Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, August 10, 2006
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 10, 2006
Yucca plan may soon be put to rest
By Kenny Guinn
During my two terms as Nevada's governor, perhaps no single issue has been as vexing and problematic as the efforts of the federal government to locate a repository for highly radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles from Las Vegas.
Now, after years of strong, sustained and unified opposition by the state, its political leaders, congressional delegation, citizens, local governments and others, Yucca Mountain finally and deservedly appears to be headed toward the trash bin of history.
In 2002, I issued a statement outlining reasons why I had disapproved the president's decision to recommend Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. In that statement, I observed: "Yucca Mountain is but the latest in a long series of Department of Energy (DOE) boondoggles -- one based on bad science, bad law and bad public policy." More than $2 billion of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars later, Congress finally appears to have reached the same conclusion.
U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, a prominent supporter of nuclear power and the nuclear industry, recently introduced new legislation that shifts focus from the failed Yucca Mountain program to the concept of interim storage, either at existing reactor locations or at regional "consolidation and preparation" facilities. The legislation, subsequently approved by the full committee, implicitly recognizes for the first time that the country is on the wrong track in its approach to dealing with spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
Even so, recent media coverage of the DOE's revised Yucca Mountain schedule clearly demonstrates that officials at DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management will continue the agency's bureaucratic effort to keep the fiction surrounding this site alive.
As with other major federal programs that have ultimately collapsed under the weight of shoddy science, excessive costs and strong opposition, the Yucca Mountain program is not likely to simply disappear overnight, and Sen. Domenici may have envisioned such an eventuality when he suggested that the time has come to put Yucca on the "back burner."
The Yucca Mountain fight has been a long and difficult one. Nevadans can be justifiably proud of how the state has pulled together to bring this dangerous, ill-advised and unnecessary project to a standstill. Nevada has often stood alone in opposing the project and exposing Yucca's fraudulent science, excessive costs and unacceptable impacts and risks. Nevada also has been at the forefront of the effort to alert the nation to the tremendous hazards associated with transporting thousands of shipments of deadly radioactive waste across the country to an unsafe site in Nevada.
It has been Nevada's strong and unyielding opposition over the past two decades that has prevented an out-of-control federal bureaucracy from making a mistake of unprecedented proportions, which would impact many generations of citizens -- in Nevada and around the U.S. -- for thousands of years.
Although the battle is not yet over, I am very encouraged by the new thinking and direction in Congress. Thanks to the sustained efforts of all Nevadans, we may finally be seeing the light at the end of the Yucca Mountain tunnel and the beginning of a new chapter in the nation's approach to solving the nuclear waste problem.
Kenny Guinn is governor of Nevada.
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UPI
August 10, 2006
Analysis: Concerns linger on Yucca site
By Ben Lando
UPI Energy Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- A central repository for toxic nuclear waste has been a plan in the United States for decades. After numerous deadlines, the Energy Department now says the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada won't open until 2017, which is debatable, as are concerns of what to do with the spent fuel in the meantime.
Yucca Mountain, or any warehouse for highly radioactive waste, needs approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Energy Department announced in July plans to submit an application for the site, located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, by June 2008, along with a calendar of benchmarks for opening.
"Experience has shown that the schedule for Yucca is a slippery thing," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., during an Aug. 3 hearing of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which he chairs. A 2010 opening was set by the Energy Department in 1993; that changed to 2017 last year.
Domenici said he supports the Yucca Mountain concept, but worries about a continually lagging project that has kept nuclear waste in a temporary storage state and cost money. Utilities and consumers have paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund since 1982, money dedicated to a central repository to be opened in 1998.
"My concern is that the new timetable does not include any margin for any further project delays by the DOE, its contractors, or legal action by the State of Nevada, all of which would cause DOE to miss these new deadlines," Domenici said at the hearing.
Edward Sproat, director of the department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told the committee the new timeline is "the best achievable schedule."
"I'm not saying that was the most probable schedule," Sproat said.
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 put the burden of nuclear waste on the federal government. Two years later, the National Academy of Sciences recommended isolating it in a deep geological area and the search was on, with further parameters set by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. That act, in part, called for two repositories -- to create parity among the NIMBY -- or not in my backyard -- crowd.
But when Yucca Mountain was chosen by Congress in 1987 as the sole repository to store highly radioactive nuclear materials in a controlled environment -- for tens of thousands of years until it loses toxicity, the NRC says -- it began a continuum of legal challenges still ongoing.
This includes lawsuits filed by Nevada and a veto by its governor over the site selection, to no avail, as well as lawsuits filed by nuclear-producing states and the nuclear industry after the Energy Department missed the 1998 deadline to start taking in waste. A U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., Tuesday rejected a petition by Nevada to review the Energy Department's latest environmental assessment as well as a plan for transporting waste to Yucca Mountain. Transporting the waste safely is a flashpoint for critics of the central site proposal.
The NRC estimates 54,000 metric tons of spent fuel is being stored at 76 sites around the country -- 65 of which are operating reactors. Two-thousand metric tons of waste is created annually, which means there will be enough to fill Yucca Mountain in eight years.
That's at current levels of production, but high energy prices and reliance on foreign oil has rejuvenated the pro-nuclear energy folks who haven't seen a new reactor built approved since 1978 and come online since 1996, a trend whose reversal would increase the amount of radioactive waste needing to be stored.
The Energy Department wants the storage cap moved from 70,000 metric tons to the 120,000 metric tons a recent department environmental assessment says it can hold.
Domenici says he agrees Yucca Mountain's storage cap needs to be raised -- while criticizing the Energy Department's schedule -- and wants an interim storage plan set up as well as a whole-hearted effort at nuclear waste recycling, which could increase the power generated from nuclear as well as reduce the amount of toxic waste.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., says Yucca Mountain should be forgotten and until a permanent alternative is determined, the nuclear waste should be kept, cooled and protected at the nuclear reactor that produced it.
The NRC is getting ready for a safety review of Yucca Mountain in anticipation of the Energy Department's application.
Although the NRC says it will complete its review within the legally mandated three years following submission, Martin Virgilio, NRC's deputy executive director for materials, research, state and compliance programs, expressed concern at the Aug. 3 hearing about a Bush administration-backed bill that would force it to complete the inspection within one year -- with a six-month extension if needed.
Citing "statutory obligations to protect public health and safety," Virgilio wrote in testimony to the recent Senate energy committee hearing: "Our main concern here is that the NRC be given sufficient time to conduct a comprehensive review of DOE's applications."
--(Comments to energy@upi.com)
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Oxford Press
August 10, 2006
Government moving to 'recycle' nuclear waste
By Jeff Nesmith
Cox News Service
WASHINGTON — Brushing aside concerns from members of Congress, scientists and anti-proliferation activists, the Energy Department is moving ahead with a plan to recycle nuclear waste into new power plant fuel.
The plan would reverse 30 years of U.S. policy, first outlined by President Jimmy Carter, opposing the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel on the grounds it would increase the threat of nuclear proliferation.
Dennis Spurgeon, assistant secretary of energy for nuclear power, announced last week that the government would spend up to $20 million to study the private development of a "commercial-scale" fuel reprocessing plant and an advanced reactor that could use fuel produced from the waste.
The department asked for "expressions of interest" in the plan from private companies in the United States and other countries and gave interested companies until Sept. 7 to request financial assistance.
Spurgeon said the fuel reprocessing facility would not be part of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility proposed for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where surplus weapons-grade plutonium is to be reprocessed into power plant fuel.
The immediate goal, he said, is to take spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants that otherwise would go to the Yucca Mountain waste repository and extract plutonium and other materials for reuse.
About 77,000 tons of spent fuel rods are waiting at more than 100 nuclear power plants to be shipped to the Nevada repository, which is not expected to open before 2017.
By reducing the amount of highly radioactive, heat-generating material in the waste, the program could increase the storage capacity of Yucca Mountain 50- to 100-fold, Spurgeon said.
In the long run, the Energy Department anticipates not only reprocessing used U.S. fuel and reusing it, but accepting nuclear waste from other countries for reprocessing as well.
It says the output of reprocessing facilities will not be usable as nuclear explosives.
However, the technology needed for some steps in reprocessing the waste does not exist, and neither do facilities known as "fast burner reactors" that could use the reprocessed fuel, Spurgeon acknowledged at a news conference.
In addition, declassified Energy Department documents have revealed that "reactor grade" plutonium was used to carry out a nuclear explosion at the Nevada Test Site 1962.
Critics said the plan is poorly conceived and does not offer a final solution for disposing of some of the most toxic portions of the spent fuel.
"If this sounds crazy to you, then you are right," said Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental and anti-proliferation group. "It is crazy."
The administration has asked Congress to include $250 million in the Energy Department's 2007 budget for the nuclear recycling plan, which is part of President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Energy Department's budget, objected that his committee was not given enough information to approve a plan that could cost billions of dollars.
The subcommittee reduced the request by $100 million. The full House Appropriations Committee then pared another $30 million and ordered the department to consult with the National Academy of Sciences before going ahead with the idea.
"The overriding concern is simply that the Department of Energy has failed to provide sufficient detailed information to enable Congress to understand fully all aspects of this initiative, including the cost, schedule, technology development plan and waste streams," the committee said.
The corresponding Senate subcommittee reinstated the funding. A final appropriations bill for the Energy Department has not been approved by either chamber.
In an exchange of e-mail, Spurgeon said the highly radioactive spent fuel rods would be cut into small segments and dissolved in an acid solution.
He said most of the material removed from the power plant waste would be uranium-238, which can be handled and stored easily.
The department's national laboratories are working on finding ways to fabricate plutonium and other highly radioactive elements removed from the waste as fuel for a planned "advanced burner reactor," he said.
A major advantage of the process, as far as Yucca Mountain is concerned, would be the removal of "fission products," especially strontium and cesium, from the waste, he said. These substances, which cannot be used to make nuclear fuel, generate large amounts of heat.
Since there are limits on how much heat the Yucca Mountain repository can be subjected to, removing the substances would greatly increase the repository's capacity, Spurgeon said.
The Union of Concerned Scientists' Lyman said that leaves open the question of how these materials, which continue to give off heat for up to 300 years,?would otherwise be stored.
"The trade-off for achieving this vast increase in repository space is an array of storage facilities for cesium and strontium and a complex of reprocessing facilities and burner reactors, all which would require operation for several hundred years," he said.
Rodney Ewing, a University of Michigan professor of nuclear engineering and a longtime critics of the Yucca Mountain project, said he had been unable to find out what the department planned to do with strontium, cesium and other fission products.
"I suppose you could build a repository for this material anywhere," he said, "but I haven't seen the analysis and it seems to me there are a lot of unexplained parts of the way all of this is supposed to connect up."
--Jeff Nesmith is a Washington correspondent for Cox Newspapers.
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Senator Harry Reid
August 09, 2006
Reid Statement on Court of Appeals Yucca Ruling
Reno, NV— U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada issued the following statement in response to today´s U.S. Court of Appeals ruling on Yucca Mountain:
"We are still reviewing the decision, but it is my understanding that the court's ruling simply stated that this case wasn't ready for adjudication, and invited us back when the DOE makes its decision on Yucca.
"We have additional cases that are still pending, but let's be clear--Yucca Mountain will never be built and will never open. Despite the federal government's determination to dump the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada, this project is dying. This is a fight Nevada will win. "
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 09, 2006
Yucca Mountain Project: Judges reject Nevada lawsuit
Federal court panel rules claims without merit
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Nevada suffered a setback on Tuesday in its latest attempt to derail the government's plans for a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
A three-judge federal court panel declined a Nevada lawsuit charging that the Energy Department had violated environmental law and federal procedures when it formed a strategy to ship radioactive spent fuel to the Nevada site.
"We conclude that some of Nevada's claims are unripe for review and the remaining claims are without merit," Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in a 26-page opinion filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Henderson was joined in the ruling by Judges Harry Edwards and A. Raymond Randolph. The judges heard oral arguments last October.
The ruling preserves the status quo for the Yucca Mountain project. The Department of Energy is studying a 318-mile corridor from Caliente across rural Nevada in which to build a railroad to the proposed repository site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"We are very pleased with the court's decision," said Craig Stevens, a DOE spokesman. "The court's ruling today upheld the transportation aspects of the department's comprehensive environmental impact statement for the Yucca Mountain Project."
Joe Egan, Nevada's lead nuclear waste attorney, said state officials are evaluating whether to appeal the ruling. Egan said the state disagreed with the court's reasoning that it was premature to challenge DOE on elements of its railroad plans.
"It is really clear that having ruled against us in such Draconian fashion it just seemed they didn't want to do anything to upset Yucca Mountain," Egan said.
Stevens said DOE attorneys are evaluating the decision for possible impacts on other parts of the project. For instance, the DOE is weighing a possible alternative railroad line to the repository through the Walker River Paiute reservation in western Nevada.
The DOE also has made other changes since the Nevada lawsuit was filed last year, including initiating redesigns for canisters that would carry nuclear waste to the repository.
"DOE has radically altered its transportation plans," Egan said. "The net effect is that it has gone ahead and started a new analysis. In a sense they have rendered their previous analysis moot."
In the court's ruling, Henderson wrote that the DOE was within its authority in how it managed environmental impact studies and other documents that supported its transportation planning.
"We conclude that DOE's analysis of the environmental impacts of its rail corridor selection in its (final environmental impact statement) is adequate," Henderson wrote.
"It is well settled that the court will not 'flyspeck' an agency's environmental analysis looking for any deficiency no matter how minor," the judge wrote.
The court declined to consider other issues raised by the state, saying it was too early and the DOE had not yet made final decisions on them.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said the state's options may be limited.
"I doubt the Supreme Court would take review and I don't think it would be worth petitioning the entire court," said Tobias, formerly a professor at the Boyd Law School at UNLV.
Rulings made by judicial panels may be reconsidered by all the judges in the appeals circuit.
But Tobias said Henderson and Randolph, who were placed on the court by President George H.W. Bush, and Edwards, who was installed by President Carter, "are very much representative of the court and I think it is pretty unlikely" that other judges would reconsider their ruling.
In the 10 months since the oral arguments, Nevada officials and attorneys had expressed confidence that the state would prevail on at least some of its arguments. They said on Tuesday they were surprised and disappointed.
"We all thought it was one of our best cases," said Bob Loux, director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects. "Obviously this would have brought everything in the transportation arena to a halt."
Loux said the state probably would file new lawsuits later on the matters that the court said were premature to be considered at the present time.
The state has two other active cases pending related to the Yucca Mountain, although neither are major.
Oral arguments are set for September in Washington where the state is challenging a federal regulation dealing with repository licensing.
In a second case, state officials have filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in federal court in Reno seeking to obtain a copy of the DOE's draft license application for the repository.
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Platts
August 09, 2006
US court rejects Nevada's request for review of waste site EIS
Washington (Platts)--8Aug2006
A US appeals court Tuesday rejected the state of Nevada's request that it review the Department of Energy's final environmental impact statement on the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
The state, which has been fighting DOE's efforts to build a spent fuel disposal facility at the site, roughly 95 miles outside of Las Vegas, had alleged that the final EIS was procedurally flawed and violated the National Environmental Policy Act. It also challenged DOE's record of decision on the selection of a rail corridor to the site.
But the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that some of Nevada's claims were not ripe for review and that others were without merit. Some of the state's claims would be affected by decisions the department has not made yet, the court said.
--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com
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Pahrump Valley Times
August 09, 2006
Traffic light may be step closer to reality
By Mark Waite
PVT
The long-awaited traffic light at Homestead Road and Highway 160 could be a step closer to reality after the Nye County Commissioners pieced together a new funding proposal for the $1.4 million project recently.
Commissioner Patricia Cox told the board at the July 18 meeting she had secured a commitment from Jeff Fontaine, director of the Nevada Department of Transportation, for $200,000, plus design and engineering costs, which typically amount to 10 percent of the cost of a project.
A federal safety grant worth $250,000 will be added. Nye County will ante up the rest: $300,000 from impact fees charged to developers and Payment Equal to Taxes from the Yucca Mountain project used for the remainder.
The project includes widening the approach to Highway 160 on Homestead and Winery roads and widening Highway 160 to include a left-turn lane onto Homestead.
Nye County Public Works Director Samson Yao is preparing a contract with NDOT. It will be brought back to the county commission for approval.
Yao cautioned commissioners that the NDOT design may be more than the county wants. "When we want a Toyota, they design a Cadillac," he said.
Commissioner Candice Trummell suggested Chief Civil Deputy District Attorney Ron Kent and Interim County Manager Ron Williams hammer out the language of an agreement with NDOT.
"I want to make sure the county isn't given a bill for $2 million," Trummell said.
Dan Schinhofen, a non-partisan candidate for Nye County Commissioner of District 5, urged commissioners to go ahead with the project even if NDOT doesn't approve it.
"It's had three times the (traffic) warrants it needs, and that equates to deaths and accidents," Schinhofen said. "At least tell NDOT we'll approve our end of it."
NDOT Chief Safety Engineer Kelly Anrig tried to convince a skeptical crowd at the Pahrump Community Center May 15 about the worth of building a roundabout at that intersection. He said roundabouts force traffic to slow down and result in a 30 to 40 percent reduction in crashes. A few days later, after opposition from numerous local residents, NDOT agreed to a traffic signal. The cost of a roundabout had been estimated at only $500,000.
Cox said she held negotiations with NDOT over traffic signals at three other locations: Highway 372 and Blagg Road; Highway 372 and Pahrump Valley Boulevard and Highway 160 and Wilson Road.
Anrig had estimated the average daily traffic count on Highway 160 at Homestead Road at 17,000 vehicles. In the three years ending in 2005, there were 32 crashes at that intersection, with one fatality and nine people injured.
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Salt Lake Tribune
August 09, 2006
Governors group attacks plan to keep nuclear waste in place
By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON - A group of Northeastern governors are urging Congress to reject a nuclear waste storage plan that would keep the materials out of Utah by consolidating them in the states where they were produced.
The provision would allow spent nuclear fuel to be consolidated at temporary storage sites, as long as it stays in a state that has commercial nuclear power. Nevada and Utah would be explicitly ruled out as storage sites.
But governors in northeastern states, where many commercial nuclear reactors are located, don't like the change.
“We are deeply concerned and must strongly oppose language . . . that would suddenly shift long-established national policy on nuclear waste disposal by requiring commercial spent fuel at local or regional federal consolidated facilities in up to 31 states across the nation,’ Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri and Vermont Gov. James Douglas wrote on behalf of the Coalition of Northeastern Governors.
The governors also say the bill includes an aggressive timetable to set up the storage sites that doesn't give enough time to evaluate safety, security and environmental effects.
The interim storage plan in the legislation opposed by the governors serves as an alternative to Private Fuel Storage's push to park 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, 50 miles from Salt Lake City.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a license for the facility last year, but electric utilities backing PFS have abandoned the project and Congress passed a law complicating plans to ship waste by rail to the site.
In any interim storage scenario, the waste would presumably be eventually buried at a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., or the Energy Department might develop technology to recycle the nuclear material.
The Northeastern governors argued in their letter last week that building a system of temporary storage sites could undermine the push for a permanent repository.
There are about 54,000 tons of used commercial nuclear fuel awaiting disposal in 31 states, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.
The nuclear storage language was added to the bill by Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M.; Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; and Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.
Bennett had hoped to have the bill through the Senate before senators left for their monthlong August recess, but it was pushed back and Bennett said last week he doesn't anticipate it will be a top priority when senators return in September.
Anti-nuclear and environmental groups also oppose moving the waste to centralized facilities, arguing that the temporary sites would become permanent ones lacking necessary security and safeguards and that state governors would be cut out of the process.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 08, 2006
Federal court rejects Nevada's objections to Yucca Mountain waste transport plan
By Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Nevada was dealt a blow in its effort to block a radioactive waste dump Tuesday as a federal appeals court turned aside arguments against transportation plans.
Nevada contended that the Energy Department overstepped its authority and violated environmental rules in deciding to rely mostly on trains to take 77,000 tons of commercial spent fuel and high-level defense waste from sites around the country to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.
The state also raised a series of technical objections to the department's selection of the 319-mile Caliente Corridor - stretching from Caliente near the Utah border to Yucca Mountain - as its preferred route for getting nuclear waste to the dump once it reaches Nevada.
"We conclude that some of Nevada's claims are unripe for review and the remaining claims are without merit," said a decision written by Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson for a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
"We do not think that the inadequacies to which Nevada points make the (Final Environmental Impact Statement) inadequate," the opinion said. "The DOE's selection of the Caliente Corridor therefore was not arbitrary or capricious."
Energy Department officials welcomed the decision.
"The court's ruling today upheld the transportation aspects of the department's comprehensive environmental impact statement for the Yucca Mountain project," spokesman Craig Stevens said.
Joe Egan, an attorney for Nevada, said the state was considering whether to ask for a rehearing.
"It just looks to us like the court didn't want another anti-Yucca decision here. They really went out of their way to pound this decision into DOE's favor, in our view," Egan said.
The same court dealt a setback to Yucca Mountain two years ago by throwing out the government's radiation safety standards for the dump. The Environmental Protection Agency still is rewriting those standards.
The court didn't address some of Nevada's underlying arguments, saying the time was not right for review as aspects of the Energy Department's waste-transport plans aren't final.
Egan also said that some of the ground covered in the lawsuit may be moot because the Energy Department already has changed some of its plans, including announcing a new multi-use canister for waste transportation.
The department also is considering reviving a possible alternative to the Caliente Corridor because the Walker River Paiute Tribe, which has a reservation in the western part of the state, recently withdrew its long-held opposition to hosting a rail line for waste.
The challenge to the waste transport plan was just one avenue Nevada is pursuing against the long-delayed Yucca Mountain project, which is now scheduled to open in 2017 - 19 years late. The state is ready to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's new radiation standards as soon as they're released, and it has sued over Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule-making on the dump.
Nevada's congressional delegation, led by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also takes every opportunity to cut funding and create political hurdles.
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Guardian
August 08, 2006
Court Rejects Nev. Yucca Mountain Appeal
WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court refused Tuesday to review the Energy Department's plans for transporting nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain by train.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected Nevada's arguments against the Energy Department's environmental impact statement and other decision-making documents for the waste transport plan.
Nevada contended the agency overstepped its authority and violated environmental rules in reaching its decision to rely mostly on rail to take at least 77,000 tons of commercial spent fuel and high-level defense waste to the dump site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
``We conclude that some of Nevada's claims are unripe for review and the remaining claims are without merit,'' said a decision written by Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 08, 2006
Porter seeks GAO review of new Yucca schedule
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter on Monday asked congressional auditors for a second opinion on the Energy Department's new schedule to develop the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.
The Nevada Republican asked the Government Accountability Office whether DOE's self-set deadline of June 30, 2008, to finalize a license application for the proposed repository was realistic in light of persistent shortcomings the GAO outlined in a report in March.
"I am concerned that DOE will rush submitting its application without adequately addressing these challenges," Porter said in a letter to GAO Comptroller General David Walker.
Porter, chairman of a House subcommittee watching the Yucca project, also asked GAO to estimate repository costs based on the new schedule, which projects nuclear waste arriving at the site in March 2017.
The project's most recent price tag of $57.6 billion was set in 2001.
"As we have in the past, we will cooperate with the GAO," said Allen Benson, a spokesman for DOE's Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas.
The GAO reported in March that the department "has been relying on costly and time-consuming rework to resolve lingering quality assurance concerns."
Auditors said DOE continued to face design control problems and needed to review about 14 million internal e-mails to restore confidence in scientific documents.
At the time, Benson said the issues raised by the GAO "have already been identified by the department, and they've either been fixed or are on their way to being fixed."
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Patriot News
August 07, 2006
Senate proposal could keep waste at TMI
Plan would lift obstacle to new nuclear plants
By Brett Lieberman
Of Our Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel, stored since 1974 at Three Mile Island, could remain there and at other nuclear power plants for 25 more years under a U.S. Senate proposal.
The provision, included in a $30.7 billion appropriations bill for energy and water programs, would require governors to designate interim storage facilities that could open in 2011 or 2012.
Governors in 31 states could continue storing the more than 50,000 tons of waste in pools of water or concrete casks at nuclear plants or designate a single storage site for all of a state's nuclear waste.
Supporters of the plan by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the energy and water appropriations subcommittee chairman, and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the proposal would give states greater control of their waste and improve security.
But nuclear watchdog groups and state officials worry it would lead to at least 31 new nuclear waste storage facilities that could become permanent sites if reprocessing technology is not developed or the planned Yucca Mountain repository does not open in the Nevada desert in 2018.
Even if Yucca opens on time, which few industry and congressional officials believe will happen, states would not be free of nuclear waste overnight. It is estimated it would take 40 years to transport all the waste to Yucca.
Security and safety issues also have been raised as waste stored in deep pools is brought to above-ground casks or transported to other sites.
"With the failure to timely come up with a repository, now the move is afoot to develop interim storage sites given that the government's high-level plan continues to slip and become ever more remote," said Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
Gunter and other critics of the plan worry that the proposal by Domenici, the leading supporter of nuclear power in the Senate, and Reid, who has worked to thwart the Yucca project, might lead to the development of regional sites and result in states being forced to accept other states' nuclear waste.
"I believe interim is the same as saying permanent," said Eric Epstein, director of Harrisburg-based TMI Alert. "Once the waste arrives, it's not going to leave. Basically, it's cargo without a forwarding address."
Supporters of the effort, which likely won't come up for a vote until after the November elections, say such criticism is overblown and insist the proposal is a common-sense solution until waste can be reprocessed or placed at a permanent site.
"Yucca is the committee's preference, but this is a temporary solution until Yucca can be fully operational," said Scott O'Malia, the Republican clerk on the energy and water appropriations subcommittee.
Congressional aides point out that the Domenici-Reid provision would allow states to consolidate their waste or leave it at current sites.
"If Yucca doesn't open, this stuff doesn't go anywhere anyway," a congressional staffer said.
A state might decide the best option is to designate its reactors as interim sites and leave the waste in place, said congressional supporters trying to alleviate concerns.
If approved, the legislation would remove a key obstacle to a new generation of nuclear reactors. It would satisfy the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's "waste confidence" determination by demonstrating that the nuclear waste could be disposed of safely.
It also would force the U.S. Department of Energy to take title to the waste once interim sites open, which would relieve utilities of the financial and security burden of maintaining stored waste.
The Bush administration, believing Yucca offers a viable strategy, is open to discussing interim sites with lawmakers. But Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said recently that opening the temporary facilities would be a "formidable undertaking."
Governors -- except Nevada's and Utah's, who would be exempt -- would have six months from the legislation's enactment to analyze options and then three months to submit a recommendation to the Department of Energy.
DOE could override a governor's selection, leading critics to worry that state rights would be pre-empted.
"We will urge for the passage of responsible federal legislation to create permanent safe storage facilities that can be secured," said Kate Philips, Gov. Ed Rendell's spokeswoman.
Pennsylvanians are more sensitive to nuclear issues because of the 1979 accident at TMI, she said.
"Introducing a nuclear waste storage site of any kind into this environment, even a so-called temporary one, is hard to imagine," Philips said. "You'd have an awfully hard time convincing people that temporary really means temporary."
The Coalition of Northeastern Governors sent a letter to the Senate opposing the plan.
The office of U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is reviewing the legislation and working with state officials to determine the potential impact, said Specter spokesman Scott Hoeflich.
The office of U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., did not respond to requests for his position on the legislation.
Both lawmakers supported the Yucca repository.
Backers of the proposal are confident the measure will pass, but some congressional aides are not sure it will garner the 60 votes required for an authorizing provision in a spending bill.
Authorizing nuclear waste sites in their states, even temporary ones, is not likely to be politically appealing to lawmakers, said opponents as well as congressional aides.
"They think this will fly through the conference, but I'm not sure it's going to be that easy," said Michelle Boyd, who tracks the legislation for Public Citizen, a public-interest watchdog group.
--Brett Lieberman: 202-383-7833 or blieberman@patriot-news.com
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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