert, founded by two of her volunteers.
Maya became a leader of the national women's movement, defeated Nevada's lone U.S. Representative in an election for chair of the Nevada delegation at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, traveled the world working for peace in places like Guatamala and Iraq. She personally provided seed money for dozens of Nevada election campaigns by women, changing the face of state politics both literally and figuratively.
I remember the last couple of times I saw her. One was at a memorial to her son, a Parkinson's sufferer who went swimming on the Titabaisseess River and was never seen again. She was desolate.
But not long after that, I also saw her in front of the Nevada capitol building, in the first rank of a huge crowd protesting against the war in Iraq. She never gave up.
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The Hill
June 07, 2006
special report: energy & environment
Expanding nuclear energy is a move we must commit to
Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.)
“For the sake of economic security and national security, the United States of America must aggressively move forward with the construction of nuclear power plants,’ President Bush recently said in a speech.
The president is right, and Congress agrees.
As chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and a member of the committee since 1995, I have worked closely with my committee members to write essential legislation and increase critical oversight to ensure the development of a safe, secure and affordable nuclear energy future for our country.
EPACT ´05
I worked closely with Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), chairman of Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear Safety, to write three nuclear bills, which were included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, or EPACT ´05, to provide for the safe and secure growth of nuclear power. The Environment and Public Works Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee worked together to develop a comprehensive approach toward the resurgence of nuclear power in the United States.
The committees worked collaboratively to address the critical provisions needed for a nuclear renaissance. These include Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) human-capital provisions, enhanced security around nuclear plants, liability and risk insurance, production tax credits and loan guarantees to provide the foundation for construction of new nuclear plants. Because of these, nine generating companies and consortiums across the United States are preparing applications for permission to build between nine and 19 new nuclear power plants.
If all 19 are built, they would generate between 20,000 and 25,000 megawatts of new electricity by 2020. Those plants would also create tens of thousands of construction jobs and approximately 10,000 high-paying, high-tech plant-operation jobs. One plant is capable of providing the entire electricity needs of an average U.S. city.
Now the NRC will have to do its part to provide a stable and predictable licensing process. The key is regulatory certainty. The potential number of applications, the interaction of the various types of approvals, the potential for duplication of efforts and the need to coordinate the development of new regulations and regulatory guidance with the industry´s license application preparation work all pose substantial challenges.
Through our oversight efforts, which began in 1997, the NRC moved to a risk-based decision process. The relicensing process had been estimated to take between five and 10 years. By concentrating on risks, they shortened the period to less than two years. They need to apply the same concepts to the licensing of new facilities.
As chairman of the committee that oversees the NRC, I am committed to ensuring that the NRC obtains the resources necessary to do its job. I am confident that the NRC can and will exercise its independent health and safety responsibilities without stifling the rebirth of nuclear power in this country.
OPENING YUCCA MOUNTAIN
Congress must solve the nuclear-waste issue, which appears to be more political than scientific.
Earlier this year, the Environment and Public Works Committee held its first ever hearing on the nation´s first permanent high-level waste repository. Though nuclear waste is stored safely on sites around the country, the eventual disposition of this waste was slated to be at Yucca Mountain in accordance with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987. Today, most of the scientific barriers surrounding the site have been adequately resolved, yet significant political barriers continue to prevent the site from opening.
After visiting this site, I strongly support the storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. More is known about Yucca Mountain than any other parcel of real estate on the planet. This knowledge extends well below the surface, through miles of tunnels and dozens of drillings. It has been confirmed in the laboratory, reviewed by independent experts and validated against information from analogous sites around the world.
Through all that has been gained by 20 years and $8.6 billion of world-leading scientific research, one thing has remained constant — the more we examine Yucca Mountain, the better it looks. There is certainly no scientific reason not to move directly forward with this project.
MOVING FORWARD
As chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I will continue to work with my colleagues on the committee and with the Energy Committee, along with the president, to work through the remaining issues to support increasing nuclear energy.
Inhofe is chairman of the Committee on the Environment and Public Works.
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Rutland Herald
June 07, 2006
Opinion
NRC's narrow view
June 7, 2006
Nuclear Regulatory Commission representatives are in the state today to hear public comment on the environmental risk of Vermont Yankee, step No. 11 of 33 outlined on the Web site for review of the nuclear power plant's application for a license extension. It's a pointillist approach to nuclear power.
In addition to the environmental assessment, there will also be a safety assessment and inspections, all of which are subject to review by the Advisory Committee for Reactor Standards, a group of scientists and experts who ensure the proper procedures have been followed, and finally, a hearing if requested — which it has been by the states of Massachusetts and Vermont as well as by the New England Coalition, a public watchdog group — and if the NRC deems a hearing appropriate. More on that later.
The NRC will be considering 92 separate factors, which taken together will determine whether the plant meets the threshold for approval based on environmental criteria.
Of the 92 factors, 69 are considered Category I or minor criteria, and every plant applying for a license extension must show they meet the standards. The remaining 23 are Category II or major criteria and are plant specific; a plant not on a river does not have to discuss the warming effect of its effluent on the river, for instance.
In general, the environmental review includes water, land and air quality issues, radiation protection, and socio-economic or "environmental justice" issues: namely, whether the plant in question takes advantage of poor or minority citizens' relative lack of clout.
Today's meetings — although they are for hearing public comment, they are not considered hearings, which are more formal legal proceedings — are so the NRC panel can find out what environmental concerns the public has about the nuke plant in their backyard.
Speakers will be given from three to five minutes to tell the panel their concerns. While the public can say any damned thing it pleases, the NRC will only be listening for comments within the scope of its inquiry. There will also be one-hour open house sessions before the meetings for more wide-ranging discussion.
The NRC calls this "a search for new and significant information." Specific concerns about Category I issues are definitely included because the public who live next to the plant are in a better position to spot the little things than an inspection team, however thorough. While the NRC will listen to proposals to better their process, they clearly feel they know what they're doing already.
But the panel is constrained in what it can consider. The NRC cannot by law require an applicant to exceed the standards laid down in the Clean Water Act, for instance. On dry cask storage, the NRC bases its review on the assumption that there will be appropriate long-term storage for spent fuel rods by 2025, although it prefers the terminology "within the first quarter of this century." It is unclear how building the planned Yucca Mountain national nuclear waste dump in one of the most impoverished Indian reservations in the country passes the "environmental justice" test, but a waste dump in Nevada is clearly outside the scope of a licensing hearing — sorry, meeting — in Vermont.
"What if" questions are likewise not within the scope of this review. Long-term disposal of radioactive waste, emergency planning and security are matters for another time or panel.
The licensing process promises to be methodical, precise and thorough, within its parameters.
But the community's overall concern is not being heard. When the plant was built, the community and the nation had a chance to discuss the bigger issues of nuclear power: Is it a good thing, what will we do with the waste, what are the appropriate safeguards? At the end of that discussion, Vermont Yankee was approved to run at 100 percent for 40 years. Now, without benefit of the big-picture debate, the NRC has decided the plant can run at 120 percent of what was considered safe and appropriate in 1972. It is in the middle of deciding whether it is OK for the plant to run at the new level for an extra 20 years beyond the original sell-by date.
The community should have the right to another full debate on the merits of nuclear power. A lot has changed in the interim. And although the state has promised a debate independent of the NRC review, the feds clearly expect to have the final say over the plant's future.
So the state has filed for a hearing, but don't be surprised if they don't get one unless they have questions about specific points the NRC has already agreed to review.
And don't be surprised if nobody from the federal government listens when Vermonters ask hard questions at today's meeting; they're too busy with their paint-by-number kit to look at the big picture.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 06, 2006
Letter: Maya Miller fought on behalf of Nevada
Thank you so much for the wonderful editorial on June 2 about Maya Miller, but I would be remiss in not pointing out one small fact. You mention that "most recently she opposed plans to build a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain." There is nothing recent about Maya's opposition to Yucca Mountain. I believe it is important to know that if not for Maya we might already have nuclear waste in this state. When Maya learned 32 years ago that Nevada was one of the states being considered for a national repository, she took action.
In October of 1974 activists Susan Orr and Katherine Hale set off around the state to rally support against transporting nuclear waste from around the country to Nevada because Maya asked them a simple question: What do you think we should do?
The response of Nevadans to what they thought about nuclear waste coming to the state? We don't want it. Citizen Alert was born and 31 years of activism was born. Because of the "birth" of Citizen Alert and Maya Miller, our governors (well, except for one former unenlightened one, Bob List), Clark County commissioners, Las Vegas councilmen and almost every elected official (well, the enlightened ones) consistently oppose this insane project.
Maya not only funded Susan and Katherine's travel around the state but continued on a regular basis until her death. She also very generously financially supported Citizen Alert.
So, Maya Miller, that remarkable woman, has forever left her footprints all over this state, and I am forever grateful for her presence!
Peggy Maze Johnson, Las Vegas
Editor's note: The writer is executive director of Citizen Alert, a Nevada-based environmental advocacy group.
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San Francisco Chronicle
June 06, 2006
New study finds $50 million in trips given to lawmakers
$500-a-night hotel rooms paid for by private groups
Zachary Coile
Chronicle Washington Bureau
Washington -- Members of Congress, their spouses and staffers have accepted nearly $50 million in travel paid for during the last five years by corporations, trade groups and nonprofits, according to a report released Monday.
While much of the travel was for legitimate congressional business, the study found that many trips were to vacation destinations such as Hawaii, Paris and Las Vegas, and included $500-a-night hotel rooms, rides on corporate jets, spa treatments and golf excursions.
The report found that at least 90 trips, with a value estimated at $145,000, were sponsored or co-sponsored by lobbyists, an apparent violation of ethics rules that ban lobbyists from paying for congressional travel.
Earlier this year, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., proposed banning all privately funded travel, saying the system had been abused after several top lawmakers took expensive golfing trips to Scotland paid for by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his clients.
But Hastert and other GOP leaders have backed off the idea, settling instead for a provision in the recently passed lobbying reform bill that would suspend all privately funded trips through the end of the year.
The new study, called "Power Trips," was the product of nine months of research by the Center for Public Integrity, Northwestern University's Medill News Service and American Public Media, a producer of public radio programs, which collected data from congressional travel disclosure forms covering January 2000 through mid-2005.
The study's authors found that many of the top sponsors of privately funded travel have major business interests before Congress.
One San Diego-based military contractor, General Atomics, spent about $660,000 on 86 trips for lawmakers, aides and their spouses. Some of the trips, to places including Australia and Turkey, were valued at more than $25,000 each. Most of the travelers were aides to top lawmakers on the Armed Services, Homeland Security and Appropriations committees.
General Atomics makes the Predator, an unmanned spy plane, and during some of the visits, congressional staffers participated in sales meetings where company officials pitched the drone planes to foreign governments, according to the report.
The company, in a statement released Monday, said it had cleared all its trips in advance with the House and Senate ethics committees.
Industry groups also are major sponsors of congressional trips. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the Washington lobbying arm of the nuclear power industry, has spent $1.1 million since 2000 taking lawmakers and staff on tours of nuclear plants in France, Spain, Japan and Nevada's Yucca Mountain, site of a proposed nuclear waste repository.
"We believe it's very important, given that nuclear energy can be a fairly complicated technology, to allow people to see first-hand what is involved," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the group.
Two Taiwanese trade groups -- the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce and the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association -- devoted nearly $3 million to sponsor about 600 trips to Taiwan to promote business ties between the two countries.
While the trips may be educational, sponsors of the new study said they also are planned to give corporations or trade groups special access to lawmakers and their top aides.
"If you have the member of Congress and his wife that you are entertaining royally, riding in a corporate jet, staying in a $550-a-night hotel with spa treatments and golf and tennis, there is a level of obligation that accrues," said Wendell Rawls, acting executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, D.C.
"You don't have to go back to that congressman or senator and remind them of what you did for them."
Congressional leaders were among the top recipients of trips paid by private groups. New House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Hastert were among the list of lawmakers whose offices took more than $350,000 in trips since 2000.
In the Bay Area, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, topped the list of congressional offices in private travel, taking $248,000 in trips. The travel included an $11,000 trip to Cape Town, South Africa, paid for by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the South African Institute for International Affairs, and a $9,600 trip to India sponsored by the Confederation of Indian Industry, a business group. Much of the travel was to events where Lee was a featured speaker.
"It's appropriate, if she is asked to speak somewhere, for the people who are asking her to speak to pay for that -- as opposed to the taxpayer," said Nathan Britton, Lee's spokesman.
Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, was second among Bay Area lawmakers with $218,000 in private travel, including a $10,000 trip to New Zealand for the lawmaker and his wife, Annette, sponsored by the International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources, an environmental group mostly funded by industry. But most of the travel by Pombo's office was by staffers on the House Resources Committee, which Pombo has chaired since 2003.
Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, also was a frequent traveler, accepting $201,000 in private trips since 2000. Along with his wife, Cynthia, he visited Helsinki, Finland ($8,000), the Cayman Islands ($7,000), Moscow ($8,700), Cancun, Mexico ($7,900), Rome ($8,800), Jamaica ($6,800) and Puerto Rico ($6,200) in trips sponsored by the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan group known for putting on policy seminars in exotic spots.
The new report has proven embarrassing for some lawmakers. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., had to file an amended disclosure form after researchers found that he violated House rules by taking his son and his wife on a trip to Cuba in 2002. Under House rules, private groups can pay the costs of only one relative traveling with a lawmaker, so Rangel reimbursed the costs of his son's travel.
On his original travel form, Rangel had listed the sponsor of the trip as the Minneapolis-based Sian Ka'an Conservation Foundation. But after the foundation reported it had not paid any travel costs, Rangel acknowledged the trip had been paid for by the Cuban government and a top Democratic Party fundraiser, grocery mogul John Catsimatidis.
Congressional travel
A new report found that members of Congress, their relatives and staffers accepted nearly $50 million in travel paid by private groups during the last five years. Among the highlights of the study:
-- Of the 23,000 trips since 2000, about 2,300 trips cost more than $5,000, at least 500 cost $10,000 or more, and 16 cost $25,000 or more.
-- Congressional travelers took at least 200 trips to Paris, 150 trips to Hawaii and 140 trips to Italy.
-- At least 90 trips, costing an estimated $145,000, were fully or partly paid for by lobbyists, an apparent violation of congressional ethics rules.
-- One San Diego-based military firm, General Atomics, spent $660,000 on 86 trips for lawmakers, spouses and staffers to places including Turkey and Australia.
-- The Association of American Railroads spent $450,000 on more than 160 trips for lawmakers and staff.
-- Lawmakers' trips included a summit on welfare reform in Scottsdale, Ariz., and a seminar on Social Security at Beaver Creek Ski Resort in Colorado.
-- At least 150 travel disclosure forms filed by lawmakers and their staff did not list who paid for the trip.
Source: Center for Public Integrity; Northwestern University's Medill News Service; American Public Media
E-mail Zachary Coile at zcoile@sfchronicle.com.
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Western Herald
June 05, 2006
Environmentalists and plant officials debate on safety license renewal
By Sara Johnson
Senior Writer
The Palisades nuclear power plant, which has been in operation for about 40 years, may be able to continue producing electricity for another 20 years if a license renewal is approved. However, many residents around its vicinity feel the dangers of the plant are just too great.
Located in Covert Township, in Van Buren County, Palisades can operate until 2011 under its current license, but the renewal will allow it to operate until 2031.
Alice Hirt, along with some 20,000 other Michigan residents, is leading a fight against a license renewal.
“A nuclear power plant has such a potential, in a very short period of time, of creating devastation and agony, [and] I cannot imagine allowing that,’ said Hirt, a West Michigan Environmental Action Council member.
Nuclear power plants are licensed for 40 years and that is what they should run for, she added.
She cited the high-level nuclear waste stored in canisters 150 yards away from Lake Michigan as one of the reasons she's against the license renewal.
“If they already have all this waste piled up on the shores of Lake Michigan, why in the world would you want 20 more years to make more waste that has no place to go?’ Hirt asked.
Palisades planned to send the nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, she said, but the area is not open right now as a depository.
“On a daily basis Palisades, like all other nuclear plants, releases into the environment small amounts of radioactivity. That is not something that we need to put into our environment,’ Hirt said.
Palisades was recently recognized as having the most embrittled reactor vessel in the country, according to a Nuclear Information and Resource Service press release.
Mixed with pressurized thermal shock, embrittlement can fracture the reactor vessel, which risks the loss of coolant. This could create a melt down and release disastrous radiation into the environment, according to the press release.
“The people that run the plant try to do a really good job,’ Hirt said. “I don't feel that they're culpable in this. I'm not blaming them. We're just saying this plant should not be re-licensed another 20 years.’
Essentially Palisades is like the poster child for embrittlement across the country. That's just the truth of the matter.’
Palisades Communications Manager Mark Savage disagreed, noting that it surprises him that people who have never set foot in a nuclear power plant claim to know everything about it.
“All of their statements basically have been fears and trying to build on fear. Ours is fact and the fact is we've operated safely for 35 years,’ Savage said. “We continue to earn that trust every day by continuing to operate safely.’
If there is a problem with the reactor vessel or anything else, the plant is shut down until the problem is fixed, he said.
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is here 24 hours a day. They hold the keys to the door. If we don't do what our license requires us to do, they'll take the keys away,’ Savage said. “If we don't operate safely, the NRC can shut us down.’
The plant is also required to take air, crop and Lake Michigan water samples every month to show that nothing harmful from the plant goes into the environment, and the data is then sent to the NRC and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
The communities surrounding Palisades greatly benefit, Savage said.
From the tax dollars given back to the community, the plant helps fund Covert Township's fire and police department, he said, adding that Covert's roads are all paved and have traffic lights, despite being situated in a rural location.
Savage also said Palisades gives about 44 percent of the tax dollars they receive to Covert area schools, one of which has an auditorium and a swimming pool - which is rare for a Class D school.
“They can spend more on educating kids at Covert Schools and the nearby districts around them [like] Bangor, Coloma and South Haven,’ he said.
Recent concerns about the Palisades have also been based on Consumers Energy's sudden decision to sell the plant. According to the NIRS press release, Consumers Energy has admitted to having “reactor vessel embrittlement concerns", while listing operating and nuclear risk as some of the reasons for selling Palisades.
Savage said Consumers Energy owned both Palisades and the Charlevoix nuclear plant Big Rock Point, which shut down in 1997 and left Consumers Energy with only Palisades.
Most utility companies, like Consumers Energy own six or seven plants, he said.
“To be able to maintain the plant properly at a lesser cost, Consumers decided at this time to sell the plant and actually get out of nuclear energy altogether. It was a matter of economics,’ Savage said.
Throughout the country, 42 other nuclear power plants have been granted renewal licenses. The plant submitted the renewal application in March and anticipates a decision early next year as to if the plant is re-licensed.
Savage said all of the estimated 650 Palisade's employees want to operate safely at all times.
“When it comes to every piece of our equipment in our plant, it's maintained properly and it's kept up to the high standards that the NRC has set for us and we set for ourselves,’ he said.
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Reuters
June 05, 2006
Reuters Summit-Cameco sees up to 10 new US nuke plants
NEW YORK, June 5 (Reuters) - The chief executive of the world's largest uranium producer, Cameco Corp. (CCO.TO: Quote, Profile, Research), on Monday said he believes that as many as 10 new nuclear power plants will be ordered by U.S. utilities over the next five years.
"Within say five years, I believe that six to 10 units will be ordered, and within that time frame ground will be broken and construction will be started," Cameco CEO Jerry Grandey told the Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit in New York.
Grandey said he is increasingly convinced that a nuclear renaissance is under way as demand for electricity around the world surges and attitudes toward nuclear energy shift. He believes that the first new nuclear plants in the United States could be ordered within the next two years.
The U.S. nuclear industry has been virtually frozen since the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, the worst such incident in U.S. history. No company has followed through with new plans to build a nuclear plant since.
But President George W. Bush has backed renewed construction of nuclear generation as part of his energy policy, and incentives for the plants were part of last year's energy bill.
Under the bill, electric utilities are in line to get $3.1 billion in tax credits to build new nuclear plants, with the first two plants to be built receiving substantially more than those that follow.
Also, in an indication of a possible shift in public opinion, some prominent environmentalists have said they now support nuclear power because the plants produce hardly any greenhouse gas emissions.
One impediment to the approval of new plants, Grandey said, was the absence of a repository or storage area for nuclear waste in the United States, like the one proposed at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert.
He said that while he expects politicians to deal with the problem of creating a national repository "at a very slow rate," there may be other solutions to the problem of nuclear waste.
"Ninety-five percent of the energy is left in the spent fuel when it's taken out of the reactor," Grandey said. "Uranium will ultimately be scarce ... Reprocessing technology will make (spent fuel), I believe, a tremendous resource."
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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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