Yucca Mountain News Clips - Friday, September 8, 2006

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, September 8, 2006
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E&ENews
September 06, 2006

Domenici on Yucca and Interim Storage

Sen. Domenici sees no light for DOE's Yucca Mountain fix

Mary O'Driscoll
PM senior reporter

The Energy Department's legislative fix for the troubled Yucca Mountain nuclear repository appears dead for the year, according to Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.).

Domenici, long a key figure in the congressional nuclear power debate, today said the only nuclear waste legislation he is pursuing this fall is the interim storage language he added to the fiscal 2007 Energy and Water spending bill.

Also the chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, Domenici's remarks likely signal the death this year of DOE's multifaceted plan to speed up the process of licensing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

When asked if he would pursue DOE's legislative proposal this year, Domenici shook his head and said, "No."

At the same time, before adjournment Domenici intends to introduce his own version of the "fix-Yucca Mountain" bill to stimulate discussion of the matter for next year, a spokeswoman said. She did not provide further details on the bill.

Of the spending rider, Domenici said, "I'm glad it's in there" in reference to the fiscal 2007 appropriations bill that funds DOE. The proposal directs the department to enter into consultation with state governors to establish interim sites for consolidation and preparation of power reactors' nuclear waste for eventual disposal at the repository, to be located under a desert mountain range 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"I wish we could get it out of the Senate to give us something to work with," Domenici told reporters.

Under Domenici's proposal, DOE would own and operate the sites and also would be required to take over the waste stored at "dead plant" sites --those plants that have been shut down and in some cases dismantled.

A coalition of Northeastern governors sent a letter to the Senate last month urging lawmakers to reject Domenici's proposal, which could establish as many as 31 interim storage facilities for nuclear waste. The governors and a growing chorus of state-level officials contend that such a move would undermine the federal government's commitment to establish a single repository at Yucca Mountain.

Beyond this opposition, the fate of Domenici's proposal is not at all clear even in Congress. It has run into strong opposition from lawmakers in the House, so if it becomes part of the Senate's official position on the Energy and Water appropriations bill, a hot debate is likely to follow in conference -- if it gets to a conference. The most likely scenario for the energy spending bill, observers say, is that it will be part of larger omnibus bill that Congress probably will act on near Christmas during a post-election, lame-duck session.

DOE's bill, which is strongly supported by the nuclear power industry, is intended to jump-start the process of building the chronically delayed Yucca Mountain repository so that it can open by 2017. It would help boost funding for the repository by giving DOE easier access to future annual Nuclear Waste Trust Fund contributions. It also would take the important step of allowing for permanent withdrawal of 147,000 acres of land at and around the repository from public use, which is necessary for the repository to get licenses.

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Deseret News
September 08, 2006

Nuclear waste site looks doomed

2 rulings likely to keep N-waste out of Utah

By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON — Private Fuel Storage no longer has a lease to use tribal lands to store nuclear waste in Tooele County in the wake of decisions made by two Interior Department agencies Thursday.

Utah politicians said the decisions leave almost no chance that the waste shipments will come to the state.

"This is the period at the end of the sentence," Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said. "It does it for us. This is the best news Utah has received in a long time."

In two separate decisions, the Bureau of Indian Affairs disapproved a lease that allowed PFS to use Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation land, and the Bureau of Land Management refused to grant the rights of way needed to build transportation methods needed to move tons of used nuclear fuel through the state and to the storage site.

"They can't get it to the reservation, and they have no site because they have no lease," said Denise Chancellor, Utah assistant attorney general. "I believe this is the end of the line."

The decisions create more tough obstacles for PFS. The company received its license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission earlier this year, lost several original investors and still waits for a response from the government to a request they do business together. PFS was originally made up a eight nuclear utilities that wanted to create an interim storage site for 40,000 tons of nuclear waste because the permanent federal storage site is so overdue.

The federal site, now planned for Nevada's Yucca Mountain, was supposed to open in 1998, but will not open until at least the next decade. Most utilities store spent fuel on site but face rising costs or space constraints.

Chancellor said she felt "euphoric" Thursday, reflecting on the 10-year battle against the project. The state fought against the project getting a license and still has a legal case pending in federal appeals court against it. She said from a legal standpoint, these are final decisions issued by the Interior Department, and she could not think how they could be changed.

"PFS is dead. It's that simple," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who announced the Interior Department decision Thursday. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, said the department did what "we expected them to do."

"This comes as very welcome news," Cannon said.

Private Fuel Storage spokeswoman Sue Martin said neither she nor consortium chairman John Parkyn had received or reviewed the documents from the Interior Department late Thursday, so she could not comment on their contents.

"We have to take a look at exactly what their reasoning is and what this all consists of," Martin said. She added that Hatch's proclamation that the project is dead "is a bit premature."

Hatch, however, said that any notion that PFS could still put waste in Utah after Thursday's news is "pure hogwash."

"With this action, all but one nail has been driven into the PFS coffin," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. "Now we just have to get PFS to surrender its license. Putting an above-ground, high-level nuclear storage dump right next to a test and bombing range never made sense, and it never will."

Lawmakers declared a cautious victory last year when Congress passed the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Act. The bill, signed into law by President Bush, protected land in the Utah Test and Training Range. But the measure also included what PFS needed to build its rail line down to the Goshute land.

The other option was to use heavy-haul trucks to move the waste, but the consortium would still need a right-of-way from the BLM to build a special facility on public land to handle the containers.

Hatch persuaded Interior to hold another public-comment period on whether it was in the public's best interest to allow PFS access to federal land to move the waste. The department received about 6,000 comments on the issue, spokesman Shane Wolfe said.

"Utah spoke and the BLM listened," Hatch said. "It proves that every citizen can make a difference."

In Thursday's decision, Chad Calvert, acting assistant secretary for Land and Minerals Management, said that the wilderness area voided the request for the rail-line land and that granting the land for the other transfer station would not go along with the agency's goal of managing public lands and avoiding environmental harm. He also brought up security concerns. -->

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said that "for years, the entire delegation has urged the Department of Interior to take this action. I raised this issue with Secretary Kempthorne prior to his confirmation last spring and stressed the importance of it to our state. I am delighted with his prompt response. This ends any possibility that the Goshute facility will ever be used for the storage of high-level nuclear waste."

As for the lease, the superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Uintah and Ouray Agency that originally signed the conditional lease in 1997 between the Goshutes and PFS for 820 acres of land did not have the power to sign such a document, said James Cason, associate deputy secretary.

The BIA said the conditional approval does not bind the secretary to approve it now, and it did not find approving the lease to be in the government's best interest. The BIA also noted the "years-long" delay in the construction of the permanent federal nuclear-waste storage site gives "no firm basis" to determine when the nuclear waste would leave the tribal land, among other reasons. "As I said all along, administrative avenues through the federal agencies offered a clear shot at stopping high-level radioactive-waste storage from coming to Utah," said Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah. "I am so glad that thousands of Utahns contacted BLM about the environmental problems with the right-of-way application across public lands and that now we can celebrate the demise of this dangerous disposal scheme."

Margene Bullcreek, among those who have long opposed the plan which has divided the tribe's Skull Valley band, expressed relief after hearing the news from her attorney.

"I am ecstatic about it," she said. "That's something that wasn't good for our tribe. It wasn't good for our future generation because of the poison that it holds. Hopefully, we can get back to our healing process from all the hurt and separation it has caused our relatives."

Vanessa Pierce, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah said this was great news but said the state is still vulnerable because the nuclear industry wants to get waste off their own sites and into other states.

"In essence, PFS has a license, but with both the BLM and BIA rulings, it has no car, and has been told to stay off the road," Pierce said.

--E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com

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Salt Lake Tribune
September 08, 2006

Interior dumps N-waste plan

Hatch says Utah site is dead; will PFS fight?

By Robert Gehrke, Judy Fahys and Thomas Burr
The Salt Lake Tribune

In a move that may mean the death of a plan to store thousands of tons of nuclear waste about an hour's drive from Salt Lake City, the U.S. Interior Department on Thursday rejected the lease to build the facility.

"We just wanted to put a spike right through the heart of this project and this does it," Sen. Orrin Hatch said Thursday after being notified of the department's action.

In a pair of decisions, spanning 47 pages, two agencies in the department rejected a lease Private Fuel Storage signed with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes to store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear rods on 100 acres of reservation land. PFS is a group of companies that operate nuclear reactors where waste has been piling up for a half-century.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) found it could not approve a rail line to the reservation because it would have to cross a newly created wilderness area.

A plan to transfer the waste onto tractor-trailers and truck the waste to the reservation was also rejected because it would significantly increase traffic along the two-lane road and because workers transferring the casks would be exposed to radiation.

Those considerations and others - including unanswered questions about the vulnerability of the site to a terrorist attack - prompted the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reject the tribe's plan. The BIA cited inadequate police protection on the reservation, with Tooele County sheriff deputies lacking jurisdiction on the reservation and the nearest BIA officers stationed 4 1/2 hours away.

Furthermore, with a planned permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., still up in the air, it is unclear when the waste would leave the reservation, and the department lacks the technical knowledge to monitor the waste.

The rulings make it clear that the ultimate decision belonged to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, the former Idaho governor confirmed in May to his Cabinet post. The decisions describe him as a "trustee-delegate" charged with "the complex task of weighing the long-term viability of the Skull Valley Goshute reservation as a homeland for the Band (and the implications for preservation of tribal culture and life) against the benefits and risks from economic development activities. . . . "

After conducting this balancing test, "we conclude that it is not consistent with the conduct expected of a prudent trustee to approve a proposed lease that promotes storing [spent nuclear fuel] on the reservation," wrote Associate Deputy Interior Secretary James Cason.

But nowhere in the 47 pages is there any indication the Skull Valley Band was involved in the decision making. And, in fact, tribal Chairman Leon Bear apparently did not learn about Kempthorne's decision until after Hatch issued a press release, according to PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin.

Martin indicated it is premature to declare the project dead.

"We do need to see the record of decision and look at it in some detail before we get a good feel for what our options are. I believe Senator Hatch would lead you to believe we have no options and I'm not sure that's true," Martin said. "We'll have to see. Stay tuned."

Mary Allen, one of three Goshute leaders who began negotiating the deal 10 years ago, said the tribe would fight the ruling because members want the financial benefit of the project. The exact sum the 125 members could expect from the deal has never been disclosed, although it is rumored to be in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

Allen called Thursday's ruling "just another roadblock."

"The lease was recognized" by the Interior Department, Allen said. "The BIA is scared because of the politics and Senator Hatch."

Hatch, though, wasn't the only politician fighting the project.

Sen. Bob Bennett noted that all five Utah congressional members have lobbied the Interior Department to kill the plan. Their pleas in recent months have been directed at Kempthorne.

"I raised this issue with Secretary Kempthorne prior to his confirmation last spring and stressed the importance of it to our state. I am delighted with his prompt response," Bennett said in a statement Thursday. "This ends any possibility that the Goshute facility will ever be used for the storage of high-level nuclear waste."

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. declared Thursday's action "the best news I think our state has seen in recent years . . . And it's one that people have fought very hard for and we're there. We can finally put a period at the end of the sentence."

Despite what PFS says, Huntsman added, "This makes it a done deal. It's over."

PFS received its Nuclear Regulatory Commission license last year, nine years after applying for it. The license was conditioned on the BLM's approval of a plan to transport the waste to the site and BIA's final OK of the Goshutes' lease with PFS.

The Interior Department decision could be challenged in court.

"We need to sort through the ashes and put out a few embers maybe, but other than that it's stone cold dead," Hatch said. "It couldn't happen to nicer people."

Since the NRC voted to approve the PFS license a year ago, Utah's congressional delegation pushed through legislation creating the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area adjacent to the Skull Valley reservation, blocking rail access to the site. All but two of the project's original 11 backers have said they will not help fund construction of the project.

And efforts are underway in Congress to create at least one and possibly several government-run interim storage facilities, potentially making private storage unnecessary.

In May, Hatch and Bennett wrote to the BLM, arguing the wilderness designation made it impossible for PFS to build the rail line to the reservation, and that an alternate plan - to build a station to move the nuclear material from trains to trucks and drive it to the reservation - was full of holes.

There was no security plan for the proposed transfer facility, it would violate the land management plan for the area, would hurt Air Force training on the nearby Utah Test and Training Range and would be a terrorist target, the senators argued.

The BLM received more than 4,500 letters, mostly from Utahns opposed to the nuclear waste site.

"These are the largest nails in the coffin, but we know the nuclear industry is desperate to transfer the risks and liabilities away from their own users and to other states," said Vanessa Pierce, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah. "It just goes to show that when citizens speak up loud and clear, they have more power than they imagine."

Margene Bullcreek said she was ecstatic about the ruling because the waste project has torn the tribe apart.

"It's been a long, long trial and at this point it's a big, big triumph," Bullcreek said. "We still need to deal with economic development, but I'm glad we will not have this poisonous waste."

Rep. Chris Cannon said he expected the Interior Department to reject the PFS plan.

"PFS has never made sense," Cannon said. "We should be very pleased that Interior has done what we asked them to do."

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, said the decision was a huge win for Utah and especially for the military and its test and training range, which is three miles from the proposed nuclear waste storage site.

"They were looking for good reasons and I think we gave them good reasons and I applaud the Interior for their decision," Bishop said.

"I wish it would have been resolved sooner," said Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah. "I don't know anyone in America who wants nuclear waste thrown in their backyard."

--Tribune reporter Thomas Burr contributed to this report.

* The U.S. Interior Department denied a lease and a transportation plan that were crucial to proposed nuclear waste storage in Utah's Skull Valley, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

* Critics pronounced the project dead. But the decision could still be appealed in court.

* The Skull Valley Goshutes and their commercial partner in the project have yet to say if, or how, they will fight the rulings.

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Appeal-Democrat
September 08, 2006

Editorial

Nuclear's clean energy generation kept in the dark

What if the United States rolled out the welcome mat for the construction of new nuclear power plants ... and no one showed up to build them? For the no-nukes crowd, that would be a victory. But it would be a hollow victory for the rest of us Americans, who get 20 percent of our electricity from an aging nuclear energy industry that's just hanging on by its electrons.

Some alarmists dread a nuclear energy revival in the United States, evoking specters of meltdowns, Chernobyls and three-eyed fish to bolster their naysaying. But a growing number of Americans also seem to recognize that nuclear energy, while not without risks, is on balance a “cleaner” and better alternative that the same old, same old. Concerns about climate change have even prompted some pragmatic environmentalists to take a second look at the nuclear option, given that these facilities don't emit so-called greenhouse gases. The Bush administration, Department of Energy and some members of Congress have been offering proposals meant to stimulate a revival.

But as The New York Times reported, it may be hard attracting companies back into nuclear energy, even with a helping hand from the federal government, given a regulatory and political climate that makes such ventures risky. Despite Washington's dangling of incentives, “utility executives are sharply divided over whether nuclear power offers an attractive choice as they seek to satisfy a growing demand for electricity,” reported the Times. “For them, the question comes down not so much to safety and environmental impact but to whether the potential reward is worth the financial risk.”

Given the regulatory and political roadblocks that can stand in the way, it can take up to 10 years to construct a new nuclear power plant. And one of the biggest uncertainties confronting would-be builders is what to do about the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuels, since this country's efforts to deal with that issue have bogged down in politics and protests. Even after years of study and billions of dollars paid by utilities to the federal government for the design and construction of an underground waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., that project is in trouble and a solution recedes from view.

Until the nation moves forward on a serious storage solution - and we believe Yucca Mountain is still the best option out there - the energy sector likely will remain skittish about reinvesting in nuclear plants. New reactors can operate for years in spite of the nonsolution of storing waste on-site, in temporary facilities. But why would companies and potential investors think about betting on atomic power again, if the country can't address this central, but not insurmountable, challenge?

In one hopeful note, a consortium of energy companies recently broke ground on a $1.5 billion uranium enrichment plant near Eunice, N.M. - the first major nuclear facility built in this country in 30 years. Whether it will supply American reactors is far from certain, however, a point underscored when Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., while heralding the groundbreaking as the start of a “nuclear renaissance,” talked mostly about what a great thing this would be for the folks in Brazil and Asia.

While nuclear power plants may not disappear from the American landscape altogether, most of 100 senior utility execs surveyed said they did not expect “a future where nuclear generation represents a larger share of generation” than it does today. Instead of a nuclear renaissance, in other words, what the country seems to be inviting is a nuclear dark age, even while the rest of the world boldly moves forward.

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Las Vegas SUN
September 06, 2006

Warner talks homeland security in Nevada

By Kathleen Hennessey
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner said Wednesday that the Bush administration's "unilateral focus on Iraq" had diverted attention and resources from homeland security efforts.

"While we are safer, Americans are not safe enough five years after 9/11. And I believe we need to make some immediate changes in the operations and renew focus on homeland security," said Warner, in the state's first visit from a likely Democratic presidential candidate since Nevada won an early slot on the party's nomination calendar.

Democrats last month scheduled Nevada's presidential caucus for Jan. 19, following first-in-the-nation Iowa. The move was intended to let more union and minority voters weigh in on the 2008 nominee.

Warner met privately with local state legislators and held a news conference with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dina Titus on homeland security.

He called for better screening at the nation's ports, improved coordination between the intelligence agencies and more police on the street. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be pulled out of the Homeland Security Department and report directly to the president. He criticized Congress for spending federal homeland security dollars on pork-barrel projects.

"The fact that Las Vegas actually saw a decrease in homeland security (funding) shows, I think, misplaced priorities," he said.

Titus, state Senate Minority Leader, touted her own efforts to improve security systems for Nevada police agencies and criticized Congress for making "hardly a peep" when Las Vegas lost funding.

Nevada Republican Party Chairman Paul Adams accused Warner of making "political hay" out of security.

"I think there's no question that national security is going to be an issue in this election, but the immediate knee-jerk response from Democrats is, 'We're not doing enough and we're not safe.' But, there has not been an attack in five years," Adams said.

Limited to a since term as governor, Warner left office in January. He has since set up a presidential exploratory committee, Alexandria, Va.-based Forward Together, and toured the country raising money for Democrats. The former executive who made millions of dollars in the cell phone business bills himself as a Democrat who can connect with rural voters in red states.

"You've got to offer folks hope ... neither party has offered much hope, the Republicans have offered fear," he said. "You got to offer a sense that these communities have got a future."

As governor, Warner, 51, was credited for rebuilding depressed communities by courting new businesses to southern Virginia - in some cases with large state incentives.

Warner said he had not spent much time in Nevada, but said he believed it faces similar growth and rural issues as Virginia. He said he was opposed to federal efforts to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

"I'll be the first to admit I've got more to learn about the state," he said. "I hope to get to know it better."

Aide Lars Anderson said Warner's political action committee had not hired any Nevada staff.

Warner was scheduled to attend a fundraiser for Titus Wednesday evening and appear with Democrat Tessa Hafen, a candidate in Nevada's 3rd Congressional District, on Thursday.

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Las Vegas SUN
September 07, 2006

Flashpoint for Sep 07, 2006

By Jon Ralston
<ralston@vegas.com>
Las Vegas Sun

The parade has begun, folks. Tune in tonight to see former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, seen by many as the centrist Democratic solution to Hillary Clinton, on "Face to Face." Warner has studied the homeland security issue and was here to show off his bona fides and stump with local candidates. All these folks will be asked about their record on Yucca Mountain, and Warner seemed puzzled when I refreshed his memory about being one of three governors to sign a 2005 letter hyped by the Nuclear Energy Institute that advocated finishing the dump by 2010. Warner, of course, now has changed his mind and wants to talk about reprocessing and dry cask storage. Good briefing, governor. This is going to be fun.

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UPI
September 07, 2006

Markey backs nuke waste safety campaign

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Several members of Congress have called for intensified action to secure the nuclear waste generated by U.S. civilian power reactors.

Members of Congress led by Rep. Edward Markey, D-MA, joined with the nationwide Nuclear Security Coalition to call for prompt actions to secure the U.S. commercial power reactors' nuclear waste storage system. The Nuclear Security Coalition is a national group of 47 U.S. public interest organizations advocating for improved security at nuclear power plants.

Markey proposed implementation of a storage technology known as "Hardened On-Site Storage", or HOSS, by which over-filled atomic waste storage pools at reactor sites are off-loaded into dry storage casks that have been "hardened" against terrorist attack. A 14-minute compact disc presentation entitled "Nuclear Spent Fuel & Homeland Security: the Case for Hardened Storage" was hand delivered to every member of Congress in support of the joint call, the NSC said in a statement Thursday.

Markey, a senior member of the House Homeland Security and Energy and Commerce Committees, said, "The NRC engages in faith-based nuclear security planning, choosing to ignore expert report after expert report."

The Nuclear Security Coalition identified that 32 boiling water reactors around the United States that, it said, were particularly vulnerable. Those 32 reactors maintained their "spent" fuel storage pools six to 10 stories high their reactor building and outside th protective containment structures that housed the nuclear reactors themselves, the group said.

"These pools typically contain in excess of 400 metric tons of thermally hot and highly radioactive used reactor fuel, which must be continuously cooled in water 40-feet deep in the elevated pools," the NSC statement said.

"None of the nation's reactor fuel storage buildings are designed as containment structures to withstand attack by aircraft, rocket or a variety of improvised explosive devices," it said.

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Scripps News
September 07, 2006

Commentary

Editorial

Future won't favor new nuclear plants

The climate for building new nuclear power plants in the United States hasn't been this good for decades. The Bush administration is solidly behind them. Some prominent foes have changed sides, embracing uranium-derived electricity as the best available answer to global warming. Boosters are wearing told-you-so smiles.

And Congress is doing its best to help. After establishing liability limits and start-up assistance for new plants, it voted last year to offer utilities a variety of direct incentives and structured them to favor the first half-dozen plants to leave the drawing boards. Companies that design and build reactors are also said to be trying to jump-start new business by offering limited-time discounts.

The results, so far? Exactly one utility, Constellation Energy in Maryland, has contracted to buy parts for a new reactor, the first such order since 1973. While the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been saying for months that perhaps two dozen new plants are getting active consideration, polls of utility executives find that most think any notion of a nuclear renaissance is fanciful _ that nuclear power will, at best, maintain its 20 percent share of U.S. power generation, with a dozen new reactors at the most. And the reasons have less to do with Three Mile Island or Yucca Mountain than with Wall Street.

When utilities began canceling orders for new reactors in 1973, everyone still assumed the problem of storing spent fuel would be solved. The crisis at Three Mile Island was six years away; the first true nuke-plant catastrophe, at Chernobyl, wouldn't happen for seven years after that.

Safety and environmental concerns have shaped public opinion, but the core reasons for America's 30-year hiatus in building new nuclear plants lie in unfavorable balance sheets. Industry analysts say the outlook is no brighter today despite the many factors _ tougher pollution caps for coal plants, higher natural-gas prices, pending controls on greenhouse gas emissions _ that theoretically should favor more cheap, clean nukes.

But to consider nuclear power "clean," you have to ignore the pesky problem of permanent waste disposal, and to consider it "cheap" you have to focus only on the ultimate cost to make a kilowatt-hour of juice over a span of decades. Nuclear plants are more expensive than fossil-fueled counterparts to site, license, build, operate and secure; and they are slower to pay off on investment, for which the front-end needs are larger.

These factors, plus additional uncertainties of regulation, make them harder to finance. For any kind of power plant, a utility typically tries to pre-sell the power before it breaks ground, and customers just aren't as quick to sign long-term contracts for their power supplies when the electricity will be coming from uranium.

So for every utility like Constellation that opts for a new nuke, there will be multiple others that invest elsewhere _ like Constellation's competitor, PPL, which decided to invest $1.5 billion in cleaning up emissions from its coal burners. Besides environmental benefits, PPL expects further payoffs as pollution limits get tighter and, perhaps, as emissions reductions become tradeable assets.

On a smaller scale, but at an accelerating pace, private investment is moving toward alternative technologies of sustainable power generation, conservation and efficiency. The nuclear era that began with promises of electricity "too cheap to meter" has given way to a time when a dollar invested in conserving electricity returns six or seven times value of a dollar invested in making more of it.

So today the consensus seems to be that nukes have served their purpose, and will continue for a while to do so, but the future lies somewhere else.

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Orange County Register
September 07, 2006

Today's editorial: America's nuclear dark age

Given the regulatory hurdles still in place, the energy sector is wary of re-investing in plants

What if the United States rolled out the welcome mat for the construction of new nuclear power plants ... and no one showed up to build them? For the no-nukes crowd, that would be a victory. But it would be a hollow victory for the rest of Americans, who get 20 percent of their electricity from an aging nuclear energy industry that's just hanging on by its electrons.

Some alarmists dread a nuclear energy revival in the United States, evoking specters of meltdowns, Chernobyls and three-eyed fish to bolster their naysaying.

But a growing number of Americans also seem to recognize that nuclear energy, while not without risks, is on balance a "cleaner" and better alternative than the same old, same old. Concerns about climate change have even prompted some pragmatic environmentalists to take a second look at the nuclear option, given that these facilities don't emit so-called greenhouse gases. The Bush administration, Department of Energy and some members of Congress have been offering proposals meant to stimulate a revival.

But as The New York Times has reported, it may be hard attracting companies back into nuclear energy, even with a helping hand from the federal government, given a regulatory and political climate that makes such ventures risky.

Despite Washington's dangling of incentives, "utility executives are sharply divided over whether nuclear power offers an attractive choice as they seek to satisfy a growing demand for electricity," reported the Times. "For them, the question comes down not so much to safety and environmental impact but to whether the potential reward is worth the financial risk."

Even after years of study, and billions of dollars paid by utilities to the federal government for the design and construction of an underground waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., that project is in trouble and a solution recedes from view.

Until the nation moves forward on a serious storage solution – and we believe Yucca Mountain is still the best option out there – the energy sector likely will remain skittish about reinvesting in nuclear plants. New reactors can operate for years in spite of the nonsolution of storing waste on-site in temporary facilities. But why would companies and potential investors think about betting on atomic power again, if the country can't address this central, but not insurmountable challenge?

In one hopeful note, a consortium of energy companies last month broke ground on a $1.5 billion uranium enrichment plant near Eunice, N.M. – the first major nuclear facility built in this country in 30 years. Whether it will supply American reactors is far from certain, however, a point underscored when New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, while heralding the groundbreaking as the start of a "nuclear renaissance," talked mostly about what a great thing this would be for the folks in Brazil and Asia.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has 27 potential new reactors under consideration, to augment the 103 aging units currently operating. But "under consideration" shouldn't be confused with "under construction." While a few companies remain bullish on nuclear, "there is still a high degree of skepticism within the utility industry," reports the Times. One Pennsylvania utility that operates two reactors seems disinclined to invest in new ones. "There are better places to put the money of shareholders," a company executive told the newspaper.

While nuclear power plants may not disappear from the American landscape altogether, most of 100 senior utility executives surveyed said they did not expect "a future where nuclear generation represents a larger share of generation" than it does today.

Instead of a nuclear renaissance, in other words, what the country seems to be inviting is a nuclear dark age, even while the rest of the world boldly moves forward.

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Kansas City Star
September 07, 2006

Letter:

Yucca Mountain problems

I agree with your editorial of Aug. 31 that we should not build new nuclear reactors until we’ve begun to bury the present inventory of wastes, but I’m afraid Yucca Mountain has become entangled in a legal black hole from which it will never escape.

The past four years have seen suit after suit filed, and the end is not in sight because there are so many things to sue over.

One is the water leakage problem at Yucca. Another is the storage-can corrosion problem. And still more are the several studies that were not properly conducted.

When Yucca was selected in 1987, it was thought dry, but it isn’t. The C-22 alloy can was thought corrosion-free, but it isn’t. It was trusted that the scientific studies by scientists would be conducted correctly, but several weren’t.

Nevada’s lawyers have enough problems to keep them busy for another generation.

Ron Bourgoin
Rocky Mount, N.C.

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Sioux City Journal
September 07, 2006

Nebraska nuclear plants expanding storage for used fuel

OMAHA (AP) -- As they wait for a national storage site to be built, Nebraska's two nuclear power plants are expanding their on-site storage systems for used fuel.

Nebraska Public Power District is spending $45 million and the Omaha Public Power District $23 million on the first phase of expanded storage systems for the high-level radioactive waste, the utilities said.

Expansion already is under way at OPPD's Fort Calhoun plant. Work at NPPD's Cooper Nuclear Station is a few years away.

Other nuclear plants are expanding their storage systems because they are running out of room in what were originally to be transitional storage systems.

The federal government had hoped to build a single national storage site in Nevada, but scientific and political controversy have set back the project by about 20 years. That site is projected to last 10,000 years.

It will be at least 2017 before the Yucca Mountain site could begin taking fuel. By then, the nation's nuclear plants will have generated more waste than Yucca Mountain is licensed to store.

OPPD spokesman Jeff Hanson said the utility plans to spend a total of $43 million for its long-term storage system at Fort Calhoun.

Cost estimates for NPPD's Cooper plant near Brownville were not available.

When the nation's nuclear plants were built decades ago, the federal government committed to taking care of the spent fuel.

The material remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

Rod McCullum of the Nuclear Energy Institute trade association said he expects a couple of solutions to nuclear waste.

McCullum said he believes Yucca Mountain eventually will open and that it will be expanded. He said the federal government also will permit reuse of nuclear waste someday.

Within 20 years, McCullum said, nuclear plants should see their growing stock of used fuel begin to diminish.

The OPPD and NPPD plants' original storage facilities are deep pools of water that shield people from radiation but require heavy maintenance. Continuously recirculated, the water removes some of the intense heat coming off the fuel rods.

These pools are considered at greater risk of catastrophe than the long-term storage systems, in which fuel bundles are encased in steel barrels surrounded by concrete. Air movement around the barrels passively cools the waste.

Representatives of both utilities say they have no intention of turning their nuclear campuses into permanent storage sites for their waste.

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Pottstown Mercury
September 07, 2006

Borough may ask that spent fuel be sent elsewhere

Evan Brandt
ebrandt@pottsmerc.com

POTTSTOWN -- Borough Council will vote Monday on whether to request that the spent nuclear fuel planned for outdoor storage at the nuclear power plant in Limerick instead be sent somewhere else.

Barring that, the recommendation on which the council is set to vote asks that at least some additional monitoring be considered at the site once the construction is completed and the highly radioactive fuel storage begins.

The requests were made in a recommendation by the borough’s Environmental Advisory Council and discussed briefly by the council on Wednesday night.

Exelon Nuclear, which owns the facility, has plans to erect 24 steel and concrete containers on the site of its power plant. The containers will hold the spent fuel that has been accumulating in a 45-foot-deep pool of water inside the reactor building since the plant’s reactor went on-line.

Like nuclear plants across the country, space in the pool at the Limerick plant is running out and the federal government’s promise to have a national depository for spent fuel beneath Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is decades from fulfillment.

Don Read, the chairman of Pottstown’s EAC, said the request to have the fuel stored elsewhere is really meant as an indicator of how dissatisfied Pottstown is with the federal government’s progress on this issue.

"No one likes the idea of dry cask storage, including Exelon," said Read. "And we realize they have little choice. We just want to go on record as expressing our disappointment with the way the federal government has bungled this issue."

Contacted Wednesday night, Exelon spokeswoman Elizabeth Rapczynski agreed.

"Our first choice has always been permanent storage at the federal repository at Yucca Mountain," she said.

The recommendations note, "the EAC would prefer that the spent fuel rods be stored at some other location, but understands that determination is made at the federal level and is more than likely beyond the scope of anything which local municipalities can control."

Limerick Township’s control over the project was limited to the July 27 site plan approval for the concrete slab on which the casks will be set.

The only other approval needed is a "general license" issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to Transnuclear, the company that builds the casks systems.

Assuming that the request for storage elsewhere cannot be accommodated, the EAC, which received a presentation about the project from Exelon on March 27, requests that additional monitoring measures be taken.

It asks that a permanent "real time" monitoring system be installed in addition to the periodic measurements Exelon has proposed.

"If we’re going to have a nuclear dump site in our backyard, we think it should be monitored for temperature and radiation in real time," Read explained. "We don’t want four or five hours going by with radiation leaking out of a cask and the monitoring hasn’t taken place yet for that day."

Rapczynski said, "We appreciate their input, but we have confidence in the system that will be put in place by Transnuclear and we believe the monitoring system they have recommended is optimal for that system."

None of the recommendations conveyed to the council Wednesday becomes official until the council votes to adopt them, Read stressed. That vote happens Monday night.

"This is council’s decision," said Read. "We are simply fulfilling our charge to make recommendations to them about issues that we feel have the potential to have a serious environmental impact on Pottstown," Read said.

He added that these are not the only recommendations the EAC plans to present to the council about this project.

"We think the additional monitoring is a reasonable request," said Read.

"The next set of recommendations may be a little harder for Exelon to swallow as we plan to ask that terrorism and the possibility of an attack be looked at more thoroughly as a threat to the casks," he said.

This is not the first time Pottstown has taken a position on an issue that rests within Limerick Township’s jurisdiction.

When Limerick was considering allowing a slots parlor to be built near the Sanatoga exit of Route 422, the Pottstown School Board took a strong position against it, although the borough council declined, after a discussion, to do the same.

Read said he hopes that Pottstown’s willingness to consider commenting on things with a regional impact, like the dry cask storage project, will inspire other neighboring towns to speak up.

"I really wish other officials in other towns would let their voices be heard on things like this," said Read. "Something like this affects far more than just Limerick Township. It has the potential to affect us all, and our children and our grandchildren."

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New Scientist
September 06, 2006

Yucca Mountain will not blow

Nevada'S Yucca mountain, the chosen site for a massive nuclear waste repository, may be a bit safer than previously thought.

In 2005, the US Department of Energy (DoE) estimated the odds of a volcanic eruption at Yucca mountain in the next 10,000 years at about 1.6 in 10,000, making it a small but legitimate concern. Surveys of the area are incomplete, however, prompting a warning from researchers later that year that the DoE may be underestimating the risk by a factor of 10 to 100.

Now Tom Parsons of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, says the risk might be even lower than DoE predictions. Using a 3D computer model of the Earth's crust in the region, he found that volcanic activity should concentrate to the north and south of the mountain, near the ends of the area's three major faults (Geology, vol 34, p 785). "The proposed repository lies between faults," says Parsons. "As long as those faults remain active, magmatism will probably stay away from [Yucca Mountain]."

He says other models overestimate the risk because they concentrate on the frequency of eruption, rather than the location.

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Augusta Chronicle
September 06, 2006

State of Nevada - Letter to Edward Sproat, Director

Companies seek nuclear projects

SRS is at center of energy plans

By Josh Gelinas | South Carolina Bureau Chief

AIKEN - Savannah River Site boosters continue to push for a piece of President Bush's global nuclear power plans.

A consortium of large engineering companies, led by the Economic Development Partnership of Aiken and Edgefield counties, is applying to build two demonstration facilities at SRS that are part of the president's so-called Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, officials announced Tuesday.

The president's plan to expand nuclear power hinges on a proposed facility capable of recycling spent nuclear fuel and power plants capable of running off such fuel.

If selected, the SRS group would be among several that qualify for up to $5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to prepare more detailed plans illustrating the site's strengths and compatibility. The DOE got more than 40 responses in March when it went looking for organizations interested in the global program.

The DOE plans to select winning demonstration bids by the end of October, and winners would get an additional 90 days to prepare final applications.

"A successful proposal will lead to new, long-term energy-related missions which will greatly benefit our communities," Fred Humes, the executive director of the Economic Development Partnership, said in a prepared statement.

Building the demonstration facilities would cost several billion dollars and would mean several thousand new jobs, he stated.

His partner, Ernie Chaput, a former DOE manager at SRS, said the site has several things going for it, including space at the 310-square-mile reservation and decades of expertise with reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

"The whole nuclear infrastructure at Savannah River factors into this," Mr. Chaput said in an interview Tuesday.

Among other things, the DOE will be looking for sites with access to water, road availability and seismic activity.

At least two companies assisting with the SRS application, Washington Group International, the parent company of Washington Savannah River Co. that runs SRS for the DOE, and AREVA Inc., which is designing a plutonium conversion plant at SRS, have experience with the process.

"These companies give a great deal of strength to the application," said Mal McKibben, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, which promotes SRS.

Bob Pedde, the president of WSRC, told members of the Greater Aiken Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday that the technology would greatly cut down on the sort of waste that is currently being stored at SRS, his spokesman, Will Callicott, said.

"This is a project that would help address a major national need, specifically helping us reclaim the energy value of spent nuclear fuel and have less material that would ultimately have to go to Yucca Mountain," Mr. Pedde said. "This is a project that, if it happens, would have potentially a remarkable impact on this community."

Reach Josh Gelinas at (803) 648-1395, ext. 110, or josh.gelinas@augustachronicle.com.

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SitNews
September 05, 2006

Fish or Cut Bait

Another Nail in the Coffin

By Bob Ciminel

Would The Last Corporation Leaving California Please Turn Out the Lights? No. Wait. They're Already Off.

The Left Coast is at it again. Having terminated the state's nuclear industry - California will not let its investor-owned utility companies, or any other entity for that matter, build another nuclear power plant until the Federal government opens a spent fuel repository somewhere other than in California. Rest assured, if the Feds ever do open the Yucca Mountain repository, which probably will not occur in my lifetime, California's short-sighted politicians and environmentalist will find another reason to keep its citizens in the dark.

Already suffering from a lack of generating capacity, the state recently passed sweeping legislation to limit the release of greenhouse gases to levels that existed in 1990, thereby hamstringing the companies operating fossil-fueled power plants, as well as its petrochemical industry, most of whose output provides reformulated gasoline sold in California to meet the state's already tight emission standards.

First, let's get something straight; the term "greenhouse gas" is a misnomer, something the media insists on using just as they did when they adopted Ted Kennedy's term, "Star Wars," to describe President Ronald Regan's Strategic Defense Initiative. For some reason our elected representatives and the media, who await their every utterance no matter how mundane or idiotic, believe the public is too stupid to understand that the "gas" emitted by a greenhouse is simply water vapor and has nothing to do with keeping the greenhouse warm. Why hasn't the "public" asked the simple question: If warm, moist air is good for plants in a greenhouse, why is it bad for plants in the ecosystem?

There is no arguing the fact that large concentrations of certain gases in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide being one of the culprits, can cause the Earth's temperature to rise. In fact, it has been rising since man began burning wood. It's a self-sustaining process; trees take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it in the form of wood. Man burns the wood, releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Sounds like a plan to me. Oh, there is that one little problem; it takes about 20 years to replace a good-sized tree.

Fortunately, the Industrial Revolution showed us the benefits of replacing wood with coal, but we didn't take the hint and replant the forests. Just about the time we were turning day into night with coal smoke, the Spindletop gusher blew in and weaned us off of coal. Pollution-wise, I think we made progress as we moved to higher grades of fuel; the rub was we also created more carbon dioxide and water vapor.

As the world's 12th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, California believes it has a mandate to protect the Sierra Nevada snowcap. That makes sense because the snowcap is what recharges the state's aquifers - in Northern California. I'm pretty sure that everything south of Santa Barbara relies on augmentation from the Colorado River. Ostensibly, California's reason for concern about greenhouse gases is, if the Earth's temperature rises a few more degrees the snowcap might melt earlier in the year and cause flooding the Central Valley. Picture those humongous corporate farms getting more water than they need. Not a pretty picture, is it? However, if the snowcap waits until May to melt, as I think it normally does, why doesn't that cause flooding in the Central Valley?

Personally, I think the reason California doesn't want the Sierra Nevada snowcap melting too early in the year has nothing to do with flooding in the Central Valley and everything to do with keeping the ski slopes packed with skiers and snowboarders. Altruism seems to always take a back seat to making money.

Look, don't get the impression that I am anti-environment. I grew up in that industrial rust bucket known as Southwestern Pennsylvania. You can't tell me anything about pollution. Hell, I didn't know creeks were supposed to be clear and not have orange stream beds until we moved out of state for the first time. Fish swimming in a creek? You have got to be kidding!

Nope, we've got more pressing environmental problems to deal with than global warming right now. We can always wrap our arms around that tar baby later. Besides, the Kyoto Protocol coated the little fellow with Super Glue, so once we grab it, we're stuck. I think California has just given that "baby" a big hug.

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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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