Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, July 20, 2006
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Senator Harry Reid
July 19, 2006
REID STATEMENT REGARDING REVISED SCHEDULE FOR PROPOSED YUCCA MOUNTAIN NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP
Washington, DC—Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) issued the following statement regarding the official announcement of the Energy Department´s revised schedule for the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain:
“I want to make sure that every Nevadan knows that the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is not even close to being built, and I am working with my colleagues in Nevada´s congressional delegation to make sure it never will be. The Energy Department´s new timeline is neither based on political nor scientific reality, and amounts to little more than a wish list by those hoping to turn Nevada into the nation´s nuclear dumping ground.
“Storing nuclear waste is a security concern for our nation but there is absolutely no justification for endangering the public by rushing to build this repository that is fraught with scientific, technical and geological problems. That´s why we introduced a bill that requires commercial nuclear waste to be secured and licensed using on-site dry cask storage facilities.
“We are talking about the most dangerous substance known to man. For the millions of dollars the Energy Department has spent studying Yucca Mountain, all we have learned is that the site is not safe to store nuclear waste and there is no way to safely and securely ship 77,000 tons of it across the country. This project is clearly unsafe and the dump at Yucca Mountain will never open.’
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Senator John Ensign
July 18, 2006
ENSIGN: DOE´S YUCCA TIMELINE NOT BASED IN SCIENCE OR REALITY
Washington, D.C. – Senator John Ensign released the following statement today in reaction to the latest proposed timeline for the Yucca Mountain project by the Department of Energy:
“Once again, DOE has set forth a timeline with no basis in science or reality. The efforts of the entire Nevada delegation combined with DOE´s scientific defense of the Yucca Mountain project, which has ranged from incomplete to fraudulent, have resulted in a consensus that alternatives to Yucca Mountain need to be considered. Senator Reid and I intend to move forward with our legislation to force DOE to take possession of nuclear waste where it is produced. Now is the time to be talking about such alternatives, not an unrealistic timeline that will never materialize.’
--Senator John Ensign
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Congresswoman Shelley Berkley
July 19, 2006
Bush White House, GOP Declare 2017 New "Mission Accomplished" Date for Turning Nevada into a Nuclear Garbage Dump
(Washington, DC -- July 19, 2006) Despite a new rosy scenario from the Bush White House that envisions nuclear waste being buried at Yucca Mountain by next decade, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley says the proposed radioactive garbage dump 90 minutes outside Las Vegas continues to be plagued by lingering scientific uncertainties and a record of fraud and mismanagement that will doom its chances of ever opening. The new timeline for opening Yucca Mountain by 2017 is being presented to a Congressional panel today.
"The Bush Administration and its Republican allies in Congress will not rest until they turn Nevada into a nuclear garbage dump. They have wasted billions of dollars on this flawed flight of fancy that poses an unacceptable risk to Nevada families and our environment. While the White House may have ordered a ‘mission accomplished´ banner to go along with this new timetable, nothing will erase the long list of failures hanging over the Yucca Mountain Project,’ said Congresswoman Shelley Berkley (D-NV), who is leading the fight in the House to stop the proposed repository.
"Strong scientific evidence has clearly demonstrated that Yucca Mountain will not protect Nevadans from deadly radioactive waste. But that has not stopped the relentless drive by the White House to force the dump on Nevada families, regardless of the threat. In order to make this a reality, Republican House leaders and their Senate counterparts are supporting legislation authored by the Bush Administration that strips away existing safety protections and limits public opposition. The Bush Yucca Mountain bill will nearly double the amount of nuclear waste that will be dumped in Nevada, resulting in thousands of additional waste shipments through Las Vegas and other cities across the United States,’ Berkley said.
"As for Yucca Mountain´s staggering price tag, I am amazed that at a time when we face an $8 trillion debt, there is apparently an endless supply of money to be spent by the Republican Congress on President Bush´s pet plan to bury Nevada in nuclear waste,’ said Berkley.
As for hurdles standing in the way of Yucca Mountain, Berkley points to the lack of an approved radiation standard for the proposed dump, seismic and volcanic activity at the site, legal challenges by the State of Nevada, and nationwide opposition to waste shipments which threaten to release radioactive contamination in the event of an accident or terrorist attack. Rather than allow waste to be dumped in Nevada, Berkley supports legislation that would require waste to be kept on-site at nuclear plants in dry cask storage, where it can safely remain for the next 100 years.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 20, 2006
Lawmakers question new cost for Yucca
Revised schedule leads some to wonder about other estimates to complete project
By Steve Tetreault
Review-Journal
WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers who were briefed Wednesday on the Energy Department's revised schedules for the Yucca Mountain Project pressed the nuclear waste repository director for a new accounting of how much the project will cost.
DOE in 2001 set a $57.6 billion price tag to build tunnels within the mountain ridge and to ship spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors for emplacement at the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But that was based on a projected 2010 repository opening, a goal that was set aside.
On Wednesday, project director Ward Sproat outlined a revised March 2017 target to members of the House energy and air quality subcommittee.
The panel's chairman, Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, said it was difficult to weigh the project without an update on funding, a point echoed by others.
Absent a "clear understanding" of revised costs, "it would be impossible for Congress to assess whether or not new legislation is needed," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich.
Sproat said DOE would submit new costs in the fall. Talking to reporters earlier, Sproat said he did not believe the numbers have changed but he planned to examine them.
In March, DOE Deputy Secretary Clay Sell said costs might decrease after completion of a project redesign that eliminated several multibillion-dollar fuel-handling facilities.
Wednesday's hearing was Sproat's debut before Congress as the Yucca Mountain director. A former nuclear industry executive and consultant, the Pennsylvanian was confirmed by the Senate in May to head the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
Citing his industry credentials, Sproat said, "I am committed to getting the Yucca Mountain project unstuck."
Sproat said a June 30, 2008, deadline to complete repository designs and apply for a construction permit is a near-certainty. He said the date falls on a Monday, "and I do not plan on working that weekend."
But other milestones will depend heavily on whether Congress cooperates by passing a DOE bill to make available full funding from the repository's construction account, expand the repository capacity, withdraw the site from public land status, and allow the department to obtain water rights.
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said the bill might pass the House but has little support in the Senate.
The schedule also is dependent on minimal delays from lawsuits filed by the state of Nevada and other Yucca critics. Nevada officials said this week they plan to continue pressing the state's opposition in the courts.
In Nevada on Wednesday, former Gov. Bob List, a paid consultant for the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute, maintained the new schedule means DOE is serious about Yucca Mountain and the state should reconsider its stance.
"I see it as a real wake-up call to Nevada officials, that they better go to Plan B and deal in a forthright way with the project and recognize the realities," List said.
Clark County officials said they were skeptical that DOE can meet the new deadlines.
"The trouble with DOE's schedules is that they are not often reliable and are always subject to change because they leave no room for the myriad of variables," said county Planning Director Irene Navis. "While it's true that DOE can't predict or control all of them, many of them are known, and are just not well accounted for."
In Washington, Energy Committee lawmakers said they wished Sproat well. But several said that others have made promises in the project's long history, and they will believe progress when they see it.
"We applaud the schedule," said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., but he called a reluctance by lawmakers to believe the schedule "justifiable."
"This is not just embarrassing. This is costing the country a great deal of money," said Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga. "If it takes 30 years to open up that mountain, I've got great concerns."
Barton pointed out the repository will be 19 years late from its original 1998 startup date.
"There are those that hope that late means never," Barton said. "I am frustrated by the lack of progress at Yucca, but I'm not giving up."
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Las Vegas SUN
July 20, 2006
Editorial: Let nuke waste stay put
Transporting radioactive material across country is a misguided proposition
It was a joke when the government initially claimed that Yucca Mountain would be accepting the nation's nuclear waste by 1998. That year has long come and gone and this week the Energy Department announced its new deadline for Yucca Mountain to receive nuclear waste: March 31, 2017. The Energy Department would like for everyone to believe it is being more realistic, but the fact is that a 2017 opening is just as much a joke as 1998 was.
With each passing year, additional evidence keeps accumulating that shows how dangerous it is to ship nuclear waste thousands of miles to Nevada and how unsafe it is to bury the waste in the seismically active region where Yucca Mountain is located. Nonetheless, the federal government, prodded along by the nuclear power industry, has pushed for Yucca Mountain's opening. The Energy Department says it will submit its Yucca Mountain license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2008 - shortly before President Bush's term expires.
The fact of the matter is that the nation's nuclear waste can be safely stored for a century above ground, preferably where it is generated, until a realistic way is found to render it harmless. Indeed, a plan by Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Pete Domenici, R-N.M., would allow for interim storage of nuclear waste at federal sites around the country near where the waste is generated.
Although Domenici believes that Yucca Mountain is still needed, we agree with Reid that once residents in those states with nuclear power start having to wrestle with the transportation risks of shipping waste to temporary sites, they'll be content just to leave it where it is, let alone transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain. That is yet one more reason it is so disappointing to see President Bush fight so hard to approve such a dangerous plan that would send man's deadliest waste to Nevada.
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MarketWatch
July 20, 2006
US energy policy still lacking, industry officials say
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Although the U.S. Congress passed a major energy law last year, officials representing various industries Wednesday called on policymakers to take further steps on U.S. energy policy.
Speaking at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce energy summit, industry officials argued that the government needs to increase domestic supplies, open new areas to energy development and encourage fuel diversity.
After years of trying, lawmakers last summer finally approved the Energy Policy Act of 2005 - the first update of U.S. energy policy in over a decade. It provides incentives for new nuclear power plants and new transmission lines, clarifies the federal government's role in approving liquefied natural gas terminals and repeals a law restricting electric utility mergers, among other things.
But in this time of record-high energy prices, business leaders said that's not enough.
"We need a very balanced comprehensive strategy," said John Dearborn, global business vice president of energy for Dow Chemical Co. (DOW), which uses natural gas as a feedstock to produce chemicals.
U.S. natural gas prices are, at times, the highest in the world, and those high prices are hurting the chemical industry, having led to 100,000 lost jobs since 2000, he said. He argued that the federal government needs to mobilize U.S. residents to use energy wisely and more efficiently and to make way for energy firms to explore the Outer Continental Shelf, an offshore area administered by the federal government, for new gas supplies.
Although gas prices have been lower lately, Dearborn said that higher prices are likely around the corner and that the real problem is market volatility.
"The issue is not over. Certainly the futures market is telling us more concerns lie ahead," he said. "We really can't bank on whether it's a warm winter or cold summer (to get) us through."
Fritz Corrigan, president and chief executive of the Mosaic Company (MOS), which uses gas as a raw material to make fertilizer products, argued that some new federal regulations may be needed to provide greater transparency in the futures market.
"We have to make sure the right drivers are driving the price, he said.
Meanwhile, White House officials speaking at the conference agreed that legislation to open new federal waters and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas drilling is needed but touted the Energy Policy Act of 2005 as putting the country on a good path forward.
"It takes years for the benefits of sound energy policy to manifest," said Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell.
He noted that as authorized by the new energy law, the Department of Energy is moving ahead on a variety of programs. It plans to offer loan guarantees for clean energy projects and issue a report next month that will highlight areas where new electric transmission is needed. He also pointed out that the department is moving forward on a long-delayed project to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain a national repository for nuclear waste.
Still, he said he understands that high prices at the pump bring a bit of frustration over the country's energy policy direction.
"With gasoline prices as high as they are...not everyone is receptive to hearing speeches about how great EPACT (the Energy Policy Act of 2005) is," he said.
Over the long-term, however, the administration's plans to boost production of motor fuels made from switch grass and corn stover and to encourage development of nuclear power should help meet country's growing energy needs, he said.
Sell also said he's optimistic Congress will pass a bill to open more offshore areas to oil and gas development. The House of Representatives has already signed off on offshore drilling legislation, and the Senate is expected to vote on its version sometime this month.
There are "very real prospects" of getting an offshore drilling bill out of Congress this year, he said. "An OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) bill is critical. I think we can get it done this year, and Congress needs to act to get it done."
Sell said he's also hopeful that Congress this year will pass bills to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy development, to help DOE on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project and to streamline the approval process to build new oil refineries.
"We have not solved all of our energy problems, but I believe it is possible," he said, adding that new technologies and more research and development will play a key role in meeting future energy demand.
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Platts
July 19, 2006
Nuclear waste chief asks Congress to remove repository roadblocks
Washington (Platts)--19Jul2006 If the US Energy Department is to meet its 2017 deadline to open the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository, then it will need to be unfettered by lawsuits and assured of adequate funding, the agency's new top nuclear waste official said Wednesday.
Congress must pass legislation removing obstacles to the facility's opening and annual spending bills that substantially meet administration requests, Ward Sproat, DOE's director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said.
On a conference call in advance of a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday on the Nevada repository, Sproat said: "The only people I can hold accountable are the Department of Energy people and organization...Congress can hold us accountable, but I can't reverse that."
Meeting the deadline is "very much dependent on Congress enacting legislation," he added.
DOE has sent Congress a proposal that would set aside land for the repository, give DOE access to water at the site and direct revenues from the Nuclear Waste Fund to the Yucca Mountain Project.
The energy committee's chairman, Joe Barton, Republican-Texas, said Tuesday there was "a reasonable chance" the House would pass a "fix Yucca" bill during a lame duck session later in 2006. The Senate, however, has no immediate plans to do so.
Sproat said the department plans to "meet or beat" its June 30, 2008, schedule for sending an application for a license to build the repository to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But he said that factors beyond DOE's control could push back the 2017 schedule, which he called the "best achievable."
The project has been dogged by repeated lawsuits by the state of Nevada and environmental groups and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat-Nevada, who each year has prevented DOE from getting the money it says it needs to do its repository work.
Sproat said the US government would rack up $7 billion in liabilities to utilities--associated with the failure to meet contractual obligations to take the waste--if the repository is not opened up in 2017 and lawsuits are not settled before that. Plaintiffs in the lawsuits seeking damage have put DOE's potential liability at closer to $50 billion.
Sproat also said a plan offered by Senator Pete Domenici, Republican-New Mexico, the Senate Energy Committee chairman and the chairman of the energy appropriations subcommittee, to open up several centralized interim storage sites would not be easy to carry out. Domenici proposed the plan as part of the fiscal 2007 spending bill.
Sproat said licensing and building storage facilities at already licensed reactors takes about five years. "To go with a greenfield site, that isn't already licensed, the licensing process is going to be a lot longer and to do that at multiple sites, I'm not going to say that it can't be done, but its going to be a challenge," he added.
---Dan Whitten, daniel_whitten@platts.com
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Platts
July 19, 2006
DOE plans to reach 2008 target for repository license application
Washington (Platts)--19Jul2006
DOE plans to "meet or beat" a June 30, 2008 target date for the submittal of a repository license application to NRC, DOE waste program director Edward Sproat said July 19 during a teleconference call with reporters. Sproat was scheduled to present the department's new repository schedule at a House subcommittee later in the day. During the call, he said that DOE's ability to begin repository operations at Yucca Mountain, Nevada by March 31, 2017 was dependent on Congress passing the department's nuclear waste bill and on the absence of lawsuits and other stumbling blocks that could stall the program's momentum. Sproat said he also would work toward reining in the federal government's growing liability after DOE failed to begin disposing of utility spent fuel by a 1998 contract date. He cited settlement agreements with utilities and consensus building on Capitol Hill as two potential ways to reduce that liability. DOE has forecast the federal government's outstanding liability at $7 billion if a repository were to begin repository operations in 2017, he said.
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Wall Street Journal
July 20, 2006
Cross Country
A Waste of Energy
Yucca Mountain hangs in nuclear limbo.
By William Tucker
NYE COUNTY, Nev.--"As you can see, Yucca Mountain isn't really a mountain," says our guide as we near the end of an hour-long bus ride, about 100 miles north from Las Vegas. "Those of you who know geology will recognize it's only a ridge."
The Department of Energy gives monthly tours these days, anxious to prove--after almost 25 years--it still intends to open its Nuclear Waste Repository at Yucca Mountain someday. The trip, however, feels like an expedition into hostile territory. The whole state of Nevada is on the warpath over the project.
"See those buildings off on the left there," says our guide as we pass through the sagebrush. "They're brothels. As you may know, prostitution is legal in certain Nevada counties. The state has no trouble supplying them with water, but for almost a year they wouldn't give us any. We used port-o-potties for quite a long time." As it turns out, though, the brothels have their upside. Anticipating a surge in business from the construction project, they are among the few locals supporting the project.
Right now the Yucca Mountain Repository consists of one five-mile long tunnel dug into the side of the mountain/ridge. In 1994, a locomotive-like device with a 25-foot drill face started burrowing about 185 feet a day. After a mile into the mountain it turned left for three miles, then left again, re-emerging only five feet from its target. A video at the visitors' gallery shows the whirling snout breaking through the cliff face like a diver returning to the surface, as staff members in hardhats stood and cheered. That was 1997. Nothing much has happened since.
The whole project is now tied down in environmental impact statements. The Environmental Protection Agency set a standard that radiation from the site should not exceed 15 millirems a year (about one chest x-ray) for 10,000 years. Environmentalists screamed that wasn't enough. They wanted a million years. A federal court, of course, agreed. So the EPA set a standard of 350 millirems for the next million years (about two-thirds of what people in Denver get from natural sources) and environmentalists are screaming that isn't good enough either. Nobody has suggested how these standards are to be monitored.
Naturally, in trying to make such preposterous forecasts, somebody winged some numbers somewhere and that's what made it into the papers. Now the press and politicians are playing "the government lied to us."
So the bad news is that it's going to be a long, long time--if ever--before Yucca Mountain is completed. If a license is issued, there are seven more years of construction ahead, then another round of federal permits. Meanwhile, Entergy, the country's second-leading operator of nuclear plants, has collected a multimillion-dollar settlement against DOE for failing to take the spent fuel off its hands by 1998, as promised by the Energy Policy Act of 1982. Others will surely follow.
The good news is that all this probably doesn't make much difference. Nuclear power is about to undergo a resurgence in this country--with or without Yucca Mountain.
In the first place, the whole idea that there is such a thing as "nuclear waste" is a bit of a misconception. More than 98% of the material in a spent nuclear fuel rod is being recycled in other parts of the world. About 97% of spent fuel is uranium: 2% is fissionable U-235 isotope, the fuel that powers the reactor and the other 95% is good old U-238, the same non-fissionable isotope that comes out of the ground. It can't be used for bombs. Sure, it has a half-life of four billion years (that's why environmentalists think they have to sit and watch it for a million years) but this is the same stuff that's in granite.
No, the isotope everybody really worries about is plutonium-239, which is formed when small amounts of U-238 absorb neutrons during the three-year cycle. It makes up 1% of spent fuel. Separating it and putting it back in a reactor as "mixed oxide fuel" (uranium plus plutonium) is no problem.
Unfortunately, back in 1976, Jimmy Carter decided that if we extracted the plutonium, somebody might run off with it and make a bomb. Therefore he cancelled fuel recycling. That created the problem of "nuclear waste." France recycles all its fuel rods and has never had any plutonium stolen. As for the remaining 2% of the fuel rod--the highly radioactive transuranic elements and fission byproducts--it is all stored in a single room in Le Havre.
The real waste problem in this country is the 10 million tons of carbon dioxide we throw into the atmosphere every day from coal-fired electric boilers. That constitutes almost 15% of the world's carbon dioxide garbage, which environmentalists warn us is causing global warming. It's ironic that these same people are also opposing the only technology that could conceivably replace those coal plants.
No, it's more than ironic--it's dishonest. In "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore lifts the "seven-wedge" approach to global warming from Robert Socolow, director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton. Mr. Socolow's main "wedges" are efficiency, conservation, fuel switching, renewables, carbon sequestration, reforestation--and "nuclear fission." Mr. Gore conveniently leaves nuclear out.
Even as Yucca submerges slowly beneath a raft of environmental impact statements, alternatives are emerging. Some utilities are using "dry cask storage," simple upright concrete containers surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. "Dry storage is safe on the order of 50 to 100 years," says Allison Macfarlane, co-editor of "Uncertainty Underground," an anthology on the Yucca situation. "Geological repositories are the ultimate solution but there's no need to rush into one right now." The 221-member Goshute Tribe has signed a $1 million contract to accept nuclear material on its reservation in Utah. A group of Wyoming businessmen want to do the same thing at Owl Creek.
As half a dozen utilities prepare to submit applications for new reactors to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, perhaps the best role for DOE's effort will be to serve as a distraction. While environmentalists continue their war dance around Yucca Mountain, a revived nuclear industry will be solving their global warming problem for them.
Mr. Tucker has just completed a book on the nuclear revival.
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Environment News Service
July 20, 2006
Timetable for Yucca Mountain Has Nuclear Waste Arriving in 2017
WASHINGTON, DC, July 19, 2006 (ENS) - The U.S. Energy Department now says the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada could be open to accept high-level radioactive waste at the end of March 2017. If constructed, Yucca Mountain would be the first high-level nuclear waste geologic repository in the United States.
Under the schedule, announced today by Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the department would submit its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 30, 2008 and get authorization to begin construction on Sept. 30, 2011.
Testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's energy and air quality subcommittee, Sproat said construction could be completed on March 30, 2016 and Yucca Mountain could begin accepting nuclear waste on March 31, 2017.
Yucca Mountain, located at the edge of the Nevada Test site, is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Approved by president George W. Bush and Congress in 2002, the repository is intended to contain at least 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and waste from Defense Department weapons factories for thousands of years. The high-level waste is now sited at power plants and other facilities in 31 states.
The Energy Department is legally obligated to permanently dispose of the waste and the federal government has been collecting money from nuclear power plant operators for years to fund permanent storage, but the repository has run into many hurdles.
Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, who opposes Yucca Mountain as all Nevada elected officials do, says the proposed facility lacks an approved radiation standard that will protect human health and the environment.
"The Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress will not rest until they turn Nevada into a nuclear garbage dump," Berkley said today. "They have wasted billions of dollars on this flawed flight of fancy that poses an unacceptable risk to Nevada families and our environment. While the White House may have ordered a ‘mission accomplished´ banner to go along with this new timetable, nothing will erase the long list of failures hanging over the Yucca Mountain Project.’
She points to seismic and volcanic activity at the site, legal challenges by the state of Nevada, and nationwide opposition to waste shipments which could release radioactive contamination in the event of an accident or terrorist attack.
Rather than allow waste to be dumped in Nevada, the state Congressional delegation supports legislation that would require waste to be kept on-site at nuclear plants in dry cask storage, where it can safely remain for the next 100 years.
The Yucca Mountain Task Force (YMTF) calls the timetable, "a sober step in the right direction toward meeting the Federal Government´s longstanding commitment to U.S. electricity consumers and utilities, who have invested $28 billion in this program including interest."
The Task Force includes the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, U.S. Transport Council, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Prairie Island Community Council, Decommissioning Plant Coalition, and other organizations that collectively represent state regulatory authorities, nuclear utilities, and businesses with principal operations throughout the United States.
The Task Force said today, "The DOE´s plan to centralize management of spent fuel and high-level waste at one national facility in less than 11 years clearly stands in stark contrast to the Senate Appropriations plan to store this material at up to 31 sites for 25 years at the expense of ratepayers in 41 states."
The Task Force is urging rapid enactment of the pending Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act, particularly funding reform. "We encourage a continued dialog and focus on this legislation - and the tremendous costs and implications of inaction - in the balance of this Congress."
Sproat told the subcommittee that one of his basic objectives is to "Address the impasse and growing government liability associated with unmet contractual obligations to move spent fuel from nuclear plant sites."
Sproat said independent, external assessments will be conducted on the draft license application, several key engineering processes, and the quality assurance programs at DOE, the primary Yucca Mountain contractor, and several national laboratories. Requests for proposals will be issued within the next few weeks seeking qualified experts to conduct these assessments.
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UPI
July 20, 2006
Energy official: U.S. supply needs boost
WASHINGTON, July 20 (UPI) -- A top U.S. Energy Department official has said that diversifying energy supplies and developing more domestic sources is the key to a sustainable energy policy.
Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said Wednesday his energy policy wish list includes drilling on the outer continental shelf and the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, finding a safe location for nuclear waste and a new oil refinery bill.
Sell was speaking at an energy conference at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington.
Sell said the United States must expand and diversify its energy supply, become more efficient and enhance its energy infrastructure. He said the Energy Department is doing that by focusing on renewable and biofuel energy, as well as emission reduction programs.
As President Bush and members of Congress push for more nuclear plants, which he said will happen soon, Sell urged Congress to shore up plans to open Yucca Mountain in Nevada, inside which his department wants to store the nation's nuclear waste.
A loan program to fund new energy technologies will begin taking applications within the next few weeks on a limited basis and then open fully next year, Sell said.
That was one item in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, signed Aug. 8 last year by Bush.
Sell mentioned upcoming initiatives, but told attendees at the conference that in the midst of a surge in oil and natural gas prices consumers need to be patient.
"The nature of energy policy is it takes years for the benefits of sound energy policy to manifest," he said.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 19, 2006
New target set for receiving waste at Yucca
DOE estimates proposed repository won't be ready for shipments until 2017
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department has set a new schedule for the long-delayed Yucca Mountain repository, projecting a March 2017 date to begin accepting high level nuclear waste at the Nevada site.
But the new deadlines depend on a number of key financial, legal, political and regulatory obstacles getting resolved, officials said, meaning the project could fall even further behind if nagging problems resurface or if new obstacles arise.
"What we based our schedule on is what we at DOE have control over, and that is significant," spokesman Craig Stevens said Tuesday night. "There are some things that will be out of our control."
The schedule that became public on Tuesday was the government's first tangible timeline for Yucca Mountain since the Energy Department two years ago abandoned a 2010 repository opening.
Early on in the project, a Yucca repository was supposed to begin operations in January 1998 but was repeatedly set back by lawsuits, budget shortages and DOE missteps on quality assurance, document handling and other project aspects. Recent delays were attributed to allegations that hydrologists fabricated research documentation.
The new schedule envisions Yucca Mountain opening 19 years beyond the original date.
"This is an ambitious schedule, but it's nice to actually see a schedule," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee. "This is the most detailed schedule on Yucca Mountain I have seen in recent memory."
DOE officials have said the new schedule was the result of a top to bottom evaluation conducted by new managers who were installed by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and who put schedule considerations behind fixing problems and getting the job done right.
The new schedule sets a June 30, 2008, date for DOE to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an important milestone that kicks off a formal review.
Nevada officials who have fought the repository and the state's lawmakers were skeptical on the new timeline.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said it had "no basis in science or reality." Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., called it "overly optimistic" and it "could be easily derailed by a court ruling or act of Congress."
"While this schedule is based on factors within the control of DOE, reality paints a different picture," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev. "Instead of wasting more resources and time, the DOE needs to stop lying to the American people and end this failed project today."
DOE appears to be pressing to get a license application to the NRC before President Bush leaves office, in order to have wheels turning before a new president takes over in 2009, said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
"I believe no matter what the circumstances are, between hell and high water, I do believe they will submit a (license application) before this president goes," Loux said.
"It's troubling that DOE has set such an ambitious date for submitting the license application, given the fact that Secretary Bodman himself called the Project 'broken' just four months ago," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.
Ward Sproat, director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, was scheduled to explain the schedule at a House energy subcommittee hearing today.
The dates became public Tuesday after DOE shared them with congressional offices.
DOE said it formed a "best achievable" construction schedule. It anticipates receiving NRC approval for the repository by Sept. 30, 2011.
Construction of a railroad through Nevada to the site would commence by Oct. 5, 2009, and would be in service almost five years later, by June 30, 2014.
The repository itself would be built by March 30, 2016, and would begin receiving waste by March 31, 2017 after pre-operational testing.
"As we move forward the program now has definable, reachable target dates that will allow us to open the nation's repository for spent nuclear fuel," Stevens said.
DOE said the schedule assumes that:
• Congress will appropriate enough money each year to meet the schedule.
• The NRC will complete a license review within three years.
• Lawmakers pass legislation DOE has requested to withdraw land, claim water and obtain stronger powers for waste transportation.
The schedule also was dependent on DOE getting "all necessary authorizations and permits", and the "absence of litigation related delays," according to a DOE document.
"This is further proof that Nevada is winning the fight against Yucca Mountain." Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said through a spokesman. "This timeline is little more than a wish list."
"It is sheer fantasy, completely," Loux said. Nevada has pursued close to a dozen lawsuits against the repository, and plans more, he said.
"Every one of DOE's actions is a potential lawsuit point," Loux said. "There is certainly going to be more litigation."
Work remains on a number of major elements of the repository.
DOE is recataloging millions of e-mails and documents to be posted to a licensing database that must be certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC rejected an initial certification in 2004, saying the DOE database was incomplete.
Last fall, the DOE embarked on a major redesign that aims to have spent fuel loaded at nuclear reactors, transported to Yucca Mountain, stored at the site and eventually placed in the repository in special multi-purpose canisters.
DOE also is considering railroad alignments from Eastern Nevada to the site, and recently began reevaluating a route through the western side of the state.
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Las Vegas SUN
July 19, 2006
Doubts Raised Over Nuclear Waste Plan
By Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The new head of the government's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump has doubts about a Senate plan for temporary storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste pending completion of Yucca.
"I'm not saying it can't be done but it's going to be a challenge," Edward F. "Ward" Sproat, director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told reporters Wednesday.
Sproat, a former nuclear industry executive, also said that if Yucca Mountain opens in Nevada in 2017 - a new completion date announced this week - there may be no need for interim storage anyway.
"The timeframes needed to design, license and probably litigate a centralized or several centralized storage facilities" could likely stretch to 2017, Sproat said.
Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is supposed to be the first national repository for nuclear waste. It's meant to hold 77,000 tons of the material for thousands of years.
But a series of problems including lawsuits and funding shortfalls have delayed the project, and more than 50,000 tons of nuclear waste is now piling up at nuclear power plants in 31 states, with nowhere to go. The government is facing mounting legal liability because it was contractually obligated to begin storing the material starting in 1998.
That's led some in Congress to push for interim storage sites. The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved a plan by Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., that would allow the government to store nuclear waste for up to 25 years at federal sites across the country that could open five or six years from now.
Domenici said Tuesday that even with the new 2017 deadline his plan still is needed, because "we must do something now to meet this obligation."
While questioning the interim storage plan, Sproat said the mounting liability to utilities - estimated to reach $7 billion by 2017 - needed to be addressed.
Some utilities already have filed lawsuits - and won favorable rulings in the courts - claiming the government owes them millions of dollars for failing to take their waste.
While in the private sector Sproat was the lead negotiator in a nuclear waste settlement that Exelon Corp. reached with the Energy Department in 2004. He said he wanted to renew discussions with utilities on settlement agreements that might limit the government's liability.
Sproat also said that the Energy Department will not be able to achieve the new March 31, 2017, deadline to open Yucca unless Congress approves a package of legislative reforms that would increase the waste storage capacity at Yucca, ensure a steady funding stream and make other changes.
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Reuters
July 19, 2006
US sees Yucca nuke dump open in '17, 19 years late
By Chris Baltimore
WASHINGTON, July 18 (Reuters) - A nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert would begin storing spent nuclear fuel from the nation's 103 nuclear reactors in 2017 -- 19 years behind schedule -- under the latest plan the U.S. Energy Department submitted to Congress on Tuesday.
The administration wants to store about 132,000 tons (120,000 metric tons) of nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, an underground waste dump about 90 miles (150 km) northwest of Las Vegas.
The project was originally slated to open in 1998 but has been plagued by scientific foul-ups and political stonewalling.
A "best achievable" construction schedule that the Energy Department submitted to the Senate Energy Committee would see the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) authorize construction to begin in 2011, which would be finished by 2016.
That would allow Yucca Mountain to begin accepting waste on March 31, 2017, 19 years late.
Sen. Pete Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, called the schedule "ambitious" but welcomed it.
Domenici, a Republican from New Mexico, has proposed that the spent fuel be stored at interim U.S. federal facilities until Yucca Mountain opens.
Congress approved Yucca Mountain in 2002 as the site for the nation's radioactive waste, but the Energy Department until now had not published a concrete schedule for opening it.
Many U.S. utilities have sued the government for failing to take delivery of the fuel as promised, which is piling up at 120 temporary locations in 39 states. Energy Department officials say the U.S. government's liability in the lawsuit runs into the billions of dollars.
The first step in the process would be to file a crucial construction permit at the NRC, which the Energy Department said it plans to do by June 30, 2008.
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Platts
July 18, 2006
DOE announces target date for receiving spent fuel
Washington (Platts)--18Jul2006
DOE now says it will begin receiving utility spent fuel in 2017, Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico announced July 18. "This is an ambitious schedule, but it's nice to actually see a schedule," Domenici said in a July 18 press statement. Domenici, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee that controls DOE spending, said the schedule is based, in part, on DOE's submittal of a repository license application to NRC in June 2008 and NRC's docketing that application in September 2008. The DOE waste program has not had a target date for a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada since December 2004, when DOE abandoned a plan to begin operating a repository there in 2010. The 2017 target represents a 19-year delay in DOE disposal operations. DOE waste program director Edward Sproat is expected to explain the new schedule when he testifies at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing July 19.
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San Francisco Chronicle
July 19, 2006
Big Dig tragedy could stain Bechtel's name
Delays, cost overruns, leaks and now a death in Boston puts spotlight on S.F. construction giant -- and some of its other mammoth projects
David R. Baker
Chronicle Staff Writer
For Bechtel Corp., a company that lives by its record and reputation, last week's news from Boston could hardly have been worse.
A young mother of three died beneath falling concrete slabs inside the city's new network of freeway tunnels, designed by a Bechtel joint venture that also supervised construction. Bostonians -- weary of the project's long history of delays, gaffes and ballooning costs -- vented their anger at Bechtel and its subcontractors. The state's attorney general opened an investigation and declared the accident site a crime scene.
But Boston's $14.6 billion Big Dig isn't the only large public project spurring criticism of Bechtel.
In Washington state, the San Francisco company is building a nuclear waste treatment center that may end up $7 billion over its original estimate and six years late.
At the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site in Nevada, a federal investigator last year said the company received about $4 million in incentive fees for work that had been turned in late -- or in poor quality.
A California congressman this spring accused Bechtel of double-billing the federal government for Hurricane Katrina relief work, potentially costing taxpayers $48 million if government auditors hadn't objected.
The company has also spent the past three years working to repair infrastructure in Iraq. However, criticism directed at Bechtel over that project has focused more on the way it received the job -- an unusual, limited bidding competition -- rather than its performance.
Bechtel's defense
Each time, Bechtel has defended itself, often in great technical detail. Critics often don't understand the way large government contracts work, the company's representatives say. And the projects Bechtel takes on tend to be so large and so complex that problems are almost guaranteed.
"Each project is unique," said Howard Menaker, spokesman for Bechtel's infrastructure business group. "There are no two Yucca Mountains. ... Yes, there are tunnels being built all over the world. There are bridges being built all over the world. But they aren't the Big Dig."
But public criticism of the company could have an effect.
Bechtel, like other construction and engineering giants, relies on its record to win contracts. It has built its business on past achievements, such as building the Hoover Dam. If the issues swirling around the Big Dig, as well as its other major public works, aren't resolved to the government's satisfaction, it could eventually harm Bechtel's future business. How much harm, however is difficult to gauge, because very few companies can handle the large-scale contracts that are Bechtel's specialty.
Large construction companies "have their names on these projects, and they can't afford not to do well," said Gary Tulacz, senior editor of Engineering News-Record, a trade publication. "That's why I'm sure what's happened with the Big Dig is an obvious cause for consternation. These firms value their reputations."
So far, questions about the company's work haven't hurt Bechtel's revenue. The privately held firm doesn't release profit figures, but its revenue last year set a record of $18.1 billion. It remains the nation's largest construction design and management business, according to Engineering News-Record.
A Big Dig headache
The Big Dig has been, for both the company and the community, a persistent headache.
Originally expected to cost $2.6 billion, the Big Dig grew in complexity and cost over the course of two decades of discussion, design and construction. An aging, elevated freeway that once sliced through Boston's downtown, severing most of the city from its waterfront, was demolished and replaced with sleek tunnels. Workers supervised by Bechtel and its joint venture partner, Parsons Brinckerhoff, dug another tunnel beneath the harbor, linking an interstate freeway with the city's airport. A new bridge carried another freeway across the Charles River.
But criticism of the project mounted as its costs rose. And as construction neared an end two years ago, Bostonians who had endured years of detours were outraged by leaks that started appearing in the new tunnels.
Many leaks were small, but one gushed enough water to shut down the road, backing up traffic for 10 miles. Those leaks have been fixed, with the costs covered by the construction companies working for Bechtel, according to a Massachusetts Turnpike Authority spokeswoman.
The leaks became the subject of caustic jokes among Bostonians. Last week's incident, however, was far more serious.
Concrete panels suspended from the ceiling of one tunnel broke free and dropped onto a car carrying a couple to the airport. The husband survived. His wife was crushed.
In the days since, two of the tunnels have been closed for inspection and repairs. Attention has focused on the bolts and epoxy used to fasten the panels to the ceiling, with inspectors finding more than 1,100 questionable bolts.
The state's attorney general has said that problems with the bolts were first noticed in 1999, and he is investigating whether any changes were made to correct those problems.
Bechtel joint venture spokesman Andy Paven said the company produced the overall design of the ceiling but did not design the systems that held the ceiling panels in place. The company, citing the state investigation, has made few public comments on the incident. Both Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff have been served with subpoenas from the state attorney general and have said they are cooperating.
Even those who have watched the Big Dig for years say it may take a long time to assess blame. That's due, in part, to the technical nature of the work, as well as the close relationship between the contractors and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which commissioned the project. The authority has come under even more vitriolic criticism than Bechtel in the last week, with Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney taking the first formal steps Tuesday to oust the authority's top official.
"This is something that's going to take years to sort out in court," said Scott Amey, general counsel for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, which has issued several reports critical of the Big Dig's handling. "What were the actual plans? What were the specifications in the contract? And then, what did we get?"
Hanford project draws criticism
Like the Big Dig, Bechtel's nuclear waste project in Hanford, Wash., is dauntingly complex.
The company is building a facility to take 53 million gallons of radioactive waste left over from the construction of atomic bombs and encase it in glass to keep it isolated from the environment. Some of the tanks that have been storing the waste have leaked into the local groundwater. And the site sits alongside the Columbia River.
Work at the plant, however, has been plagued by questions about the facility's ability to withstand earthquakes, questions that slowed construction to a crawl and forced Bechtel to re-evaluate its plans. The construction of some of the vessels that will hold the toxic waste also has come under scrutiny, with one nonprofit watchdog organization accusing the company of ordering vessels with designs it knew to be flawed and installing one key vessel before fixing some faulty welds that had already been found in it.
"They were definitely on a fast track, and they were taking short cuts," said Tom Carpenter, director of the nuclear oversight program at the nonprofit Government Accountability Project. "Of course, they'll deny that to their dying breath, but that's what it looks like. That's what whistle-blowers on the inside are telling us."
Bechtel says the seismic issues did not require the company to remove or redo any work at the plant. The company denies that it found any problems with designs for the waste vessels before commissioning their construction.
Project manager Craig Albert said Bechtel decided to install one vessel before fixing all the welds because the repairs would be better performed after installation. He said the company discussed that decision with its federal government clients, who concurred.
"Everybody agreed that was an appropriate way to act," he said.
At Yucca Mountain, criticism focused on nearly $4 million in incentive payments the company received. Bechtel has a $3.2 billion contract to design the long-delayed storage facility for nuclear waste.
An audit by the U.S. Department of Energy's inspector general in September said the company had been paid incentives for work that had been performed late or was of "poor quality."
Bechtel spokesman Jason Bohne said the company then gave the Energy Department documentation showing that the work met all the specifications required for the incentive payments. No further action has been taken by the government, he said, and the company kept the money.
Katrina controversy
Another division of the federal government this year questioned the amount Bechtel said would be needed to maintain trailers shipped to Mississippi to house people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Bechtel was one of several companies tapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to supply housing. A review by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, however, questioned $48 million of Bechtel's estimates for trailer maintenance. That led U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, a Los Angeles Democrat and a frequent Bechtel critic, to say the company was trying to double-bill the government.
Menaker called the problem an error and said it was immediately corrected. He added that the company never charged the government the disputed amount. Rather, he said the incident shows how federal contracts are supposed to work. Bechtel gave a cost estimate, the government reviewed it and corrected mistakes, and the work was able to proceed.
"It's a good example of the system working, under federal auditors," he said. "It's also a good case of how the public was not double billed."
E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.
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DOE
July 19, 2006
DOE Announces Yucca Mountain License Application Schedule
New Director Ward Sproat Testifies on Revised Timeline
WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that it will submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, no later than June 30, 2008. The Department also announced that if requested legislative changes are enacted, the repository will be able to accept spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste starting in early 2017. Announcing a schedule for submitting a license application is another step in the Department´s mission to provide stability, clarity and predictability in moving the Yucca Mountain Project forward as quickly as possible based on sound science.
“I am confident that we will prepare and submit a defensible and credible license application that accurately reflects a design for the Yucca Mountain repository which meets or exceeds the safety criteria specified by the NRC no later than Monday, June 30, 2008,’ said Edward “Ward’ Sproat, Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, in testimony before the House Energy & Commerce Committee´s Energy & Air Quality subcommittee.
Sproat announced that independent, external assessments will be conducted on the draft license application, several key engineering processes, and the quality assurance programs at DOE, the primary Yucca Mountain contractor, and several national laboratories. Requests for proposals will be issued within the next few weeks seeking qualified experts to conduct these assessments.
“These reviews will tell us the gaps that currently exist between where the program stands right now and where it needs to be when we submit the application. Safety, quality and schedule discipline are not mutually exclusive; in fact, we will need all three of these elements to meet these licensing expectations,’ Sproat said.
Sproat emphasized that submitting a license application by June 30, 2008, is his first priority. He said before an application is submitted the following conditions will be met to his satisfaction: design of license meets the licensing requirements; application accurately reflects the design; data which is used to justify the design is accurate and generated in compliance with quality assurance requirements; application adequately addresses all of the requirements of NUREG 1804 (NRC´s Yucca Mountain Review Plan); and writers of the application have attested to the accuracy and completeness of their sections.
Submittal of the license application by this date is one of four strategic objectives that Sproat said are “of utmost importance to this program and will be the basis of planning and resource allocation during my tenure.’
Sproat´s four objectives are to:
* Submit a license application to the NRC by June 30, 2008;
* Staff and train the OCRWM organization so that it has the skills and culture needed to design, license, manage construction and operate the Yucca Mountain project with safety, quality and cost effectiveness;
* Address the impasse and growing government liability associated with unmet contractual obligations to move spent fuel from nuclear plant sites;
* Develop and begin implementation of a comprehensive national spent fuel transportation plan that accommodates state, local and tribal concerns to the greatest extent possible.
Sproat, a Registered Professional Engineer, has long and extensive experience in the nuclear power generating industry. He founded McNeill, Sproat & Associates, LLC, a management consulting company specializing in energy technologies. He served as the chief operating officer of Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, Ltd in South Africa, and worked for various nuclear power generating companies including Exelon, PECO Energy and its predecessor, Philadelphia Electric Company.
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Las Vegas SUN
July 18, 2006
New opening date for Yucca Mountain waste dump is 2017
By Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Energy Department has a new opening date for the long-delayed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada: March 31, 2017.
That's 19 years late. But it's the first concrete timeline the department has produced in some time.
The Energy Department planned to announce the schedule at a congressional hearing Wednesday but shared it with congressional offices Tuesday. A department spokesman didn't immediately return a call for comment.
According to a copy of the new schedule released by the office of Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., the department would submit its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 30, 2008, get authorization to begin construction on Sept. 30, 2011, complete construction on March 30, 2016 and begin accepting nuclear waste on March 31, 2017.
The dates correspond to general goals department officials have shared recently with lawmakers.
"This is an ambitious schedule, but it's nice to actually see a schedule. This is the most detailed schedule on Yucca Mountain that I have seen in recent memory," said Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M.
But Domenici, who last month released a proposal for interim nuclear waste storage at federal sites across the country, said his plan still would be needed because the government is years past its 1998 deadline to begin accepting spent fuel from nuclear reactors.
Yucca Mountain is planned as the first national repository for nuclear waste and is meant to hold at least 77,000 tons of the material for thousands of years. The dump site is in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The project has been delayed repeatedly by lawsuits, funding shortfalls, evidence that government scientists flouted quality control standards - requiring their work to be redone - and other problems.
Currently there are more than 50,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste waiting at nuclear power plants in 31 states. The government is obligated by contract to take the waste off the utilities' hands but has not done so because it has no place to put it.
"This timetable is a rosy scenario painted to please those desperate to see Yucca Mountain open for business," said Berkley, who along with the rest of Nevada's congressional delegation strongly opposes the dump. "The proposed nuclear garbage dump at Yucca Mountain still faces serious obstacles before it can be licensed, including additional legal challenges from the state of Nevada."
Jon Summers, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the new schedule was "nothing more than a wish list by the people who want to turn Nevada into the nation's nuclear dumping ground."
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Nevada Observer
July 18, 2006
Reid Calls For GAO Audit Of DOE Spending At Yucca
Berkley Says Interim Plan For Waste Storage Is Stop-Gap
Nevada Senator Harry Reid (D) is calling for a Government Accounting Office (GAO) audit of the spending practices of the Department of Energy (DOE) at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Reid says that a Clark County report on how DOE spends its resources indicates that the agency is spending its money in ways not authorized by congress.
According to Reid, the county report shows that DOE is spending money on things other than what should be high priority items. The county indicates that while DOE should be working toward getting licensed, money is spent on items that would indicate the license is already in hand. Reid says that simply is wrong and wants a full audit. The House is currently looking to not put any more money in a Yucca budget while the Senate is debating creating a budget of $50 million for this fiscal year. In all it is believed that Yucca has already cost more than $8 billion and licensing is no closer today than it was 20 years ago.
Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley (D) has said that a proposal in the senate for interim waste storage of high level nuclear waste would still send nuclear waste to Nevada for storage at Yucca Mountain. Berkley is breaking from her democratic partner in the Senate, Harry Reid who is supporting the plan written by he and New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici. "At the end of the day," she said in a prepared statement, "this plan still calls for nuclear waste to be dumped 90 minutes from Las Vegas, so nothing has really changed, except the timetable for sending radioactive garbage to Yucca Mountain."
Berkley has been one of the strong voices against the entire concept of Yucca Mountain, and said, "The fact that the supporters of this proposal say Yucca Mountain can wait 25 more years to open only proves that the dump is no longer needed." Domenici and Reid are proposing that high level waste be temporarily stored in areas near existing nuclear energy plants, and to continue research into reusing the waste in the future.
"As I have said over and over again," Berkley stated, "we should use the existing trust fund to pay plant operators to secure nuclear waste on-site. That will keep nuclear waste off of America's roads and railways and out of Nevada." Berkley says she sees no reason to move the waste from where it is right now. Moving the waste would be dangerous and be of no benefit to anyone. "For years the nuclear industry has been falsely claiming that Yucca Mountain had to open right away, or else plants would shut down. This obvious lie was meant to create pressure on lawmakers to force radioactive waste down the throats of Nevadans."
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New Republic
July 18, 2006
The Plank
YES NEW NUKES?:
I was glad to see Sunday's New York Times Magazine feature a long (and long-overdue) look at the future of nuclear power and whether it can save us from global warming, soaring energy costs, foreign wars, and just about everything nasty that afflicts us. It turns out the answer is probably no--but also that fission is one of several approaches which, taken together, might solve our worst energy and environmental woes.
Still, the piece makes the the industry's economic future look dicier than I would have guessed. (Simply contructing a nuclear plant, for instance, apparently still costs a staggering $2 billion or so. You don't make that money back in a year.) And perhaps more important, though the piece sort of glosses over this point, the industry doesn't seem to have any bright new ideas about the supreme dilemma of radioactive waste. Harry Reid, not to mention various Energy Department incompetents, are steadily killing off the prospects for a national waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, where the latest target date for waste storage is now 2018. (To help conceptualize how long that is, imagine two White House terms for Hillary and then a couple years of Jeb.) But without some better solution to the waste problem, it's hard to see public opinion embracing a new nuclear boom. Global warming, after all, is a speculative and fairly distant threat--even if it's the more serious one. A huge spent fuel depot 15 miles from your child's playground is somewhat harder to shrug off.
P.S. Perhaps public opinion would be swayed if some prominent Democrat took up the nuclear cause. But so far that's not happening. Here's Hillary in her "major" energy policy speech from May:
Nuclear is now very much in the news as a potential power source because of its lack of contribution to global warming. If you look at nuclear energy, which currently provides 20 percent of our energy with virtually no emission of greenhouse gases, we do have to take a serious look, but there remain very serious questions about nuclear power and our ability to manage it in a world with suicidal terrorists.
So I have real concerns, specifically about a plant in my state near where I live, Indian Point, which has had a number of problems, and more generally with the capacity and quality of the oversight provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
So we need to resolve problems with the NRC, as well as questions of cost, safety, proliferation and waste, before we go forward with nuclear power.
Will anyone in the 2008 Democratic primaries disagree with her?
--Michael Crowley
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The Monitor
July 18, 2006
Proliferation of Nuclear Waste Sites Boosts Risk
If the Department of Energy hasn´t been able to build one national repository for high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., what makes some members of Congress believe it would be able to build 31 smaller Yucca Mountains as a temporary storage alternative?
This suggests a meltdown of common sense in response to a waste storage impasse that could stymie any revival of America´s nuclear energy industry if not resolved.
This hare-brained idea originated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who, in yet another attempt to derail Yucca Mountain, not long ago suggested that the status quo was good enough, and that we leave these potentially dangerous materials where they are, at 103 temporary storage sites scattered across 13 states. But we´re shocked that the normally level-headed Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is lending his name to a similar idea, instead of using his influence as chairman of the Senate Energy Committee to speed the completion of Yucca Mountain.
This idea just seems a silly diversion that doesn´t get us any closer to a permanent solution, and would cause more problems than it solves.
One remote and highly secure repository, on the Nevada Test site, is easier to safeguard against threats than are 31 scattered repositories. One repository, already years under development, study and construction, should be faster and less expensive to complete than 31 satellite sites would be — facilities that would require years to study, plan and permit. The logistical challenges involved in transporting nuclear waste in 31 temporary sites, rather than one, seem insurmountable.
And if one Yucca Mountain has generated this much controversy, obstructions and public anxiety, just think what 31 little Yucca Mountains would generate. As it now stands, terrorists have more than a hundred targets from which to choose if they want to go after a nuclear storage facility. We would prefer to see that number drastically decrease, not increase.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman recently called the possibility of building temporary storage sites “a formidable undertaking,’ which we think was an understatement.
“If Congress wishes to discuss with us the questions of interim storage, which the committee has indicated, we are happy to engage with them,’ Bodman said, but he believes — as we do — that the focus of Congress and the administration should remain on finishing Yucca Mountain.
Critics of Yucca Mountain are fond of pointing to its purported flaws. But imperfect as it is, it´s still far superior to anything else we´ve seen proposed, or to the potentially dangerous status quo.
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Boston Globe
July 18, 2006
Baldacci opposes possible storage of more radwaste at Wiscasset
AUGUSTA, Maine --Gov. John Baldacci on Tuesday aired his objections to a proposal moving through the Senate that could create temporary radioactive waste storage areas. Critics fear the Maine Yankee site could be targeted.
The proposal addresses the growing volume of used reactor fuel at power plants by calling for the government to store civilian nuclear waste for up to 25 years at federal sites across the country.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., included the provision in a $30.7 billion spending bill that advanced out of his Appropriations subcommittee.
In a letter to Domenici, Baldacci said Monday that creating temporary storage sites could lead to further delays in a proposed dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the designated federal storage site that was supposed to open in 1998.
As drafted, Domenici's proposal would put high-level radioactive waste in storage facilities "never designed, intended or evaluated for this purpose," Baldacci said. Instead, the government should move forward with a national radwaste repository in Yucca Mountain.
Furthermore, there are security issues, Baldacci noted.
"The security concerns of Americans are not well served by having thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste left in facilities in 31 states, including Maine," Baldacci wrote.
With completion of the Yucca Mountain storage site delayed, Domenici's provision allows the U.S. energy secretary to take title to closed plants such as Maine Yankee and take responsibility for the storage of high-level nuclear waste until it can be moved.
Another provision calls on the energy secretary to designate a consolidation site for waste within any state with a reactor for 25 years.
Currently there are more than 50,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste in the form of spent reactor fuel rods at nuclear power plants in 31 states.
The site of the former Maine Yankee atomic power plant in Wiscasset holds 600 metric tons of nuclear waste sealed in 64 concrete and steel casks that are designed to last for decades.
Once the national repository opens, the casks will be loaded onto rail cars for shipment to the permanent storage location.
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Central Maine Morning Sentinel
Editorial: Can we trust the feds on nuclear waste?
Since 1984, electricity ratepayers in Maine and across the United States have been paying a portion of their electricity bills to the federal government. The surcharge was meant to pay for the construction of a permanent storage site for the dangerous radioactive waste generated by nuclear power plants. The government has collected $24 billion since that time, $279 million of it from Maine Yankee ratepayers.
Yet, despite the fact that the feds were supposed to haul away every state's nuclear waste by 1998 and ultimately put it into permanent storage, that hasn't happened. That's because Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where the waste was due to be stored, isn't nearly ready to receive it. And because of political wrangling in Washington, D.C., Yucca Mountain may never be ready.
So the federal government doesn't have a very good track record of carrying out its commitments to states regarding nuclear waste. In fact, lawsuits were filed against the Department of Energy on behalf of ratepayers whose money has been collected, but not used, to pay for long-term storage of the waste; courts have found the Department of Energy in default on its obligations.
So with that sterling track record of payments made but services never rendered -- Maine Yankee's 550 metric tons of waste are still sitting at Maine Yankee -- the government is here to help us once again.
Now, there's a Bush administration plan making its way in a spending bill through Congress with the support of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.Mex., to have the feds gather up all the spent fuel at various sites, reprocess it and then send it back to not-yet-designated consolidation centers for the next 25 years, or until Yucca Mountain is opened -- whichever comes first. Perhaps we should also add "a cold day in purgatory" to that list of timeframes?
The legislation would deprive states of any ability to say "yes" or "no" to becoming consolidation centers, which we think is just a fancy word for "dumps." The dumps would be built on private land purchased by the government, or land in federal hands already, and only in states that already have nuclear power plants.
But you can bet it's the states with already existing nuclear waste storage areas -- including Maine -- that will be top on the list of potential sites if the bill passes, which could very well mean Maine might become an attractive alternative for storage of the region's waste. After all, compared to states to the south of us, we don't have too many voters, our population is spread out, and our two very independent Republican senators may need to be punished by the administration for not toeing the party line as strongly as the faithful. Oh, and Maine voted for Kerry in the last presidential election.
There are other issues presented by the plan. Among them is the fact that most of those extant storage sites are located on the site of nuclear power plants, which means they're near the water. And that means they're very close to sea level, which raises the question: If sea level rise is a serious possibility, how safe is it to use these sites?
Maine does have a strong history of fighting back against proposed nuclear waste dumps in our backyard. The feds tried to make Maine the site of a waste repository in the mid-1980s; the Maine delegation, including then U.S. Rep. Olympia Snowe, joined with Gov. Joe Brennan to successfully defeat that proposal. Both Snowe and Sen. Susan Collins have stated publicly that they would oppose any legislation to open up Maine to new waste from out of state; Collins has said she will press to have the waste that we currently have removed from the state in a safe manner. That's the right position to take and we hope that other senators join with our two in the understanding that making empty new promises to Americans to replace the old ones that were broken isn't the responsible way to deal with the dangerous waste that we've generated.
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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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