Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, June 11, 2006
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Los Angeles Times
June 11, 2006

A few more nukes!

Environmentalists need to face the fact that nuclear power is less dangerous than fossil-fired global warming.

By George Monbiot

George Monbiot writes an environmental column for the Guardian of London (www.monbiot.com).

His book "Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning" will be published in Britain in October.

When I tell my "green" friends that I am rethinking nuclear power, they respond with outrage. I am an environmentalist, and, to a large extent, the green movements in the developed world arose from public concern about atomic energy.

For about 30 years we have seen nuclear power as dangerous, its radioactive wastes as unmanageable, the industry as incompetent and untrustworthy. In the environmental camp, any softening of this opposition is seen as a betrayal.

But climate change and falling energy reserves demand that we reopen the question. The nuclear industry now claims that nuclear power is the most reliable answer to the global warming caused by the overuse of fossil fuels. It argues that new technologies make it safe and cheap.

I've spent the last year searching for a way to cut carbon emissions by 90%, which is necessary to prevent runaway global warming. One of the hardest problems is how to generate enough electricity. My sympathies lie with renewable power. Alongside a massive energy-efficiency program, it plainly provides part of the answer. But it cannot supply all of our electricity needs. The rest must come from somewhere, and to dismiss nuclear power without considering what the alternatives involve would be irresponsible.

I still detest the nuclear industry and its efforts to hoodwink the public about its costs, its dangers and its record. But I've reluctantly concluded that some of its arguments have merit.

It is true, for example, that a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl is highly unlikely to happen again because no new power station will be built without a containment vessel, which prevents most radiation from escaping in an accident. But the mining, processing and use of uranium will continue to be accompanied — as they always have been — by leaks into the environment.

It now looks as though radioactive waste can be stored safely. The Finnish authority responsible for nuclear waste disposal has developed a method that looks foolproof. The problem is that it is expensive, and the nuclear industry has a long record of cutting corners. One British company was caught throwing nuclear waste into open shafts it had dug above crumbling coastal cliffs. Another admitted that it had been keeping plutonium in uncovered ponds for more than 30 years. Workers at the U.S. Geological Survey, which is responsible for testing the Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada, falsified the rates of water percolation, apparently to make the site seem safer than it is.

After reading reams of conflicting data, I now also believe that global supplies of uranium are not the limiting factor many feared. On the other hand, the threat of nuclear terrorism can never be wholly dismissed, and the more fissile materials that are extracted and refined, the more opportunities there will be for people to obtain them. But although the radiation released by accidents or terrorists could kill hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, climate change caused by burning fossil fuels threatens hundreds of millions.

Though nuclear power is plainly less dangerous than climate change, I would still like to avoid building new plants if possible. But the real danger is this: If we oppose nuclear power without demonstrating that there are viable alternatives, we become, in effect, lobbyists for the coal industry. In Eurasia, there are still abundant supplies of natural gas, but in North America, gas production has already peaked and is in long-term decline. Already, coal supplies 32% of U.S. electricity, while natural gas supplies 24% and nuclear power 10%. As 90% of remaining U.S. fossil energy reserves take the form of coal, gas generators are likely to be replaced by coal plants. The same applies to aging nuclear generators, if they are not replaced by new ones.

If you believe that burning coal sounds more benign than nuclear power, I invite you to turn on your computer and search for images of the "mountaintop removal" being carried out by coal-mining companies in the Appalachians. It looks as if a nuclear disaster already has happened. The forests have been flattened, the hilltops blown off, the valleys filled with sterile rubble. Coal is also the worst of all fuels as far as climate change is concerned. It contains 40% more carbon per unit of energy than gas.

But if fossil fuels and nuclear power are bad choices, could 90% of the electricity in the United States be generated by greener means? There is no doubt that, if it could be harnessed, the U.S. has enough ambient energy to provide all the electricity it now uses. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute points out that the wind in a few counties in the Dakotas is, in theory, sufficient to supply the entire nation with electricity. Though no one is suggesting that all U.S. energy should be drawn from one source, the development of cheap, high-voltage direct current, or DC, lines of the kind now used in Brazil, Sweden and Australia would permit even the most remote sources to be exploited. The problem with transporting power has been that the electricity load carried by traditional alternating current, or AC, systems declines as the distance increases. But DC systems don't suffer such "line losses." In principle, DC lines could open up wind and wave power across the entire U.S. continental shelf, and solar electricity throughout its deserts.

What about the cost? Although estimates vary widely, electricity from large-scale wind farms appears to be cheaper than electricity from either nuclear power or coal, and its costs are falling fast. Even solar thermal electricity, a more expensive technology than wind, is now cost-effective in some places. A report published last year showed that during times of peak demand in Southern California, the cost of electricity produced by solar thermal plants is roughly equal to the wholesale price of conventional power. Peak demand in sunny places, driven by air-conditioning, coincides with maximum solar output.

The problem with alternative energies is that the coincidence of demand and supply is by no means guaranteed. Power companies can fire up their standby coal plant when demand rises, but they can't turn on the wind or ask the sun to shine. This problem can be partly overcome by using long-distance DC cables: When there's a flat calm in New York, there could be a gale blowing in Chicago. The wider the net from which electricity can be drawn, the more reliable ambient power becomes. But beyond a certain point — perhaps 50% or so of total supply — power from intermittent sources cannot be guaranteed. Part of the remainder could be supplied by burning biomass such as straw or wood. But farm waste is limited, and mass planting of fuel crops has implications for water tables and the global food supply.

So, with gas growing scarcer, where do Americans find the rest of their power? It seems to me that the U.S. has only two choices: either to build a new generation of nuclear plants or to find a genuinely acceptable, nonpolluting means of mining and burning coal.

Such a means might exist, if underground coal gasification fulfills its early promise. In principle, you can partly combust underground coal seams, capture the gas they produce and scrub the pollutants from it, producing either methane or hydrogen. The methane can be burned in power stations and the carbon dioxide in their exhausts extracted and buried, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 90%. The hydrogen could be piped to people's homes and used in mini-generators to provide both electricity and heat. But unless great care is taken, underground combustion could contaminate supplies of groundwater.

Picking "clean coal" or nuclear power is not a choice I would like to make. But if there is one thing I have learned in studying our energy systems, it is that there are no painless solutions.

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San Francisco Chronicle
June 11, 2006

Waste storage dilemma crimps nuclear future

David R. Baker
Chronicle Staff Writer

Avila Beach, San Luis Obispo County -- In a quiet, air-conditioned room deep inside the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant sits a small pool filled with water colored an unnatural blue. It's packed with radioactive waste.

The pool holds roughly half of all the used fuel ever pulled from the plant's reactors. The other half sits in a second concrete tank nearby, slowly cooling beneath 25 feet of water. Some fuel rods have been there about 20 years.

Both pools are nearly full. Neither was designed to store this much waste. But there's nowhere else to put it.

The government long ago promised Diablo's owner, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., that it would haul away the waste and entomb it deep below Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But, in the face of unrelenting opposition from Nevada residents irate over the prospect of becoming a dumping ground for nuclear waste, the repository never opened.

With the nation's appetite for energy growing, the U.S. nuclear industry appears poised for a renaissance. President Bush has made building nuclear plants, for the first time in decades, a cornerstone of his energy policies. And some former foes are willing to give the technology another look, lured by the promise of generating abundant power without belching greenhouse gases from more fossil fuel plants.

But the industry and its supporters in Washington still have not resolved one of the biggest issues that derailed nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s -- what to do with the waste, which remains radioactive for thousands of years. Yucca Mountain remains bottled up by Nevada politicians.

One alternative would be to recycle spent fuel rods, extracting radioactive material for reuse and reducing the amount of waste that would need to be stored. But the idea has long been blocked by fears that plutonium removed from old rods could fall into the hands of terrorists or rogue countries trying to build nuclear weapons.

So Diablo and other nuclear plants must keep their waste on-site -- indefinitely. PG&E installed replacement racks that pack more rods into Diablo's pools and has even started building another storage facility that could cost up to $200 million on a hillside behind the plant.

"The government hasn't lived up to its contracts, so what's happening now is Plan B," said David Vosburg, a PG&E project manager. "The extra racks are filling up. The same thing's happening across the country."

Extra storage sites next to nuclear plants, however, won't solve the problem. They will just buy time.

"You just have to hope that there's a national solution, because this won't be a Diablo issue -- it will be a national issue," said Richard Hagler, project engineer for the new storage facility.

Anyone living near a nuclear plant also lives near a long-term storage site for radioactive waste. Those facilities aren't long-term by the standards of engineers, who must consider what happens to radioactive material over centuries. Homeowners, however, find themselves spending decades close to used fuel rods, with no end in sight.

"They promised us that the waste would be removed and the government would come to the rescue," said Jack Biesek, 58, who lives in a lushly wooded canyon about 7 miles downwind of Diablo. "I think it's going to stay there. The handwriting's on the wall."

Without a long-range solution for the waste problem, America's much-heralded "nuclear spring" may never come.

"Obviously, waste storage is the elephant in the room," said Frank Bowman, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's main lobbying group.

America now has roughly 40,000 metric tons of spent radioactive fuel, according to the institute, with another 2,000 metric tons added each year. Even if Yucca Mountain opens, the nation would soon need another facility just like it. Reprocessing the fuel would relieve that pressure, but it's far from clear that reuse will ever happen.

"If we don't recycle, we're going to have to build a new Yucca Mountain every few decades," said U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell.

Used fuel rods are hot and highly radioactive when they emerge from a reactor. Both the heat and the radioactivity drop substantially within the first several years, the radiation falling by a factor of 1,000 in a decade, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. But the rods remain dangerously radioactive for many thousands of years.

Diablo Canyon has relied on its twin spent-fuel pools to store waste since the plant began commercial operation in 1985.

They sit not far from the towering containment domes that hold Diablo's reactors, separated from the outside world by steel walls and concrete floors. The plant refuels every 18 to 21 months, plugging some new rods into the reactors and transferring old ones to the storage pools.

Standing 12 feet tall, each rod is a metal tube filled with uranium pellets -- the source of the plant's power. The rods are narrow, about the width of a fat pencil, and are bundled into assemblies that weigh 1,350 pounds each. Workers maneuver the assemblies into the pools through a series of water-filled channels to keep the fuel cool, making sure it never touches open air. A crane grabs the assemblies underwater and lowers them into waiting racks.

Each pool was designed to hold 270 assemblies. Now, the racks have been reconfigured to store 1,324.

One pool already has 1,064. The other, 1,100.

"Five percent of the state's electricity generation for the last 20 years is sitting in that pool," Vosburg said, as a current of circulating water rippled the surface. The water, surrounded by concrete walls 6 feet thick, dissipates heat coming from the fuel rods and shields the outside world from radiation. Boric acid, added to the water to absorb neutrons, gives the pool its deep blue tint.

Later this year, PG&E will install temporary racks in both pools to provide 154 more storage slots each. Even so, they will run out of room by 2010.

So PG&E, like operators of the nation's 64 other nuclear power plants, is trying to make do.

On a shaved-off hillside overlooking the plant, workers pour the concrete floor for Diablo's next storage facility. Instead of using a pool, PG&E will seal old fuel assemblies inside 20-foot-tall canisters lined up like squat obelisks on an open field. There will be no walls or ceiling of any kind -- just the canisters themselves.

The technology is called dry cask storage, and it isn't new. Its use at Diablo, however, has alarmed many of the plant's long-standing opponents.

They fear that the field, which could eventually hold 138 casks, will make an even more alluring target for terrorists than the plant itself, perched on a rocky stretch of the central California coast. A commandeered jet, they say, could approach Diablo from the water, fly over the plant and crash into the casks, spewing radioactive material into the air.

"How is that safe from terrorism, especially when there's no 'no fly zone' at the plant?" asked Rochelle Becker of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility. "California needs to know, how much radioactive waste are we willing to store on our coast, for how long?"

Last week, a federal court ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should have examined the possibility of a terrorist assault on Diablo before giving PG&E permission to build the dry cask facility. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the commission to study what threat an attack could pose to the local environment. However, a PG&E spokesman said construction will continue during the review, with the first casks scheduled to be loaded with fuel next fall.

The company considers the facility secure.

Standing above the field, PG&E engineer Hagler sketched out possible lines of terrorist attack. Fly a commercial airliner in from the west, over the ocean, and the hillside would rip off the plane's right wing before it could reach the casks. Approach from the east, and the pilot would have to hug the contours of several protecting hills before making a swift, steep plunge into the field.

Those obstacles wouldn't matter as much to a small plane. But small aircraft, he said, lack the mass to smash open the steel-and-concrete casks.

"An aircraft that size? It'd be like a bee hitting a windshield," Hagler said. "I know the cask is going to win."

To some neighbors, terrorism isn't the only issue. They object to the possibility that Diablo's waste will never leave, staying decade after decade on the coast they love until its presence becomes permanent.

"This whole area is going to be a carbuncle ruined for millennia," Biesek said.

Since 1976, he has lived in nearby See Canyon, along a stream shaded by oak and pine trees. He and his wife, Susan, have long opposed the plant. They keep a Geiger counter in the house, although it needs new batteries.

The Bieseks question whether any storage technology can isolate nuclear waste from the environment forever, particularly in a place prone to earthquakes and other disasters. If radioactive material from Diablo found its way into an aquifer or the ocean, they said, who knows how widespread the effects could be?

"It's not like this backyard dump is just our dump," Susan Biesek said one recent morning, as birdsong filled the canyon's cool air. "Where do you move that's safe?"

Such talk drives nuclear engineers to distraction. Used nuclear fuel does pose risks, they say, but those risks can be controlled.

"I hate the word 'dump,' " said Mark Somerville, a PG&E physicist specializing in radiation protection. "I sympathize with people who, like we did, thought there'd be an endgame where things would be handled long term. ... But it's anything but a dump. It's a very carefully controlled process."

Meanwhile, the Bush administration keeps pushing to open Yucca Mountain and recycle used fuel. Storing waste on-site, Deputy Energy Secretary Sell said, is safe but won't solve the problem.

"As an interim solution, it's acceptable," he said. "As a long-term solution, it's not."

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

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Denver Post
June 11, 2006

Trainload of debate on nuke storage

Environmental groups vow to fight a Utah tribe's plan. If approved, waste would likely roll on Denver tracks.

By Michael Riley
Denver Post Staff Writer

Skull Valley, Utah - The rumble of trucks along Utah 196 is the only thing breaking the silence that swallows the cluster of a dozen mostly empty houses. Tumbleweeds roll across an empty baseball field. Abandoned cars litter overgrown lots.

The home of the Skull Valley band of Goshute Indians - all 120 members - is 18,000 acres of mostly cheatgrass and sagebrush. But it's also the focus of one of the biggest political disputes in the West, a bitter controversy over America's nuclear- waste policy and a clamorous environmental debate.

The Goshutes have signed a deal with a consortium of utilities to create a temporary storage site on their reservation, 45 miles west of Salt Lake City, for as much as 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods that once powered nuclear reactors.

The idea is controversial: Seal the radioactive rods in 4,000 concrete and steel casks, surround them with two 8-foot fences, and let them sit for decades in a kind of nuclear parking lot until a more permanent solution is ready.

Much of that waste would probably travel to the reservation by train through Denver.

Environmental groups call it irresponsible. Some of the tribe's own members say it violates American Indian values. The governor of Utah has vowed to lie down on the railroad tracks to stop the project.

But over the past six months, federal officials have made key decisions that signal an important shift in the country's strategy for handling nuclear waste.

Those moves, analysts say, make it likely that the Goshutes' project or something like it will become a reality within the next few years.

For tribal leaders, the waste site is a way to revive a dying reservation, where only about 15 tribal members still live permanently. They say it will provide jobs and millions of dollars in lease payments to pay for a health clinic, housing and infrastructure.

As for environmental concerns, Leon Bear, the tribe's chairman, points out that his reservation is flanked by an Air Force bombing range on one side, a low-level nuclear disposal facility on another.

"How can you violate something when it's already been violated?" Bear asked.

The state of Utah sees it differently. State officials have created new laws, sponsored a federal wilderness area and taken the U.S. government to court in a nearly decade-long struggle to halt a project it says is a threat to the state's largest city.

"We will leave no stone unturned," said Mike Lee, chief counsel for Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. "It may take years, but ... we will end this plan and dance gleefully on its grave when it's dead."

But with the Bush administration pushing nuclear power as a means to bolster energy independence, the winds from Washington appear to be blowing the Goshutes' way.

In February, Private Fuel Storage, as the project is known, received an operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

After nearly a decade of bureaucratic wrangling, one of the last significant hurdles is a pending permit from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which manages land outside the reservation's borders.

"To people on the northeastern seaboard, we're just the square states," Lee said. "We have a whole lot of space, and a lot of it's good for nothing but cacti and prairie dogs."

Costs and potential dangers

A 14-foot spent fuel rod assembly weighs 1,000 pounds and contains highly radioactive isotopes of plutonium, neptunium and cesium, among others. A terrorist trying to sneak part of an unshielded rod out of a plant would die of radiation exposure before reaching his car.

In the open air, the radiation from an exposed rod travels only a few hundred feet. But if damaged casks are caught in a fire, critics say radioactive material carried by the debris in smoke could irradiate a city dozens of miles away.

It is precisely those attributes that have made the national debate over where the rods should go and how to get them there long and bitter.

The country's long-standing plan is to bury the waste deep in Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where it could be sealed off for millennia. But that plan is at least 15 years behind schedule, plagued by technical and political problems. The delay has thrown America's nuclear energy policy into disarray.

The waste now sits at 72 reactor sites nationwide, in cooling ponds and casks. In at least eight cases, the reactors have long since closed, their owners maintaining a security force simply to guard what is essentially very dangerous garbage.

Analysts estimate it costs utilities at least $500 million a year to store and guard the waste. Dozens of nuclear plant owners have sued the federal government for failing to take title when it promised, in 1998.

Government lawyers have already lost several of those cases, and the ultimate liability is likely to reach into the billions, said Steven Kraft of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobbying group.

"Our position is clearly that we believe the federal government needs to begin moving this fuel off of our sites. There is a law. There's a contract," Kraft said. "It is in our view a far sounder thing to do to move the fuel to a central facility where ... it is easier to deal with."

Many key decision-makers are coming to that realization as well. In March, the NRC granted Private Fuel Storage a license to open an interim repository on the Goshute reservation.

Last month, the House Appropriations Committee approved a massive energy bill that pilloried the Energy Department's lack of progress on Yucca Mountain and allocated $30 million for the agency to begin establishing an interim storage site, either on its own or through a private venture like Private Fuel Storage, or PFS.

The funds must still be approved by the full Congress.

Analysts say momentum also is coming from a major push to begin building nuclear power plants again, after a 28-year hiatus. President Bush last year signed the 2005 Energy Policy Act, creating incentives for utilities to build nuclear plants, including loan guarantees, production tax credits and federal risk insurance.

Ten new plants are under consideration, but no utility has applied for a construction permit, citing barriers from cost to a lack of a place to put waste.

"People used to say, 'You can't build new nuclear plants until you solve the waste problem.' ... Now it's 'We're going to build nuclear plants, so you better solve the waste problem,"' Kraft said.

Post-Sept. 11 terrorism fears

In its licensing studies, the NRC found that the casks proposed for the Goshute storage site could be safely left in the open for decades. When Utah officials raised the possibility of an Air Force jet crashing into a waste canister while using the nearby bombing range, modeling showed there was less than a one-in-a-million chance that radiation would be released.

But critics point out that the nation has never tried to move such a large amount of nuclear waste in a short period before and that pronouncements of the effort's safety depend on every single cask conforming perfectly to specifications.

Kevin Kamps, a radioactive-waste expert for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which opposes the PFS project, said that a 2000 quality- assurance audit of one of the largest cask manufacturers found widespread welding flaws and other serious manufacturing errors.

Nor did the NRC's licensing panel consider the possibility of a terrorist attack on the site, ruling that it was outside the panel's authority.

But Utah officials say that in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world, 4,000 casks of highly radioactive material make a particularly luring terrorist target.

A 1998 military test showed that the casks could be virtually obliterated by a TOW anti-tank missile, leading to a significant release of radioactive material.

Utah has passed laws prohibiting transport of nuclear waste on its roadways, but those were struck down by a judge.

In a state where politicians traditionally oppose wilderness designation of public lands, Utah's congressional delegation last year proposed the Cedar Mountain wilderness, a desolate section of land that also happened to be in the path of a planned rail spur that would have carried waste to the reservation.

Sponsors now say they will load the waste onto massive trucks near Interstate 80 and drive it to the proposed site, a step Utah says represents a hazard to local traffic.

"We will do whatever we can to stop" the waste, said Denise Chancellor, Utah's assistant attorney general, "just like PFS will do anything they can to try to get it there."

"A piece of the American pie"

At the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, abandoned cars litter overgrown lots. On the door of a small community center, a bacteria alert warns residents not to drink the water. And the tribe is paid to take truckloads of garbage from Salt Lake City.

But where others may see desolation, tribal leader Leon Bear sees potential.

Neither PFS nor the tribe will disclose the specifics of their deal, but some tribe members say it could mean at least $40 million for the Goshutes over 50 years.

They can already see benefits. Along a narrow and pocked road, new modular homes sit on blocks, paid for through the exclusivity agreement the band has signed with PFS. But many sit empty because their owners now live in Salt Lake and other cities where they have gone to find work.

The lease payments from PFS could pay for health care, a clinic and new infrastructure, Bear said. And the storage site could provide jobs to tribe members as security personnel or technicians for decades to come.

But the bargain's costs are visible as well.

Sitting at a broken picnic table outside a rundown home, Margene Bullcreek said that, so far, the money has been dished out to those members of the band who back the project, while opponents are excluded.

"We respect the air, the water and the mountain. We respect the eagle," Bullcreek said. "All that is more important than these promises of having millions of dollars."

Bear said his job is not to protect the past but preserve a future.

"I'm a traditionalist up to a certain point, but you can't go back and live in a wickiup," a traditional Goshute dwelling made from sagebrush, Bear said.

"I was raised in the '70s, when it was all about promoting economic development. I was taught I could have a piece of the American pie.

"Most of our kids are going to school, trying to get an education," he said. "That's what I'm looking at."

--Staff writer Michael Riley can be reached at mriley@denverpost.com or 303-820-1614.

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Green Left Weekly
June 11, 2006

All the way with the USA: Howard´s dream of a nuclear future

Christine Milne

Make no mistake: the current debate about nuclear power in Australia is a furphy. The real agenda is the development of a nuclear enrichment industry and a global nuclear waste dump to store huge volumes of depleted uranium and to take high-level waste from all over the world, including the United States.

The prime minister´s task force is hand picked for the task. It will find that nuclear power is not economically viable but that an expanded uranium mining, nuclear enrichment industry and waste dump will be highly lucrative and will make Australia a key player in the global nuclear industry.

The plan is to develop the enrichment facility in South Australia in association with the huge expansion of the Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs and to transport the enriched uranium via the Halliburton-owned railway to Darwin for leasing to overseas countries like India. By leasing and not selling, Australia will be able to join the US in circumventing the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Since it is clear that nuclear is too slow, too dirty and too dangerous to address climate change or energy security, why has nuclear rushed onto the Australian agenda? Look no further than the mutual admiration club of US President George Bush and PM John Howard.

During the Vietnam war Australians had to endure the sickening refrain “All the way with LBJ’, referring to the federal government´s support of then-US President Lyndon B. Johnson. Now we are seeing Howard clamouring to be part of President Bush´s grand nuclear plan, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).

Howard, a long-time admirer of all things American just as former prime minister Menzies was of all things British, could hardly contain his excitement after his recent visit to Washington, that President Bush had a real strategic role for Australia to play in the US´s 21st century empire.

The US wants to control which countries can access nuclear technologies and develop civilian nuclear power, and it wants to find a global waste dump for high-level nuclear waste, including its own. What´s more, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, set up by the US to oversee rules governing the supply of uranium, nuclear fuel and technology, has now offended its creator, with Sweden and Switzerland blocking consensus on the US-India nuclear technology deal because it undermines the NPT. Instead of respecting multilateralism and the rule of law, the US now wants to set up a new organisation that will do what it wants.

Who better for Bush to turn to than his good friend and ally Howard? Australia, with 40% of the world´s uranium reserves and wide open spaces ripe for a dump, presents a perfect solution.

The US initiative for a GNEP proposes a number of nuclear fuel supply centres around the world. GNEP participants would offer other countries a reliable supply of nuclear fuel and fuel services including waste storage.

While Australia might argue that exporting uranium will not lead to leakage into weapons programs in countries like China and India, the US is keenly aware of the danger and the loopholes in safeguard arrangements. It also fears that bomb-ready plutonium derived from re-processing spent nuclear fuel rods from power plants would be susceptible to misuse, theft or terrorist attack. But it cannot secure support in the United States for a dump at home.

So to address the nuclear proliferation and waste storage and disposal issues, US deputy energy secretary Clay Sell said: “We hope to develop an international regime … so that fuel can be leased to a country interested in building a reactor and taking fuel, but then the fuel can be taken back to the fuel cycle country.’

This plan for fuel suppliers to take back the high-level waste would suit the US because public opposition there has stalled the US government´s plan to open a long-term spent nuclear fuel and waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Howard´s remark while announcing the nuclear task force - “If we are not a nuclear fuel supplier then that shuts us out of certain gatherings’ - reveals exactly where the PM is coming from. Just as he was desperate to be part of the Coalition of the Willing that invaded Iraq in 2003, he is determined not to be left out of Bush´s nuclear plan.

It is ironic that those who stand in front of the flag and invoke the memory of ANZAC to reaffirm their patriotism are the very politicians who are compromising Australia´s independence and global positioning so profoundly.

The Greens do not share a vision of Australia as an adjunct to the US. We do not want a nuclear future for Australia as a global uranium supplier and nuclear waste dump. We want Australia to be a world leader in renewable industries like solar and build up a global reputation for solar thermal and sliver cell technologies. We want to be part of the global drive for peace and a solution to global warming.

[Senator Christine Milne is the Green´s energy and climate change spokesperson.]

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Pahrump Valley Times
June 09, 2006

Nuclear Waste Office

Commissioners turn aside bids for no-bid contracts

County Making Offer For on-Site Oversight

By Mark Waite
PVT

Dale Hammermeister, who recently stepped down as director of the Nye County Nuclear Waste and Federal Facilities Office, was rebuffed by Nye County commissioners Tuesday when he requested a no-bid $95,000 consulting contract to continue overseeing the nuclear waste program.

"I do have concerns with this. The person didn't want to be manager, they were leaving the area, now we're going to enter into a high dollar contract," Nye County Commissioner Patricia Cox said.

Cox added the only way to build the local economy is to have people living in the community. Hammermeister's firm, GeoSystems Analysis Inc., is based in Reno.

"It'd be pretty difficult for us to competitively bid this piece of work because of Dr. Hammermeister's unique knowledge about what needs to be done," said Dave Swanson, acting director of the Nye County Nuclear Waste and Federal Facilities Office.

"We're over a barrel because we have no one overseeing the science in this program," Commissioner Joni Eastley said.

Cox said the county should go out for proposals. If no one else applies, commissioners can hire Hammermeister's firm, she said.

A $60,000 non-competitive bid by his wife Susy Hammermeister for nuclear oversight was also denied.

"To say no one is qualified in the United States is stretching it," Cox said. "It's not just handing over a cushy contract to an inside firm."

Eastley said county officials should consider hiring a manager for the office to fill Hammermeister's place.

Swanson said the county is making an offer to an individual to be the on-site representative for that job. In addition, Swanson assured Eastley, "We have a talented group of scientists to assist us."

The county has received applications from 13 individuals interested in the Nuclear Waste and Federal Facilities Office manager position, which have been forwarded to a committee consisting of Interim County Manager Ron Williams, Interim Assistant County Manager Rick Marshall and Swanson.

But Nye County Commissioner Gary Hollis, the county commission's liaison on nuclear waste, recommended Swanson not be part of the review committee.

After the request was turned down, Swanson told commissioners, "Dale could've completed this work a lot more efficiently."

Swanson's memo stated Hammermeister had been instrumental in defining the roles and objectives of the Independent Science Investigation Program for the past five years.

The program is in the last year of a five-year cooperative program with the U.S. department of Energy.

Swanson said Hammermeister had also been working on several technical projects.

Some of Hammermeister's work would have included technical reports on groundwater impacts in the Lathrop Wells area, plans for alternate sources of long-term funding of scientific work to assess Yucca Mountain impacts and a technical review of strategy AND planning documents.

Susy Hammermeister would have edited documents to meet industry and agency standards on the Community Protection Plan, Amargosa Desert Village concept plan, public safety cooperative agreement, and the economic benefits study of the proposed Nevada rail and other work.

While the Hammermeisters' bids weren't approved, Nye County Commissioners approved a contract not to exceed $250,000 with the Nevada Environmental Monitoring and Research Institute, or NEMRI, to study impacts to the county's nuclear waste repository program from President Bush's proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

The president's proposal would promote nuclear energy to meet growing electricity demands by having nations with secure nuclear capabilities provide fresh fuel and recycled fuel to other nations who agree to use nuclear energy for generating power.

The emphasis on recycling nuclear fuel may delay the Yucca Mountain program, according to Swanson's memo to commissioners.

"There's a lot of people who think the recycling of nuclear fuel makes Yucca Mountain obsolete, and it doesn't," said Don Baepler, founder and director of NEMRI.

Baepler said a demonstration project on recycling nuclear waste in Pahrump would be a 20-year project. He said 98 percent of the energy in the spent fuel rods is still available for recycling. The radioactive material has a 300- to 500-year half-life, Baepler said.

"This process does not produce pure plutonium. So it would be very difficult for anyone to convert it into weapons grade," Baepler said.

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Pahrump Valley Times
June 09, 2006

Nevada's stupidity, the world's loss

By Bob McCracken

Former Nevada Senator Chic Hecht, Mayer Jacob Hecht, known since childhood as Chic, a nickname bestowed by an uncle, was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, on November 30, 1928. He graduated from the University of Missouri in 1949, where he majored in business. After graduation, he served as a counterintelligence agent in Berlin in 1952 and 1953. He was named to the Army Intelligence Hall of Fame in 1988. He was a resident of Nevada for 40 years and had a successful career in business. He served in the Nevada State Senate from 1962 to 1975. In 1982, as an underdog given no chance to win, he defeated incumbent U.S. Senator Howard Cannon in one of the greatest political upsets in Nevada history. He served one term in the U.S. Senate and was defeated by Harry Reid in a bid for re-election in 1988. He served as Ambassador to the Bahamas from 1989 to 1994. He died May 15, 2006.

Chic Hecht was a gentle and honorable man in the best sense of those terms. He was that rare type of human being who insisted on collecting as much information as he could on an issue before making an important decision. He had been a long-time supporter of Ronald Reagan in his bid for the presidency, and during his six years in the U.S. Senate, Hecht enjoyed a special relationship with Reagan and was given easy access to the president and the members of the Reagan administration. In a speech delivered November 1, 1988, in Reno, President Reagan said of Sen. Hecht, "He gets the job done for the people of Nevada. Chic doesn't grab headlines; he doesn't showboat. . . . He works hard, he's effective. . . . I feel a special friendship for Chic. You see, we began working side by side long before he went to Washington."

While in the Senate, Hecht served on the Senate Energy and Intelligence Committees. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed the month prior to Hecht's moving to Washington. The Senate Energy Committee had jurisdiction over that legislation and the nation's effort to deal with nuclear waste issues, including Yucca Mountain. Thus for six years Sen. Hecht was front and center as the nuclear waste and Yucca Mountain debate unfolded. He had an inside perspective on how the issue became so contentious in Nevada and how our nation's effort to deal with nuclear power and spent nuclear fuel stalled out.

Before I move on, I would like to relate an anecdote that I think says a lot about Chic Hecht and who he was.

After the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in December 1982, many living in central Nevada assumed, perhaps naively, that it would bring jobs to rural central Nevada. After all, both Yucca Mountain and the Nevada Test Site were located in Nye County. Over the previous 30 years, numerous rural residents had held good jobs at the Test Site. Yucca Mountain adjoined the Test Site and was to be a big-ticket item, so the expectation seemed reasonable.

Although numerous people were hired out of Las Vegas and others brought in from Washington D.C., Tennessee, and who knows where else in the ten months following the passage of the act, as far as anyone knew, there was still no one on the payroll from Nye County. The Department of Energy (DOE) was making little visible effort to embed the project in the local community. Though there was talk of putting 70,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel into the county, there was no effort to get the county really involved with the undertaking.

A small group in Tonopah became concerned about the lack of hiring in Nye County. In the fall of 1983, Bobbie Kennedy, a leader of this group, called Sen. Hecht's office in Washington and spoke with an aide, explaining the situation. The aide told Kennedy he would inform the senator of her concerns. That same day, Sen. Hecht personally called Bobbie. He assured her he would talk to the appropriate people at DOE. The next day, she got a call from an official of the Yucca Mountain project in Las Vegas. I'm not sure how many Nye County jobs this call produced - perhaps a few - but the incident illustrates, I believe, Sen. Hecht's concern with and willingness to help his constituents. For me, it says what kind of politician he was, and more importantly, what kind of man he was.

Over the next 20 years, I followed the meanderings of the Yucca Mountain project. Most of what one heard was incessant negativity from Nevada's political establishment. As our civilization rushed down the fast track toward perhaps irreparable damages caused by the twin monsters, global warming and declining reserves of oil and gas, seldom was a constructive word heard.

About three years ago, I became interested in what role rural Nevada, Nye County in particular, might play in edging the world back from the brink. That is when I decided to see if Chic Hecht would talk to me. I figured he had a first-hand view and probably knew more about the early years of Yucca Mountain and its politics than anyone. He agreed to an interview and graciously invited me to lunch.

On April 9, 2004 I conducted a two-hour interview with the former senator. The following is excerpted from the transcript of that interview:

Q. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed in December of 1982. You became a member of the U.S. Senate in January 1983. You sat on the Energy Committee, which had jurisdiction over Yucca Mountain. Some Nevada politicians were highly critical of Yucca Mountain and announced their "unalterable" opposition at the outset. You didn't. Why?

A. If you're going to do something, you've got to get every bit of information you can, every fact. ... Immediately I started traveling the world and talking to people. I saw this was a huge, huge issue for Nevada, the state I represented in the United States Senate. I studied the problem for six years with the greatest scientists worldwide. I went to Dr. [Edward] Teller ["the father of the hydrogen bomb"]. Being a genius, he was a very humble man. He was very happy that I sought his counsel all the time; always had time for me. He felt that Congress should listen to the scientists more than the political people.

I toured I can't tell you how many nuclear power plants across America, toured the world. I had access as a senator and took advantage of it. I talked to the top scientists in France, Sweden, and China, all which had nuclear power ... We [Hecht and Energy Committee Chairman Bennett Johnston] went to Russia studying nuclear waste.

And after studying the problem for many, many years, it was obvious there was not a "problem." It's a political problem, not a scientific problem.

Q. What is your take on the so called "Screw Nevada" bill, the 1987 legislation that singled Yucca Mountains out as the nation's only candidate for storage of spent nuclear fuel? What about Senator Bennett Johnston's role in this?

A. He [Johnston] was being very realistic. We have all the nuclear waste in the ground in Nevada [from nuclear weapons testing]. There were different states studied, and obviously, Nevada was right up there because of the uniqueness of the Nevada Test Site and the fact that [access to the site is restricted].

Q. France is very reliant on nuclear power for its energy. How does France handle the nuclear issue?

A. France, which is above 80 percent nuclear, made up their mind after the Second World War ... They had no gas; they had no coal; they had to have some type of energy. So they went to nuclear. We went to France, talked to all the scientists, observed everything, and they preprocess it and they recycle it. There is a tiny residue left over from the reprocessing and the recycling ... It was stored in a room roughly the size of a basketball court under 10 feet of concrete. And there is no problem ... The people of France have no fear of nuclear power; absolutely none. And they've never had an accident in France.

Q. Nevada doesn't do very well when it comes to getting Federal pork dollars. When you compare what Sen. Peter Domenici brings home to New Mexico, Sen. Reid and the others aren't bringing home that much. What is your take on this?

A. Let's talk about Domenici, who is a good friend of mine. [We both] served on the Senate Energy Committee. By his speaking out positively [on the nuclear issue], an entirely different situation developed in New Mexico [than] in Nevada. People in New Mexico welcomed the jobs. They built super highways down to the repository [at Carlsbad]. Now, it is not the high level - this is a medium level ... it's just a whole different attitude. I think 100 percent of it's from the leadership.

Q. When you represented Nevada in the U.S. Senate, how close were you to the Reagan administration?

A. I was President Reagan's strongest supporter in the U.S. Senate ... When you were a strong supporter [of] the president, you had support from everyone in the administration. For that reason, John Herrington [Secretary of Energy] and I were very close.

Q. What is the origin of the nuclear conundrum, the existing impasse regarding the nuclear waste issue in this country?

A. When the nuclear program in America was started, there was no problem with nuclear waste. The way the program was set up, nuclear waste was to be reprocessed and recycled, and that would be it. This plan was changed during President Carter's tenure. [Carter ended recycling.]

Q. What is your opinion of President Carter's decision?

A. Strictly unscientific. In my opinion, idiotic. He was supposed to have been a nuclear scientist. When people like Dr. Teller, who were geniuses of our time, say this is the way to do it [you should pay attention].

Q. What's your assessment of the danger of the way the waste is presently stored on site at power plants?

A. Terrible. Nuclear waste at the present time is building up ... [at sites] all over the United States, and it's very, very dangerous. They're running out of facilities. You can go and buy a Russian SA-7 ... missile, and drive up to some of these places where the nuclear [material] is stored ... and [hit] it ... It is so dangerous, the way it is right now.

Q. Would one of these missiles penetrate the storage containers that they have at the plants?

A. In my opinion, there is no question.

Q. If the solution to nuclear waste is a political and not a scientific problem, it suggests leadership issues, as with the case in New Mexico. How did the high-profile opponents of Yucca Mountain in Nevada know early on to stake out that issue? How did they know it would become such a powerful political issue - because it wasn't at first - that it would "have legs," to use a show-business term?

A. It was an issue where there's a fear factor. And fear factors are always wonderful political issues. It's far more dangerous not to reprocess and recycle. You've got nuclear waste - the reality is there. Now, let's go back and get rid of it, the way it was intended.

Q. Can you give me more details about how Nevada's intransigent position on Yucca Mountain evolved?

A. They staked out a spot; they were intransigent and could not be moved and felt it was a wonderful political spot to be in. And they were right. Did they represent the state? In my opinion, no. Did they represent humanity? I think they did an injustice to humanity, to the far bigger picture than winning an election.

Q. What is your sense of the evolution of public opinion in Nevada on the whole Yucca Mountain issue?

A. Well, people's opinions are [molded] by the elected officials, and the elected officials in Nevada have been so one-sided, so the press and everyone covers them and I don't think the people gained a true picture. ... There's been a concentrated effort to mold that in the last 20 years, and it's working.

Q. Is it reversible in any sense?

A. Yes, it is reversible if you stick to the scientific facts and go back and reprocess and recycle.

Q. Am I correct in my assessment that the Democrats were so skillful in staking out this powerful anti-nuclear political position, that they created a climate in which the Republicans kind of had to go along with it or keep quiet on it de facto? Would that be correct?

A. Probably a pretty good rationalization, yes.

Q. So even if a Republican were kind of for it, he can't say it too loud. He or she has to be careful.

A. You saw what happened to me.

Q. Do you think that was a big factor in your defeat by Harry Reid?

A. Oh, I think it was. I think so.

(To be continued.)

Bob McCracken is the author of A History of Pahrump, Nevada and 11 other books about Nye County published by the Nye County Press. Send questions and comments to rdmassociates@yahoo.com.

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Salt Lake Tribune
June 09, 2006

Appeals court rules in favor of nuclear reactor foes

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune

An appeals court ruling in California last week has brought new hope for Utah lawyers fighting proposed nuclear reactor waste storage in Skull Valley.

A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday in favor of the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace and the Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club, which insisted that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission should analyze the environmental consequences of a terrorist attack on an oceanside nuclear waste storage site on California's Central Coast.

Several times the judges mentioned the commission's arguments against undertaking a similar study for the proposed Skull Valley site in Tooele County. Over the objections of the State of Utah and others, that site received a license last year to store up to 44,000 tons of high-level radioactive reactor waste in 4,000 steel and concrete containers.

Three times in the agency's eight-year review of Skull Valley the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rebuffed Utah's requests to examine terrorist risks. Basically, the commission said such an attack is too unlikely to be considered a threat.

The appeals court judges said it didn't make sense for the agency to say, on the one hand, it takes terrorism seriously, and on the other that it won't allow the question to be discussed as part of the environmental review process.

"It appears as though the NRC is attempting, as a matter of policy, to insist on its preparedness and the seriousness with which it is responding to the post-Sept. 11 terrorist threat, while concluding, as a matter of law, that all terrorist threats are remote and highly speculative," wrote Judge Sidney Thomas in the 9th Circuit Court opinion.

Assistant Utah Attorney General Denise Chancellor said Wednesday the commission's reasoning in both cases was identical, and she hinted that the Washington, D.C., appeals court judges now considering the state's appeal of the Skull Valley license might have a similar outcome.

The Skull Valley project is a joint enterprise of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, which is housing the storage site on its reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, and Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of utility companies.

--fahys@sltrib.com

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Alamogordo Daily News
June 09, 2006

WIPP finds one supporter

By Walter Rubel
Santa Fe Bureau Chief

SANTA FE -- A nuclear chemist said he supported proposed permit changes for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, but he was the only supporter at a public hearing Thursday morning.

The state Environment Department published proposed changes to the WIPP permit in November, 2005. Under the changes, WIPP would be allowed to accept remote-handled waste. The changes also modify waste characterization and the volume of waste stored and disposed of at WIPP.

A public hearing on the proposed changes began May 31 in Carlsbad, and will continue through today in Santa Fe. Hearing examiner Rip Harwood said he would make a recommendation to Environment Secretary Ron Curry after listening to all of the public comments.

Three sessions were held Thursday. At the morning session, Roberto Villarreal, a nuclear chemist from Los Alamos National Laboratory who has also worked at a nuclear production facility in Idaho, supported the proposed changes.

He said storing the waste at WIPP would be much safer than storing it on the site where it was generated, as is being done now.

"Most of the remote-handled waste that will be going to WIPP has been around for 20 or 30 years," Villarreal said. "It's much safer to take it out of the generation sites. The safest place for this is the WIPP site."

Villarreal said he participated in an eight-year study at LANL on the effect the nuclear waste is expected to have over the years on the brine in WIPP site. He said there would be no long-term migration from the site.

Those who opposed the permit changes expressed concerns that go far beyond WIPP and the possible impact the changes could have on the environment of the area. They were concerned that the changes could lead to greater proliferation of both nuclear energy and weapons.

"I don't think we should be accepting waste from outside of New Mexico," said Marlene Perrott of the Partnership for Earth Spirituality. "The generating plants should find a way to take care of their own waste. If they don't, we should have a moratorium."

Julie Sutherland said she was afraid that New Mexico would become the nation's nuclear dumping ground. "I'm concerned that these shipments will be the small pox blankets of the new millennium," she said.

Marilyn Holt said the waste being considered is for WIPP is potentially deadly. And, she said this could be a "foot in the door" in case plans to dispose of stronger waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada fall through.

Harwood said he appreciated those "global" concerns, but said his focus was on the specific changes in the permit.

Environment Secretary Ron Curry said last month that the proposed changes were arrived at after lengthy negotiations with a variety of stake holders. He said a final decision won't be made until after a review and evaluation of the public comments.

A draft of the proposed permit modifications is available at www.nmenv.state.nm.us/wipp/

Walter Rubel can be reached at wrubel@lcsun-news.com.

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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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