Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, July 28, 2006
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 28, 2006
New Yucca analysis sought
Reid, Ensign press Bush administration for access to impact study
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Nevada's senators say White House environmental advisers were supposed to have completed a new Yucca Mountain analysis by now, and they are demanding to know where the document is.
Federal law requires the White House Council of Environmental Quality to prepare impact studies to accompany proposed bills, the senators said.
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So Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., asked council chairman James Connaughton in a letter Wednesday for the report on a Yucca Mountain bill that the Bush administration sent to Capitol Hill on April 5.
"The CEQ must provide this analysis to Congress," Ensign said.
The demand was viewed as a fresh shot across the bow of the Bush administration as the Nevada senators load new ammunition in their battle against the proposed nuclear waste repository.
Aides said that the senators suspect a report has not been written and that Reid and Ensign plan to bring the subject up at a Yucca Mountain hearing set for next week before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
"CEQ's analysis is necessary for members of Congress and the public to understand the impact and parameters of the proposal," Reid and Ensign said in the letter.
A CEQ spokeswoman on Thursday declined to discuss the status of any Yucca Mountain report or to confirm whether one has been written. The spokeswoman would not say whether the White House believes one was required or not.
"We will be responding to the senators' letter, and we will share the response after the senators see it," spokeswoman Kristy Hellmer said.
The Senate committee is scheduled to examine a Bush administration bill aiming to clear away some of the obstacles that Energy Department officials say are holding up the repository project.
The measure would reclassify the Yucca Mountain fund so that DOE can gain access to funds needed for construction.
It would withdraw the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas from public land status and would lift a cap of 70,000 metric tons on how much nuclear waste can be placed inside the mountain.
The bill also would make it easier for DOE to claim water rights for the repository despite Nevada opposition. In addition, it would expand the energy secretary's authority on nuclear waste transportation.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
July 28, 2006
In 2008: America, meet Nevada
Over this past week, you've probably heard that the Democratic National Committee has chosen Nevada to hold its second-in-the-nation presidential caucus in 2008. The political community in Nevada and the nation is certainly weighing the ramifications of this decision, while a few east coasters are whipping out their dusty atlases to find out where, exactly, Nevada is.
With a booming, diversifying population and a penchant for leaning toward the winner "" we've only picked the loser twice in the past hundred years "" Nevada would be a good choice for an early caucus for either party. The best part for less-than-partisan Nevadans: it's not all about the party. Democrat, Republican, or Independent, Nevadans should recognize this as a positive for the state.
The Presidential election, especially in the last decade, has become an ongoing media event. Already, cable news networks are preparing fancy splash screens of red, white and blue declaring the obvious with phrases like "America Decides: 2008," or "Decision: America 2008." This time, the second major event: us.
This will be well before the media or the public lose interest in other states' decisions; before that forgotten clump of primaries that don't really matter because the parties have each reached a level of inevitability. No "" Nevada will be front, center and important.
A lot of our issues are the same as the nation at large: immigration, minimum wage, taxes, health care, security and the war. A few of our issues are decidedly not, however; and pundits are already discussing how the candidates will wiggle their way around the elephant "" err, donkey "" in the room: Yucca Mountain.
Democrats are probably better equipped to deal with the issue, considering it was a Republican who made the final decision (although we re-elected him afterwards, so maybe we've moved past that). Perhaps the tougher hurdle will be post-Nevada; after a solid week of talking to Nevadans about keeping the waste out, Democratic hopefuls will need to deal with South Carolina just ten days later, and South Carolinians want just the opposite.
Although the issue might be a new one in the primaries, the dance is very old. Democrats and Republicans alike often have to play to their base in order to get the party nod "" before moving toward the center in order to win the November election.
As the second Democratic caucus "" right after the famously first Iowa caucuses "" the candidate field is likely to be wide open; for Democrats, a bellwether state is exactly what they'll need to get a sneak peek at which of their candidates are going to be competitive nationwide. Traditionally partisan states will certainly be able to pick the best Republican or the best Democrat, but it won't always be the most competitive Republican or Democrat.
Nevada, for all its growing, has consistently kept itself on the political center line, although both parties wish it weren't. Perhaps it's our live-and-let-live attitude; perhaps it's the fact that regardless of our party affiliation, we all seem to have a libertarian streak (even though we don't always show it).
However it might affect us, just fifteen days into the election year, all eyes will be on Nevada, as the full slate of Democratic hopefuls descends on our state to woo the Nevada Democrats to their side.
So, schedule your haircuts and iron your good shirts: like it or not, Nevada's about to move into the spotlight.
Ryan McGinness is a Nevada native living and working in Washington, D.C. He can be reached via e-mail at rmcginness@yahoo.com.
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Spartanburg Herald Journal
July 28, 2006
Congress is trying to kill the only option left for removing plutonium from South Carolina
When federal officials decided to send surplus plutonium to South Carolina, they promised it would not stay long.
They had two methods to dispose of the dangerous, highly radioactive material. Some of it would be encased in glass logs and permanently stored in a new high-level nuclear waste facility under construction in Nevada. The rest would be reprocessed at the Savannah River Site into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.
The new permanent disposal site in Nevada is in limbo, the subject of interminable and unreasonable congressional debate and litigation.
Now, the U.S. House has voted to kill funding for the plant that would reprocess the weapons-grade plutonium into mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) for commercial power plants.
That would not only kill a major jobs project in that area of the state, it would leave South Carolina with no way to get rid of the plutonium, which has already been sent here.
South Carolinians always knew this was a possibility. The federal government has a terrible track record on carrying out any plan that involves handling nuclear waste.
The state sued the federal government to keep the plutonium out of the state and lost. The best compromise was a federal law that requires Washington to make hefty payments to the state if the plutonium stays here longer than the original plan.
The state's congressional delegation must hold its colleagues to that deal. It is the state's only leverage.
This plutonium is being stored at the Savannah River Site, which is not in a suitable location for long-term plutonium storage. The facility is also not designed for that purpose.
Federal officials have an obligation to South Carolina to reprocess this material and get it out of the state. Congress must fund the MOX plant, and it must move forward the plans for the disposal facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The alternative means breaking faith with South Carolinians and creating a long-term environmental and health hazard, as well as a potential terrorist threat.
The federal government forced this material on South Carolina. In doing so, it forced a hazard on the state. It must recognize its obligation to remedy the situation.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
July 28, 2006
Limerick board OKs nuclear-storage planBy
Sandy Bauers
Inquirer Staff Writer
In voting to approve little more than a 56,000-square-foot concrete pad and a small building at the Limerick nuclear power plant, the Limerick Township supervisors last night removed the last township obstacle to building a new storage facility for highly radioactive spent fuel.
The board unanimously approved the building plan, with the contingency that the plant's owner, Exelon Corp., provide extra hazardous-materials training and radiation-protection kits and other equipment for the two fire companies that serve the area.
The pad will provide the foundation for concrete "casks," each slightly larger than a one-car garage, to hold steel canisters containing spent fuel.
Supervisor Chairman David Kane said, however, that concerns about the plant and the fuel-storage plan remained, even though that was out of the township's purview.
Kane reiterated that the township has "no jurisdiction over use or safety" at the plant; that is up to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he said.
But he described township correspondence with federal elected officials and said it would continue.
"Let's not let it end here. Let's not let the safety and our concerns end in two meetings," Kane said, referring to the two supervisors' meetings at which the plans were discussed.
"We will continue to fight for whatever benefits we can," he said, "but we are limited."
Longtime township resident Bill Miller asked what would happen if the township voted against the building plan.
"It would be immediately overturned by the Court of Common Pleas," Kane said. "We have looked at everything we can do here. What we're not going to do is waste taxpayer money or stop the inevitable."
Resident Cookie Shearer complained that more people didn't show up to object because "they feel like they have no recourse... . They will fight against a supermarket or a store, but they won't come out and comment on nuclear waste in their backyard."
Limerick, like many other nuclear power plants in the United States, is running out of space for its spent fuel rods, about a third of which are replaced in each reactor every year.
The spent rods - still highly radioactive for thousands of years - go into racks in a water-filled pool next to each reactor for cooling. But even though Limerick has reconfigured its racks to hold more spent fuel, officials there say the pools will be full in about three years.
At one time, nuclear facilities planned to transport spent fuel to the proposed national storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nev. But with that stalled - the latest, most optimistic estimate is that it could open in 2017 - facilities have to find other options for spent fuel.
So, like more than half of the nation's 65 commercial nuclear power sites, Exelon decided to construct a "dry cask" system.
Critics worry about radiation leaks and the potential for a terrorist attack damaging a cask and releasing a cloud of radioactivity. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and proponents of dry-cask storage say the system is safe.
--Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 215-854-5147 or sbauers@phillynews.com.
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Providence Journal
July 28, 2006
Coming soon: More nuclear-power plants
M.J. Andersen
Recently, a top government official in Britain told members of Parliament that nuclear power would have to make up part of the country's energy supply in the coming decades.
It was the kind of news that would barely make a ripple in the United States. But I heard about it while visiting Scotland, and wondered if there, it might spark a bit of a row.
(Travel in the United Kingdom can have you thinking in British-isms, while taking note of local customs. The best place for a row, in Glasgow at least, is Sauchiehall Street, not just because it is a crowded shopping thoroughfare but because the name is pronounced "Suckyhall." On summer evenings, young men rove there, and, depending on how many pints they have had, are more or less inclined to invent scores, and settle them.)
Because the British face the same energy problems we do, the word from industry secretary Alistair Darling struck me as a grim preview. Soon, Americans will be hearing about nuclear power, and deciding how much more of it they will tolerate.
The British have a longstanding abhorrence of things nuclear. So I was surprised to learn that nuclear power currently generates about 20 percent of the United Kingdom's electricity -- about the same proportion as in the United States. (The French, hog-wild for nuclear, draw on it for 78 percent of their power.)
People in developed countries have begun feeling trapped on the question of future energy needs. And that could lead many of us to embrace moves we once might have rejected. Ironically, in the case of nuclear power, it could be environmentalists who end up leading the way.
Most experts who have looked at the U.S. energy problem say no single approach will do. They argue for multi-pronged strategies (e.g., throwing nuclear power into the mix), both as a way of promoting energy independence and of combating global warming.
As Jon Gertner noted in a July 16 New York Times Magazine article, the electricity question is separate from the problem we have learned to call "our dependence on foreign oil."
Oil furnishes only a tiny percentage of U.S. electrical power. About half comes from coal-burning plants, which add to global warming. Partly because of supply constraints, natural gas (another leading source) has become increasingly expensive.
The most desirable alternatives -- wind and solar power -- so far supply only negligible amounts. It could be decades before they become major sources.
As U.S. energy demands grow, and problems associated with global warming increase, Americans and Britons alike will look to nuclear power as the nearest quick fix. It produces none of the gases believed to cause global warming. And uranium, though messy to mine, is relatively cheap.
Some experts believe that intensive conservation efforts could erase the need for substantial new power supplies. But few political leaders are leaping to promote, say, more energy-efficient appliances, or encourage "green" buildings -- for that matter, to do any kind of advance planning.
President Bush is already on the bandwagon for expanding nuclear power.
He also resists traditional approaches to curbing greenhouse gases (higher fuel-economy standards, policies favoring mass transit, etc.)
Other, more imaginative strategies for reducing the gases -- so-called geoengineering -- are ridiculed and go unfunded. Instead, the president proposes another trip to the moon, where perhaps he intends to live.
By one estimate, the world has a 10-year window to forestall the more significant effects of global warming. Yet, between election cycles and quarterly reports, Americans live in a short-term world. We will act only when our backs are to the wall.
It appears inevitable that some new nuclear plants are on the way, probably to be sited near old ones. Most existing plants will soon reach their expiration dates, and have to be shut down. New plants will be needed if only to replace the power they supply.
Emissions caps on coal burning are likely to hasten the day, making the costs of nuclear power relatively more appealing.
The trouble, of course, is what it always was: What to do with reactors' remarkably lethal spent fuel? Already, our nuclear plants (103 of them, in 31 states) have generated 50,000 tons of highly radioactive waste. And because the federal disposal site at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, is not ready (nor will be, for another dozen years), the waste is being stored in its home states.
It is frightening enough that the stuff could kill or injure people accidentally. The new worry is that terrorists could get hold of it, and wreak serious intentional damage.
More and more people have a sense that we are walking the plank -- that because of our failed resolve, we will stock the world with more poisons than we already have, leaving them for our children to deal with.
It is more than a bit dodgy, as they might say in Scotland -- and worthy of a tremendous row indeed.
--M.J. Andersen is a member of The Journal's editorial board.
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The Onion
July 27, 2006
Nuclear Waste Accumulating
Thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel is building up at three power plants because the government¹s failure to open a promised storage facility in Nevada.
What do you think?
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"Surely there are faster, less costly ways to turn Nevada into a barren wasteland of radioactive decay."
Yvonne Breen, Building Contractor
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"It's like my mom always said: 'A place for everything and everything in its place.' Of course, I never had more than one or two rods of nuclear waste lying around in my room."
Peter Wexler, Door-to-Door Salesman
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"Whoever put Troma in charge of federal hazardous-waste management is an idiot."
Ron Breslin, Systems Analyst
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Philadelphia Inquirer
July 27, 2006
Limerick's plans to store nuclear waste raise fears
Steel canisters containing spent fuel would be placed inside concrete vaults that sit out in the open.
By Sandy Bauers
Inquirer Staff Writer
Deep inside the Limerick nuclear power plant - past concrete barriers, razor wire, armed guards, four-inch-thick steel doors, and detectors for explosives and metal - bluish water undulates gently in two deep pools, stirred by pumps.
More than 20 feet below the surface sit 5,000 bundles of spent fuel rods, from Limerick's 20 years of operation.
And now, the pools are expected to be full in three years.
So Limerick intends to transfer some of the spent fuel - highly radioactive for thousands of years - into steel containers that will be put in concrete vaults sitting in the open on the property.
The plan has alarmed many in the community. They fear that a terrorist attack could rupture a cask and release radiation. They worry that the site will become a permanent nuclear-waste dump.
Critics are outraged that the industry still lacks a good solution to spent fuel a half-century after the first large-scale plant began operating in Shippingport, Pa.
But officials for plant owner Exelon Corp. and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission insist that it's safe. And they say they have no other options - for Limerick, or any other nuclear plant in the United States.
The contentious debate over what to do with spent fuel may even stall President Bush's plan, promoted during his May 24 visit to Limerick, to build more nuclear power plants.
Roughly 12 to 18 plants are in planning, said Steven Kraft of the industry lobbying group, the Nuclear Energy Institute. But fuel storage "comes up as a concern," he said, and he expects that "visible progress" on a solution will be needed before any get the go-ahead.
John Hanger, president of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, an environmental group, put it more bluntly.
"It's the height of irresponsibility," said Hanger, a former member of Pennsylvania's Public Utility Commission. The industry "is out there beating the drums for creating more plants when there is no place to store the waste."
Limerick is merely the latest to move to so-called dry cask storage. Similar facilities have been built - with varying levels of protest - at 33 of 65 commercial nuclear power sites in the nation, including New Jersey's Oyster Creek plant and Pennsylvania's Susquehanna plant in Luzerne County and Peach Bottom in York County. Dry cask storage is nearing completion for Salem and Hope Creek in New Jersey.
This wasn't how it was supposed to be.
When construction began at Limerick in 1974, the plan was to cool the spent fuel in pools, then take it to a reprocessing plant.
But in 1979, President Jimmy Carter banned reprocessing, fearing that a byproduct, plutonium, which is used in nuclear weapons, would fall into the wrong hands.
In the 1980s, the government decided to take responsibility for the nation's spent fuel.
That led to the Yucca Mountain, Nev., storage plan; the facility was to start accepting deliveries in 1998. But that has hit a multitude of snags, not to mention opposition from Nevada.
On Thursday, the Energy Department's Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told Congress that the earliest Yucca Mountain could open is 2017.
And that "is our best achievable schedule," said Sproat, a Tredyffrin resident and former Peco Energy and Exelon employee who worked at Limerick.
Meanwhile, electricity users across the country have, through their rates, been paying into a Nuclear Waste Fund specifically for Yucca Mountain, which has grown to $19 billion.
Every March, Limerick shuts down one of its reactors and replaces about one-third of the fuel, moving the spent fuel into adjacent steel-lined pools.
Officials figure that they have until 2009 before Limerick's pools are filled to a "conservative" limit, said Kevin J. Carrabine, the dry cask project manager. He expects to have the dry storage ready by 2008.
Some residents are angry that, ultimately, they have no say in whether spent fuel is stored in casks on the site. Under Limerick's NRC license, it can store spent fuel. Dry casks are just a different method.
Limerick Township's main purview is whether the thick cement slab that's needed is within setbacks defined by the zoning ordinance and whether it will alter storm-water runoff.
In July, the township supervisors gave the project preliminary approval. Final approval could come by September, Supervisor Renee Chessler said.
But at each meeting, dozens of residents show up. In a post-Three Mile Island, post-9/11 world, some worry about radiation.
"You're asking us to put double trouble in our backyard," said Donna Cuthbert, a resident of neighboring North Coventry Township in Chester County. "It's really irresponsible to go down this path."
Limerick is also home to 80 of the plant's 700 workers - and nearly 500 more live within 10 miles.
One of them, Bob Mandik, rose at two recent township meetings and asked other coworkers there to do the same.
"It's not just some outside company that's in here," he said.
Others chafe with long-standing bitterness over the nuclear giant in their midst, township historian Bill Miller said. They didn't want it in the first place, and don't feel adequately compensated for the risks.
In 2005, Exelon won a reduction in the plant's assessed value for taxes from $912 million to $20 million. It is now the fourth-largest contributor to the Spring-Ford School District's coffers.
But one of the critics' biggest concerns is terrorism. What would happen if the exposed concrete vaults were targeted?
The NRC has done "extensive modeling," the commission's Randy Hall at a recent township meeting. Its research shows that the casks could withstand an attack "up to and including the crash of a fully loaded jetliner."
Michele Boyd of Public Citizen, a national watchdog group, said other tests showed that the casks could be harmed by a shoulder-fired missile. Her groups favors putting earth berms around the storage site, which a Maine plant has done. Limerick is not planning to do so.
A California antinuclear group, Mothers for Peace, sued the NRC, saying it should have considered the possibility of a terrorist attack at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo when it allowed dry cask storage there. In June, a federal appeals court agreed.
Dry cask opponents hope the ruling will prompt closer study of casks at other sites.
Kraft, of the lobbying group, said he thought that if the ruling stood, it would only present "an opportunity for anyone to stop anything."
At best, the casks are viewed as a stopgap solution until Yucca Mountain opens and other proposals - temporary regional storage sites, for instance, or new reprocessing technology - get traction.
David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that, in some ways, dry cask storage is actually safer than a nearly full pool. If the pool leaks or the pumps and backup pumps fail, the rods could melt or catch fire, releasing a cloud of radiation.
Having an emptier pool would give workers extra hours in which to respond to an emergency, he said.
"There is no zero-risk answer to this problem," he said. "It's managing the risk to as low as you can get."
--Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 215-854-5147 or sbauers@phillynews.com.
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Senator Harry Reid
July 26, 2006
Reid, Ensign Press for Release of Environmental Report on Yucca Mountain
Analysis of Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act Consequences Overdue
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a joint letter sent Wednesday, U.S. Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign of Nevada strongly urged the Council on Environmental Quality to release the long-overdue and legally mandated environmental impact analysis of the Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act, the proposal for dumping nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires the completion and public release of an environmental analysis of such legislation so the full environmental consequences of the bill can be examined before Congress acts. The Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act was first presented to Congress on April 5, 2006, nearly four months ago.
"We are talking about the most dangerous substance known to man. The people of Nevada need to know, and have a right to know, about the dangers associated with storing 77,000 tons of nuclear waste in our state, including the potential environmental impact." said Reid. "It would be irresponsible to rush to build a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain and transport so much dangerous material across the country without the public being informed of the public health and environmental hazards.’
“The CEQ must provide this analysis to Congress,’ said Ensign. “The people of Nevada have a legal right to know the environmental impact of storing the most hazardous substance known to mankind in our backyard.’
The Senators sent the letter in advance of a hearing that will be held next week regarding the Yucca Mountain proposal. Both senators are urging the Council on Environmental Quality to release its report in time for the hearing to enable a thorough discussion of the Yucca Mountain proposal.
The full text of the letter is below.
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James L. Connaughton Chairman
Council on Environmental Quality
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Chairman Connaughton:
We are writing to request the Council on Environmental Quality´s (CEQ´s) environmental impact analysis of the Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act, S. 2589, that Senators Domenici and Inhofe introduced by request of the Administration.
As stated in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Section 102(C) (43 U.S.C. 4332(C)):
“The Congress authorizes and directs that, to the fullest extent possible: (1) the policies, regulations, and public laws of the United States shall be interpreted and administered in accordance with the policies set forth in this Act, and (2) all agencies of the Federal Government shall –
. . .
(C) include in every recommendation or report on proposals for legislation and other major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on –
(i) the environmental impact of the proposed action,
(ii) any adverse environmental effects which cannot be avoided should the proposal be implemented,
(iii) alternatives to the proposed action,
(iv) the relationship between local short-term uses of man's environment and the maintenance and enhancement of long-term productivity, and
(v) any irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources which would be involved in the proposed action should it be implemented[.]’
CEQ´s analysis must be presented to Congress and the public prior to any action on the Administration´s proposal. CEQ´s analysis is necessary for members of Congress and the public to understand the impact and parameters of the proposal.
The administration´s bill was presented to Congress on April 5, 2006, nearly four months ago, yet Congress has not received the CEQ´s analysis as required by law. As we are confident that this is just an oversight of CEQ, we request that the analysis be provided to Congress by COB July 26th. We look forward to reviewing your analysis. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this request, please contact Sandra Schubert at 224.3542 or Pam Thiessen at 224.6244.
Sincerely,
United States Senator Harry Reid
United States Senator John Ensign
Cc:
United States Senator Pete Domenici, Chairman, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
United States Senator Jeff Bingaman, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
United States Senator James Inhofe, Chairman, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
United States Senator James Jeffords, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
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Christian Science Monitor
July 26, 2006
Spent nuclear fuel edges closer to Yucca
The Department of Energy has announced a timeline for the nuclear-waste site, as opposition intensifies in Nevada.
By Matt Bradley
Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
What weighs a total of about 50,000 tons, is scattered among 31 states, and scares the daylights out of almost everybody?
For the congressional delegation of Nevada - home to the much-debated, much-delayed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste site - the answer could be headed their way a little too soon. It was over their protests that the Department of Energy (DOE) announced last week that Yucca will begin accepting the nation's spent nuclear fuel by 2017.
True, this is about 19 years later than the department originally promised. But these days, nuclear power is on an upswing, thanks to climbing gas prices, concerns about climate change, and an increasing desire to diminish America's dependency on foreign oil.
Despite the shifting economic and political winds, however, policymakers and others are still wrestling with questions about spent nuclear fuel.
For its part, the DOE says its new dumping date is still a best-case scenario.
But the new timetable, and a new political will for the project, have hardly swayed the senators of Nevada from their opposition. The timeline "is a wish list by the people who are trying to turn the state of Nevada into the nation's nuclear dumping ground," says Jon Summers, a spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid (D) of Nevada.
The new date comes as several pieces of legislation seek to address the decades-old issue of handling spent nuclear fuel. One such proposal, tacked onto an appropriations bill by Sen. Pete Domenici (R) of New Mexico, would empower the Energy Department to designate "interim" waste sites for up to 25 years, or until Yucca is complete. Most likely, the sites would designate existing or decommissioned power plants, where radioactive materials are already stored. However, the DOE has already acknowledged major bureaucratic challenges to granting speedy, temporary storage licenses for some 31 facilities.
For supporters of Yucca Mountain, the proposal for interim sites smacks of diversionary tactics.
"Senator Reid wants to make sure that the nuclear waste doesn't come to his state," says Charles Pray, a nuclear safety adviser for the state of Maine. "Even though the licensing is [for] 25 years, we're afraid that once it's there, it will be a long time before it moves out of the state."
Many states, including Maine, are suing the department for failing to remove their spent fuel by 1998 as originally promised. Maine expects a decision on its case later this year, and total damages against the federal government are expected to climb into the tens of billions of dollars. The DOE has so far doled out about $150 million in damages to commercial nuclear utilities.
The DOE has thrown its support behind legislation that would speed Yucca's progress by "streamlining" some remaining regulatory hurdles. "People on both sides of the aisle are seeing the need for an expansion of nuclear energy," says Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the department. "We're just looking at [the political dialogue] as a positive development in the discussion as we're moving ahead with the nuclear renaissance in this country."
After all, Yucca is widely touted as the world's most studied piece of real estate. The Nevada laboratory facility currently employs about 2,000 scientists and staff - a research effort that has already cost the government about $8 billion. Energy officials are convinced of the facility's safety.
But opponents of Yucca, particularly Nevada's powerful congressional delegation, blame the DOE for what they call politically motivated science. Some environmental groups say the proposed Yucca facility, as well as its location about 90 miles from Las Vegas, is unsafe. The office of Sen. John Ensign (R) of Nevada cites the threat of terrorism as a primary argument against a centralized waste site.
"There's a larger problem with putting [nuclear waste] on trucks and trains and shipping it all over the country to Nevada," says Jack Finn, communications director for Senator Ensign. "What's done in other countries is reprocessing on site, where waste is produced. That's an option Senator Ensign thinks we should pursue more vigorously."
Nuclear reprocessing, which is essentially a form of recycling for spent nuclear fuel, also forms the centerpiece of President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership project. Mr. Bush's proposal would fund an expansion of nuclear energy facilities in the United States and abroad. The project would also reclaim spent fuel for reprocessing in order to reduce waste and prevent the still-radioactive materials from falling into the hands of militant groups.
"If you were to take fuel rods, you could put them back, theoretically, into a nuclear reactor and burn that down even more," says Mr. Stevens.
But even if scientists perfect reprocessing for widespread use - so far, it has only been shown to work in a lab - Yucca Mountain remains the closest thing to a long-term waste solution, Stevens says. "We see nuclear power as the single environmentally clean, base-load source of electricity. Period. Yucca Mountain is the place, by science and by law."
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Grist Magazine
July 25, 2006
Democratic caucuses and Yucca Mountain
Posted by Lisa Hymas
If the Dems go ahead with their plan to hold an early presidential caucus in Nevada, it'll be another big strike against the already beleaguered plan to open a nuclear-waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
Yucca Mountain has looked like a long shot for years anyway, beset by technical problems, timeline delays, and court challenges, and held at bay by Nevada's two senators, who -- like the vast majority of their constituents -- are virulently opposed to their state serving as the nation's nuke-waste dumping ground.
If Nevada's caucus becomes a key early contest, candidates will stumble over each other to swear on their mothers' graves that Yucca Mountain won't happen under their watch -- just as they now pledge undying fealty to ethanol subsidies in Iowa.
(If only they'd just rotate the early caucuses and primaries every four years, so each state's pet issues could get their 15 minutes of candidate pandering.)
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Salt Lake Tribune
July 26, 2006
Town meeting on climate
By Heather May
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson is hosting a town hall meeting about climate change Friday at the Main Library auditorium at 6:30 p.m. Anderson will give a presentation, followed by an open public forum. Ice cream will be served at 6 p.m.
"All members of the community are invited to learn about and discuss the challenges of climate change, and the threat it poses to our community and the world," says the meeting announcement.
The woman behind Mayor Rocky Anderson's rise to national prominence on environmental matters is quitting her City Hall post.
Lisa Romney, Anderson's environmental adviser, is leaving after more than five years on the job, saying it's time to move on. Hers is one of the longest tenures under Anderson.
"Professionally, I need to gain new experiences," said Romney, 29. "The most successful people know when they need to move on."
Anderson and Romney, who doesn't have another job lined up, like to joke that she has been responsible for everything from dog waste to nuclear waste. Indeed, she's worked on creating dog parks in the city. And she wrote testimony Anderson gave the U.S. Senate against storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
As head of Salt Lake City Green, Romney has overseen energy conservation, alternative fuels, pedestrian and bicycle initiatives, the push for sustainable construction of city buildings and a program that promotes green, local businesses.
The city has now reached, and even surpassed, its goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 21 percent from a 2001 baseline. It was accomplished by buying wind power, purchasing alternative-fuel vehicles, phasing out some SUVs from the city fleet, capturing methane at the landfill for reuse and installing energy-efficient traffic signals.
Such measures have given Anderson a national - and sometimes international - platform on environmental issues. He's spoken at numerous conferences about Salt Lake City's programs, and won awards from the Sierra Club and Environmental Protection Agency. The city also won a World Leadership Award for the environment last year.
Romney recalls her first day on the job in June 2001: She looked at the incandescent light bulbs above her desk and decided to convert City Hall to the more-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. Other "common sense" changes flowed from there.
"I'm very proud of my role of making Salt Lake City one of the greenest cities in the country," said Romney, who rides her cruiser bicycle or walks to work. "I will always look back with of fond memories of everyone I have worked with and what I have accomplished. We are just an incredibly green city and continuing every single day to become greener."
Anderson also gives Romney credit. Hse hasn't found her replacement.
"She's been the person who works on these matters on a daily basis. Salt Lake City really is in the lead among municipalities for the environmental work we have done, particularly our climate protection campaign. It would never have been possible without good staff support like Lisa [and others]."
Romney said her departure is amicable, though she and the mayor have had their disagreements. At one point last year, Anderson apologized for how he had been treating her.
"This office can be the stuff best-selling novels are made of," Romney said Tuesday. "I'm moving on for my own professional reasons."
--hmay@sltrib.com
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Campus Progress
July 26, 2006
Big Oil, Hot Air
Conservatives address the energy crisis without mentioning… the energy crisis.
By Theresa Mohin
Duke University
You might expect, since the president recently declared America addicted to oil, and the public increasingly recognizes the threat of global warming, that a think-tank panel called “Technology and Impending Energy Crisis’ would address the question of how we can reduce our energy consumption, particularly from oil. But you would be disappointed, at least if the panel was at the conservative Heritage Foundation. The event´s misleading description, “creative solutions to our impending energy crisis,’ made it sound like it would include some mention of carbon emissions-reducing technology. It did not.
At least there was no liberal-bashing, maybe because no one noticed me—a renewable-fuel-loving imposter. (I wore pearls to fit in.) But the speakers mostly focused on the half of the energy security issue that conservatives typically care about—how the impending energy crisis affects our national security. There was little talk of the finite supply of oil or of how our consumption of oil threatens our very existence by accelerating global warming. I´ve been told by many conservatives that these are the concerns of tree-huggers and bleeding hearts, which perhaps explains why speakers at Heritage never mentioned the environment. What those speakers missed, and what conservatives generally don´t consider, is that we can tackle national security and environmental protection with the same policy solutions.
The most compelling speaker of the day was Ann Korin, editor of Energy Security magazine and co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. Korin´s thought process was this: we don´t have an energy problem, we have an oil problem. She said we are vulnerable to any change in a volatile industry controlled by countries that “do not have and will not have our best interest at heart,’ nations with corrupt governments unable to protect their oil infrastructures from terror attacks. She passionately argued for a more mixed set of energy resources in the transportation sector as a solution to our oil dependence. She also decried our $0.54 per gallon tax on imported ethanol and demanded that the United States let all renewables, not just corn ethanol, compete on the fuels market.
These are good ideas, but Korin should have gone further with her argument. She failed to mention (perhaps because of her audience) one of the biggest obstacles to the growth of renewable fuels: the Big Oil lobby. As long as Exxon is making big bucks off sky-high oil prices, you can be sure that alternative fuel options will remain few and far between. (Check out the harrowing attempt of a few recent college grads to make it across the country using only E85 fuel this month.) A more creative solution would reduce our oil demand by going after that infamous byproduct that comes from burning oil: carbon dioxide. Currently, our country (the world´s largest CO2 emitter) subsidizes niche markets like corn ethanol as part of our quest to reduce oil consumption. If instead the government taxed carbon dioxide emissions, big oil companies would have a greater incentive to invest in non-emissions-producing fuels, rather than in new ways to exploit oil reserves. In the case of ridding ourselves of dirty oil habits, regulation drives innovation.
The second speaker, Craig Hansen from BWX Technologies, came up with this fantastically creative solution: divert tons of government subsidies to nuclear power. I really can´t fault Hansen for promoting this faulty idea, as he does work for the nuclear industry. He argued that in order to increase the percentage of nuclear-generated power, we will need up to 12 new reactors (costing hundreds of millions of dollars) in the United States by 2010. Hansen suggested that, unless we begin heavily subsidizing nuclear development, we “will be trading one form of dependence for another,’ referring to the possibility of importing nuclear energy from nuclear-powered countries like France and Japan.
This is hardly a way to avoid the “impending energy crisis.’ First of all, as Korin had mentioned, oil generates a mere 3 percent of the electricity consumed in the United States. Increasing the amount of electricity generated from nuclear reactors, which currently accounts for 20 percent of the electrical supply, would simply displace other sources of electricity. The vast majority of imported oil ends up in our gas tanks, which cannot be filled with enriched uranium. Hansen also failed to mention that we would be trading one form of environmental disaster for another. Instead of carbon emissions, we´d face a massive nuclear waste problem. Nuclear waste has already been piling up at nuclear power plants for the past 50 years, and the government owes millions to utilities for its cleanup. The controversy over the Yucca Mountain depository is far from over—the earliest projected opening date is a good 11 years away, and in the meantime the cost of the building and maintaining the site continues to rise. Increased nuclear investment is simply not a good solution to reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil; in fact it´s almost completely unrelated. It would create more problems than it would solve.
In the end, I walked away from Heritage—free Subway sandwich in hand—dissatisfied with their ideas about energy security. One only needs to look around at the rest of the world to see some solutions to the energy problem. Raise automobile fuel efficiency standards. Invest in renewables like solar and wind energy. Implement a cap-and-trade carbon emissions system. The answers are out there; we need the progressive, creative vision that Heritage lacks to solve this problem.
--Theresa Mohin is a senior at Duke University and a summer 2006 environmental and energy intern at the Center for American Progress.
Comments:
Sorry, but a majority of CO2 emitted is from power generation. Tax carbon at the car is like taxing water because you don´t like rain—-it will not work.
The point is simple: If we REALLY want to effect global warming we will need to change our source of electrity. While there are some intesting technologies like Solar and Wind, the will cost several times more than traditional power sources.
Nuclear is a viable, clean, safe, and sane way to help deal with global warming. I´m made at my fellow progressives for waiting for the ‘perfect´ answer forgetting the the problem is getting worse everyday.
— Mike Z. - Jul 26, 07:54 PM - #
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Mike Z: You are right to point out that nuclear energy is clean- at least in terms of carbon emissions. However, this fact does not erase the reality that we have not yet figured out what to do with the radioactive waste produced by nuclear energy. The problem is getting worse every day, yet that does not mean we should run amock creating new problems. And do not be confused for a moment: radioactive waste is a HUGE problem.
— Claire G - Jul 27, 03:41 PM - #
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Well the issue of waste is an issue; however, it is an issue precisely because of the lack of NEW nuclear power plants and a lack of funding of new technology.
Nuke plants today were built in 1960s and 1970s. Since then technology like pebble-bed reactors and fast-breeders makes waste a far less important issue. In fact, had the US continued to do real research into nuclear power, we would already of found a way to recycle waste. Also a vast majority of the radioactivity stops after a few hundred years—while not a short period, it is a period that we are perfectly capable of dealing with.
Also remember if nuclear fuels like MOX are derived from decommissioned nuclear weapons. They will radioactive waste regardless of whether we decided to get over our phobia and make some power while it sits there and decays.
— Mike Z. - Jul 27, 07:30 PM - #
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Mike, I appreciate your comments. Unfortunately, nuclear power does not provide a way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Since we import a large percentage of oil from hostile countries, our oil consumption has become a security issue.
Increasing nuclear power in the electricity grid doesn´t solve this problem, and one could even argue that it makes it worse. More investment in new nuclear power plants could potential divert money away from developing renewables like solar and wind (which are expensive, as you mentioned, but will become cheaper with investment and increased demand, like all technology). More nuclear power plants also means increased vulnerability to terrorist attacks.
I would argue that progressives are not waiting for the “perfect answer,’ but looking to choose the best solution from a variety of options.
— Theresa - Jul 28, 08:42 AM -#
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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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