Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, June 26, 2006
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E&E Daily
June 26, 2006
APPROPRIATIONS: Domenici to float new Yucca Mountain waste concept
Mary O'Driscoll
E&E Daily senior reporter
The Senate's top energy appropriator is expected to unveil a new nuclear waste management plan tomorrow when his Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee takes up the $30.71 billion spending package for fiscal 2007.
Details of the nuclear waste plan have been closely held by a small number of lawmakers, DOE officials and a select number of nuclear industry executives. But if Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici's (R-N.M.) recent statements are any indication, they likely will involve measures that acknowledge and work around the increasingly expensive delays that have bedeviled the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository near Las Vegas, Nev. The delays have kept the nation's nuclear utilities and federal defense-related nuclear sites from moving their spent fuel and other high-level radioactive wastes into the repository, which originally was to have opened in 1998 but now is not likely until the end of the next decade.
Domenici said last month that continued delays at Yucca Mountain mean the program will have to be folded into the White House's ambitious nuclear waste reprocessing and recycling program under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.
He added that spent fuel rods, many of which now reside in dry cask storage at nuclear power plant sites around the country, will never be shipped to Yucca Mountain, and predicted nuclear utilities will have to continue storing the spent fuel on site for much longer than anticipated. When asked last week to expand on his plans and to clarify whether they involve interim storage of wastes at an alternative site, Domenici would only say that his proposal will involve a mixture of appropriations and authorizations. "It will be very exciting," he told reporters.
Domenici's statements have fueled concerns that by folding Yucca Mountain into GNEP, the Energy Department will be able to use the nuclear utility ratepayer-supported Yucca Mountain nuclear waste trust fund for GNEP activities involving the treating or packaging of spent nuclear fuel. DOE asserted it has such authority in response to questions by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who as ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee raised the issue after an oversight hearing on nuclear issues earlier this spring.
According to some nuclear industry sources, Domenici's plans are likely to allow for a proposal for a phased approach to the Yucca Mountain repository in which defense-related waste will be first in line for storage at the site, even before the commercial spent fuel that is packaged and ready to go. But to try to quell the expected howls of protests from nuclear utilities, Domenici's plans also are said to include a draft bill allowing for interim storage of nuclear waste at an alternative site until the GNEP reprocessing program is ready to prepare the waste for burial at Yucca Mountain.
It remains unclear how much, if any, of the White House's proposed Yucca Mountain legislation will be included in any appropriations or waste policy package. The legislation, unveiled in April, was sent to Congress at least two months later than anticipated. Because of that, it fell behind in the flurry of election-year legislative priorities.
In any event, sources on and off Capitol Hill say Yucca Mountain still is the focus of the nuclear waste program. How this will square with the ranking member of the energy appropriations subcommittee, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), is unclear. A spokeswoman for Reid said the two lawmakers have discussed budget issues surrounding GNEP and Yucca Mountain, but nothing related to policy for those programs.
And how this will fall with the hard line that House appropriators took on DOE's nuclear-related programs also is a question. Though the White House and Domenici want to fully fund GNEP at $250 million -- and Domenici is determined to find even more money for it -- the House only appropriated $120 million out of anger at the way DOE raided other energy programs to pay for it.
Conversely, the House fully funded the repository program, an option Domenici wants to avoid this year because the $544 million budget provides for DOE's defense of its license application, which will not be filed until after 2008.
Part of the House's anger at DOE was fueled by continued cost overruns at the Hanford nuclear reservation, whose vitrification program now is estimated to cost $11.55 billion. Its original cost was $4.3 billion when DOE hired Bechtel National to build the waste vitrification plant in 2000.
Domenici and House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Dave Hobson (R-Ohio) also are expected to be on a collision course over the future of the mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The House zeroed out spending for the program and Hobson called it a "boondoggle" and said eliminating it is necessary because Russia has signaled it will abandon its similar program, therefore rendering the U.S. program unnecessary. Domenici has stated his support for the MOX program and said it must be funded.
Schedule: The subcommittee markup of H.R. 5427 starts at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow in 138 Dirksen.
Schedule: The full committee markup of H.R 5427 starts at 2 p.m. Thursday in 106 Dirksen.
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Guardian
June 24, 2006
Utah Tribe Divided Over Nuclear Waste
By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
SKULL VALLEY, Utah (AP) - Leon Bear, a stocky man in T-shirt and jeans, peers across the sagebrush-pocked valley where his ancestors once chased Pony Express riders and sees the future for his dwindling tribe.
Nuclear waste.
Just west of the gun-barrel straight, two-lane road that darts through the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, Bear wants to store 4,000 steel and concrete canisters of highly radioactive used fuel from nuclear power plants.
The American Indian tribe would reap tens of millions of dollars in rent over the next 40 years.
``I've been shown there's no problem. The way they plan to handle it, it's safe,'' the 46-year-old tribal leader insists, escorting a visitor around the reservation in a glistening new pickup truck.
The truck is an example of the largess the tribe already has received from a consortium of eight electric utilities. Nine years ago, the companies signed a lease with the tribe to put 40,000 tons of reactor waste on the reservation.
It is the kind of deal that other tribes have rejected, that most communities would oppose, that spells ``not in my back yard'' in the brightest of colors. Utah's establishment in Salt Lake City, the capital 45 miles away, is enraged.
Critics, including some within the tribe, call it environmental racism at its rawest.
Bear says it is the way to riches that will mean new homes, new jobs and better health care for the 118 members of his tribe. Only about two dozen - including children - still live on the 18,000-acre reservation, but this project will bring many of the others back, he predicts.
The Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the lease in 1997. The deal is yet to be consummated amid lawsuits, regulatory hurdles and bitter opposition. It's close, though.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license for the dump in February. The agency rejected arguments that the dump's location is unsafe because hundreds of F-16 jet fighters fly over the reservation on the way to bombing runs over nearby government land. The chance of a crash that could result in the release of radiation is one in a million, an adequate risk, the NRC said.
Private Fuel Storage LLC of Wisconsin, the consortium that would build and run the dump, has begun looking for nuclear power plant owners to sign up for waste shipments.
``We have to store this stuff somewhere,'' says the group's chairman, John Parkyn. The utilities ``were promised this material would be collected and removed to a central location, and now we have one.''
If Bear and Parkyn get their way, the project will mark a watershed in addressing the thorniest problem facing the nuclear industry: where to put nearly 60,000 tons of highly radioactive reactor waste now stored at power plants in 31 states, and the additional 2,000 tons being generated each year.
The government promised to take the waste beginning in 1998. But a planned federal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is years behind schedule. Some people say it may never be built.
The PFS consortium has spent more than $20 million so far, including licensing costs and payments to the Skull Valley tribe under its 1997 lease.
Not a single utility has committed to send waste to Utah, and four of the companies that helped finance the project have said they will not commit any more money as long as Yucca Mountain moves forward.
If Yucca Mountain encounters more hurdles and delays, utilities will turn to Skull Valley, Parkyn predicted in an interview.
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The consortium has spent more than $20 million. Neither Bear nor the utilities will say how much of that the tribe has received or will get over the next 40 years if the deal goes through. Speculation is that the total could be as much as $100 million for the tribe.
Still, it's hard to find people in Utah who favor the dump.
``You're batting in the 85 percent range of people who don't want this project to go forward. As conservative as the state is, you don't even see those kind of percentages in things like gay marriage,'' says Jason Groenewold, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, which opposes the project.
The state has tried all manner of maneuvers to stop the project, with little success so far. The Legislature imposed steep taxes on anyone doing business with the consortium and banned local governments from providing electricity and other services. The laws were declared unconstitutional by a federal court.
Utah's senators have lobbied the Bush administration. So far, administration officials have said only that they remain committed to opening Yucca Mountain - 350 miles south of Skull Valley - and that the tribal project is not part of the government's nuclear waste plan.
Dump opponents do have one significant victory. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, got Congress to create a 100,000-acre wilderness near the Goshute reservation with a finger of protected land crossing - and essentially blocking - a proposed right of way for a rail spur to bring the waste to the dump. Parkyn says he will just bring the waste the last 26 miles by truck.
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Once, more than 20,000 Goshutes roamed Utah and Nevada. Now there are only about 500, including the 118 belonging to the Skull Valley Band, according to Bear.
Fewer than two dozen, including children, still live in the cluster of homes and trailers a few hundreds yards off the single highway that cuts through the reservation. Most of the households are below the national poverty level.
At the tribe's only commercial building, the ``Pony Express Store'' and gas station, the sign is missing several letters. The clerk talks on the phone with little suggestion any customers will be arriving soon.
Some of the economic benefits from the proposed dump already are visible. Amid the old, dilapidated houses are a half-dozen new modular homes - some still waiting to be put on foundations - thanks to money from the utilities. Bear lives in one; a second belongs to his brother; a third belongs to the vice chair of the tribe's executive council, also a strong supporter of the waste dump.
Two of Bear's neighbors and sharpest critics - Margene Bullcreek and Sammie Blackbear - have not been offered new homes, says a lawyer representing Bullcreek. Blackbear lives in a small trailer just across the road from the new homes.
``It's entirely environmental racism,'' says Bullcreek, a 59-year-old grandmother. ``You have large corporations wanting to put the nuclear waste that nobody wants in their back yards on our land.''
Bullcreek and other critics of the project contend that tribal members never formally approved the dump and that the majority oppose it. But Bear maintains that the tribe approved the waste project in 1996, before the BIA approved it in March 1997 in a decision that itself has been questioned by dump opponents. A local BIA superintendent, David Allison, approved the lease only three days after receiving the final document.
Allison, now retired, defends his decision and says there were months of discussions as the lease was being developed. ``Unquestionably it's to the benefit of the tribe,'' he said in a telephone interview.
He acknowledged the issue is ``a very political hot potato'' and added, ``I've even been threatened over this thing.''
Anger over the waste dump has spilled over to a bitter dispute over tribal leadership. Bear's chairmanship expired in 2004, but Bullcreek says he has skirted new elections by repeatedly claiming the lack of a quorum before everyone has arrived at meetings.
A suit challenging Bear's leadership and the BIA lease approval was dismissed by a federal court in Salt Lake City.
Three years ago, Blackbear and two other nuclear dump opponents assumed leadership of the tribal council and began using its funds. The BIA never recognized them and they were arrested for theft and received probation.
Last year Bear faced embezzlement charges and agreed to return $31,500 to the tribe. He also pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion. ``We don't believe the (tribal) chairmanship is a job,'' he said, explaining why he did not pay taxes on his income as tribal leader. ``Apparently the feds don't feel that way.''
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The radioactive spent fuel rods are now kept in pools of water or in concrete containers at power plants. At Skull Valley, they will be kept in steel canisters inside concrete enclosures resting atop a concrete slab.
A private security force will be at the site with double fences cordoning off the inner 100 acres where the waste will be kept. Consortium officials say the facility will comply fully with NRC security requirements.
Tooele County, Utah, which surrounds the reservation, is anything but pristine.
A few miles to the east, over the Stansbury Mountain range, the government is storing and burning nerve gas and other chemical agents. To the south is the Dugway Proving Ground, where the government uses chemical and biological agents in tests. Toward the northwest are private landfills holding hazardous, toxic and low-level radioactive waste. Not far away, on the Great Salt Lake, is a magnesium plant once ranked by the Environmental Protection Agency as the nation's No. 1 toxic polluter.
Skull Valley itself has long been viewed as a bit foreboding. In the late 19th century, the state located its only leper colony there.
Bullcreek, nonetheless, argues that becoming the country's storehouse for nuclear waste - ``This poison,'' she calls it - is contrary to Goshute tradition. ``It will destroy the harmony we have, the tranquility that we have in our valley.''
Bear scoffs at the dissent.
``We've got to live today,'' he says. ``We can't go back and live like the old days. You can't feed your children, you can't feed your family that way.''
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On the Net:
Skull Valley Goshutes: http://www.skullvalleygoshutes.org/
Private Fuel Storage LLC: http://www.privatefuelstorage.com/
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov
Public Citizen: http://www.citizen.org/CMEP/
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Guardian
June 24, 2006
Nuclear Dump Glance
By The Associated Press
Information about a proposed nuclear waste storage facility on an American Indian reservation in Utah:
WHAT: The facility would keep 44,000 tons of used commercial reactor fuel for up to 40 years in steel and cement canisters on the Goshute reservation in Skull Valley, Utah.
WHO: Private Fuel Storage LLC, a Wisconsin-based consortium of eight utilities, and the Goshutes signed a 20-year renewable lease, pending final approval of necessary permits. None of the utilities has committed to sending waste, but the group says it expects to have customers. Details of the lease and payments to the tribe have not been made public.
PFS MEMBERS: Xcel Energy Inc., American Electric Power, Southern California Edison, Southern Nuclear Company, First Energy Corp., Entergy Corp., Florida Power and Light Co., and Genoa Fuel Tech (a subsidiary of Dairyland Power Cooperative in Wisconsin).
STATUS: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license for the waste site in February. Approval by the Interior Department of an access route through federal land and final lease certification by the Bureau of Indian Affairs are pending.
OPPOSITION: The state of Utah is challenging the NRC's license approval in federal court in Washington. The state's suit claims the commission failed to adequately take into account risks from military jet overflights in the area. Utah officials also are lobbying the Bush administration to block the project.
TRIBAL STRIFE: The issue has split the small Skull Valley Band. Opponents of the dump are challenging tribal chief Leon Bear, the primary force behind the project. Bear says the project will provide millions of dollars in economic benefits to the tribe. Opponents, led by Margene Bullcreek, says the dump violates tribal tradition and accuses Private Fuel Storage of ``environmental racism.''
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Las Vegas SUN
June 23, 2006
Yucca bill stalls, at least for this session
Nuclear waste debate lacked recycling plan
By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - Despite strong pressure from the nuclear energy industry and the Bush administration, Congress almost certainly will not put Yucca Mountain on a fast track this year.
Legislation to "fix Yucca" once and for all hit a wall shortly after it was introduced in Congress two months ago. Republicans and Democrats alike say the bill reaches for too much too fast, while failing to address the latest darling in the nuclear energy debate - recycling.
Barring a miracle, the administration will have to try again in the next Congress - the last of the Bush presidency - to get the stalled Yucca nuclear waste storage plan moving again.
"I'm hoping 11:30 at night, somebody's going to wake up and say, 'We have to do this. Let's get it done,' " said Charles Pray, co-chairman of the U.S. Transport Council's Yucca Mountain Task Force, a leading advocacy group for the nuclear transportation industry.
The apparent failure of the "fix Yucca" bill comes despite a near-perfect alignment of powerful interests. The Bush administration is the most pro-nuclear administration in decades. Republicans control both houses of Congress. The nuclear industry is pushing hard to get the project moving again.
But the Energy Department did not deliver its "fix Yucca" bill as early in the year as Congress wanted. When the legislation did arrive, it contained elements that many lawmakers opposed, while failing to include provisions they sought.
"It's a greedy bill and goes way beyond any realm of sensibleness," said Michele Boyd, a legislative director at Public Citizen, which has fought Yucca Mountain.
"Even senators in the past who have voted for Yucca Mountain say, 'No way.' "
Yucca is years behind schedule, despite $8 billion in spending and the involvement of 25,000 scientists dedicated to creating the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository.
Introduced by two leading Republican advocates of nuclear power - Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Rep. Joe Barton of Texas - the bill would lift the cap on the amount of waste that can be stored at Yucca Mountain, turn the site over to the Department of Energy and guarantee a funding stream that could not be knocked down by opponents in Congress.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the bill dead on arrival when it was introduced in April. Both Reid and Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign oppose the development of Yucca Mountain and especially do not want to cede so much authority to the Energy Department.
Reid might well have outmaneuvered Yucca supporters and bottled up the bill. But he apparently didn't need to. The legislation failed to include provisions about nuclear waste recycling that is now a prominent issue in the Bush White House and a favorite of Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where the bill languishes.
"Obviously there are a lot of things holding it up because you have two generally sympathetic committee chairmen who could schedule a hearing - and they're not," said a spokesman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, a nuclear energy advocate and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. No hearings have been set, either, in Barton's House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Despite dimming prospects for the bill, some Republicans and nuclear industry officials still hope it will move forward this year. Domenici signaled this week that he was trying to find a way to include nuclear recycling in the legislation.
Recycling is part of the Bush administration's far-reaching - and some say unrealistic - initiative to develop technology that would reprocess nuclear fuel in a way that would render the waste less toxic and curtail its volume. Doing so would reduce the risks involved in transporting and storing nuclear waste at Yucca and also allow it to accept waste for many more years before reaching its storage capacity.
The Bush initiative, known as Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, could clear the way for construction of more domestic nuclear energy plants. It also would stem the spread of nuclear weapons by providing an alternative method of reprocessing nuclear fuel. The current method, used elsewhere in the world, can be modified to produce plutonium, a critical component of nuclear weapons.
Critics, however, say the initiative is a boondoggle that would cost tens of billions of dollars and take decades to come to fruition.
Dennis R. Spurgeon, assistant secretary for nuclear energy in the Energy Department, acknowledged Thursday it will be difficult to get the bill through this session.
Pray, who has increased his travel budget by $10,000 this year to rally nuclear-power generating states to the cause, said the industry is well aware of the need to find success before the Republican stronghold on Congress and the White House fades.
"That would close opportunities," he said.
Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 23, 2006
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Rail line option studied
DOE reviewing land ownership, mining claims related to western route
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is updating 20-year-old data on railroad alignments in western Nevada and should decide by the end of the summer whether it wants to further explore an alternative route to ship nuclear waste by rail through the state to Yucca Mountain, a DOE manager said Thursday.
DOE officials are reviewing changes in land ownership and the status of mining claims in the region, said Gary Lanthrum, transportation director for the Yucca Mountain program.
They have inspected possible paths through the Walker River Paiute Indian reservation and have examined topography at other points, he said.
The department is working with the tribe and others to look at "some of the aspects of alignments along the route to see if they are feasible," Lanthrum said at a nuclear waste transportation conference.
"Once a determination is made, we will figure out how to go forward." Lanthrum said. DOE would consider moving forward with formal action and environmental studies "if there is a feasible route that looks like it might be a reasonable alternative."
The manager's remarks to a meeting of the U.S. Transport Council, a group of nuclear waste shipping interests, expanded on previous DOE statements about the so-called Mina route to the proposed nuclear waste repository site.
The Energy Department already is conducting an official environmental impact study of a proposed rail corridor across rural Nevada from Caliente to Yucca Mountain.
But its interest in a possible Mina alternative was piqued when the Walker River Paiute tribal leaders said they might consider allowing railroad shipments of nuclear waste through their reservation north of Walker Lake.
The tribe's position appears to have revived a DOE rail option that was studied in the 1980s. It involves nuclear waste traveling on existing rail along a corridor to Hawthorne, with DOE improving old mining rail beds and building new rail through Mineral and Esmerelda counties, and into Nye County where Yucca Mountain is located.
Some transportation experts say the alignment would be shorter, at 209 miles, and easier and less expensive to build than a railroad from Caliente. DOE's cost estimate of a 319-mile Caliente rail line was increased last year to $2 billion.
Lanthrum said it is too soon to tell.
"It is shorter, but we don't know if it would be less expensive," Lanthrum said. "We have no information that is less than 20 years old."
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Oregon Public Broadcasting
June 23, 2006
Waste Issues Hamper Nuclear Power's Potential
By Todd Zwillich
WASHINGTON, D.C. 2006-06-23 The president is pushing the benefits of nuclear power again. But leaders in Congress are increasingly pessimistic about progress at the planned nuclear waste site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. And even if the storage site is opened, some are warning that it won't put a dent in Oregon's nuclear waste problem. Todd Zwillich reports from Capitol Hill.
Despite the growing faith of local and state officials in the safety of nuclear power -- and plans to build 14 new nuclear plants -- no one wants the waste. The Department of Energy says Yucca Mountain won't open for another 9 to 14 years. That means more nuclear waste will stay where it's made at more than 110 commercrial nuclear plants nationwide.
Meanwhile, Nevada lawmakers like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid are still trying to stop the repository at Yucca Mountain.
Harry Reid: "I am opposed to transporting nuclear waste, it's the most dangerous substance known to man, it can stay where it is."
And another proposal for a privately funded site on a Utah Indian reservation has outraged lawmakers like Republican Senator Orrin Hatch.
Orrin Hatch: "I won't stop until it's stone cold dead."
Concerns over high gas prices, global warming, and entanglement in the Middle East have made nuclear power more attractive to some as an alternative to fossil fuels.
But not to Eugene Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio. He says no nuclear facilities should go online until policy makers figure out where to put the waste.
Peter DeFazio: "I think we should have kind of a basic rule, we're not going to create anything we don't know what to do with for the next 20,000 years. And until we resolve that problem I don't think we should be endeavoring to build new nuclear plants in the United States.
The Trojan power plant in Ranier was the only nuclear facility ever built in Oregon. A radioactive gas leak shut it down in 1992, and this May, Portland General Electric blew up the cooling tower, the long standing symbol of a bygone era.
Up the Columbia River, Hanford is a government-owned relic of World War II atom bomb production and to this day is home to tons of liquid radioactive waste. The site has been mired in years of controversy over efforts to safely store that waste before any more of it leeches into the Columbia River. A federal judge recently struck down a Washington voter initiative barring any more waste from reaching the site until cleanup is complete.
Tom Carpenter: "Let's be very clear, Yucca Mountain was built to accommodate commercial nuclear waste."
Tom Carpenter is head of nuclear oversight at the private watchdog Government Accountability Project in Seattle. He says potentially 10% of Hanford's radioactive military waste could be transported to Nevada. But he says Yucca is already overbooked.
Tom Carpenter: "The commercial waste has first dibs. It's not clear to me that any of Hanford's nuclear waste will ever actually end up at Yucca Mountain -- if it opens."
In January, President Bush said he wanted $250 million for new nuclear recycling technology -- but so far, Congress has only approved $120 million.
Eastern oregon republican congressman Greg Walden says he supports Yucca Mountain -- and more nuclear power plants.
Greg Walden: "I think there probably is a role for some of the new nuclear technologies to come on line, but only after they've been through the full siting processes that are out there. Our country is in an energy crunch, we see it at the gas pump, we see it with natural gas prices, and we see it in our electric bills. We're trying to figure out ways to combat greenhouse gasses."
The energy policy bill passed by Congress last year renewed a provision known as Price-Anderson. It protects the industry by capping liability in case of an accident; that was seen as an incentive for companies to build more plants. Still, most experts agree that until there is a waste solution, it's unlikely new nuclear power plants will break ground.
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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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