Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 26, 2006
Letter: Safe waste disposal
In his Sept. 20 letter to the editor, Dan Kane criticized a Review-Journal editorial, saying "it is difficult to understand how any member of the public could fail to comprehend the need for more nuclear power." What Mr. Kane did not mention is that he is a longtime employee of the U.S. Department of Energy and an upper-level manager at the Yucca Mountain Project.
The Review-Journal has correctly pointed out that for the last 10 years the federal government's own watchdog agencies have discovered serious quality problems and mismanagement at Yucca Mountain. The state of Nevada and more than 100 public interest groups called for the Energy Department to disqualify the site eight years ago when studies showed it could not meet standards. Instead, the rules have been continually weakened, and now federal legislation is being introduced to further water down and/or eliminate regulations for the project.
For years, the Energy Department told public audiences that nuclear power was not the issue. The focus was only on scientific study to find out if Yucca Mountain could safely isolate nuclear waste for as long as it is dangerous to public health and the environment.
The new director of the Yucca Mountain Project says that he has inherited a troubled operation with people who must learn to take responsibility for quality. Mr. Kane seems more interested in convincing us that our only hope for survival is more nuclear power. Is the unbridled obsession and commitment to expanding nuclear power more important than the responsibility for and quality assurance necessary for safe, permanent waste disposal?
Judy Treichel
Las Vegas
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Times of India
September 26, 2006
Indo-US nuclear deal faces new roadblock
Indrani Bagchi
NEW DELHI: The Indo-US nuclear deal is hanging by a thread. And it's all due to a single Democrat senator, Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader who has concerns about spent fuel from India coming to his native Nevada for disposal and who wants to introduce an amendment to the Bill.
The Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada is proposed to be used by the US government as a terminal storage facility for nuclear waste — a controversial proposal.
He has effectively held up what would have been an easy passage for the bill in the Senate — by utilising a procedural feature called "unanimous consent".
This limits debate and amendments to the bill, making its floor vote a quick affair. But even one amendment throws this entire arrangement out of kilter and that's exactly what has happened.
This consent route was adopted by Senate leaders to mark a quick passage in a crowded Senate calendar; the Senate disbands for elections on September 29, which means there are very few days to squeeze the India legislation in.
Reid has reportedly refused to relent to persuasion thus far. Complicating matters on the Republican side of the floor is Larry Craig from Idaho, who also wants a similar amendment, but saying the opposite of Reid.
Unless these are resolved, the Senate passage looks like a clap of distant thunder. To add to the dissonance, Democrat-Republican relations are not at their best right now, particularly in election season.
In the past week, foreign secretary (and soon to be special envoy) Shyam Saran and senior officials from the foreign office have been stalking the corridors of New York and Washington.
Saran met his counterpart Nick Burns for several meetings as well as Senate leaders to lobby for the legislation. Saran and Burns also worked on the 123 Agreement as well as coordinated positions on the forthcoming meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
But all of this will unravel if the Senate fails to mark a floor vote this week. In fact, as officials complained, extraneous factors have dogged the Indian deal for a while.
First it was the Title II of the Bill, which was a ratification of the IAEA's additional protocol, and now the Yucca Mountain controversy, both of which have nothing to do with India but have muddied the Indian waters.
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MSN Money
September 26, 2006
Linking business and diplomacy with nuclear energy
While I realize that Areva (ARVCF, news, msgs), one of the stocks in my Strategy Lab portfolio, is an acquired taste, here is something published today by Les Echos, the French business daily and my views on it.
Areva, the French nuclear engineering group, is among the bidders to put up the first U.S. nuclear fuel recycling plant. The bidding is being run by the U.S. Department of Energy and the facility will cost $10-$15 billion. It will reduce radioactive waste currently buried at Yucca Mountain (Nevada) by 75%, enhancing U.S. security and cutting risk.
As our country moves toward rediscovery of the advantages of nuclear energy, we are having to call on French expertise. France never gave up on nuclear, and now produces nearly 70% of its electricity from nuclear power plants.
Linking business and diplomacy
What I hope to see is a link between Areva bidding on this reprocessing facility and its decision not to sell anything similar to Iran. Pourquoi pas? The French would not hesitate to link business and diplomacy this way if the situations were reversed. Get to work Condi Rice!
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Conservative Voice
September 25, 2006
Nuclear Waste Disposal Issue Unresolved
by James Finch
Over the past 24 years, each time your house or business consumed a nuclear-generated kilowatt-hour of electricity, you were billed – by mandate of the U.S. government – one-tenth of one penny to pay for the storage of nuclear waste. And those pennies add up. Since 1982, the Nuclear Waste Fund has grown to more than $28 billion. The plan back then was to safely dispose of the nuclear waste left over after providing 20 percent of the nation’s electricity through nuclear energy. Instead, like a ticking time bomb, about 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods are chilling out in 141 concrete cooling ponds never intended for long-term use. Many are within a few dozen miles of large cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Miami.
Now, at least nine states are heating up over the localized nuclear waste issue. On September 13th, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan joined state attorneys general in California, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin in calling on Congress to reject legislation enabling the federal government to designate nuclear waste storage facilities in all states with nuclear power plants, superceding objections by the state’s governor or state and local zoning and environmental laws.
The endless merry-go-round of deciding upon a final resting place for nuclear waste has been studied for more than two decades, has cost taxpayers more than $9 billion and has actually been solved. Unless of course, you are talking about an ideal solution which is required to be as satisfactory for up to one million years from now as it might be some 10,000 years into the future. That appears to be the most recent verdict – let’s keep nuclear waste in temporary storage scattered across geologically challenged locations, some near major cities, for decades to come, because a minority of environmentalists are “uncomfortable” with a well-studied, scientifically satisfactory centralized disposal site in a remote location. Instead of moving forward with a site, which will reportedly store the waste safely for 10,000 years (and probably up to 80,000 years), the environmental lobby would prefer a toxic risk for tens of millions of Americans from ‘overcrowded’ temporary storage sites. They would like to stall matters until scientists can prove a centralized storage site can survive all potential abuse for up to one million years.
Unfortunately, even if Congress acts in early 2007, the best-case scenario for a centralized nuclear waste repository brings us to 2017. And that would require quite a few politicians and bureaucrats coming to their senses. While they haggle over whether the nuclear waste can be safely stored for 10,000 years (which a number of scientific studies confirm that it can), or whether the waste site must store the spent nuclear fuel for one million years, electricity consumers are annually paying $1 billion for temporary storage.
The amount of nuclear waste accumulating since U.S. utilities began powering our homes with nuclear energy comes to about 54,000 metric tons over the past forty years. To put this in perspective, it would take up the size of a football field with a depth of less than 10 yards. Nuclear energy does not generate carbon dioxide emissions. By contrast, the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere through fossil fuels is enormous. According to one of the world’s leading environmental scientists, James Lovelock, who recently authored “The Revenge of Gaia” (Basic Books, 2006), one could freeze the annual carbon dioxide emissions and create a mountain one mile high and twelve miles in circumference. And that’s each year. Using the same yardstick since the 1960s, we would have 40 such mountains of carbon dioxide, but one small football field of nuclear waste.
A Mountain Which Can Solve the Current Waste Disposal Issue
After passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) chose nine locations in six states as potential permanent repository sites. The DOE whittled this list down to five sites after various technical studies and environmental assessments. After intensive scientific study, the DOE chose its finalists: Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Deaf Smith County, Texas and Hanford, Washington. Following lengthy environmental studies of all three sites, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1987 and designated Yucca Mountain to be studied as the final destination for nuclear waste.
“We’ve been studying Yucca Mountain for 22 years,” Steven Kraft told us during a recent telephone interview. Mr. Kraft is mechanical engineer who serves as the senior director for Used Fuel Management at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), and was part of the Recovery Team following the Three Mile Island accident in March 1979. “It is the most studied piece of real estate on the face of the earth. There isn’t anything we don’t know about it.”
Why didn’t they pick someplace far away like Mongolia, Siberia or Greenland? “You’re making the assumption that somehow the remoteness of a location makes it okay,” Kraft responded. “You’re talking about places where there are geologic instabilities or the geology is very difficult to understand.” There are also proposals suggesting ice sheet disposal, deep ocean disposal, or simply blasting the waste into outer space. “Yucca Mountain meets all of the requirements, and I can’t think of a better site,” Kraft explained. “They have an awful good rock body down there that has withstood a lot of scientific scrutiny. It is by happenstance of geology they have a good location.”
And what is the key to geology? “What makes Yucca Mountain such a good site is, in the formation below the repository, are naturally occurring zeolites,” Kraft pointed out. Water softeners rely upon zeolites as ion-exchange beds. “Zeolites strip out a lot of the radionuclides and belays the flow of water,’ he explained. “By the time you get to the accessible environment, the dose rate stays well below EPA standards.”
No location is perfect. Even if all nuclear power plants were turned off today, more than 108 million pounds of nuclear waste would require disposition. You can’t burn nuclear fuel pellets. Nuclear waste is not flammable; it is too weak to explode. Each year, the nation’s 103 reactors produce another 2,000 metric tons of waste. It has to end up somewhere. The Yucca Mountain area is geologically stable. The last volcanic eruption – a small one – occurred 80,000 years ago. About 12 to 15 million years ago, large eruptions north of Yucca Mountain laid down the sturdy bedrock which formed this mountain.
The Yucca Mountain area only receives about seven inches of rainfall per year. Ninety percent runs off the side of the mountain ridge and mostly evaporates or is absorbed by vegetation. The proposed repository is 1000 feet underground. And the site is 1000 feet above the water table. Rainwater seeping through rock fractures is negligible and would likely be trapped inside the mountain.
Inside Alloy 22 Engineered Barrier Canisters
Within the first 1,000 years, about 99 percent of the radioactivity in the reactor fuel will have dissipated through the natural process of radioactive decay. For those who believe the nuclear waste will be dumped in some hole in the ground – as some fanatical environmentalists falsely compared this to a landfill disposal – think again. The Department of Energy designed rust-resistant canisters lined with titanium drip shield to prevent water entry. A new alloy for these canisters was created in 1987 called Alloy 22, which is a blend of nickel, chromium and other corrosive-resistant metals.
In one DOE simulation, it was found the waste canisters wouldn’t begin to rust for about 80,000 years. Kraft told us, “From the presentations at the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board meetings, the amount of time that the metal is actually subjected to the corrosive environment is actually far less in terms of hundreds of years.” And who’s to say how much technology will advance over the next 10,000 or 80,000 years? Imagine for a moment how much technology has changed our lives over the past one hundred years, let alone over the previous 10,000 years. The fact is we will all be long dead before a single drop of moisture ever rusts one of those canisters. And so will the next 2000 generations of our great grandchildren.
As a result of the geological and man-made barriers, scientific reports demonstrate the largest expected annual radiation dose near Yucca Mountain would be 0.1 millirem. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set an annual 15-millirem limit. The EPA’s dosage is about one-half what most of us get from cosmic rays every year. A chest x-ray gives you a much higher dose. Occupational standards for workers at nuclear power plants are ten times higher. Clearly, both science and logical rationale are being ignored when politicians and environmentalists dream up such “Twilight Zone” guidelines for Yucca Mountain. When the EPA standard of one million years was proposed, based upon a 1995 National Academy of Science study, it was “unprecedented worldwide,” Kraft said.
Is Transporting the Nuclear Waste to Yucca Mountain Safe?
Critics worry about the dangers of transporting nuclear waste from local sites to Yucca Mountain. They seem to overlook an important fact. During the past 30 years, more than 3000 shipments have traveled across the United States over 1.6 million highway and rail miles without a single radioactive episode. Used nuclear fuel has been safely shipped tens of thousands of times outside the United States. Environmentalists would have already pounced had there been an accident involving radioactive releases.
The DOE estimates about 175 used fuel shipments will travel to Yucca Mountain each year for 24 years, transporting between 300 and 500 containers. Numerous tests performed by Sandia National Laboratories to “destroy” the canisters demonstrated the ruggedness of the containers. Crashing trucks into concrete barriers at 65 mph, trains broadsiding the trucks at 80 mph and engulfing the trucks and canisters at crispy temperatures failed to destroy the canisters. “To get a certificate from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), they have to pass very severe accident tests,” Kraft explained. “My guess is that, at this point, it will be fundamentally rail shipments with limited trucking, but we had to analyze both.”
Fear of terrorists? “Before September 11, 2001, these (nuclear storage facilities) were the most secure, heavily guarded industrial sites there were,” Kraft told us. “And they have only gotten even more protected. We have increased the number of guards, the stand-off distance from the gate, and other things I can’t talk about because of the nature of the information. We do have very good terrorist protection.”
But what about on the open road? The DOE hope to construct a 300-mile railroad spur to connect the nation’s existing rail system to Yucca Mountain. In an August 2006 Fact Sheet, the NEI writes, “The shipments are heavily guarded. Travel routes and times for shipment are not publicly available; transport vehicles are equipped with devices to prevent unauthorized movement; and satellites track shipments constantly.” Sandia National Laboratories also simulated a terrorist attack using a weapon 30 times more powerful than a shoulder-fired, anti-tank missile. The result? The weapon made only a quarter-inch hole, which the NRC estimated would release only about one-third of an ounce of radioactive material, a minute amount of radiation posing no risk beyond the immediate vicinity, and would be easy to clean up.
U.S. Left Behind in the Nuclear Renaissance?
In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, amending in 1987, levied a tax on consumers for electricity generated by nuclear power, and set a 1998 deadline to begin accepting used fuel. The U.S. government defaulted. “1998 has come and gone,” said Kraft. “It’s almost nine years later and 50 utilities are suing. Lawsuits are in the multiple, multiple billions of dollars.” One wonders if the federal government will actually honor this obligation. “No one is being helped by this,” Kraft complained. The DOE has settled with Exelon and a few others to repay their interim storage costs. Utilities have been paying about $750 million per year since 1982. For example, Illinois consumers have paid $3.5 billion since the inception of the Nuclear Waste Fund; Pennsylvania consumers have paid $2.4 billion.
“There are a lot of places that want to build new nuclear plants,” Kraft pointed out. “There are about 30 on the boards right now.” But a lot of the communities are asking, “Wait a minute, we still have the spent fuel from the other reactor, when is all that stuff going to leave the site?”
Kraft explained, “What the communities are not asking for is an actual functioning disposal system, but a believable sustainable plan for getting there. At the moment, the DOE program does not look terribly sustainable to these communities. In each case that wants a facility, the community is making it very clear ‘we want to know what the plans are for moving the nuclear waste offsite.’ We have to be able to answer those questions.”
He is earnest about moving Yucca Mountain into the operational stage. “I’ve been waking up for the past 30 years wanting to solve this problem,” Kraft told us. “The person that has to wake up is Congress.”
In a September 13th press release, the NEI wrote, “To meet a projected increase in electricity demand of 45 percent by 2030, 12 companies or groups of companies are developing federal construction and operating license applications, and four companies already have filed applications for early site permits with the NRC.” The first wave of those nuclear power plants could be ready for commercial operation in the 2014 to 2015 time frame.
In a nutshell, U.S. consumers would be in a no-win situation in the absence of nuclear power. More than 70 percent of the electricity which comes from energy sources that do not bring about greenhouse gases or are linked to smog and acid rain comes from nuclear energy. The rest comes from renewables, especially hydroelectric power. “By shutting down 20 percent of our electricity doesn’t make sense for this country,” Kraft argued. “It’s not something the average ordinary homeowner is going to want to have happen.”
And the fate of the emerging nuclear revival, or the nuclear renaissance, hangs by the decisions Congress must soon make in honoring the government’s obligation as the ultimate stewards of the nuclear waste. “We capture all our waste,” said Kraft. “We store it all, we know where it is, we got it numbered and we treat it with great respect.” Ironically, with the ongoing renaissance in uranium mining in the United States, if there were no reversal by Congress, the yellowcake would end up in Asia or elsewhere to fuel their galloping nuclear energy programs.
In 2002, after more than 60 public hearings were held in Nevada, then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham certified that Yucca Mountain meets the site selection requirements. Both house of Congress approved the Yucca Mountain site in July 2002. “Yucca Mountain is an approved project as far as Congress and the President are concerned,” concluded Kraft. “And now we have the license application to complete, get it through the NRC, and start building it.” Approval for Yucca Mountain came after one of the most extensive scientific investigations in U.S. history. The NRC review may take up to three years.
The remaining stumbling block appears to be the 1995 report by the National Academy of Sciences, and adopted by the EPA, demanding a million-year guarantee of safety at Yucca Mountain. This came about while Yucca Mountain was passing every scientific test for the original 10,000-year safeguard. Congress can remedy this absurdity with legislation relieving this EPA standard. In other words, it is time to get realistic. Otherwise, the nuclear waste remains in limbo, chilling out in the cooling ponds or dry casket storage instead of the Yucca Mountain tunnels.
James Finch contributes to StockInterview.com and other publications. His archived articles on uranium mining, nuclear energy and the nuclear renaissance can be found at http://www.stockinterview.com
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 25, 2006
Editorial: Buying support for Yucca Mountain
But even if Nevadans were interested, current offer is insulting
For all political and practical purposes, the Yucca Mountain Project is broken beyond repair.
The federal government and the nuclear energy industry have toiled for two decades to open a high-level nuclear waste repository about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Lawyers have punched holes in environmental standards, and audit after audit has revealed glaring flaws in the scientific models created to demonstrate the project's long-term viability. After spending about $8 billion in taxpayer money over that period, all the Department of Energy has to show for its effort is a big, empty tunnel in the side of a ridge.
The nuclear energy industry is desperate to send the waste piling up at commercial reactor sites around the country somewhere, anywhere. That Nevada remains the industry's best hope for the storage of spent fuel only intensifies the exasperation.
So the industry's lobbying arm now wants to build Nevada's support for the repository the old-fashioned way -- by paying for it.
On Wednesday, the Nuclear Energy Institute unveiled a bill draft that would pay the state of Nevada $25 million per year to accept the development of a temporary waste storage site at Yucca Mountain. Once the first waste shipment arrives, that annual payment would double to $50 million.
If the request were taken up by Congress as written, nuclear waste could begin arriving in Nevada within two years of the legislation's passage.
We all knew it would come to this, didn't we? With this campaign, the nuclear energy industry formally acknowledges what Nevadans have known for 20 years: There is no science behind the Yucca Mountain Project. All the "studies" completed to justify this boondoggle had a predetermined outcome. It's just taking a long time to get there.
So now, finally, after years of muted debate in this state about whether Nevada should drop its opposition to the repository and negotiate with the federal government for benefits, the Nuclear Energy Institute has submitted the first offer.
And is it ever low.
If $25 million per year were divided between every resident of the state, each person would get about $10. If the money were dumped into the state government's general fund, it might cover the Millennium Scholarship program for a year. For $50 million, the Clark County School District can build a new high school.
The standard for paying off a state's population was set by the Alaska Permanent Fund, which collects fees and taxes from oil and mineral exploration and production and offers qualifying residents an annual dividend. This year's check is for $1,106.96. That's per resident.
The Nuclear Energy Institute's proposition is the equivalent of trying to impress a date by buying microwaved burritos at the corner convenience store and expecting romance to follow. Yes, prostitution is legal in parts of Nevada, but does the nuclear lobby really think we're that easy?
There is probably no figure that would make Nevadans forget all their health, safety and environmental concerns about the Yucca Mountain Project. Certainly, the Nuclear Energy Institute's current proposal won't move the repository any closer to completion.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 24, 2006
Editorial: Freedom of information
On Tuesday, we took a swipe at the U.S. Department of Energy's inspector general for waiting more than four years to fulfill this newspaper's request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
The agency finally handed over an audit of the Yucca Mountain Project when the woman who compiled it gave notice she was quitting her job. The timing of the release made it easy to wonder whether the inspector general's office ever would have provided the report had Kristi Hodges not resigned.
A bill passed Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee could prevent such abuses of the law. Sponsored by Sens. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, the bill would require federal agencies to declare within 20 days of receiving a FOIA request whether they will comply. Agencies would have to provide tracking numbers for requests and a service, accessible by telephone or the Internet, that documents the status of each request.
The bill also lays out penalties for agencies that ignore information requests or fail to comply in a timely fashion.
It's ridiculous that new legislation and, likely, a new bureaucracy, are needed to uphold a law first passed in 1966. The bill restates the original 1966 act's "strong presumption in favor of disclosure" and notes that it hasn't always succeeded in shining light on the workings of government.
Increasingly, if a federal agency actually fulfills a FOIA request, whole pages are blacked out. Such practices prevent meaningful examination of how tax dollars are spent and whether the resulting programs and policies are efficient or serve the public interest.
For this bill to spark any change in the way the Freedom of Information Act is observed, the entire culture of the federal government must change. Federal employees need to recognize that they work for the public, not vice versa. And their offices are not fiefdoms immune from public scrutiny.
The full Senate should make sure this bill's teeth won't rot from neglect before sending it on to the House.
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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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