Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, August 17, 2006
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Washington Post
August 17, 2006

That Eerie Green Glow

New nuclear power plants sound promising. But what to do with the radioactive leftovers?

NOW THAT greenhouse gases are the pollutants to fear, nuclear power may be making a comeback; British Petroleum's failings in Prudhoe Bay, revealed last week, only enhance the attractiveness of alternatives to oil. But as the nation rushes back to the future by embracing atomic energy, the industry and government have to solve one little problem left over from the past: how to deal with nuclear waste.

Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman recently announced that his agency would provide $2 billion in federal risk insurance to companies applying to build nuclear power plants. It's part of a package of government incentives designed to encourage the building of the country's first nuclear reactors since the 1970s. The Energy Department aims to insure at least six new power plants, and 19 companies have announced they will seek licenses to build nuclear power stations, according to Per F. Peterson, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.

Nuclear power can produce electricity without generating the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Industry spokesmen claim nuclear power plants can do so cheaply and efficiently, even taking subsidies into account, and, if properly monitored, safely; Chernobyl-style accidents can be avoided. Given the environmental and geopolitical disadvantages of dependence on oil, gas and coal, these arguments are persuasive.

But the Energy Department must prove early on that it has a politically and technically viable plan for storing the deadly radioactive waste that nuclear power plants produce. That has been a smoldering problem for the agency, which for years has tried to build a permanent waste storage site inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain. All the while, nuclear waste continues to pile up on sites next to reactors, in many cases close to population centers.

The Energy Department's current plan is to open the Yucca Mountain facility by 2017, ready to take the waste the new power plants will create. But construction at Yucca isn't fully authorized yet. The department has encountered stiff political and legal opposition in Nevada, and faulty scientific reviews of the site have also delayed the building. Who knows what kinds of problems construction will bring? The Yucca storage site is still the safest long-term solution to America's nuclear-waste problem. But given the project's history of delay, we're not counting on it opening on time. Neither should the federal government.

The Energy Department's assistant secretary for nuclear energy, Dennis Spurgeon, says the agency has contingency plans. If it begins its program to reprocess spent nuclear fuel in time -- and that seems unlikely -- nuclear waste can go to reprocessing sites. If that doesn't work, the government has two options: It can keep waste at reactor sites longer than would be ideal, or it can build secure and isolated interim storage sites. The first option shouldn't be on the table; utilities legally are not -- and should not be -- responsible for storing radioactive sludge longer than the few years it takes for it to cool, especially when many of the plants are close to cities. The second option sounds more promising, but as of now the Energy Department doesn't have the authority to conduct interim storage of nuclear waste itself -- that would take an act of Congress.

The federal government needs a foolproof plan to dispose properly of the waste. Otherwise, Americans won't have confidence in nuclear power.

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KPVI-TV
August 17, 2006

New Nuclear Plants Planned

Nuclear policy is changing in the United States - a move that will create jobs and protests. It took 20 years to create what some say is a nuclear power renaissance. Political specialist Doug Andersen reports.

It means the first nuclear plants in three decades, and with that, the question of what to do with the waste from the existing 100 plants. A year ago this month, President George Bush signed into law a comprehensive change to this country's energy policy. From the man next in line to chair the Senate Energy Committee, progress has already been made, especially when it comes to nuclear energy.

Twenty percent of the nation's energy base is derived from nuclear.

Sen. Larry Craig: "My guess is, within two decades, 35% will be."

At his third town hall in two days, Senator Larry Craig says applications to build two dozen nuclear power plants are in the works.

Sen. Larry Craig: "1000 megawatts is how much each year California needs in new growth. That's one plant."

Each of those 24 plants generating 1000 megawatts of electricity. Idaho would use about a quarter of the production from one plant.

Sen. Larry Craig: "To sustain a 3.5% to 4% growth economy, with a million new jobs a year - that's what we need to stay vibrant as a country - it's going to take a good number of those plants on an annual basis."

Powering 15-million homes.

Sen. Larry Craig: "It's the attitude, 'I don't want it in my backyard.' Every one of those plants has to be built somewhere."

That's a reference to NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). But what about the waste component?

Sen. Larry Craig: "We will have a Yucca Mountain in time."

The below-ground permanent storage facility in Southern Nevada.

Sen. Larry Craig: "The only reason we can't handle our waste stream is politics, plain and simple."

...over budget and 20 years behind schedule. At present, it's scheduled for a 2017 opening.

Sen. Larry Craig: "In the short term, meaning the next decade or two, the waste will be stored at the site of generation."

Interim, or temporary, storage sites; easily made permanent from political whim or scientific study.

Sen. Larry Craig: "Americans have to grow to understand that if they want energy, and they want it reasonably priced, they are going to have to tolerate its production."

The senior member of the Senate Energy Committee says that means government not impeding progress.

Another component to nuclear energy is job creation. The Senate Energy Committee projects between 40,000 and 45,000 new construction jobs and another 10,000 high-paying high-tech plant jobs. However, there remains the public concern over radioactive waste coming to a backyard near you.

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Connecticut Post
August 17, 2006

FERC to decide stranded cost deal

Rob Varnon
rvarnon@ctpost.com

Two state agencies and the owners of Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co. added five years to an agreement to cover the decommissioning costs of the nuclear plant in order to reduce the $93-million-a-year bill to electricity customers.

The Department of Public Utility Control, the Office of Consumer Counsel and the owners of Haddam Neck-based Connecticut Yankee said Tuesday the annual fee will be reduced to $43 million. But the payments, which were to end by 2010, will be extended to 2015. The United Illuminating Co. and Connecticut Light & Power Co. are part owners of the nuclear plant.

Beryl Lyons, a DPUC spokeswoman, said the agreement must be approved by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which she expects to happen some time this year. UI spokeswoman Anita Steeves said her company would not speculate on the impact to bills until FERC reaches a decision.

"It's not mere spreading it out," said Joseph Rosenthal, the Office of Consumer Counsel's principal attorney. The deal, he said, will reduce the overall cost to consumers, following FERC's most recent decision.

When Connecticut deregulated the power generation business, the utilities that owned the plant, including the two state companies, decommissioned it. But because the utilities couldn't recoup all the costs of building the plant by the time they had to shut down the plant, FERC allowed them to pass along those so-called stranded costs to consumers.

In December 2005, FERC gave preliminary approval to Connecticut Yankee to increase the amount of stranded costs its utility owners could recover to $93 million per year.

But Rosenthal said it is doubtful people will see a drop in their overall power bills next year, when this goes into effect, because there are so many other costs that will be hitting them. Bills are expected to increase by 5 to 6 percent because of new federal rules aimed at encouraging competition. The rules provide fiscal incentives to power generators to locate in areas that are net importers of power. UI and CL&P also need to secure new power contracts, which means the companies will pass along the higher energy costs in the new contracts to consumers, he said.

Kelley Smith, a Connecticut Yankee spokeswoman, said the yearly fee includes the cost to store spent nuclear fuel. She said the 560-Megawatt plant has not produced power

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York County Coast Star
August 17, 2006

States have grievances with Capitol

By Christopher W. Babbidge

My students would tell you, I hope, that federalism is that characteristic of American government by which power is divided geographically into national and state governments. That relationship between governments is often strained, but in recent years it has become significantly worse. It is true that both Congress and the President have plummeted in popularity, but frustration with the federal government may be worst among Governors. For those few of us who actually paid attention, willingly, to the C-SPAN coverage of the recent National Governors Conference in South Carolina, the animosity toward Washington appeared to be bipartisan.

The states' criticism of the Republican-led Congress and the Bush Administration has been growing over time regarding federal policy regarding issues including No Child Left Behind, homeland security, illegal immigration, healthcare, Real ID, the environment, stem cell research, energy policy, and rising gas prices. The latest point of contention is over the National Guard.

A little history is in order. Nearly a quarter century ago, President Reagan was alarmed that, in the same year he had been elected on a conservative wave in the U.S., a leftist President had been elected in Nicaragua. So he gave directives that resulted in the mining of Nicaraguan harbors and the financing of counter-revolutionary military units, or contras, that used neighboring Honduras as a jumping off point to "destablize" the new Nicaraguan government. In his plan to build supporting infrastructure in Honduras, instead of just sending active units, he called up the National Guard from certain states to go, and made the obligatory request of the respective governors. Maine's governor, Joseph Brennan, said no to the President, provoking national attention. He believed the President was overstepping his authority according to the divisions of power within federalism, and he opposed Maine's Guard being used as a tool in foreign policy "as a foreign legion."

Brennan's authority prevailed, but was short-lived. U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery of Mississippi, a fellow Democrat, successfully sponsored legislation in Congress to permit the President's action and eliminate the governors' authority to veto such action.

This year the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill for the President to take control of any state's National Guard without gubernatorial consent in case of "natural or manmade disaster, accident, or catastrophe" in the United States. A southern Republican governor, Mike Huckabee, called the proposed power shift a violation of 200 years of tradition and chastised leaders of his party in Washington for abandoning the party's traditional preservation of states' rights. Democratic governors Tom Vilsack and Janet Napolitano also urged colleagues to oppose this federal power grab when a House and Senate Conference Committee discuss the issue in September. Breaking news as I write this is that all 51 governors have joined to publicly oppose the proposal.

Huckabee also expressed his concern with the Administration's general attitude that the states are mere satellites of a centralized federal authority, venting his frustration by asking if the people in Washington had ever passed ninth-grade civics. He cited the Real ID program, a well-intentioned idea passed by Congress that will force states to verify the citizenship and authenticity of documents for every person seeking a driver's license. Huckabee said that making entry-level DMV employees into de facto immigration officers while allocating no money for hiring or training is a disaster in the making.

The governors also took the Bush Administration to task for domestic energy policy failures. Republican Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, said Washington has been asleep at the switch for 30 years, with no forward thinking on alternative fuels such as ethanol and wind energy. Brian Schwweitzer, a Democrat from Montana who is an advocate for synthetic diesel, was particularly critical of the Administration in a segment I watched, citing the lack of planning and leadership for allowing the country to reach the current mess. But Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi and a former National Republican Chairman, said supply is the issue and he blamed the environmentalists for opposing expanded drilling and for NIMBY positions regarding distribution pipelines and new nuclear plants.

Regarding nuclear, the court, which must often resolve state-federal conflicts, sided with the feds recently by striking down a Nevada complaint against a Bush Administration decision to transport by rail most of the 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, stored in states from Maine to California, to Nevada's Yucca Mountain site.

Tommy Thompson, a Republican from Wisconsin who had served in the Bush Cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services, criticized Washington's inaction on healthcare, and he urged the Governors to move individually to health maintenance and preventive services or, he claimed, the system will suffer financial breakdown within seven years. States must act, he said, because "Congress will not do it."

Regarding Maine-Washington relations, legislative leaders in Augusta have performed their predictably partisan functions. Democrats blame Washington for inadequate funding and Republicans, who, as a minority party, are not responsible for governing, citing funding increases, and both statements have some merit. Here are some facts. Maine has received more overall Medicaid funding, which must be matched with, roughly, 1/3 state funds. The fact is federal funds come with costly strings, and mandated programs, if funded initially, are not sufficiently covered over time, requiring the state to cut services or foot the bill. But the biggest issue is funding priorities. For example, while the feds offered funds for abstinence education or to promote marriage, they cut funding of drug enforcement by 40 percent. Nearly 14 percent of Maine's recent Supplemental Budget for 06/07 went to cover federal cuts, including money for the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, to cover reductions allocated for juvenile court, and to cover elderly and disabled individuals for the Medicare Part D drug benefit. Maine government stepped up to fulfill important responsibilities that were abandoned by Washington's funding priorities.

The Administration's woes regarding popularity, therefore, are not limited to foreign policy management. Its policies on the domestic front have those Democrats and Republicans in power in various states in harmony about their concern and frustration. Federalism as created by the framers of the Constitution provides for the division of power that sets the table for potential conflict. But, as expressed at the Governors' Conference, the states' criticism of government in Washington, where all branches are Republican, is of an unusually bipartisan nature.

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Scientific American
August 16, 2006

The Nuclear Option

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague David Biello made a blog entry highly critical of nuclear power. Now, in the September issue of the magazine we have an article with a more positive outlook. John M. Deutch and Ernest J. Moniz of MIT present an analysis of how nuclear power generation might triple, in the U.S. and globally, by 2050. The discussion draws heavily on a 2003 MIT report that they co-chaired, The Future of Nuclear Power.

Such a tripling would result in approximately a terawatt (a million megawatts) of generation capacity and would avoid 0.8 to 1.8 billion tons of carbon emissions annually, depending on whether the nuclear plants were displacing natural gas-burning plants (0.8) or coal-burning plants (1.8). To put that in perspective, at present 7 billion tons of carbon are poured into the atmosphere every year, a figure that will double in 50 years if emissions continue to grow at the pace of the past 30 years (see the article in the same issue by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala).

To what extent the nuclear option should be exercised is not a simple question. The answer depends on what target we aim for regarding carbon emissions, how much electric power must be produced in 2050, how big a contribution to electric power generation can be made by renewable sources of energy such as wind and photovoltaics, and how successful carbon dioxide sequestration turns out to be. The economics of the different options must be weighed against one another, and then there are the harder-to-quantify factors of safety, waste disposal and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.

The MIT report suggests that a terawatt of nuclear power is likely to be needed in addition to aggressive expansion of renewables, development of sequestration and so on. Others argue that improvements in efficiency and expansion of renewables alone can suffice.

Regarding nuclear waste, Deutch and Moniz state that the scientific case for geologic disposal, in which waste is stored in chambers hundreds of meters underground, is well-established:

Decades of studies support the geologic disposal option. Scientists have a good understanding of the processes and events that could transport radionuclides from the repository to the biosphere.

(As with much of the article, this point is elaborated on in greater detail in the MIT report, which is available in full on the web.) Of course, the scientific acceptability of the waste disposal scheme is quite a different matter from actually implementing it successfully, which entails overcoming daunting political and regulatory challenges. A highly sobering fact: The tripling scenario would entail building one waste repository of the size proposed for Yucca mountain about every three years.

I don't want to steal any more thunder from the print article itself, but there is one notable point that was abbreviated by cuts made for space reasons. Deutch and Moniz advocate a so-called once-through fuel cycle for the next few decades at least. That means that spent fuel is not reprocessed to extract material for re-use as fuel in a nuclear power plant. Adhering to a once-through cycle in the near term has specific policy implications:

Congress has pushed for reprocessing of spent fuel in the near term, but that is a mistake. Reprocessing is a costly, dangerous procedure that has risks to the environment and creates stocks of plutonium that can be readily diverted for use in weapons. The benefits for waste disposal using current technology are marginal.

Finally, the administration has proposed to reestablish a robust program to explore other approaches to waste management, in particular a type of advanced recycling in which all the transuranic elements in the waste are fissioned into shorter-lived elements. New types of reactors, separation technologies and fuel forms are all likely to be needed for such a system to work technically and economically, and much basic research is needed. It will take decades before such approaches can be evaluated, let alone deployed commercially.

Translation of the latter paragraph: The U.S. shouldn't rush to try to implement these advanced recycling schemes prematurely in large demonstration plants and the like.

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St. George Daily Spectrum
August 16, 2006

Yucca site will set red alert

Planes, trains and nuclear waste. Yes, it appears that not only will 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel be hauled by train - a 319-mile route stretching from Caliente near the Utah border - to Yucca Mountain. The Air Force may also be acquiring airspace rights over the federal repository site to conduct munitions training and air-to-air combat exercises from Nellis Air Force Base.

The announcements both came last week at the same time Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., criticized the Yucca Mountain project, saying Bechtel, the contractor building the nuclear storage site, is the same one that built Boston's troubled Big Dig tunnel where a large piece of concrete gave way and crushed a motorist traveling in the underground thoroughfare.

Though the Department of Energy is opposing Reid's disclosure - they say there's a big difference between a highway project and an underground nuclear repository - combine potentially faulty construction with the other possible risks of a train or plane crash and we've got ourselves an accident waiting to happen. Is this sensible homeland security to breach the safety of a highly radioactive waste dump with vulnerable transportation plans approved Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit?

The DOE is seeking to designate a "no-fly zone" as part of the project with a 4-mile radius of restricted flight area centered on the mountain. It also has studied the probabilities and potential outcomes of plane crashes. But those studies' findings are less than comforting - especially when the contractor's credibility has been brought into question.

Yucca Mountain is set to open in 2017. Inadequacies as to the environmental impact, overall safety and storage capacity plague the facility, with an additional catalyst of effects from Mother Nature and her unpredictability with water, earthquakes and volcanic activity. More scientific input is desperately needed because Yucca Mountain is not only a disaster for Nevada, it could be a disaster to Utah and the western United States. All of us must unite in opposition or the next mechanism of potential danger will be the shipping of radioactive waste by diesel trucks on Interstate 15.

Then it'll be planes, trains, automobiles and nuclear waste forcing the country into a constant state of red alert. Residing in America was never intended to be lived that way - and it never should.

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Tooele Transcript-Bulletin
August 16, 2006

Hatch touts Romney during Tooele visit

Written by Mark Watson

With the Senate in recess during August, Utah's longtime Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch is making his presence felt in Tooele County.

The senator seeks to extend his tenure in the U.S. Senate from 30 to 36 years and will face Democratic opponent Pete Ashdown in the Nov. 7 general election.

After attending the demolition derby at the Tooele County Fair on Aug. 5, Hatch was back in Tooele Valley on Monday where he met with the Tooele County Commission, Tooele Mayor Patrick Dunlavy, Grantsville Mayor Byron Anderson and other Republican supporters. He visited the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin and toured the Benson Grist Mill. Hatch was accompanied by Tooele County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Debbie Winn.

Monday's sojourn to Tooele County kicks off Hatch's 2006 campaign with 84 days until the election.

"You have good leaders here in the county," Hatch said. "Their main concerns are money, water, energy, high cost of gas and economic development."

During his political junket Hatch also lauded fellow Mormon Mitt Romney as the best Republican choice for the presidency in 2008.

Nuclear Waste

Hatch has battled vigorously to keep high-level nuclear waste out of Skull Valley. He said support for Private Fuel Storage's plan to store spent nuclear fuel rods on the Goshute Indian Reservation is waning considerably. "We've come a long way in that battle, but the plan is not dead yet. Fifty percent of the companies have pulled away from the temporary storage plan. Yucca Mountain is the only place where they have the methodologies to store the waste."

He said EnergySolutions is working on technologies to reprocess spent nuclear rods in the United States based on European technology. The company has vowed not to reprocess nuclear fuel rods in Utah. "EnergySolutions is a great company, the only two places for reprocessing nuclear are Savannah River (Georgia) and Idaho."

President Bush - Iraq

Naturally, the Republican senator is a strong supporter of President George W. Bush and military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the Democratic trend now is to hate George W. Bush and current foreign policy. He said they even cast away former vice president candidate Joe Lieberman of Connecticut because he feels the U.S. should stay the course in Iraq.

"The liberal press is having a field day bashing Bush - the Washington Post and New York Times. The worst thing we can do in Iraq is cut and run," Hatch said. He said the Iraqi military is growing stronger.

The senator stressed that the Middle East is the haven for terrorism and if the United States leaves too soon the terrorists will follow them back to the United States and we have World War III. "They're waiting for the Democrats here to take control, let things cool off and then strike again." Hatch said the USA PATRIOT Act is thwarting terrorism in the United States and that 300 terrorists have been caught. He said that major terrorist attacks are being thwarted and terrorist leaders have been relegated to hiding in caves.

"There has been nothing major since 9-11." Hatch said.

He said Hezbollah is a terrorist organization and Israel had every right and obligation to attack. Hatch said it is very telling that the Mideast governments of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia decry the tactics of Hezbollah.

Mitt Romney for president

Hatch reeled of the names of several potential Republican candidates for president. "Mitt Romney would be the best candidate. He's the best manager, he's been a terrific governor working in a liberal state, he's charismatic, handsome and wealthy, and he made it on his own," Hatch said. "The Mormon issue could hurt him because people don't know a lot about Mormons. They still think Mormons practice polygamy and have other ideas. John F. Kennedy was able to break through though as the first Catholic president."

"I think Hillary (Clinton) could be the Democratic candidate if she wants it. I call her 'Hill.' I don't think women will vote for her."

Global Warming

"Over the centuries there have been concerns about global warming. Scientists, actually, are split on the seriousness of the issue. I do think it is a problem and we need to find alternate energy sources and quit burning fossil fuels. It's not as big a problem as Al Gore thinks it is. We need to get the politics out of it and do whatever pure science dictates," Hatch said.

The senator said the price of gas will continue to climb because of the United States' dependency on foreign oil. "Oil is at $70 a barrel and it will never dip below $60 a barrel," Hatch said. He mentioned increased used of ethanol and hydrogen for vehicles as well as more use of hybrid gas-electric cars, and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.

He said fuel shortages may increase because of the burgeoning economies of China and India. "They are voracious users of oil and gas."

Hatch also is an advocate of more nuclear power plants.

The candidate said voters should be aware of his power and status in the Senate. If re-elected he will be chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and fellow Utahn Sen. Bob Bennett would chair the Senate Banking Committee.

--e-mail:mwatson@tooeletranscript.com

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Las Vegas SUN
August 15, 2006

New light on Yucca

Congress wants to get over the mountain on nuclear waste

By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun

Slowly and quietly, a 20-year logjam on Yucca Mountain and nuclear energy is breaking.

There have been no announcements or sudden movements, but the signs are clear. The nuclear energy industry is revving up with plans to build the first nuclear power plants in this country in three decades. The issue of nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain is closely tied to that progress.

Legislation pending in Congress would provide an alternative to creating a permanent waste repository at Yucca Mountain. If approved, the legislation will allow for creation of interim storage sites around the country, a step that would remove the handcuffs from an industry that has been barred from building new nuclear plants until the nation finds a way to store the waste. It is now stacked up at each of the nation's 104 nuclear plants.

Yucca Mountain, now nearly 20 years behind schedule, is currently the only option as a storage site. The government has refused to create any alternative for fear it would slow development of Yucca.

Now, however, lawmakers and others are recognizing that Yucca's delays could be indefinite, if not permanent.

Constellation Energy and AREVA, a partnership established last year to build nuclear reactors, announced two weeks ago that they have placed orders for the heavy steel forgings necessary to build the first new nuclear power plant in the United States since the 1970s. At least 20 reactors are under discussion around the nation.

But none can be built until the waste disposal issue is addressed. Many backers of the interim storage legislation, including Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, insist that it is merely a way to let the energy industry move forward while Yucca is developed. In fact, separate legislation to get Yucca back on track is also pending before Congress.

Domenici, the Senate's leading nuclear power advocate, also argues that the interim solution would give the Energy Department time to push ahead with research into a new form of waste reprocessing that could change the equations involved in storing the waste permanently.

But not all supporters of the legislation agree with Domenici. If they did, you could expect to see much teeth gnashing from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the army of Nevada elected officials opposed to developing Yucca.

Instead, they are grinning like Cheshire cats. They think that interim storage sites might not be all that "interim."

History is on their side. It shows that creating a site - any kind of site - to store nuclear waste is a big step. From there, it's but a short step for "interim" to evolve into "permanent." When interim storage was debated 20 years ago, opponents made their case by arguing what was known as the law of nuclear waste - wherever the waste lands, that's where it stays.

You won't hear Nevada officials using that language, for fear of stirring up opposition. But what you do hear is an industry increasingly interested in alternatives.

"There was an expectation in the '80s and '90s we were going to have a repository fairly soon," said Steven P. Kraft, senior director of used fuel management for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main lobbying arm of the nuclear industry. "Now people are so frustrated about the lack of progress in a repository they're beginning to think about what kind of facilities we need to accept this material."

Gov. Kenny Guinn summed up the state's view last week in an opinion piece in the Reno Gazette-Journal. The legislation "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," he said.

"Although the battle is not yet over," he wrote, "I am very encouraged by the new thinking and direction in Congress."

Yucca Mountain researcher Allison Macfarlane now gives Yucca Mountain a 50-50 chance of ever opening.

She believes the pending legislation is simply a way to address the reality - that waste has stacked up at power plants across the nation and is not likely to move from there any time soon.

"This is the de facto interim solution," said Macfarlane, an associate professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University in Washington, who co-wrote a book on Yucca Mountain this spring. "It could go either way with Yucca Mountain ¦ There's a good possibility it will fail."

What a difference a generation makes. In 1987, most of the country outside of Nevada breathed a sigh of relief when Congress put Yucca Mountain on the short list to house the nation's waste. No one wanted the dump in their back yard.

When Yucca missed its first opening deadline and waste kept piling up, President Bill Clinton vetoed a 2000 proposal led by Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert for temporary storage in Nevada.

Now Yucca is uncertain, and interim storage plans would dump waste in many back yards. Any of the 31 states with nuclear reactors could be designated by the federal government as an interim site where waste could be stored for up to 25 years under the legislation.

As a result, various governors have dashed off letters urging the Energy Department to move ahead with Yucca.

At a House committee hearing last month, Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, the state with more nuclear waste than any other, put it bluntly: "That's the stupidest idea I ever heard of and we cannot go there."

"Certainly, there's been a fair expression of concerns," said Charles Pray, a former Energy Department official in the Clinton administration who now serves as Maine's nuclear safety adviser. "It's taking us right back to the early 1980s when Congress directed the Department of Energy to find a national repository."

For Domenici, it's all about the math. Even if Yucca Mountain gets up and running by 2017 as now planned, it will still take decades to move all of the waste now sitting at nuclear reactor sites nationwide - a point he reiterated in a letter Monday to one of the governors. Plus more waste is being generated each day - at a rate of 2,000 metric tons a year.

Every day the waste sits, the government amasses enormous financial liability for not opening Yucca on time - or providing some other storage solution. Nuclear power companies nationwide have sued to recover the cost of continuing to store the waste near their plants, and the government is bracing for $7 billion in court-ordered payouts until Yucca opens.

Domenici and the Bush administration envision a sweeping change in the way the nation treats its waste, with the waste making a midway stop rather than going directly into permanent storage.

Instead, it would be recycled, converted back into fuel. That cycle could be repeated many times before it reaches a form so depleted that it cannot be recycled again. That final, spent waste would be much less toxic than existing leftovers.

At that point, in the opinion of Domenici and the Bush administration, the stuff should go to Yucca.

Skeptics in the scientific community say the idea is preposterous, as do environmentalists and others who seek to prevent construction of any more nuclear plants.

The kind of recycling being advocated was shelved by this country nearly 30 years ago, the critics say. The science involved is unproven and the technology does not exit. To pump the billions of dollars into trying to develop the technology would be an enormous waste.

But Bush promoted the new form of recycling earlier this year, and the Energy Department announced this month that it was soliciting ideas to begin the research.

"There's always interest in these proposals," said Craig Nesbit, spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, the nation's largest nuclear energy company. "It's never a bad idea to look at all your options."

--Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.

Sidebar: All in Good Time

The opening date for Yucca Mountain as a storage site has been changed many times:

1982: Congress passes the Nuclear Waste Policy Act establishing the development of two national repositories for nuclear waste. Scheduled opening 1998.

1987: In what became known as the “Screw Nevada’ bill, Congress names Nevada´s Yucca Mountain as the only site to be studied and drops plans for interim storage elsewhere.

1989: The Energy Department moves the repository opening date to 2003.

1994: The Energy Department moves the repository opening date to 2010.

2000: The Senate falls one vote short of overriding President Bill Clinton´s veto of interim waste storage in Nevada.

2002: Congress passes the Yucca Mountain Development Resolution naming the site as the national repository.

2006: The Energy Department moves the repository opening date to 2017. New plans for interim storage are proposed.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 15, 2006

Letter: DOE has no legal authority to spend funds

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency has fired another written volley at the Yucca Mountain Project.

In a letter last week to the Department of Energy, the agency said the DOE doesn't have legal authority to spend $100 million on roads, power lines and buildings at the planned nuclear waste site let alone use the state's water to do it.

"It cannot be presumed that the construction and operation of a repository at Yucca Mountain will ever occur," agency Executive Director Bob Loux wrote in the Aug. 8 letter, commenting on the impacts of upgrading the infrastructure at the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"The proposed action contained in the EA (environmental assessment) is unnecessary, unjustified and lacks legal authority," Loux wrote in the letter to EA Document Manager Jane Summerson.

Later, in a statement, Loux said the upgrade plan, which includes paving a 36-foot-wide road to the crest of the volcanic-rock ridge, amounts to "a road to nowhere."

Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allen Benson offered no comment on the state's letter.

Loux noted that the court only allows the DOE to use less than 10 acre-feet of water per year for minimal site maintenance and other needs such as safety, sanitation and drinking water for employees and visitors. The court, he wrote, "does not allow for hundreds of acre-feet of annual water use necessary to support the new construction activities."

The plan calls for construction of up to 33 miles of new and replacement roads, more than 20 miles of power lines, and a central operations area with six buildings to replace existing facilities that in some cases have exceeded their operational life, according to the 70-page draft document.

The buildings include a 43,000-square-foot field operations center for offices, training, computer operations and emergency facilities; a 10,000-square-foot station for fire and medical support; and a 43,000-square-foot craft shop for maintenance and repair operations.

None of the work is directly related to the planned repository, nor is the work being done to construct concrete pads for storing nuclear waste above ground before it is entombed inside the mountain.

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New West
August 15, 2006

U.S. Army Wants Your Colorado Ranchland

By Headwaters News

Western states are no longer the remote havens for industries and military exercises they used to be.

The nuclear waste repository planned for Nevada´s Yucca Mountain is still tied up in protests and litigation. The proposed “Divine Strake’ exercise set for June at the Nevada Test Site, which was to test the bunker-busting ability of 700 tons of the same explosive mixture that was used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was also torpedoed by both public and political opposition.

With energy development proceeding great guns, even some political stalwarts who have normally been on the side of such development, have come out against drilling on all public lands, i.e., Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas' opposition to drilling on the Wyoming Range and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns' agreement that no drilling be allowed on that state's Rocky Mountain Front.

Two stories today reflect a change in attitude about some areas of the West being used as testing grounds for military firepower and as the nation´s source of domestic energy.

In Colorado, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reports that the small towns and ranches in the southeastern corner of the state are definitely not putting out the welcome mat to the U.S. Army´s proposed expansion of its existing Piñon Canyon maneuver site.

When the Army built the site in the 1980s, it used eminent domain to condemn the 250,000 acres just south of LaJunta that it needed for the military training grounds.

But a lot has changed in the last couple of decades, and the resistance to the expansion plans has already begun to grow, despite the Army´s insistence that such resistance is premature. The Army still needs to secure funding for the expansion and Army officials have promised the public will be allowed to comment on the plan once the Pentagon approves it.

Army officials said the current political situation requires the ability to test advanced weapons able to deliver firepower over longer distances and thus the need to expand the Piñon Canyon site.

That insistence is making surrounding communities and ranchers certain that the Army will once again resort to eminent domain and will use that power to clear the quarter-million-acre circle of land that the Army has indicated it wants.

Business owners said now that a bus plant in Lamar has closed and LaJunta lost the Bay Valley pickle plant, ranchers are about the only paying customers left in the area.

Wayne Snider, head of the La Junta Economic Development Alliance, said if the military is successful in getting their training grounds expanded, the U.S. government should do something to help the area recoup jobs lost. Snider said LaJunta is one of the sites under consideration for a government research facility and the News quotes Snider as saying, "If they (the government) are going to take something away, they need to give something back.’

Meanwhile, the opposition to the Army´s plans for the area has other businesses adopting a wait-and-see attitude.

An oil company put its plan to expand in the area on hold, and company officials said public outcry against the Army´s plan made them rethink their plans.

In Wyoming, natural gas development has residents of the Line Creek Wilderness subdivision near Clark in Park County crying foul. At least 25 of the families who reside in the subdivision had to leave their homes when a major leak at a natural gas well occurred.

The Casper Star-Tribune reports that, for years, the residents of the subdivision have fought deep-well development of natural gas resources in the area over concerns about contamination of water supplies and dangers about gas seeps.

Now that the concerns have been realized, residents are demanding accountability.

Jimmy Goolsby, a consultant who provides geological services to the oil and gas industry, says as more and more subdivisions are being built in the rural reaches of the state, conflicts with energy companies are rising. The Tribune quotes Goolsby as saying, “Most oil and gas development occurs in remote areas. Now, people want to live in those remote areas. There has to be some willingness for all of us to take some amount of risk, as long as we keep that risk as low as we possibly can."

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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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