Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, August 27, 2006
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The State
August 28, 2006

Letter: Burning MOX fuel beats burying it

The Aug. 13 letter from Mary Kelly opposing the MOX plant at the Savannah River Site was consistent with her decades-long opposition to everything at SRS.

The disposal of surplus weapons-grade plutonium by burning it as MOX fuel has been endorsed by the National Academy of Science and many others. It is the right thing to do.

The anti-nuclear community thinks it would be better to simply bury it at Yucca Mountain in high-level waste canisters, even though they oppose opening that facility.

Burying it would create weapons-grade plutonium mines for the future, which has nuclear weapons proliferation implications.

Kelly claimed Russia is “not keeping up its end of the bargain.’ Last month, Russia signed an agreement with the United States to dispose of its 34 metric tons of plutonium in a “fast reactor’ rather than in low-enriched thermal reactors as we are planning to do. The point is they are disposing of it.

Ms. Kelly´s concluding statement that this and other activities at SRS are endangering us is, quite simply, nonsense. The 54-year record of safety at SRS is exemplary, and well-documented.

Finally, she seems to think creating hundreds of high-paying jobs for South Carolinians is a bad thing to do. We do not.

Mal McKibben
Executive Director
Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness
Aiken

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Las Vegas SUN
August 27, 2006

Differences clear, but who wins?

Porter said to be tough foe for Hafen

By Lisa Mascaro
Las Vegas Sun

The differences between challenger Tessa Hafen and two-term incumbent Rep. Jon Porter in Nevada's 3rd Congressional District are easy to see, political watchers say, but what is not so clear is who will win.

The makeup of the congressional district encompasses one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. It ranges from the metropolitan areas of Las Vegas, to the suburbs of Henderson and to the idyllic Lake Mead and Red Rock Canyon areas. It is evenly divided between Democrat and Republican voters, making the outcome anything but easy to predict.

Republican Porter is a loyalist who has rarely departed from his party's agenda in the House. He's a veteran of political office, having served as Boulder City mayor and council member before being elected to Congress in 2002.

Hafen has never held office. She's a Harry Reid Democrat, both in her moderate Democratic politics and her roots. Her political experience consists of working eight years for Reid in Washington.

Political analysts in Nevada and Washington say Porter will be tough to beat, even with polls nationwide pointing to big Democratic gains in November congressional races - enough, perhaps, to give the Democrats control of one or both houses of Congress.

Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said last week his analysis shows that the election could produce one of the narrowest majorities ever in the House.

He also said the electorate seems more polarized than at any time since the turn of the 19th century. "It's a clear choice," he said. Voters will go to the polls with a simple question in mind: "Which side are you on?"

The Porter-Hafen race is drawing scrutiny and support from both national parties because the outcome is expected to be close. Porter won by 14 and 18 percentage point margins the first two times he ran. The outcome will be much tighter this year, said Republican consultant Pete Ernaut, but he expects Porter to win.

The campaigns kicked in last week as the two candidates faced off before a crowd of 300 at the Clark County Library. Hafen began in a shaky voice, her butterflies clearly rustling. She regained her footing in time to launch a rather polite attack.

Over the last week she has argued that Porter has been a trusty foot soldier in Washington as Republicans walked the country into problems - the war in Iraq, $3-a-gallon gas, tax cuts for the rich.

She said Porter supported the broad energy bill that gives huge tax breaks to the oil and nuclear industry to develop new power sources at a time when Nevadans are paying record high gasoline prices at the pump and fighting Yucca Mountain. He supported the Medicare prescription drug plan that has left middle-class seniors with a gaping hole in their coverage.

If she is elected, Hafen said, she would push for the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a strategy to bring the troops home from Iraq, development of alternative fuel sources to end the addiction to foreign oil and postponement of the Bush tax cuts for the richest 1 percent of Americans until the country has dealt with its record deficit.

"To go to Congress and just be a rubber stamp is not what people here want in a representative," she said in an interview last week over diet soda at the Gold Coast coffee shop. "I hope there will just be a wave across the country where voters say enough is enough."

At the library appearance, Porter took to the floor with the gravitas of an incumbent. His voice never shook as he talked about the "serious times" the country faces.

While many members of Congress are distancing themselves from Bush as the president's poll ratings hover in the mid- to high 30s, Porter stands by the Republican agenda. He says Hafen is from the party of "no" - no to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, no to the House immigration bill, no to staying the course in Iraq.

Two deviations he has made from the Bush administration are opposing Yucca Mountain, as every member of the Nevada delegation does, and supporting stem cell research, as most Americans do.

Porter defended himself against critics of the House immigration bill, which would make it a felony to help an illegal immigrant and toughen enforcement without providing a path to citizenship for immigrants who have lived and worked for years in the United States. That bill isn't perfect, he said, but it's a step in the right direction.

He said the same of the Medicare prescription drug bill. It has problems, but it is a step in the right direction - and 300,000 Nevada seniors now have coverage they didn't have before, he said.

During an interview while he toured Yucca Mountain last week, Porter said that Democrats "vote no and then they complain it's not perfect." His campaign is focused on bringing home money for a college nursing program, transportation projects and homeland security.

As the campaigns heat up, a number of leading lawmakers will come to Nevada to boost their party's candidate in the race.

Hafen's cause will be helped along, too, by the Democratic Party's decision to move the 2008 Nevada presidential caucuses to immediately after the Iowa caucuses - making it the second contest of the presidential primary season. The campaigns of as many as a half-dozen Democratic presidential aspirants are considering trips to Nevada after Labor Day to campaign for candidates here and begin assessing the landscape with an eye toward 2008.

Reid has raised substantial sums for his former press secretary and will continue on through the campaign. She has raised $800,000 for her campaign - enough to make a credible run but only a third as much as Porter has raised.

On the Republican side, New York Rep. Tom Reynolds, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told reporters that the party will do "whatever it takes" to support Porter's campaign against a "B-list" candidate.

House Majority Leader John Boehner and House Speaker Dennis Hastert are stopping in Nevada this month to raise money for Porter.

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

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Pahrump Valley Times
August 26, 2006

Big changes are on the way to Calvada Boulevard

By Mark Waite
PVT

The Calvada Eye was once a steakhouse and a sales office for Preferred Equities Corporation when they sold parcels to thousands of Pahrump home buyers back in the 1970s.

The Southwest-style building with the red-tile roof then underwent a metamorphosis into the Calvada Library and the offices of the former Central Nevada Utilities Inc., now known simply as Utilities Inc.

Nye County bought the 32- acre site for $3.2 million in September 2004 from Frank Shopko, manager of Rocklin Redeleng, the company that purchased the property after the bankruptcy of Preferred Equities Corp.

Now the county has plans to transform the old building again, this time into a meeting room to replace the Bob Ruud Community Center, where the library once called home until the new Pahrump Library opened in 2000.

The old steakhouse would be used as offices for the Nye County district attorney. The Nye County Administration Department, including the county manager and Human Resources Department, will also be located there.

Nine condominium units at the west end of the Calvada Eye are being renovated for the Nuclear Waste Repository Office, which currently works out of a building rented from Wulfenstein Construction for $6,000 per month on East Basin Road.

County commissioners allocated $2 million to renovate the Calvada Eye in this year's budget from the $10 million in Payment Equal to Taxes county officials expect to receive from the U.S. Department of Energy for the Yucca Mountain Project next January.

Nye County Facilities Manager Bob Jones said it should cost closer to $1 million.

The first step in the rehabilitation project for the 65,000-square-foot Calvada building will be the award of a contract for $6,108 to examine the building for asbestos and mold.

"We have to re-roof, a sprinkler system will have to be installed, basically it will have to be gutted, and an electrical system will have to be done," Jones said. "I've already got a price of $150,000 to put a sprinkler system in it."

Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis said the existing courthouse on East Basin Road will be converted into three courtrooms after the district attorney moves out and modular buildings will be installed on the northeast corner of that property for the county treasurer, recorder and assessor.

Hollis said Pahrump will need another justice court when the population of the valley reaches 35,000. The Nye County population estimate for the first quarter of 2006 put the population at 36,584.

"I'm not sure if we have to wait for the census year or when the state deems it necessary," Hollis said during a recent tour of the Calvada Eye buildings.

Another courtroom will be needed for a second district court. That would be needed whether Department One District Judge John Davis in Tonopah retires in 2008 and is replaced by a Pahrump judge or is re-elected, due to the increasing caseload.

"A lot of the time it's difficult to get a courtroom because Judge (Robert) Lane is using it. I have to bring cases up here to utilize my time," Davis said from Tonopah. He added it would be good to have another courtroom for hearings in Pahrump like law and motion day.

The third courtroom would be for Juvenile Court Judge Margaret Whitaker. Hollis said she's had to hold court in ambulance bays, coffee break rooms and other unlikely venues. Among other problems, such locations don't give the right courtroom atmosphere, he said.

"That's the wrong message to send to these kids. They need to know the justice system is going to come down on their little heads," Hollis said.

The county commissioners voted to put the Calvada duck pond property out to bid, after a report of "an unidentified man" offering double the price the county paid for it. Minimum bids were set at $6 million. But Jones said, "That mysterious person that was going to give us $6 million didn't bid."

Nye County has spent about $50,000 on landscaping the grounds and watering the duck ponds, Jones said. However, the duck ponds are no longer used as the site for community functions like United Way fundraisers.

The duck pond is still a favorite place for Pahrump residents to relax under the big trees and feed the ducks. Hollis said, however, that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may have to hire a ranger to thin the population of ducks.

In the near future, residents attending county commission or town board meetings may relax around the pond during breaks in the proceedings.

The Calvada Eye was recently identified as the top choice of a town center by 51 percent of the small number responding to a recent town survey.

Hollis said the room formerly used for the library, and for a time as district court when the existing courthouse was closed due to mold in 2002, is big enough, at about 1,900 square feet, for holding all those chairs set up for community meetings.

Pahrump Town Manager Dave Richards will then be able to do some renovations to the existing Bob Ruud Community Center, which is used almost constantly, Hollis said.

"In the beginning, the recommendation was just to bulldoze this because of the expense," Jones said, while walking through the Calvada Eye building. But in the last year, the cost of construction material has gone up.

Jones estimated that, at $165 per square foot, it would cost $1.8 million to build a courthouse using estimates from Kitchell Consultants -- and those were last year's prices.

The Nuclear Waste Repository Office will move into the nine condos that have been vandalized since they were abandoned a few years ago. The county will tear out some shrubs that block the view of the building. The offices are funded by the federal government; the county will collect the rent for that space. Some nuclear waste office space has spilled over to a shopping center on Basin Road.

The county allocated $250,000 to renovate those condos. That building measures about 6,500 square feet, Jones said.

When the Nuclear Waste Repository Office moves into the Calvada Eye, Jones said the Pahrump Buildings and Grounds Department, operated by Charles Abbott and Associates, may want to expand in that complex.

In the middle of both buildings on the Calvada Eye is the JobConnect office, a one-stop center that opened May 7, 2005. That modular complex anchored by the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board includes offices for employers to conduct interviews - like the Desert View Regional Medical Center and hiring for a Target store in Las Vegas -- as well as the veterans services office, Progressive Choices, the Western Truck Driving School and others.

Workforce Development Director Victoria Balint said she'd look forward to having the county next door. It would complement their existing services.

"Any time you can pull in government, the private sector and nonprofits, it's a win-win for everybody," Balint said.

Nye County District Attorney Bob Beckett said locating there would mean a commute of several minutes for his attorneys to travel to court, but it wouldn't be a major problem.

When commissioners discussed appropriating the $2 million last month, Hollis said that would be better than going out for bonds to build a new courthouse.

"If we go out and ask taxpayers for a bond issue, the first thing they'll say, 'You haven't used up your options. You have a building out there you haven't done anything with,'" he said. "We have enough money to revamp that Calvada Eye and make it something we can all be proud of."

Commissioner Patricia Cox said she'd rather see the Nye County Planning Department, the Public Works Department and the code enforcement officer at the Calvada Eye instead of the D.A. They work out of the original courthouse on Highway 160 and Basin Road.

"Without moving the D.A.'s office, I don't see how you'll put three courtrooms in there," Hollis said, referring to the existing courthouse.

It cost $7 million to put up in 1998, Hollis said. He said it would cost $22 million to build today.

The rest of the PETT funds will go toward a new fire hall to replace one that has been condemned in Tonopah, $500,000; paving the Amargosa Valley Community Center parking lot, $300,000; another $352,619 to supply water to the old Barrick Bullfrog Mine complex in Beatty for renovation as an industrial park; $750,000 for the Great Basin College project; $200,000 for connecting to the Southern Nevada Area Communications Complex; $550,000 for a sheriff's department microwave system and $291,700 in carryover funds for Simkins Park.

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EurekAlert
August 25, 2006

Contact: Ann Cairns
acairns@geosociety.org
303-357-1056
Geological Society of America

September GEOLOGY and GSA TODAY media highlights

Boulder, Colo. - Topics include: paleoseismology of Yucca Mountain, Nevada; impact of magnetic anomalies in Earth's oceanic crust on plate tectonics; evidence of episodic regional and possibly global glaciation during the Neoproterozoic; insights into Paleocene-Eocene global warming; impact of subduction on Earth's surface characteristics; records of environmental change in Black Coral specimens; and geology's place in the Scientific Revolution. The GSA TODAY science article addresses Hurricane Katrina sediment deposits and hydraulic conditions associated with the flooding.

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Atlanta Journal Constitution
August 25, 2006

Nuclear power makes sense on all levels

By Jim Wooten
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Drive through a pine thicket in rural Burke County and two markings suddenly appear, spray-painted in bright surveyor´s-tape green, a few feet apart. If all goes well, this spot of ground on 3,150 acres near Augusta will within a decade be the epicenter of a third nuclear reactor, a key element in America´s drive for energy independence.

Nearby will be a fourth — if the numbers work and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves the application by Southern Co.´s nuclear power subsidiary, Southern Nuclear Operating Co., to construct two reactors a short distance from the two that have operated safely at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro for almost 20 years.

To jump-start the industry, which has been skittish for decades because of concern about regulatory obstacles and the willingness of the investment community to take risks on nuclear energy, especially when natural gas appeared to be readily available and cheap, Congress offered incentives. The first two nuclear plants constructed will be eligible for generous tax credits, loan guarantees and insurance protection against delays caused by litigation or the licensing process. The next four would qualify for lesser subsidies.

“There´s a reason there are 25 nuclear applications on the table today when there were six a year ago,’ said U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) during a visit to this newspaper Wednesday. “And it is that you can do things by reducing the regulatory burden’ and by offering incentives that attract private capital. “There´s no emissions, no global warming, no side effects to it, it´s equally safe and per kilowatt hour is as cheap or cheaper’ than alternatives, so “capital will flow there once we reduce the regulatory burden.’

Part of the skittishness, too, is that Vogtle was under construction when the partial meltdown occurred at Pennsylvania´s Three Mile Island in 1979. As a result of shutdowns, design changes prompted by new regulations and other delays, construction stretched to some 14 years and the costs ballooned to $8.87 billion. Its projected cost before Three Mile Island was $600 million. The two units at Plant Hatch near Baxley came on line in 1975 and 1979 and cost about $1 billion.

In the decades since Three Mile Island, design and technology have changed. As one example, the partial meltdown there occurred because several water coolant pumps failed, causing the reactor to overheat. Now, gravity drops the cooling water, replacing the pumping system that failed at Three Mile Island.

Design and construction now are much more standardized, and while as many as 13,000 construction workers were employed in building Vogtle, now about 30-40 percent of the proposed new facilities would be built in modules off site and shipped in, reducing the on-site work force to 1,500 to 2,000.

Safety, though, has not been a question for some time. The issue has been permanent disposal of spent fuel, which is now stored underwater on site at Vogtle. The obvious site is Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where it could be stored a thousand feet below ground. The site has been studied since 1978, and because of objections by environmentalists and politicians, it´s not scheduled to begin accepting spent fuel from the 104 operating nuclear plants until 2017.

“It´s the most studied piece of real estate known to man,’ says Lou Long, technical support vice president of Southern Nuclear in Birmingham. Utilities´ customers have paid $20 billion — $90 million by Georgia Power customers alone — to develop Yucca Mountain for storage, $14 billion of which has been spent on studies.

Clearly the nation does need to move promptly to get back into the nuclear power business in a major way. In France, 78.1 percent of electricity comes from nuclear. It´s cheap, clean, safe and efficient. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Belgium gets 55.1 percent, Japan 29.3 and the United States 19.9. About three-fourths of this nation´s emission-free power generation comes from nuclear.

Georgia Power adds 40,000 customers per year, and that´s about half the new customers coming online in Georgia yearly. The two 1,200-megawatt reactors at Vogtle alone generate about 11 percent of its electric-power needs.

The nation has been timid too long. Company officials have made no decision yet on whether to add the two reactors at Vogtle. The correct decision, for Georgia and for the nation, is yes. Build.

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UPI
August 25, 2006

Analysis: NRC hires expecting nuke boom

By Ben Lando
UPI Energy Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been on a hiring spree in anticipation of applications for new nuclear reactors, reactor permit renewals and the nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain.

"For at least the past year we've been looking to seriously ramp up the agency's research personnel," said NRC spokesman Scott Burnell.

That includes more than 300 hires over the past year, a trend expected to continue for the next few years. This has put the agency in a space crunch, too, converting conference rooms in its Rockville, Md., headquarters into cubicles. "Regional offices are tight on space" as well, Burnell said.

While active reactors head into the twilight years of their original permit and begin applying for renewal, and the NRC braces itself for the beast of a job that is regulating the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site, "a large percentage" of the new staff is dedicated to new reactor applications, Burnell said.

Burnell said there are 13 prospective applicants totaling "19 possible applications, based on companies that have come to us so far and laid out specific plans," which he estimates to be about 27 new reactors. He expects the first new reactor application by late next year.

Ron Hagen, a nuclear energy analyst with the U.S. Energy Department's data arm, the Energy Information Administration, says he thinks there may be even more potential new nuclear sites than the NRC is letting on, and talk from within the industry points to increased chances at the first approval of nuclear power plant since 1978.

"What you're seeing is a gradual warming up to the idea," said Hagen, referring to companies getting in line for various supplies necessary to begin the building process, partly fueled by tax incentives in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The World Nuclear Association, in a recent review of U.S. nuclear industry, expects new reactor construction by 2010, in operation by 2014, largely because of "regulatory initiatives," including Early Site Permit and Combined Construction-Operation Licensing that are partially funded by the Energy Department.

Nearly 789 billion kilowatt hours of electricity was generated by U.S. nuclear power in 2004, the most ever for the country and the fifth record set since 1998 despite no new nuclear plants coming on line since 1996.

Alan Beamon, director of EIA's coal and electrical power forecasting division, said a now nearly year-old long-term forecast predicts by 2030 U.S. nuclear capacity will increase by 9,000 megawatts -- 3,000 mw in upgrades to existing plants and 6,000 mw in new plants.

He said that estimate may be low now, after the full effects of recent energy legislation are known, including Internal Revenue Service rulings on the extent the tax breaks can be applied.

"It looks to us like the incentives in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 should be large enough to stimulate new nuclear construction," Beamon said, adding one hurdle will be the anti-nuclear groups who will surely contest the projects.

Criticism of the industry aside, it has been a steadily efficient source of energy, Beamon said.

"Nuclear power plants over the last decade, 20 years or so, have dramatically improved their performance and their output," up from 66 a percent capacity factor in 1990 to 90 percent now.

For the new plants, "the issue is then whether they can build those new units, and build them at a cost that makes further units attractive and whether they can overcome waste disposal concerns," he said.

The latter is the ongoing debacle that is the Energy Department's determination to open up a geological reservoir in Nevada's Yucca Mountain to store spent nuclear fuel. Its latest estimate is to have an application into the NRC by 2008 and open its doors by 2017, but doubts on the tight timeframe linger, spurred by history -- Yucca Mountain was supposed to open by 1998.

The NRC has opened an office in nearby Las Vegas, where Burnell says a full-time, devoted staff awaits the application. In the meantime it can be used for other regulatory work.

And there are seven nuclear plant license renewal applications being reviewed by NRC now, and 22 letters of intent to renew have been issued.

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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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