Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, September 11, 2006
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Las Vegas SUN
September 11, 2006
Editorial: Setting a precedent
Agencies reject nuclear waste dump in Utah for reasons that sound familiar
The U.S. Interior Department rejected a proposed plan to build a temporary nuclear waste storage facility in Utah, citing concerns that included transportation safety and the possible radiation exposure of workers transferring the waste.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, lauded the rejection and told the Salt Lake Tribune that Utahns "wanted to put a spike right through the heart of this project, and this does it."
The proposed lease - a joint venture between Private Fuel Storage and the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes - called for building a temporary storage facility for high-level nuclear waste on the Goshute reservation, about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City.
The proposal drew stiff opposition from Utah's congressional delegation, which has recently supported Nevada's opposition to a proposed permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas.
The Interior Department rejected the Utah lease because the Bureau of Indian Affairs raised concerns about the site's vulnerability to a terrorist attack and the Bureau of Land Management raised concerns about transportation.
BLM officials said they could not approve a rail line into the facility because it would cross a designated wilderness area. They also rejected a plan to truck the waste onto the reservation because workers transferring the casks from trains to trucks would risk radiation exposure.
The Interior Department's 47-page decision includes correspondence in which Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says that the Goshute site was never part of his department's overall plan to open the Yucca Mountain repository, and that the fate of the temporary dump had no bearing on his intentions to open Yucca Mountain.
Bodman's declarations are puff and bluster, as federal officials have yet to produce any credible scientific evidence that burying high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is safe. In fact, scientific study over the years has revealed multiple reasons as to why it is not safe.
And the Interior Department's rejection of the Utah facility bolsters arguments against opening Yucca Mountain. The department determined that it is not safe to transport such waste over sensitive lands by train, and that transport workers would risk radiation exposure.
The nation needs a safe plan for disposing of high-level nuclear waste. But gathering it all up and dumping it into one state's open lands is not it. It wasn't safe for Utah. And it is not safe for Nevada.
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Grist Magazine
September 11, 2006
Goshute in the Foot
Interior Department blocks interim nuke-waste site in Utah
The Interior Department has blocked an interim nuclear-waste storage plant on a Native reservation in appropriately named Skull Valley, Utah. The department denied a lease and transportation plan for the site, which was to hold 44,000 tons of nuclear waste in above-ground casks about an hour's drive from Salt Lake City. The department's main concern was just how interim the interim site would be, as the planned permanent waste dump in Yucca Mountain, Nev., has been plagued with delays and may not be completed for decades, if ever. The rejection was cheered by Utah's governor, congressional delegation, and thousands of letter-writing citizens, as well as some members of the Goshute tribe, which owns the land. Others in the 125-member tribe lamented the loss of a profit-making venture. The decision may be appealed by Private Fuel Storage, the eight-utility consortium backing the waste site.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 10, 2006
In Depth: The Long Shadow of 9/11: Transporting nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain could offer a moving target
By A.D. Hopkins
Review-Journal
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-- William Butler Yeats
If America's waste from nuclear power plants ever starts rolling regularly toward Nevada's Yucca Mountain, highways and rail systems will become vulnerable to a new kind of attack. While a terrorist attack on the nuclear transports might logically seek maximum damage to America and thus be carried out in a more populated area than the Battle Born state, it is Nevadan opponents to Yucca Mountain who have pointed out the weakness.
The earliest date at which the Nuclear Waste Repository might receive shipments, projected by the Department of Energy in June, is 2017. The delivery routes probably will include the highway system that carries much of the rest of America's commerce. However, the Department of Energy's preferred proposal is to use mostly rail transport and to build a spur from Caliente, a small and isolated railroad town on the Union Pacific in eastern Nevada, west to the repository. This would allow shipments from the eastern United States to bypass Las Vegas.
In 1999, Nevada petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requesting it conduct a comprehensive assessment of consequences of terrorist attacks against such shipments, with an eye toward strengthening rules about safeguarding the shipments. No such study has been revealed. Robert Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said, "They say they are doing their own reassessment of those standards and regulations, but nobody is allowed to see that."
David McIntyre, public affairs officer for the NRC, said, "We're always looking at the security of spent fuel shipments and have been for 30 years. Since 9/11, we have taken a closer look and increased the security measures that licensees must take." He wouldn't discuss specific security measures but said they include armed guards and secrecy. When shipments start moving to Yucca Mountain, federal agencies will be required by law to notify state authorities that a shipment is coming and to train emergency personnel in dealing with any spills.
A study published by Loux's agency in 1997, however, made some disturbing findings:
• "Planners could expect two to three rail and three to four highway shipments per week for a 30-year period."
• One DOE study of a transportation accident, releasing 1 percent of the material from a nuclear waste cask being transported by rail, would contaminate 40 square miles and cost more than $600 million to clean up. A similar-size area probably would be contaminated in certain kinds of intentional attacks.
• Rocket-propelled military devices that already were available on the black market in 1997, as well as improvised explosive devices, were capable of penetrating transport casks.
Dr. James David Ballard, a criminal justice professor who wrote his UNLV dissertation on the Oklahoma City bombing, was principal author of the report, and says he has seen little happen since to mitigate the danger. Armor-piercing munitions are more widely available, and exponentially better; improvised explosives are more clever; and more people know how to use both. "The sheer numbers of spent fuel rods require you ship them in larger containers, and the heavy haul truck carrying them will stand out like Bozo at the opera."
The modest DOE and NRC estimations of terrorist danger, he charged, are rooted in 1984 technology and attitudes. "In 1984, it was hard to conceive that anybody would consider attacking nuclear garbage because exposure to it would harm them personally. But fast-forward to 2001 and the whole world changes."
Potential attackers are not limited to Middle Eastern jihadists, Ballard said. "These shipments have symbolic value for any number of groups. If a group is against the federal government, Yucca Mountain is a large-scale federal program being imposed on the state," he observed. "And a group that wanted to challenge the nuclear industry might do it."
Allen Benson, director of external affairs for DOE's office of civilian radioactive waste management, said that over 30 years, there have been some 3,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel in the United States, and more than 4,000 shipments of other contaminated material. "These shipments have essentially been incident free. There have been accidents, but I am unaware of any release of waste that has been harmful to the public."
But sabotage already has been attempted. In Golden Valley, Minn., in 1986, Ballard said, an environmentalist group removed a rail from the track in front of a shipment of nuclear waste. "It so happened the train that actually derailed was a lumber train, routed in front of the other train because of a last-minute change in schedule."
Robert Halstead, who served as a consultant to the state of Nevada on nuclear waste transportation, said the DOE's own studies have shown that available explosives could breach a cask wall and release radioactive cesium 137 in particle sizes small enough to be dispersed in a smoke cloud, inhaled by humans and widely deposited on the landscape.
The NRC's McIntyre said, "What you hear about most is a test done in 1999. A TOW missile warhead was not fired at, but placed right beside the outer wall of a shipping cask and exploded. Yes, that created a small hole in the outer concrete cask. If it were to get through all the way, though, what would happen? Unlike a battle tank full of explosives, there's nothing inside these casks that would explode and disperse the contents." More elaborate scenarios, he said, have been studied mostly by computer modeling rather than actual test, but he added, "Our studies have reaffirmed the studies done back in the '70s about the ability of the casks to withstand any event and the effectiveness of any security measures in place."
Halstead, however, said that the DOE, a separate agency, now suggests that cleanup costs could run into the billions, and state planners think the DOE estimate is conservative and a realistic one might be several times as large.
Halstead concluded, "The concern is not that any large number of people would be immediately killed, but that a successful attack would contaminate an area ranging in size from a couple of football fields to several square miles, that would pose such a significant threat to public health and the environment that it would have to be thoroughly cleaned up, at a cost that would constitute an economic catastrophe."
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Boston Globe
September 10, 2006
Despite millions spent, Boston is vulnerable
By Stephen Kurkjian, Kevin Cullen, and Thomas Farragher
First of three parts.
This story was reported and written by Stephen Kurkjian, Kevin Cullen, and Thomas Farragher of the Globe staff.
Under the brilliance of a late-summer sun, through a prism now tinted by terror, there is a fragile beauty about Boston seen from the air.
In every direction, the vista -- the sprawling harbor, the storied skyline -- is colored by the shadow of vulnerability: a cluster of petroleum tanks here, a terminal stacked with cargo containers there, a T train disappearing into a distant tunnel, the untraceable zigzag of ships and pleasure craft.
This is what Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta would have seen that crystalline morning five years ago if he had glanced down at the city he used as a staging area for the worst act of terrorism in American history.
Since then, as the country launched a costly global war, efforts to protect US soil have cost billions. An army of security workers has blossomed. Surveillance cameras are ubiquitous. There is suspicion and screening at every turn.
Yet five years later, even those sworn to protect a nation transformed by terror acknowledge that if someone with Atta's deadly diligence were to target Boston or another major American city today, the chance of success remains high. And that progress in addressing security needs has slowed, as the calamity of 9/11 has faded into memory. ``When people focus on things that could be done that have not been done, they will be shocked," said US Representative James R. Langevin , a Rhode Island Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee. ``And I think the American people will be angry."
Indeed, a Globe examination of security measures in and around Boston finds that while important progress has been made since 9/11, significant gaps remain on several fronts:
Sensitive areas of Boston Harbor remain clearly vulnerable, even as security experts have long seen the nation's seaports as especially attractive targets for terrorists. Officials are scrambling to secure up to $5 million to purchase a 7,000-foot-long movable barrier that could, in an emergency, seal off sections of the harbor to protect petroleum tankers, cruise ships, or thousands drawn to a waterfront fireworks festival, from a bomb on a boat.
Even after mass transit attacks in London and Madrid underscored trains as potential targets, officials in Boston have yet to complete a fully seamless communication network for police and emergency crews responding to a mass transit attack. ``If there were an attack today, the first responders to a T attack are, by all accounts, not any better prepared than they would have been five years ago," said State Senator Jarrett T. Barrios , chairman of the Joint Committee of Public Safety and Homeland Security.
Law enforcement officials generally agree that their ability to gather and analyze raw intelligence about possible terrorists has improved and that police agencies which once zealously guarded their independence have been forced to cooperate. But officials have little confidence that they could detect in time the kind of threat they deem most likely: an assault on one of the nearly limitless ``soft" targets an open society affords, from schools to hotels to shopping malls.
The nuclear power plant at Plymouth remains a worrisome potential target because the pool in which spent fuel rods are kept has not been fortified against attack. While the nuclear reactor is encased in a thick concrete liner which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes could withstand a direct hit from a terrorist-hijacked jetliner, there is no such encasement of the spent fuel cell chamber.
Boston did well on a test of its ability to evacuate in the event of an attack. But that showing was undercut by the fact that none of the other eight communities in the evacuation plan were included in the test. And the marked evacuation roots end at the city line.
Massachusetts has received some $230 million in federal anti terrorism funds -- more, proportionally, than most other states. But the spending of the funds, which has yet to be audited by the federal government, has been marred by some intramural fights among cities and towns. And some major purchases have gone awry -- including more than 1,000 Motorola emergency phones that had to be replaced.
And at Logan International Airport, where Atta and nine other terrorists hijacked the planes they used as missiles in Manhattan, officials acknowledge that despite elaborate security systems installed since 9/11, vulnerabilities remain, particularly in air cargo. If well-trained terrorists had a 70 percent to 75 percent chance of success five years ago, a top official estimated, today those chances have been trimmed to a hardly reassuring 35 percent to 40 percent.
``We have to be perfect every day," said Massport chief executive Thomas J. Kinton Jr. ``They've got to be right once."
Even critics of the nation's lingering security lapses acknowledge that it would be impossible to eliminate the risk of terrorism. But using a more rational measuring stick -- what could reasonably have been expected five years after the attack -- many security specialists say the country has left itself remarkably unprotected along its waterfront, at its nuclear facilities, at its chemical plants, and at shipping sites that distribute cargo by air and by sea.
``Al Qaeda always tries to exploit the glaring vulnerability," said US Representative Edward J. Markey , a Malden Democrat and a member of the House Homeland Security Committee. ``We saw that on 9/11. And we'll see it when they execute their next attack on our country. They will have found and exploited the vulnerability that was identified but not protected against."
Those charged with protecting passengers on trains and planes, of securing busy ports, and guarding plants containing dangerous chemicals or nuclear material say they are engaged in a high-stakes balancing act that has safety and security on one scale and the free flow of people and commerce on the other.
``I don't want to be so bold as to say, `Gee, nothing has happened in this country,' but the fact is that nothing's happened in this country" since Sept. 11, 2001, Kinton said. ``That doesn't give me great relief but it gives me some sense that something is working."
A SHIFT IN PUBLIC SAFETY
Thomas M. Menino, the mayor of Boston, was standing in a florist shop in Brighton when his cellphone rang on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. It was Police Commissioner Paul Evans.
Minutes later, the two men most responsible for public safety in Boston were standing at the huge plate glass window in Menino's City Hall office, staring down at Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Some people seemed stunned, others crying.
``Tommy," Evans said, ``our world has changed forever."
A few weeks later, Evans and a half-dozen other police chiefs met with FBI director Robert S. Mueller in Washington, telling him that the way intelligence gathering took place in the United States had to change forever, too.
The old days of one-way information trading, in which the locals were expected to tell the feds everything without getting much in return, were over, the chiefs told Mueller.
Five years later, there is a consensus among law enforcement officials that the threat of terrorism has changed the way they do their jobs, and the culture of law enforcement. This is especially the case with the most important defense against terrorism: the gathering and sharing of information about who the bad guys are, and what they have in mind.
Kenneth W. Kaiser, the special agent in charge of the Boston FBI office, whom many state and local officials credit with keeping Mueller's promise to put aside the FBI's traditional elitist ``lead agency" mentality, said the single Boston-based terrorism squad consisting of a dozen FBI agents and four or five state and local officers that existed before 9/11 was expanded to three separate squads, comprising 34 FBI agents and 20 state and local officers.
Nationally, Kaiser said, the FBI has nearly doubled the number of agents working on counterterrorism, to 4,600, in five years. The number of intelligence analysts has more than doubled, to 2,100, while the number of translators has nearly doubled to 1,400, with expertise in more than 100 languages.
In Boston, where the number of translators analyzing intelligence has doubled to 35, the importance of accurate translation of foreign languages was underscored a week after the 9/11 attacks, when a faulty translation of a benign communication led to a brief, but unnerving warning that the city was targeted for a terrorist attack. Boston-based translators speak just a dozen languages, but investigators here draw on the national bank of translators as needed.
Meanwhile, hosting the Democratic National Convention in 2004 gave law enforcement chiefs the impetus to create an intelligence center that is now being touted nationally. At the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, or BRIC, Boston police and officials from surrounding communities compile and analyze raw information about common criminals, potential subversives, and terrorists.
Kaiser agreed that a similar culture shift is occurring at the FBI and at the state's so-called Fusion Center at Massachusetts State Police headquarters in Framingham. The center is a statewide version of the BRIC, where civilian analysts pore over field reports filed by street cops, state troopers, and federal agents.
An independent review earlier this year, however, showed there is room for improvement. ``While the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a wealth of information and intelligence from its agencies, much of it exists in information silos," the study by CTC Inc. of Westborough for the state's Executive Office of Public Safety concluded.
Boston police Superintendent Robert Dunford said police were able to defuse potential unrest during the DNC by engaging in behavioral profiling -- targeting potential troublemakers not by the way they looked, or what group they belonged to, but by the way they acted. He said it is a technique that Israeli security agents use to great effect against suicide bombers.
But Dunford and other officials acknowledge that the number of vulnerable sites far exceeds their ability to deter potential attacks. ``If someone's willing to kill themselves, there's only so much you can do to protect people in an open, democratic society," he said.
Dunford says he drives the city's streets every day, looking for vulnerabilities, and he sees many, though he won't name them.
Kaiser does the same.
``We go to great lengths to harden the airport and places like that," he said. ``But you can't harden everything."
Kaiser said there have been about 100 major terror-related prosecutions in the United States since 9/11, five of them in Boston, including the so-called ``shoe bomber" Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Paris to Miami.
``I worry about what I don't know," Kaiser said.
WATCHING THE HARBOR
From the spotless bridge of the massive $230 million liquefied natural gas tanker under his command, captain Ernst Roald Hansen shook his head in bemusement at the distinct stir his arrival at the Distrigas terminal in Everett caused on a muggy morning in early August.
Helicopters buzzed overhead. The Tobin Bridge closed briefly. A small flotilla of law enforcement boats escorted the 940-foot-long vessel loaded with the equivalent of 3 billion cubic feet of natural gas into its berth where a 25-foot rigid hull inflatable Coast Guard vessel, a 60-caliber machine gun mounted on its bow, stood guard.
Hansen said all the flashing blue lights, all the high-profile protection, are more about symbolism than security.
``I feel it is a little bit over the top," he said. ``You don't see this in other ports. Here in Boston, it is something special."
Pointing to a petroleum depot just a few hundred yards to the south, where an oil tanker was being unloaded with no such attention, Hansen said: ``She could be a bigger threat."
Indeed, the lead author of a study used by critics to assail the risks of LNG shipping says Hansen is right.
``What you don't want to do is get so hysterical about LNG that you forget about other hazardous materials imported by water into Boston which could include oil, gasoline, chemicals, and other hazardous materials," said Mike Hightower of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.
But in Boston Harbor, where nearly 13 million tons of fuel, 241,000 cruise ship passengers, and 16.3 million tons of cargo arrive each year, officials say resources are limited and must be allocated based on intelligence about where terrorists might strike. Right now, with one huge tanker arriving every week, that means LNG.
``That's where we've got to put our security and our resources," Kinton, the Massport chief, said. ``If intelligence tells us it's a chemical plant, or a nuke plant next week, or the tank farms over here in Everett or Gillette Stadium or downtown Boston or any football venue on any college weekend across the country, then we've got to move our resources and respond to that intelligence."
In short, Kinton said, the harbor ``is vulnerable. I do worry about it. It does keep me awake."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the country's 361 seaports -- sprawling, complex, and interwoven systems where access is generally easy -- have increasingly been viewed as attractive targets to terrorists seeking to inflict damage to cruise ships, power plants, refineries, and fuel tanks along the water.
``I'm worried about a 50-foot, seagoing pleasure craft," said Daniel Goure, a security specialist with the nonpartisan Lexington Institute in Virginia. ``You put a bomb on board. I can drive it right into Boston Harbor and nobody checks and nobody knows. That's what scares me."
Standing in his 24-hour sector command center at the foot of Hanover Street in the North End, Coast Guard Captain James L. McDonald said he can't guarantee his people would stop an attack such as that, but they monitor multiple live feeds from surveillance cameras located around the harbor, and can zoom in on suspicious vessels heading into port.
``We layer in a series of protections that make it very, very difficult to carry out something like that," McDonald said.
One of those layers of protection would be a movable security barrier, a 7,000-foot floating chain of stainless steel cables encased in hard rubber that would allow law enforcement to cordon off large sections of the harbor. McDonald said a deal to secure the system is ``very, very close." The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach recently won funding for nearly-identical systems.
``Suffice it to say it's enough that you would preclude . . . a small boat coming through laden with explosives from getting through that barrier system," McDonald said.
FEW CHECKS ON CARGO
It is packed into metal containers, row upon row of brightly painted rectangles stacked high at a terminal hard by Castle Island. In the belly of the airplane, it snuggles next to the luggage and the golf clubs and the baby carriages of passengers riding just above.
Cargo by the ton, arriving aboard container ships in Boston Harbor and lifting off hourly aboard planes from Logan Airport, represents one of the most glaring vulnerabilities in the nation's defense against terrorism. Just a fraction of it is inspected -- a dangerous loophole that security specialists say many Americans believe had closed long ago.
``A vulnerability -- clearly," acknowledged Kinton, the executive director and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan.
About 22 percent of all US air cargo -- some 6 billion pounds -- is placed aboard passenger planes. A bare fraction of it is inspected. For nearly all of it, airlines rely on random checks and on what they call a known shipper program, which evaluates the credentials of shipping companies with which they do business.
``Five years later, there's no one who would reasonably expect that they're going to get on a passenger plane and have uninspected cargo underneath their feet," Markey said. ``Every day, that's what happens all across this country."
Cathleen A. Berrick , a lead author of a Government Accounting Office review of the air cargo system, said that because air cargo comes in divergent shapes and sizes, existing explosive detection systems are ineffective. The percentage of passenger plane cargo that is inspected is a classified figure. But the GAO has called it ``very small."
If technology is a barrier, so is money. Kinton said there is only so much to go around. ``Commerce needs to move," he said. ``You can have the safest airport in the world [if you] shut it down."
And the federal Transportation Security Administration agrees. ``If we impose a security regime that kills an industry, we've failed in our job and let the terrorists win," said Ann Davis, a TSA spokeswoman.
If cargo on airplanes represents an opening for terrorists to exploit, cargo on ships is too.
Of the 11 million cargo containers that arrive in the United States each year, only about 6 percent are physically inspected. For the rest, customs officials check the manifests of importers, use X-ray or radiation screening machines for some suspect containers, and rely on voluntary cooperation from oversea shippers.
``We don't know anything about the 94 percent that we are not inspecting and we're not sure that the 6 percent that we are inspecting is the right percentage," said Clark K. Ervin, the former inspector general for the US Department of Homeland Security.
Retired Coast Guard Admiral James Loy, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, called the existing system ``a big house built on sand -- sand meaning it's voluntary. Last time I checked, the bad guys weren't volunteering information that can help us. It's only as good as volunteerism allows it to be."
US Representative Rob Simmons, a Connecticut Republican and a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the only way to guarantee ironclad security in Boston Harbor, where 91,000 containers arrive each year, is to close the harbor.
``We can spend an infinite amount of money opening and inspecting every container headed for the United States of America and somebody can blow up Boston Harbor with a 50-foot recreational or a commercial fishing vessel packed with a dirty bomb," Simmons said. ``While you're opening every box, he might be coming up the Charles River in a speed boat."
GAPS IN PREPAREDNESS
The evacuation signs that are spaced every three blocks along 10 principal thoroughfares in the city of Boston are a reflection of the planning -- unfinished planning -- for a terrorist attack or similar catastrophe.
The blue-and-white signs are part of an overall plan to guide motorists onto the fastest routes from the city in the event of mass evacuation order, or from a specific neighborhood in case of a local threat. But the signs end at the city's borders. None of the eight communities in Boston's homeland security planning region -- the communities expected to accept the influx of fleeing city residents -- have agreed to Boston's plan.
``I'm not sure what [the city] expects us to do when people from East Boston start coming over the Chelsea and Meridian streets bridges," said Chelsea Police Captain Keith Houghton. ``Our plan is to follow the State Police evacuation routes and move them north towards Saugus."
``It's a problem but we're working on it," said Carlo Boccia, director of Boston's Office of Homeland Security.
The state is awaiting the results of a $150,000 study that will recommend evacuation routes and the location of stations to supply food, medicine, shelter, and other essentials for Boston and other major urban areas, according to Jon Carlisle, a spokesman for the state Executive Office of Transportation.
But the biggest need already identified by the security specialists is a system to ensure that ``first responders" -- fire, police, and medical personnel arriving at a disaster scen -- can communicate with one another. Commanders of such emergency personnel have long complained that cooperation is hampered by inadequate radio equipment. It is a problem that plagued rescue efforts after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
But after the long-sought radios arrived last April, problems developed. About a third of them gave off a high-pitch squeal. The city demanded that Motorola replace 1,365.
At the MBTA, General Manager Daniel A. Grabauskas said a seamless communications system for first responders to an attack on the subway is still 18 months away. ``To wire the entire system for communications of more than a dozen different agencies is a difficult task," he said.
Elsewhere on the system greater progress has been made, Grabauskas said. The T has 310 surveillance cameras in operation now -- most of them installed since 9/11 -- with nearly 200 more on the way.
``I don't want to give a false sense of security to our customers," the T chief said. ``We're doing what we can."
PROTECTING OTHER TARGETS
Initially, those who plotted the 9/11 attack were looking to spread devastation far beyond the World Trade Center.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the terrorist masterminds now in captivity, has said that the plotters considered a host of other targets, including a nuclear power plant somewhere in the country.
Five years later , nuclear plant vulnerability remains an acute concern.
``Nuclear is the nightmare scenario," said Markey. ``Terrorists are looking to create the largest possible deaths and mayhem, and nuclear is the route to cause that."
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has concluded that a nuclear power plant's chief vulnerability lies in the large pool of demineralized water in which the spent reactor fuel rods are stored. If a large airliner were to hit the nuclear reactor or the spent fuel rod pool beside it, there could be a 45 percent chance of a calamitous spill, the commission warned in a 2000 report.
And even a small amount of contaminated spillage at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant could be disastrous for Plymouth and surrounding communities. It would likely do even more harm if the wind was blowing toward inland population centers.
An aircraft crashing into the spent fuel chamber could result in the melting or burning of the rods, and the release of a highly toxic by-product, Cesium 137. Such a release could result in some 8,000 people contracting cancer a year or more later. The cleanup cost could run into the billions.
That report was cited by Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly in June when he asked the NRC to hold a hearing on the danger presented by the storage of spent fuel rods before granting Pilgrim another 20-year license to operate.
The current storage of spent fuel ``poses a significant and reasonably foreseeable environmental risk of severe fire and offsite release of a large amount of radioactivity," Reilly's brief stated.
The spent-fuel storage system at Pilgrim is viewed as more problematic than those at plants, like the one in Seabrook, N.H., where used rods are bundled and stored underground.
The general risk from spent fuel has, however, increased over the years as the federal government has failed to complete work on a deep mine inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain where the used fuel rods from Pilgrim and the other 103 nuclear plants across the country would be stored. As a result, the 38-foot deep pool at Pilgrim, which was designed to hold about 800 spent fuel rod assemblies, now contains 2,602.
David Tarantino, a spokesman for Pilgrim, said other industry studies suggest that a 9/11-style attack on the nuclear facility, including its spent fuel chamber, might not result in a major radiation release.
Entergy, the company which owns and operates Pilgrim, says that it has met NRC standards and that the storage system for spent fuel rods at the plant is scientifically sound. Tarantino said Entergy has spent $10 million since 9/11 to improve security at the plant, and that additional protection for the spent-fuel chamber may soon be required by the NRC.
He also said the firm has moved to take over -- and increase the training and expertise of -- the force of more than 100 guards at Pilgrim who now work for an independent firm. The increased training may be needed: While the security force successfully repelled a mock terrorist attack earlier this year, Time Magazine reported last year that guards at Pilgrim failed 28 out of 29 ``table top" drills.
And the spokesman for the Pilgrim plant downplayed the possibility that the spent-fuel chamber is vulnerable to attack, noting that it was unlikely that a terrorist would be able to maneuver a plane to strike the 50-by-50 foot chamber, located inside the building housing the nuclear reactor.
If the nuclear plant remains a real regional safety threat, a hazard posed by a Boston chemical facility has been removed.
Until earlier this year, the Houghton Chemical Corp. in Allston -- its pastel-painted tanks nestled next to a Doubletree Guest Suites hotel -- was among some 100 chemical facilities in the United States where the Environmental Protection Agency said an accident would put more than a million people at risk. ``We just quietly removed it," Bruce E. Houghton, the company's president, said of the stocks of vinyl acetate, a highly flammable liquid that, if attacked, could have sent a miles-long toxic cloud through the city.
``Boston is markedly safer with those chemicals gone from that site," said Paul Orum, a consultant to environmental public interest groups on chemical security.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 09, 2006
Ads Urge Lawmakers: 'Fix Yucca Mountain'
Industry wants legislation bolstering repository
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The nuclear industry has launched advertisements urging Congress to pass a "Fix Yucca Mountain" bill amid signs such legislation probably is too late for this year.
The Nuclear Energy Institute is running full-page ads this week and next week in four publications read widely on Capitol Hill. The ads call on lawmakers "to get this project done and secure our energy future."
"Congress approved a site for this facility in 2002 but the government is already 8 years behind schedule in accepting used nuclear fuel," the industry said.
Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was chosen for a nuclear waste repository, but management problems, funding shortfalls and legal challenges have stymied the effort. The state of Nevada and environmental groups insist the site is not safe.
"The message is we would like Congress in what little time it has left to get serious about fixing the Yucca Mountain program," said Scott Peterson, communications vice president for the nuclear trade association.
The NEI ads are running in Roll Call, The Hill, National Journal and Congress Daily. Peterson declined to say how much they cost.
A Yucca Mountain bill urged by the Energy Department in April has been a nonstarter in Congress, which is scheduled to recess in only three weeks so lawmakers can go home to campaign. Lawmakers expect to return for a post-election session.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said this week he intends to introduce a new Yucca bill "later this month" but for discussion only.
"Obviously, with less than a month before we recess, I don't expect to pass the bill this year, but I hope to get useful input from my Senate colleagues, the House and other interested parties," Domenici said in a statement.
"Yucca Mountain is a complicated issue that evokes strong, diverse opinions. That's why I'm introducing a bill in the 109th Congress that I will seek to pass in the 110th Congress," Domenici said.
Domenici has said he will take parts of the Bush administration bill that he likes but he has not said which ones.
Peterson said NEI is "realistic" about chances to get a bill passed in the fall.
"We would like to be pushing forward to making something happen but we recognize it might roll over into the next Congress," he said.
The NEI ads are scheduled to run next week when at least four House and Senate committees have scheduled hearings to assess where things stand on nuclear waste policies, including Yucca Mountain and fuel reprocessing.
"There are a lot of people out there who realize Yucca Mountain is dying," said Jon Summers, a spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. "These are all last-gasp efforts to try to save it and try to figure out what to do."
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Pahrump Valley Times
September 08, 2006
Nuke recycling not trip's focus
Mission will be to Study Transport of Nuclear Materials
By Mark Waite
PVT
-- Nye County Commissioner Roberta "Midge" Carver will be saying "sayonara" soon as she travels to Japan from Oct. 21 through Oct. 28 to inspect nuclear waste processing facilities.
Nye County Commissioners approved her trip, with funds coming out of the nuclear waste repository program funds at an estimated cost of $8,500.
The purpose of the trip, which is being coordinated by the U.S. Transportation Council, is to review key aspects of the programs for the safe transport of spent nuclear fuel. She will travel with Bob Gamble, the county's paid representative to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The only question about the safari came from Commissioner Joni Eastley, who wanted to refute any misconception that Nye County wanted a facility to reprocess nuclear waste, one of the site visits on the tour.
"It was not my understanding that Nye County was going to get involved in any way with fuel recycling facilities or lobbying to get them in Nye County, or negotiating with outside companies to get them located here," she said. Carver said that's not an issue she will be concerned with in Japan.
But she said recycled nuclear fuel could eventually be transported through Nye County.
Eastley said Nye County's role in the project needs to be limited to independent, scientific oversight.
Pahrump resident Jim Petell urged commissioners to consider the seismic risks of the project.
Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis, the county commission's liaison on the Yucca Mountain project, said he was invited to go on the trip but may have to monitor a legislative bill on Yucca Mountain about that time. He endorsed the overseas trips.
"They're mandatory. They're absolutely essential how we know their cask is working that transports the fuel from the reactor plant to the recycling facility or wherever they store (it).
Our goal is to get the fuel to Yucca Mountain as safely as possible," Hollis said. Asked whether it was possible to monitor the process in the U.S., he said, "We ship fuel all the time, but it's not being made public all the time." Hollis will travel to Washington, D.C., at the end of this month for meetings with congressmen on the Yucca Mountain project.
The memorandum from Interim County Manager Ron Williams on the travel request states Carver's visit to facilities for transferring nuclear waste casks, recycling fuel and waste storage facilities is of particular interest to Nye County.
Carver traveled to France last year to visit shipping facilities in Cherbourg and a reprocessing plant in the Hague on a jaunt coordinated by the U.S. Transport Council.
The Nye County Community Protection Plan, adopted in August 2002, states that "all shipments of spent nuclear fuel or high-level waste to interim or permanent storage facilities in the site county (Nye County) should be by rail, using routes which avoid site county communities and public mainline highways and which are selected in consultation with the Nye County Commission. No shipment of highly radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain should use the two-lane, rural, public highways of the site county."
The plan states shipments of nuclear waste on two-lane rural highways pose special risks for radiological exposure, accident and a stigma for communities along the 371 miles of highway routes.
The community protection plan explains Nye County's perspectives on the project to ship nuclear waste from 35 states to Yucca Mountain, describes potential effects of the project and suggests steps to protect Nye County. Recently, the scientific community has expressed a renewed interest in studying the recycling of nuclear waste to reduce storage space and other benefits.
Carver's hotel bill in Japan will be $150 per night, or $1,050 for seven nights. In-country air and train travel and meals are estimated to cost another $2,000. The U.S. Transport Council is making the travel arrangements; it said the round-trip airfare to Japan is available for as little as $970 on Expedia.com.
The agenda includes a welcome dinner; meeting with a federation of Japanese nuclear energy organizations; travel to the Rokkosho nuclear complex in northern Japan; a tour of the Tokai nuclear waste interim storage facility; touring the Hitachi-Zosen facility where nuclear transport casks are manufactured; and on the last day, a cultural, sightseeing tour of Kyoto.
Commissioners, however, turned thumbs-down an amended contract with the Nevada Environmental Research and Monitoring Institute through March 31, 2007, to help negotiate a partnership agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy.
Nye County had a similar agreement in 1991 and 1992. The maximum total compensation would've been $250,000.
Commissioner Eastley said Nye County officials can themselves negotiate with DOE.
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Salt Lake Tribune
September 09, 2006
Hatch jawboned N-dump decision
Bennett also helped persuade against the project
By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON - In a pivotal meeting between Sen. Orrin Hatch and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne in late June, Hatch persuaded the former Idaho governor to kick-start his department's verdict on plans to ship thousands of tons of nuclear waste to Utah.
Interior had been waiting for Utah's lawsuit challenging the project to wend its way through court, potentially delaying any decision for years. That changed dramatically after Hatch's meeting with Kempthorne, who spent five years in the Senate before serving two terms as Idaho governor.
On Thursday, just 10 weeks after the private session, Interior dealt the waste project two potentially fatal blows. Department officials rejected plans to ship 44,000 tons of radioactive waste to the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, just an hour's drive from Salt Lake City, and vetoed the agreement between Private Fuel Storage, a group of utilities, and the American Indian tribe.
The Interior Department confirmed the meeting took place but wouldn't discuss specifics.
Hatch, in an interview Friday, described it this way: Kempthorne, on the job barely a month, listened patiently and left the June 29 meeting assuring the Utah senator he would get the ball rolling.
"Utah had such a strong case in my eyes, so I did everything I could to make sure the administration understood my position," Hatch said. "I felt pretty confident from the beginning that I could convince anybody this was not the way to go."
Kempthorne, himself, did not make the decisions, although he had been briefed and was well aware of the issues, said Interior Department spokesman Shane Wolfe. The final opinions were delegated to two senior-level assistants.
But Hatch and Sen. Bob Bennett both made clear to Kempthorne their views on the PFS plan in discussions before and after the secretary's confirmation at the end of May.
"I made no attempt to pressure him," Bennett said Friday, "simply to call the issue to his attention and to pay close attention to all the merits because I was convinced that on the merits our point of view would come on top."
For Hatch, sticking close by the Bush administration on nuclear issues was the strategy he had committed to a year before, despite pressure to reverse his course on a permanent nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for the nation's 50-year stockpile of spent nuclear fuel.
The rest of Utah's congressional delegation and the governor had come out against building a waste dump at Yucca Mountain, hoping standing with Nevada would help their case against the Skull Valley project. Bennett did a complete turnabout on Yucca during a Senate floor speech, arguing the permanent repository would never be built and a new approach was needed.
Some publicly questioned the wisdom of Hatch's dogged stance at odds with other Utah politicians.
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said at the time that Hatch's continued backing of Yucca Mountain was "ill-advised."
"It was one of the most miserable periods of my lifetime," Hatch said Friday. "[But] if I hadn't stuck with the administration, we wouldn't have got this done."
Hatch said he put in countless calls and had many meetings with administration officials, from chief of staff Josh Bolton and his deputy Karl Rove on down.
"This wasn't a case of political pressure. They couldn't ignore me, but we had a strong case. I kept building that case, call by call and meeting by meeting."
Hatch convinced Kempthorne's predecessor, Gale Norton, to reassess the issue of moving waste to the reservation. With a reopened public comment period, thousands of Utahns sent letters urging the transportation plan be rejected.
One of the key factors in Interior's decision against the Skull Valley project was Congress' designation of the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area, which effectively blocks a proposed rail line to the site. Previous attempts to pass the wilderness bill were thwarted with the help of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada. But when Bennett and other Utah leaders joined opponents to Yucca, Reid cleared the way for the Cedar Mountain legislation.
Bennett said that in the end the divergent paths he and Hatch took may have helped reach the goal they both wanted.
"He did what he thought was the right thing to do and I did what I thought was the right thing to do and both the administration's position and Congress' position . . . indicate that it all worked out," he said.
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Salt Lake Tribune
September 09, 2006
Nuke-dump backers ponder their next move
PFS plan squelched: Proponents had pressured U.S. agency for approval of the facility for months
By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune
Backers of nuclear waste storage in Utah had pressed the U.S. Interior Department to sign off on their project in the months before federal officials nixed it Thursday.
But neither the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, the Tooele County Indian tribe that promised reservation land for the storage, nor Private Fuel Storage, the nuclear-reactor operators that partnered with the Goshutes, were prepared to say Friday if, or how, they might fight the department's two-pronged decision killing the project.
"It will probably be a week before we have any real notion of what our next steps will be," said Sue Martin, a spokeswoman for PFS.
Deputies of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, the former Idaho governor and U.S. Senate Republican, issued twin rulings Thursday that appeared to deal a death blow to the multi-billion-dollar waste storage plan.
James E. Cason, associate deputy secretary for Indian affairs at the Interior Department, voided the 1997 lease between the Goshutes and PFS.
Chad Calvert, acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management, nixed the plan for transporting waste to the reservation, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Cason's decision noted the tribe had twice written letters last spring urging his agency to sign off on a "conditional lease" that was approved by a Utah-based Indian agency official more than nine years ago.
"The [Skull Valley] Band has also made numerous phone calls to Department officials demanding immediate action," Cason wrote.
The waste plan's critics - anti-nuclear activists, ordinary Utahns and state and federal officials - say the separate decisions kill the project. But PFS and the Goshutes were not ready Friday to concede.
PFS's Martin said Thursday's decisions leave the nation no answer to its nuclear waste backlog.
"The fact is, our facility was the closest, most immediate solution that was available to the [nuclear energy] industry," she said.
Lacking an off-site option like the Skull Valley storage, the nation's nuclear reactors have resorted to storing roughly 60,000 tons of high-level waste at 72 sites while they wait for the federal government to build the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. The planned site is long past its deadline and is certain to be delayed for years to come. Congress has just begun to talk about creating federal interim storage sites.
Meanwhile, Dianne Nielson, director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said her agency would continue its fight to kill the license the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted to PFS in February.
She noted the Interior Department's rulings echoed many of the safety and legal concerns Utahns have been raising about the waste proposal for nearly a decade.
"The fact of the matter is they [at the Interior Department] did their homework," she said, "and I think they got it exactly right."
--fahys@sltrib.com
Options for proponents of the Skull Valley nuclear storage site
* Call it quits.
* Fight the Interior Department's ruling in court.
* Propose a new lease and/or alternative transportation plans.
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Salt Lake Tribune
September 09, 2006
Politics glows: Politicians deserve credit for stopping PFS
Tribune Editorial
It may be impossible to say whether Thursday's Interior Department rulings that apparently kill the planned nuclear waste storage facility in Utah's Skull Valley were prompted by the merits of the arguments or the unanimous political pressure brought by our state's elected officials.
Not that anyone really cares.
It has been 12 years since Private Fuel Storage, a shrinking consortium of electric utilities, and the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, a small tribe with a reservation west of Salt Lake City, first started talking about what became a plan to store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel atop a giant concrete slab.
Time was not on their side.
The idea was opposed from the start, and not just by the usual environmentalist suspects. First Gov. Mike Leavitt, and now Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., have fought it, as have all members of the state's congressional delegation.
And, if it isn't too ominous an analogy, the ground has been shifting under PFS all along.
The Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada, supposedly the permanent resting place for the waste that would be parked in Skull Valley, has been repeatedly delayed and may never open. There have been innovations that make it possible, if not downright smart, to continue to store the waste at power plants where it is generated.
There were also concerns about security that only grew in a post-9/11 world.
All of that, though, may matter less than the fact that all the political muscle Utah could bring to bear on the issue was rolled out and kept out.
Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett and Reps. Chris Cannon, Rob Bishop and Jim Matheson pulled every lever. None of them succumbed to the arguments of economic development or blind faith in technology that are so often used to excuse some really bad ideas.
Added to the bird-dogging provided by such groups as the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah and the recent opposition of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that was enough pull to put an end to a plan that was, in the best possible light, far too sketchy to be believed in.
"Political pressure" is always decried when it's used in a way that you don't like. In the case of Skull Valley, though, it was a shining example of democracy in action.
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New York Times
September 09, 2006
Interior Department Rejects Interim Plan for Nuclear Waste
By Martin Stolz and Matthew L. Wald
SKULL VALLEY, Utah, Sept. 8 — The Interior Department has moved to block a huge “interim” nuclear waste storage plant on an Indian reservation here, citing a lack of confidence that it would truly be temporary because there is so much doubt about completion of a permanent repository, at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
But sponsors of the project, which was granted a license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February, said that the Interior Department decision had numerous errors and that they were considering an appeal.
A consortium of eight utilities negotiated a lease 10 years ago for an 800-acre corner of the reservation that belongs to the Goshute band, a tiny tribe, about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City. The lease would run for 25 years with an option for another 25, and the waste would be stored in above-ground casks of a type already used at reactors around the country.
Some waste is so old that the reactors that generated it have been torn down. And many nuclear power plants still operating have expanding fields of storage casks and no place to ship them.
But in a decision issued Thursday, the Interior Department said that acting as a “prudent” trustee of Indian lands, it could “derive no confidence from the public record” that there would be someplace for the fuel ultimately to go.
“Construction of Yucca Mountain could be indefinitely delayed by any number of factors, including protracted litigation,” the department said, adding that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “acknowledges that ‘decades’ are the most relevant unit of time for predicting the completion date.”
The decision was hailed by many elected officials in Utah, which has no reactors, and where many non-Indians oppose the plan.
But John D. Parkyn, the chairman of the board of Private Fuel Storage, the consortium, said in a telephone interview on Friday that the opinion about Yucca Mountain was contrary to federal policy and that there were various errors in the decision.
One, Mr. Parkyn said, is that the decision said development on the reservation would require a tribal police force. But in fact, he said, the plant would have only about 20 employees, and most of those would be guards. If tribal police were somehow required, he said, the project would pay for them.
The decision also cites the environmental impact of two extra-large trucks per week going to the site, but the Interior Department has already approved a garbage dump on the site that requires about 1,000 truckloads a week, Mr. Parkyn said.
He said that the Interior Department had told him a decision had been made but that he had not given him a copy. He received one from a reporter, he said, and had not finished analyzing it.
The tribe is divided over the project. A proponent, Garth Jerry Bear, said Friday at his home on the reservation that the plant would provide hope for the desperately poor members, good-paying jobs and money for schools. “This is a third-world country, right here in the United States,” Mr. Bear said.
He added that the county, state and federal government were usurping tribal sovereignty because of resentment over not getting their share of the lucrative contract.
“It’s like the broken treaties,” Mr. Bear said.
Sammy Blackbear, an opponent of the storage plan, said he was elated by the decision.
“It should have come a long time ago,’’ Mr. Blackbear said, “but this is better late than never.”
Denise Chancellor, an assistant attorney general in Utah, said that the law gave the Interior Department wide discretion in deciding about leases, and that “it’s got to be fairly blatant before a court will step in and overturn it.”
The Interior Department’s decision is “the final nail” in killing the project, Ms. Chancellor said.
At the Energy Department, a spokesman, Craig Stevens, said the Yucca Mountain repository would be finished by 2017.
But nuclear waste may yet go elsewhere. Mr. Stevens said the department had received dozens of proposals for sites for interim storage and then reprocessing, in which uranium and plutonium are recovered for future use.
Nuclear experts said, however, that given the experience of the Skull Valley project, it would take years for any of the sites to get a license.
The department is under pressure to find some way to accept nuclear waste, because it signed contracts with utilities in the early 80’s, promising to do so beginning in 1998, in exchange for payments by the utilities of one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour generated at their reactors.
The Skull Valley partners offered that site to the Energy Department, but Mr. Parkyn said the Energy Department had not responded.
Martin Stolz reported from Skull Valley, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.
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Lincoln Journal Star
September 09, 2006
Nuke waste needs to be safely buried
Construction of new dry cask storage systems for high-level nuclear waste is a responsible attempt by Nebraska’s two nuclear power plants to cope with a real problem.
It’s too bad that this step is necessary.
By now, the spent nuclear rods ought to be safely buried in a national waste site.
The proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada was supposed to open in 1998. But it’s still snarled in legal battles and shackled by congressional dysfunction.
Last week, the Department of Energy announced that the facility would begin accepting fuel in 2017. Judging by the history of the proposal, that date once again will be pushed back.
Environmentalists and Nevada residents contend that the Yucca Mountain site is not safe enough. Others claim that transportation of fuel rods will create “mobile Chernobyls.”
Opponents of the Yucca Mountain site exaggerate those risks and trivialize the risks of leaving the waste at places such as Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville and the Fort Calhoun Station near Omaha.
The two plants are among 31 scattered across the United States that are “temporarily” storing about 50,000 tons of radioactive waste.
The Fort Calhoun station already has built a $23 million system. Its concrete bunkers have two-foot-thick walls containing stainless steel canisters, each filled with fuel rods and fuel assemblies. The canisters are filled with helium to prevent corrosion.
Nebraska Public Power District announced recently that it plans to spend about $45 million to build a similar facility.
Meanwhile, about $8 billion has been spent studying and preparing the Yucca Mountain site. About 2,000 scientists and staff work at the laboratory on the site.
It probably is the most scientifically studied piece of real estate in the world. Study after study has deemed it safe for storage of nuclear waste in vaults about 1,000 feet underground in solid rock.
In recent decades, opponents of nuclear energy have succeeded in preventing construction of new plants. But use of nuclear energy to generate electricity has one advantage over coal-fired plants. It contributes far less to global warming.
That has led environmentalists such as Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace, to advocate a switch to more nuclear power plants.
The changing balance of power has led some members of Congress to propose that the rest of the approval process for Yucca Mountain be streamlined.
Let’s hope that those efforts are successful. The “temporary” storage of spent nuclear fuel at power plants is a poor alternative to burying it for thousands of years under solid rock.
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Investor's Business Daily
September 09, 2006
Confronting The Power Shift
By J. Bonasia
Investor's Business Daily
For a look at the fast-changing world of electric utilities, check out California.
Five years ago, the Golden State suffered through rolling blackouts in the wake of utility deregulation. Today, it's leading the charge to cut dependence on fossil fuels.
The California Legislature passed a breakthrough law late last month to achieve a 25% rollback in the state's greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. That move sent shock waves throughout the electricity industry, far beyond California.
To craft the bill, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worked with the Legislature's Democratic majority. Policymakers and venture capitalists say the measure could usher in a new wave of investments in clean, renewable fuels.
Deregulation, meanwhile, remains a hot-button issue for U.S. utilities. About half the states passed some form of deregulation in the 1990s with mixed results.
In many cases, competition grew and prices fell, but in some areas, energy-trading schemes by Enron and other companies drove up prices — and may have contributed to California's blackouts. Many ratepayers no longer have faith in deregulation.
As the need for power grows, the public wants more renewable energy — and lower prices. Regulators in many states hope to address those concerns. That's forcing utilities to keep current.
1. Business
The electric power industry consists of two joined halves: power generation, and transmission and distribution. The generation side has been deregulated by 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and West. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission oversees power generation.
Coal provides about half the nation's power. Most other utility plants run on nuclear fuel or natural gas. Less than 2% of U.S. electricity comes from wind, hydroelectric or solar sources. (Related Story)
The power transmission business, meanwhile, is regulated by the states — since the companies involved often share power lines. Generation plants transmit power over thick cables strung from tall towers. Smaller distribution lines carry lower voltage power into homes and businesses.
A new power plant can cost $1 billion or more.
Maintaining the transmission grid is costly too. And regulations are constantly changing. For these reasons, new power plant construction has slowed — especially for coal and nuclear facilities.
Despite major missteps in California, deregulation has benefited customers across Pennsylvania and much of the Northeast, says Jim Miller, incoming chief executive of PPL, (PPL) a utility in Allentown, Pa. PPL also has plants in Montana, Britain, Chile and El Salvador.
"Deregulation has created a desire for companies to operate more efficiently," Miller said. "Ultimately it has resulted in lower power costs."
Name of the game: In this plugged-in world, utilities must ensure continuous service at the lowest possible price. That requires constant maintenance of their complex infrastructure. It also means staying on top of rule changes handed down by Congress and the states.
2. Market
The country's heaters, air conditioners, machines and appliances depend on a steady power source. That's a big plus for the utility industry, notes Daniele Seitz, an analyst with Dahlman Rose. And demand is outstripping supply due to a lack of new plants, she says.
"People cannot live without power," Seitz said. "Yet we're running out of cheap energy in the electricity sector."
Record heat waves over the summer drove demand for coal and natural gas. Electricity prices rose 11% in the first half of the year, the Energy Department said. Total power consumption is expected to grow 0.6% this year and 1.1% in '07.
The long approval process for new coal and nuclear plants has hindered their construction. Many communities view coal as too dirty. Nuclear plants are challenged by the disposal of spent fuel rods. A plan to bury the country's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been hotly debated for years.
As a result, many utilities have built cheaper natural gas plants over the past decade. The downside to that: natural gas prices have more than doubled in recent years.
Still, the country remains addicted to power. Electric utility stocks have gained 60% in cumulative value since January 2004, Seitz says. That compares with the S&P's 19% growth over the same period. Seitz has a buy rating on shares of PPL and Allegheny Energy. (AYE)
"This group (of utility stocks) has been an excellent commodity investment tool for the last three years," she said.
3. Climate
California's mandate to cut carbon dioxide emissions should serve as writing on the wall for the industry at large, says Ron Minsk, an attorney in the energy practice of law firm Alston & Bird. In the 1990s, he worked on energy issues as a special assistant on economic policy in the Clinton administration.
"We're at a point now in the industry where one can reasonably foresee what may be a significant change in the rules with respect to (cutting) emissions," Minsk said. "Pretty soon the issue will not be 'Should we do it?' but 'How should we do it?' "
Minsk says he won't be surprised if by the end of 2010 Congress passes a law to limit fossil fuels. Such regulation will bring challenges for power companies, but opportunities as well. Developers of wind plants and solar farms can expect a lift.
General Electric, (GE) for instance, is the largest maker of wind turbines. Some large utilities, such as Exelon (EXC) and PPL, rely on a mix of fuel. They blend coal, nuclear and gas power with renewable sources such as hydro.
Some smaller utilities, such as Allegheny Energy, rely 100% on coal.
Coal burning emits a lot of unwanted carbon dioxide. Coal is the country's last abundant energy resource, with a 250-year supply on hand, notes Paul Evanson, Allegheny chief executive. That's crucial in any talk on energy security, he says.
"We can't just rely on gas and oil," Evanson said. "Global warming is a major uncertainty and an overhang for the whole industry."
4. Technology
To address global warming fears, utilities are exploring new ways to extract carbon dioxide from the fuel-burning process. The goal is to sequester the gas deep underground so that existing sources of coal can be used without the negative pollution effects, says Curt Morgan, executive vice president of NRG Energy (NRG). The approach is also known as clean coal.
"Even environmental groups have a hard time arguing against this one," Morgan said.
The approach is defined as integrated gasification combined cycle, or IGCC. A chemical process converts coal into a gas, which can be burned as fuel. The carbon dioxide is captured at the plant. The hardest part of IGCC involves injecting the carbon dioxide into subterranean caverns and reservoirs.
"People are studying this now to ensure that there are no ill effects from having the CO2 underground," Morgan said.
Power plants have used smokestack scrubbers for years to reduce harmful emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Now other technologies are being developed to create nonpolluting energy sources.
Experts say wind power has become quite cost effective in regions where winds reach 8 mph. This could be a huge advantage for the Great Plains and coastal areas. Problems still exist, however, when winds slow or stop.
Many homes and businesses are adding solar panels. Sometimes, this distributed form of generation can return power to the grid, reversing the owner's meter.
Also, the industry is testing new solar thermal plants. They reflect the sun's rays to heat a liquid or gas and thus drive turbines. Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric are working on such projects in California's deserts.
5. Outlook
The industry isn't going away soon. The need for power will grow.
Upside: Americans are expected to use more gadgets per capita in the future, driving demand. Electricity remains a critical element of the overall U.S. economy.
Risks: The industry faces much uncertainty. Legislators are growing concerned about the effects of global warming. And with a new president taking office in early 2009, the drive for new rules could grow, says energy attorney Minsk.
"The biggest question mark facing the industry addresses both risk and opportunity," Minsk said. "This involves what air emissions standards we're likely to see over the next several years from every level of government."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 08, 2006
Safeguards for nuclear waste called insufficient
Berkley, other Democrats criticize NRC
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has not done enough to make nuclear waste "terrorist-proof" at power plants where the highly radioactive material is stored indoors in deepwater pools and outdoors in heavy casks, several lawmakers and safety advocates said Thursday.
"I have a (security) clearance and with all the briefings I have had with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and they have been numerous and in my office, I have yet to get a clear idea of what exactly the government is doing to secure these sites," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
Berkley and three other Democrats said the Bush administration has not heeded recommendations in reports from the National Academy of Sciences and scientists who advocate further "hardening" of nuclear power plants.
A coalition of public interest groups including Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists called for utilities to remove some of the used fuel assemblies now being kept in deepwater vaults at power plants and move them instead into reinforced concrete and steel "dry cask" containers.
The groups say the containers should be further shielded by earth or gravel berms and steel or concrete caps.
Berkley added there has been little apparent progress in studies of the security threats that might be posed in transporting nuclear waste from reactors to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.
"We have an administration that talks a good game when it comes to national security and has done very little in the ensuing five years to provide our citizens with true national security," Berkley said.
An NRC official said contrary to the criticism, the agency took steps to tighten security at nuclear waste sites after the 2001 attacks.
Based on security assessments, the agency believes that nuclear waste is secure in pools and in the dry containers as they are presently configured, spokesman Dave McIntyre said.
"The pools are hardened structures," McIntyre said.
As for shifting more used fuel from pools into concrete containers, "We have looked at it from a security standpoint and we don't believe there is that need," McIntyre said. "We feel the fuel is equally safe in pools and in casks."
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Reno Gazette-Journal
September 08, 2006
Opinion: Repository will open, and it will be safe
By Marvin Fertel
Gov. Kenny Guinn's recent declaration that the proposed federal used nuclear fuel repository at Yucca Mountain "appears to be headed toward the trash bin of history" is a statement of Yucca Mountain politics rather than a realistic representation of this project [Your Turn, Aug. 10].
Given the intense competition for world energy resources, the global commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a doubling of U.S. electricity demand expected by 2030, it's no wonder Congress and the nation are looking at an expanded role for nuclear energy. That expanded role must take into account stewardship of used nuclear fuel.
Based on scientific evidence, Congress and the president in 2002 concluded that Yucca Mountain should be the site for a specially designed, underground repository for used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from U.S. defense programs. They have maintained this commitment to the project even while pursuing other options as part of an integrated national used fuel management program.
There is no question that the Yucca Mountain project has experienced some challenges. However, work to facilitate its opening is ongoing. Sen. Pete Domenici, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman, is among those leading this effort on a policy level. He and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe have introduced the Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act, which would clarify land transfer, water use and other issues at Yucca Mountain.
"Yucca Mountain is the cornerstone of a comprehensive spent nuclear fuel management strategy for this country," Domenici said last month. "Let me be clear: We need Yucca Mountain. I want to fix this program and make it work."
The Department of Energy said that it intends to file its license application to build the repository with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008.
In testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Director Edward Sproat said, "We need to ensure a strong and diversified energy mix to fuel our Nation's economy, and nuclear power is an important component of that mix. In order to ensure the future viability of our nuclear generating capacity, we need a safe, permanent, geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain."
Sproat, after an extended visit to the site recently, said that a lot of work remains to be done at Yucca but that there are no overwhelming obstacles to moving forward with the
$60 billion public works project.
DOE will continue to be subject to broad oversight of the program by the state and scientific and regulatory bodies when it moves to the repository construction phase. The nuclear energy industry shares this commitment to safety at the project, just as it has at 103 commercial reactors. As part of this oversight, DOE will be subject to a rigorous licensing process before the independent NRC. The NRC has licensed more than two dozen fuel storage facilities at nuclear plant sites.
While Gov. Guinn may have his own perceptions on Yucca Mountain, they are more political than practical. By opposing the repository project at every turn, the state's chief executive is risking enormous economic opportunity for the state and a chance for Nevada to become a center of science and energy research.
Marvin Fertel is chief nuclear officer and senior vice president at the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
September 08, 2006
Letter: Guinn's Yucca claim motivated by politics
Gov. Kenny Guinn claimed that the proposed high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel repository at Yucca Mountain was founded on "shoddy science" [RGJ, Aug. 9]. I object to the governor's claims and wish to set the record straight.
Regardless of what the governor believes, the fact is that work was done by many different researchers and leading experts from the highly regarded U.S. Geological Survey, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Sandia Laboratory, and by some of the nation's top geological experts from leading universities across the country.
It is unrealistic to expect that these highly qualified scientists would have done shoddy science or even falsified data simply because our government believes that Yucca Mountain is the best place in the country to establish such a nuclear waste repository.
I very much appreciate Gov. Guinn's service and dedication to our state but his comments about the quality of science at the high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain were politically motivated, unwarranted, and at best misguided.
Forrest Hopson
Reno
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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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