Yucca Mountain News Clips
Sunday, October 15, 2006
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 15, 2006
GEOFF SCHUMACHER: How about $1 billion? Now that's real money
It is said that everyone has a price.
But Nevada, according to its political leaders, is "not for sale." This is what they repeatedly tell the president and Congress in regard to Yucca Mountain.
Tessa Hafen, the Democrat challenging Rep. Jon Porter in the 3rd Congressional District, is the latest Nevadan to adopt this rhetorical flourish. "I challenge Jon Porter to join me in telling President Bush that Nevada is not for sale as a nuclear waste dump," Hafen said in a recent news release.
Hafen was responding to a nuclear industry scheme to entice Nevada to accept the nation's high-level nuclear waste on a temporary basis until a permanent repository is completed. The offer: Nevada would get $25 million a year until the temporary storage site opens, $50 million when the first waste shipment arrives and $50 million a year until the site closes.
Nevada leaders quickly pounced on this bribe attempt, insisting the state will not accept the waste at any price. But let me posit a theory: Nevada does have a price; it's just that the nuclear industry's numbers are way too low. Chicken feed, in fact. Review-Journal letter writer Bruce Feher put it well: "Our very lives are at stake and they want to pay $25 million a year? Chump change."
You can't build a regulation middle school for $25 million. It'll barely get you a mile of four-lane road. The late, great high-roller Kerry Packer could drop that much in a weekend on the Strip.
Here's my two-part counterproposal:
1. Nevada gets $1 billion per year.
Now, that is a stack of bills we could do something with. Am I right?
Imagine: proper school system funding, including teacher raises and Millennium scholarships; new streets, highways and effective mass transit systems; and decent state and local programs to deal with social ills such as homelessness, mental illness, drug, alcohol and gambling addiction, child welfare, affordable housing.
And guess what: I bet with that kind of dough we could even mail a modest check to every Nevadan -- every year. At least enough to buy the kids some school clothes.
Perhaps with all this new funding, Nevada eventually could pull itself out of the wretched bottom tier of states in all the educational and social rankings.
Of course, $1 billion is a nice annual paycheck, but 20 years from now it just won't be worth what it is today. And with the state's inevitable growth, we'll need another infusion of dollars to keep our burgeoning welfare state afloat. That brings us to:
2. The radioactive waste stored in Nevada becomes the property of the state. Or, if not our property per se (legal issues), we get a large piece of the action when it is reprocessed or transmuted or whatever the nuclear engineers want to do with it.
All the long-range plans in the nuclear industry include the idea that the waste can be put to good use rather than buried hundreds of feet below ground. Reprocessing has been done for years in Europe.
In other words, all those tons of deadly nuclear garbage eventually will have value.
Whether we want to sell the waste outright to the reprocessing folks or receive a hefty royalty on its extraction (as states commonly do in the mining industry) or charge a hefty rental fee, Nevada should be able to pocket good money on the deal.
Now, let me be clear: I have been a consistent, active opponent of dumping nuclear waste in Nevada since the mid-1980s, when I was old enough to know better than to say "nuke-you-ler." I find it reprehensible that Nevada has been singled out to receive this waste when we don't produce any of it ourselves and it remains unclear that Yucca Mountain is the safest place to put it.
I also take pride in the fact that Nevada, with its tiny congressional delegation, has managed to fend off the mighty federal government -- in political, legal and scientific arenas -- time and again. (It hasn't hurt that the U.S. Department of Energy is almost as inept as Donald Rumsfeld.)
Nonetheless, it's intriguing to consider the possibility of Nevada turning nuclear waste into a windfall the likes of which no state has ever seen.
Unfortunately, this line of thinking puts me in league with former Nevada Gov. Bob List, who several years ago sold his soul to the nuclear industry and has been doing its bidding ever since. List told Las Vegas Business Press columnist Chuck Muth that "it would be much more accurate to describe Yucca Mountain as a desert version of Fort Knox than as a 'dump.' " List suggests Nevada could strike it rich through the investment of billions in reprocessing research and facilities here.
Alas, my daydreaming is just that. The nuclear industry, rich as it appears to be, isn't going to pony up $1 billion a year so Nevada can issue gold lamé uniforms to all its schoolchildren. Remember, the industry's current offer is in the range of $25 million to $50 million a year.
Chicken feed.
Besides, getting paid to take the waste just lets the Nevada Legislature off the hook. There is no legitimate excuse why our governor and lawmakers allow Nevada to continue to be a second-rate state in so many areas -- unless we want to be perceived as the kind of place the nuclear industry thinks will be impressed by a paltry bribe.
--Geoff Schumacher (gschumacher@reviewjournal.com) is Stephens Media's director of community publications. He is the author of "Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas." His column appears Sunday.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 15, 2006
Editorial: Hafen, Berkley, Derby are right choices for Nevada
Tessa Hafen will succeed where Jon Porter has failed our state
The bruising partisanship of the Republican-led House has gotten out of control - and Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., hasn't done anything to stop it. One telling example occurred in October 2003, when Democrats proposed giving U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan a $1,500 bonus.
Porter initially voted for the measure, but that didn't last long. The Republican leadership, which feared that the Democrats would get political credit for sponsoring the measure, leaned on Porter to switch his vote. Porter, a few minutes later, meekly went along and changed his vote.
The final tally: a 213-213 tie. The bonus for the troops was defeated since it didn't receive a majority - all because of Porter's deciding vote. Porter let partisan politics prevent the troops from getting a well-deserved bonus for their sacrifices. Furthermore, in almost 9 out of every 10 votes cast, Porter has voted for President Bush's agenda. Porter has been a reliable supporter of the president's failed policies, including the war in Iraq.
So much for Porter's "independence," a quality that he laughably touts in his bid for re-election. Porter's subservience to Bush and Republican leaders is an embarrassment. It doesn't have to stay this way, however.
Voters in the 3rd Congressional District have an opportunity to send someone to Washington who will truly represent them - and not be beholden to a Republican administration and big special interests.
Tessa Hafen, a third-generation Nevadan, is the Democratic nominee opposing Porter. In recent years she has been Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's press secretary, working out of his Washington office. It's a reflection of Porter's character that his TV ads lie about the time Hafen has spent in Nevada, trying to make it sound as if she is a newcomer to the area. Porter's ads are the act of a desperate candidate, one whose record is weak.
On the issues, Hafen clearly is in tune with the voters. She believes we need to adjust our policies in Iraq - and that begins with firing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Hafen also supports an increase in the minimum wage and opposes billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies. (Porter voted for such tax breaks and subsidies.)
With respect to health care, there are serious differences between her and Porter. She believes that the gap in Medicare coverage that requires people to pay the full price for prescription drugs should be closed and that the federal government should be allowed to negotiate with drug companies to obtain lower prices.
The incumbent has opposed the Yucca Mountain project, but the fact is that Porter's Republican Party has done everything in its power to send the nation's nuclear waste to Nevada. Republicans already are making noises about making it much easier in the next session of Congress to bypass environmental and public safety rules to ship nuclear waste here. We fear what the outcome might be if there once again is a Republican-controlled House, especially if it's coupled with a president hell-bent on doing the nuclear power industry's bidding. We are confident that Hafen would do much better in fighting Yucca Mountain than Porter has.
It is clear that more of the same in Washington, exacerbated by Republican control of both Congress and the White House, isn't working.
It also is obvious that Hafen is intelligent and well versed on the issues. She has the kind of enthusiasm and independence sorely lacking in our nation's capital. We believe Hafen would be an outstanding addition to the House of Representatives.
The Sun endorses Tessa Hafen.
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Nevada Appeal
October 15, 2006
The truth about global warming and the coming ice age
by Dan Mooney
Special to the Appeal
It is a fact that the globe upon which we live is warming.
". . . An ice age will result from a slow warming and rising of the ocean that is now taking place."
I read this prediction 48 years ago. When a sophomore in college and enrolled in an Expository Writing class, I wrote a research paper, part of which was based upon an article by a freelance writer, Betty Friedan. This was five years before she wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963). Her inquiry, "The Coming Ice Age," was published in Harper's Magazine in September of that year. The article stirred my imagination. Since I expected to live another 100 years, I kept the magazine as a reminder to look into it 50 years later. We're almost there.
Computer modeling was unheard of then so the prediction was based upon solid scientific research by a team of scientists headed by Maurice Ewing, director of the Lamont Geological Observatory and a theoretical geophysicist at Columbia University. Their results predicted that natural global warming would start within 100 years from then (1958) with rising ocean waters flooding most of our port cities. What a prophecy!
I emphasize this as a natural process not caused by human intervention. Yet social, political and even physical scientists today still do not tell the truth about the natural cause of these events. Global warming has been brewing for over 10,000 years. Yet the far left propaganda mill is very busy proclaiming that the cause is man made without even a hint that we are at the beginning of global warming that naturally precedes an ice age.
Based upon my inquiry some 48 years ago, I was not surprised to hear that the ice sheets on the North and South Poles have now started melting. A natural event or man made? Just the other day, the results of a four year study using high-tech tools was released by Peter A. Rona, a Rutgers University professor who led a team of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and Stony Brook University in New York. Their findings include preliminary evidence that methane gas, which is dispersed under the ocean floor over millions of square miles, is escaping and contributing to global warming, a natural process.
Still, Al Gore and the visual and print media are replete with sensational stories about the melting glaciers, using this natural event as a cause célèbre for their insistence that, with little evidence, the "warming effect" is not caused by nature but by man's flatulence alone, i.e., the buildup of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. This, in spite of Dr. Ewing's accurate predictions 48 years ago.
In their book, "The Golem: What You Should Know About Science," Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch point out that when scientific experiments are inconclusive, scientists often resort to alternative methods of arriving at conclusions. Thus, scientific truth is also subject to cultural limitations because scientists live and work within the ethos of their culture and time period. Hence this is the time to be wary of scientific and political conclusions that man is the cause of global warming or that high level nuclear waste can be safely stored forever or that they will leak in 10 years.
As with global warming and Yucca Mountain, when important social decisions are based upon science, the average citizen is forced to trust that these decisions are made by those who use science competently. But, when stakes are high, science, like statistics, is often used to support almost any conclusion including the creation of bad science to influence political decisions.
Unless we study the matter in detail and review all alternatives, we should not draw independent conclusions. Science is just too complex. Yet we, like the political scientists, still pick and choose which science to believe based upon our own non-scientific biases.
--Dan Mooney is a Carson City resident and frequent contributor to the Nevada Appeal's Opinion page.
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Nevada Appeal
October 15, 2006
Letters to the editor
Nuclear waste route runs on sensitive lands
In what may be fairly viewed as an attempt to placate the State of Nevada, the U.S. Department of Energy has announced plans to evaluate a northern Nevada rail route that would see nuclear waste shipped through eight northern Nevada counties and their principal communities including Reno/Sparks, Fernley, Silver Springs, Lovelock, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Carlin, Elko, Wells and Wendover to a repository location in Nye County.
The route follows the Humboldt River for over 250 miles, the Truckee River for 65 miles, the Walker River for 12 miles and the Carson River for 2 miles. Nuclear waste would also be shipped through or adjacent to several state and federal wildlife management areas, the Rye Patch State Recreation Area and Ft. Churchill State Historic Park.
The northern route, also know as the Mina Route, would pass through or adjacent to several Native American tribal communities/reservations. Thousands of acres of private land, a scarce commodity in a state whose land area is 87 percent federally-controlled, would be crossed by the Mina Route.
While the State of Nevada continues to assert its opposition to the Yucca Mountain repository, Bob Halstead a consultant to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, was quoted in the Las Vegas Review Journal on Friday as saying, "a north-south corridor to Yucca Mountain would be "the least bad way" because it stays within valleys rather than crossing multiple ranges." Halstead went on to say, "We have told (DOE) from the beginning the Caliente route was probably not feasible and might be too expensive to build." The State of Nevada's encouragement of DOE plans to study the so-called Mina Route have not served the public interest in Nevada.
Mike Baughman
Carson City
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LaCrosse Tribune
October 15, 2006
Change is coming at Dairyland facility
By Reid Magney
La Crosse Tribune
GENOA, Wis. — Workers at Dairyland Power Cooperative’s Genoa facility are getting ready to start dismantling the closed nuclear reactor on site.
The La Crosse Area Boiling Water Reactor opened in 1969 and shut down in 1987. Since then, Dairyland has been working on plans to decommission the plant, which involves taking it apart and safely disposing of its radioactive parts.
The biggest part is the reactor pressure vessel, a large steel container where nuclear rods boiled water to create steam for the 50 megawatt generator.
“It’s a huge project because it’s such a large item,” said plant manager Roger Christians.
The vessel is considered to be low-level nuclear waste, and it will be buried in a nuclear waste facility in South Carolina.
Already, workers inside the plant have filled the vessel with concrete grout, increasing its weight to about 200 tons, Christians said.
The next step, which is now visible from the outside, is to cut a hole in the reactor building wall. Workers are removing the outer skin of insulation from part of the reactor building, and will soon start cutting a hole large enough to remove the vessel through.
The walls of the building are just over 10 inches thick — nine inches of concrete and 1.16 inches of metal. Workers will first drill through the walls, then use a diamond-studded wire saw to cut out sections.
Once the hole is cut, probably in November, workers will install rolling doors that can be closed. In March, they’ll erect a crane strong enough to lift the 200-ton vessel 20 feet in the air and slide it outside the building.
Outside, the vessel will be lowered into a steel container, which also will be filled with concrete grout, Christians said, and sealed shut. It will then weigh about 360 tons.
“There’s nothing to leak,” Christians said. “This is a low-level waste shipment, just a bigger one.”
The vessel will be laid on two special railroad cars with 20 axles, and shipped south from Genoa to South Carolina in mid-May. The exact route is not being disclosed, Christians said.
Gail Vaughn, an anti-nuclear activist who lives in Vernon County near Genoa, has mixed feelings about the decommissioning.
Vaughn said she’d feel better if Dairyland didn’t ship out the reactor vessel and other parts. “They’re going to have to write off parts of South Carolina as a dead zone” because of nuclear waste disposal there, she said.
However, Vaughn believes it was more important to keep the spent fuel rods from being shipped to Utah.
Dairyland is part owner of Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of utilities that wanted to temporarily store nuclear waste on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah. Recent federal government rulings have all but killed those plans.
Christians said Dairyland’s plan now is to store the spent fuel rods at the Genoa plant in dry casks “until the government lives up to its obligation to come and get it.”
The government’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada still isn’t done, and if it is approved it wouldn’t be able to accept waste until at least 2017.
Christians said a consultant is evaluating the best spot on the Genoa site for storing the casks. Those same casks could be used for shipping if Yucca Mountain opens.
Vaughn described the situation at Genoa as “the best a person could hope for.”
Eventually, the entire nuclear reactor facility at Genoa will be torn down, Christians said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has estimated the cost of decommissioning the plant at $79.5 million.
--Reid Magney can be reached at (608) 791-8211 or rmagney@lacrossetribune.com.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 14, 2006
Yucca public meetings slated
'Mina corridor' rail plan to be discussed
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Public meetings in Nevada were announced Friday as the Energy Department prepares to conduct new environmental studies for the Yucca Mountain Project.
The department issued a formal notice that it will prepare a wide-ranging environmental impact statement on a 280-mile corridor in western Nevada being considered for a nuclear waste railroad.
A second notice published in the Federal Register announced a study of the possible impacts of a redesigned nuclear waste handling complex on the surface of the Yucca Mountain ridge, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The moves signify possible new directions for the nuclear waste project, which the Energy Department is trying to rebalance after confronting high costs and technical challenges to its work within Nevada.
The DOE announced public scoping meetings where Nevadans would be able to examine maps and comment on its plan to add the north-south "Mina corridor" as an option to build a Yucca rail line.
Under the proposal, nuclear waste would be shipped across Northern Nevada along Union Pacific Railroad tracks, turning south around Winnemucca, then crossing west of Fallon through the Walker River Indian Reservation to Hawthorne.
From there, the DOE would build or refurbish a rail line to near Mina in Mineral County. The line then would head generally south to near Tonopah and Goldfield and along the western edge of the Nellis Air Force Range to the Yucca site.
According to Friday's notice, the DOE also is seeking comment on possible alterations to the Caliente railroad corridor across central Nevada that it continues to study as another potential rail route.
The rail meetings will be held at the following places and times:
• In Amargosa Valley at the Longstreet, state Route 373, 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 1.
• In Caliente at the Caliente Youth Center, U.S. Highway 93 North, 6-8 p.m. on Nov. 8.
• In Goldfield at the Goldfield School Gymnasium, 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 13.
• In Hawthorne at the. Hawthorne Convention Center, 932 E St., 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 14.
• In Fallon at the Fallon Convention Center, 100 Campus Way, 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 15.
Meetings to discuss alterations to the above-ground features of the proposed repository will be held:
• In Amargosa Valley at the Longstreet, 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 1.
• In Las Vegas at Cashman Center, 850 Las Vegas Blvd. North, 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 2.
A scoping meeting also has been set for Oct. 30 in Washington.
DOE spokesman Allen Benson said department officials will be on hand at all sites to record comments on both the transportation and repository study plans. He noted that the Amargosa Valley meeting will cover both proposals.
New designs for the repository site will incorporate handling facilities for multiple-purpose transport, aging, and disposal canisters that would be packed at commercial reactors and shipped to the repository.
The blueprints call for a pool facility where damaged canisters or bare nuclear fuel would be handled under water to minimize release of radiation material.
Plans also call for concrete "aging pads" where nuclear waste would be stored.
Officials from the state of Nevada, which opposes the repository plan, said those two features might prove controversial. The state contends that the storage pads amount to an "interim storage" facility that Congress made illegal under federal law in Nevada. State officials say they also plan to question the earthquake-resistance of the proposed pool.
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Pahrump Valley Times
October 13, 2006
Commission rebuffs choice for nuclear waste director
By Mark Waite
PVT
A recommendation to appoint Dave Swanson as the permanent director of the Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Office was tabled by county commissioners last week, not because of his qualifications but due to a perceived conflict of interest in the selection committee.
Interim Assistant County Manager Rick Marshall told Commissioner Patricia Cox the three-member screening committee included Ed Hanson, a former Nevada Test Site worker and member of the Pahrump town nuclear waste advisory committee; Geneva Hollis, a retired, long-time county employee who on different occasions served as acting county manager and in a number of other county positions; and himself.
Cox expressed concerns about Hollis serving on the selection committee, since her husband, Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis, is the county commission's liaison on nuclear waste. Commissioner Hollis offered to abstain from the vote. Commissioner Candice Trummell had already abstained due to her position with the Robison-Sidler consulting firm, which deals with nuclear waste transportation issues.
"When a commissioner liaison works closely with this department and his wife is sitting as a committee member, I feel there is too much of a conflict," Cox said.
She said the county normally involves the county manager and other high officials when it hires people for top management positions like the nuclear waste repository office director.
Interim County Manager Ron Williams said he divided duties with Interim Assistant County Manager Marshall when they were appointed to fill in after the termination of county manager Mike Maher back in April.
"When I was asked to put this (committee) together, I looked at people who were familiar with budgets, with the nuclear industry as well," Marshall said. After the committee was selected, Marshall said he kept the composition secret so the members couldn't be influenced by others.
The appointment of Swanson has been put on the agenda again however for Tuesday's Nye County Commission meeting. The agenda also offers commissioners the choice to appoint a new selection committee to either review all the original applicants or advertise again for the position.
Nye County received 10 applications for the position, Marshall said. One withdrew, two failed to return follow-up questionnaires by the deadline, and the remaining seven were ranked based on job qualifications, he said.
"We interviewed the top two and, based on the interview, the committee felt that Dave Swanson was the most qualified and the best selection for the position," Marshall said.
The candidates were required to list their education, experience and write a paper advising Nye County on recent congressional proposals for the interim storage of nuclear waste.
Commissioner Joni Eastley, after consulting with Nye County Chief Civil Deputy District Attorney Ron Kent, said three commissioners had to be present in the county seat during the first meeting of the month to discuss an item. Commissioner Cox was attending the meeting via video-conference from Pahrump, while both Commissioners Trummell and Hollis excused themselves, leaving only two commissioners left.
"I will tell you, I don't support this selection," Eastley said.
Dale Hammermeister, an on-site geo-technical representative, was promoted to director of the program in February but resigned in May. Before Hammermeister, the department had been without a permanent director since Les Bradshaw retired in September 2004.
Hammermeister was then rebuffed when he came back before the commissioners in June to request a no-bid $95,000 consulting contract to continue overseeing the nuclear waste program. Hammermeister represented a firm called GeoSystems Analysis Inc., based in Reno, when he bid for the contract.
At that time Swanson told commissioners Hammermeister had unique knowledge of the program that would have made it difficult to solicit competitive bids. His wife, Susy Hammermeister, bid $60,000 for another Nye County nuclear waste study contract, which was also denied.
Swanson has been the acting director of the repository office since Bradshaw left, except for when Hammermeister held the position. The director supervises the $2.6 million Nye County oversight program of Yucca Mountain and the $3.4 million Independent Scientific Investigative Program. The office has 13 staff members and contracts with over 12 scientists and engineers.
Swanson has worked at the Nuclear Waste Repository Office for four years. He received a master of science degree in water resource development in 1970 from Michigan State University. His resume lists over 25 years of experience in hydro-geology and mitigation of contaminated ground water and soil for engineering firms on behalf of firms ranging from railroads, chemical, drug and utility companies.
In another nuclear waste related issue, commissioners voted 4-0 to approve an expansion of the Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office to hire a planner to study affects of the Yucca Mountain program on surrounding communities like Beatty and Amargosa Valley. The planner would compile an inventory of current land uses and infrastructure in those communities. The study, expected to take two years, would also identify possible support facilities for the Yucca Mountain project that could be located there.
Swanson's request for the project states: "Impacts caused by new residents wanting to locate in the communities and new commercial and government facilities will stress existing (and in some cases non-existent) infrastructure. There is a current need to develop the necessary plans to assure that future development is successful and is consistent with community goals."
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Dallas Morning News
October 14, 2006
U.S. may speed approval of nuclear plants
Regulator hopes to cut license time for sites, including 9 in Texas
By Elizabeth Souder
The Dallas Morning News
ARLINGTON – The new head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission thinks he can cut the time it takes to license a nuclear power plant in half, to about two years.
Chairman Dale Klein will have many opportunities to try: The commission expects applications for 29 new nuclear power plants ahead of the 2008 deadline to get federal incentives. That includes nine reactors in Texas.
If it takes about 48 months to actually build a plant, "42 months to license seems a bit long," Mr. Klein told reporters Friday. He said it's "not unreasonable" to cut that licensing time in half without compromising safety.
"We look at too many little things and miss the big things," said Mr. Klein, who was assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear and chemical and biological defense programs before taking his current job in July.
Cutting the time it takes to license a plant could help some companies put plants into production more quickly, especially those in the very early planning stages.
For consumers, it could mean getting the relatively cheap and clean nuclear electricity sooner. And it could also pressure the U.S. government to resolve the issue of where to store nuclear waste.
"We've been sort of counting on the more traditional time of 3 ½ years. If they can do it quicker, that's good news, but we'd rather everybody feel comfortable with it," said Steve Wynn, president of NRG Texas, which plans to build the next nuclear reactor in the state, by 2014.
The U.S. has 103 nuclear power reactors, which generate about 20 percent of the country's electricity.
It's been more than a decade since the most recent plants were built, and some of them took decades to build. One holdup was that each of those plants had a unique design.
Now, the NRC has certified a few standard equipment designs for the next generation of plants, so that the NRC staff doesn't have to approve the exact designs of every single plant.
For companies that use the standard designs, and turn in pristine, complete applications, the commission will try to accelerate things, said Mr. Klein, who has worked as a vice chancellor for the University of Texas System and still has tenure at UT Austin.
"When I say standardization, I mean standardization. I want to see the wallpaper the same color," he said.
Three companies have said they want to build Texas nuclear plants.
Planning plants
NRG Texas said in June it plans to build two more reactors at its South Texas Project and expects the first to be in production by 2014.
Last month, TXU Corp. announced plans to build up to six reactors at three sites across the state by around 2015 to 2020.
And on Friday, a spokesman for Exelon Corp. said the company plans to apply for a license to build one nuclear plant in Texas. Exelon spokesman Craig Nesbit said the company is evaluating eight sites in Texas, none of which has a nuclear plant now.
Mr. Wynn, with NRG Texas, said a quicker licensing process might shave about a year off his timeline, but it wouldn't shorten things substantially because he's on a waiting list for equipment.
He pointed out that there are only a few foundries that can make the large equipment nuclear plants use, and NRG secured its spot in line to meet its own timeline.
Mr. Wynn said a speedier licensing process would be most helpful for companies that haven't ordered equipment yet.
"If the objective of the country is to have a new nuclear fleet, for units No. 10 through 30, it's likely to accelerate when those plants come online," he said.
Mr. Klein agreed that the initial applications might not get the benefit of his goal. He said his staff might have to go through the licensing process a couple of times to find ways to work more quickly.
'Emotional issue'
As for what to do with the nuclear waste the new plants will generate, Mr. Klein declined to give an opinion. "The disposal of fuel is an emotional issue" as well as a scientific decision, Mr. Klein said.
The Department of Energy has said it will apply to the NRC for a license in 2008 for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The commission would have three years to consider the application, Mr. Klein said.
That means some new plants may break ground before the commission licenses a site to dispose of the spent fuel, he said.
E-mail esouder@dallasnews.com
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Energy Central
October 13, 2006
EnergyBiz Insider
Where to Store Spent Nuclear Fuel
Ken Silverstein
Editor-in-Chief
Just when it seemed that a permanent nuclear waste storage site might be derailed, the possibility has come roaring back. A bill to speed up time frames and remove some procedural obstacles to implementation of such a repository is now before Congress.
While Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici's legislation wants the federal government to take control over nuclear waste, his bill's future is far from certain. The measure wants to open up Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles away from Las Vegas, by 2011 to defense-related nuclear waste and by 2017 to commercially-related spent fuel from utilities. All of it would eventually be stored underground there.
Under the bill, defense waste can be shipped to Yucca after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves an above-ground storage facility. That is estimated to occur by 2010, making it possible that the spent fuel could be stored within concrete walls about a year later. At the same time, the U.S. Secretary of Energy could decide what waste would qualify to be re-processed, or recycled -- all as a way to lessen the level of waste sent to the repository. The fuel that cannot be recycled would be stored at Yucca.
"This bill will remove legal barriers that will allow the (Department of Energy) to meet its obligation to accept and store spent nuclear fuel as soon as possible," says Domenici, in a floor speech. The measure gives the Energy Department the authority to create 147,000 acres of land as a buffer zone around Yucca. It would also fund a rail system to transport waste from 131 sites around the country.
Current law enacted in 1982 permits 70,000 tons of spent fuel to be housed at Yucca. But, Domenici says that the threshold is too little and the limit would be quickly reached -- if the site becomes a permanent storage facility. For example, about 54,000 tons of both commercial and defense-related waste now awaits permanent storage But, the Energy Department says those entities could generate 119,000 tons of spent fuel by 2035.
The pending measure deviates from the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, allowing the Energy Department to circumvent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that must approve the Yucca Mountain application. If the bill would pass, the Energy Department could move the spent fuel to the site before the nuclear agency gives its permission -- something that has been repeatedly pushed back and is not expected now until 2008.
Until Yucca Mountain would become workable, the bill would allow for the creation of interim storage facilities in several states -- something opposed by 10 state attorney generals. "The proposal does not contain even basic measures to address the major transportation-safety issues entailed in moving nuclear waste, such as emergency-response preparation, accident prevention, security and public education," says the coalition of attorneys general, in a letter to Chairman Domenici.
On-Site Storage
Critics of Domenici's latest efforts say that it is an attempt by federal officials to bypass the current set of requirements. If the measure were to become law, they have vowed to challenge it in the courts. Opponents have always maintained that Yucca poses serious environmental and safety concerns and argue that the best solution to storing nuclear waste is to keep it on site and in underground storage near the reactors that generate it.
Public Citizen, the Union for Concerned Scientists and many others told a House subcommittee that highly reinforced dry casks is the appropriate place to put spent nuclear fuel. Moreover, Yucca Mountain is a poor solution and would not obviate the need for on site storage, they say. Some members of Congress want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue rules requiring permanent on-site, underground storage at each of the nation's 103 nuclear power plants.
Yucca Mountain "is not a site that can be licensed given reasonable standards for health and public safety," said Michele Boyd, legislative counsel with Public Citizen. She says that the ongoing effort to create a permanent nuclear waste site there has cost $10 billion over the last 20 years.
The issue of storing spent nuclear fuel is probably the most pressing one facing the nuclear power industry. While proponents have done a reasonably good job of letting the public know that nuclear energy is environmentally friendly, they have yet to persuade all parties that the generation and storage processes are totally safe. And, if federal incentives are successful and more nuclear power generation is built, then the federal government would likely need to create more permanent storage facilities beyond what Yucca Mountain has to offer.
An MIT study says that existing nuclear storage sites should be expanded to enable the storage of spent fuel decades into the future. At some point, the technology to allow that fuel to be recycled will have advanced. Instead of burying it all, some of the spent fuel could then be used to power other nuclear generators.
Other countries, meantime, are grappling with similar issues. France, for example, now reprocesses its waste and uses it in other reactors. The country also buries it underground in storage at two sites there and in ventilated wells to control the temperature. An underground research laboratory in eastern France is now researching more effective ways to bury such waste.
In the United States, leading lawmakers are insistent that Yucca Mountain is the best long-term solution when it comes to storing spent fuel. They are working to remove the legal barriers to allow for such a permanent repository. Opponents are determined to prevent it. As such, the more immediate question may be whether underground, on-site storage is the most optimal answer to the problem.
Respond to the editor: energybizinsider@energycentral.com
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Platts
October 12, 2006
DOE eyes Yucca Mountain waste repository rail alternative
Washington (Platts)--12Oct2006
The US Department of Energy plans to consider a second path for a rail line in Nevada to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, documents showed.
In a Federal Register notice scheduled for publication Friday, DOE said it would consider the environmental impact of a 280-mile path, known as the Mina corridor, through the Walker River Paiute Tribe's land in western Nevada.
The plan is an alternative to a 319-mile corridor from Caliente to Yucca Mountain that has been DOE's preference for rail transportation to the facility.
The tribe has given its blessing to the study.
"The Mina corridor appears to offer potential advantages to the extent it would cross fewer mountain ranges, utilize existing rail bed and also be a shorter distance," DOE said in a draft of the notice. "These potential advantages would simplify design and construction, and therefore would be less costly to construct."
DOE considered the Mina route in the 1990s, but dropped the idea when the Walker River Paiutes refused it access to their reservation. The tribe reconsidered earlier in 2006.
Separately, DOE is also scheduled to publish Friday a Federal Register notice announcing plans for a "supplemental" environmental impact statement on the Yucca Mountain repository site.
The department said it would carry out the additional review because of its 2005 decision to use one type of canister to ship, store and ultimately dispose of nuclear waste instead of multiple types. The change necessitated changes in the repository's design. The original EIS was completed in 2002.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 12, 2006
DOE to publish rail plan for Yucca
Advantages cited for using Mina corridor
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is preparing to reopen its plans for a rail line to Yucca Mountain, adding a new route to be scrutinized as a possible path to the proposed nuclear waste repository.
The DOE is poised to announce detailed studies of a north-south rail corridor through western Nevada. The alignment was examined in the 1990s but shelved when the Walker River Paiute Indians refused access to their reservation. The tribe reconsidered this year.
The department's intentions are scheduled to be published Friday in the Federal Register, according to DOE officials. State and local leaders and members of Congress were notified on Wednesday.
Also Friday, the department will announce plans to prepare an environmental impact statement of a redesigned industrial complex at the Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where nuclear waste would arrive and be managed before being placed underground, officials said.
The published notice about the railroad amounts to the DOE's formal acknowledgment that it is intrigued with what has become known as the Mina route to Yucca Mountain.
"Based on DOE's preliminary analysis, in comparison with other rail corridors, the Mina corridor appears to offer potential advantages to the extent it would cross fewer mountain ranges, utilize existing rail bed and also be a shorter distance," the department said in a draft notice obtained Wednesday.
"These potential advantages would simplify design and construction, and therefore would be less costly to construct," DOE reported in the draft. "The Mina corridor also would appear to have fewer land use conflicts, and would involve less land disturbance."
The department has identified a 319-mile corridor from Caliente across rural Nevada to the repository, a route that carries an estimated $2 billion price tag.
The Mina corridor is 280 miles. DOE officials say new construction would be necessary on 240 to 259 miles because the corridor includes an existing rail line from Wabuska to Hawthorne.
The Energy Department will continue to prepare an environmental impact statement of the Caliente corridor. Draft versions of both studies would be released by the summer, DOE spokesman Allen Benson said.
The public will be invited to comment on both proposals and the new repository surface designs at scoping meetings in Amargosa Valley, Caliente, Goldfield, Hawthorne, Las Vegas and Fallon in November.
Within the Caliente corridor, the DOE plans new analyses of alternative alignments in several areas, including Caliente and Eccles, through Garden Valley, near the Reveille Range, near Goldfield and the ghost town of Bonnie Claire, and in Oasis Valley, according to the draft notice.
While some industry officials have promoted the Mina route, David Blee, a nuclear waste shipping consultant, said the full picture will emerge only after detailed studies.
"The verdict still is very much out on the ultimate decision," said Blee, a spokesman for the U.S. Transport Council. "There are things other than cost that will have to be evaluated," such as the chances of obtaining rights of way through the Walker River Indian Reservation.
Tribal leaders reversed policy and agreed in May to allow the government to map a new rail line through their reservation. The tribal chairwoman said the tribe is reserving a final decision on allowing nuclear waste shipments.
Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant to the state of Nevada, said the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs might also become involved in the matter. That could pose a wild card, he said, because the agency played a role in rejecting a lease for the Private Fuel Storage nuclear site on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah.
While the state continues to oppose the repository, Halstead said, a north-south corridor to Yucca Mountain would be "the least bad way" because it stays within valleys rather than crossing multiple ranges.
"We have told (DOE) from the beginning the Caliente route was probably not feasible and might be too expensive to build," Halstead said.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 12, 2006
Railroad route to nuclear dump in Nevada getting another look
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Energy Department is reconsidering building a rail line through western Nevada to the site of a proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, officials said.
The north-south route dubbed the Mina Corridor was examined in the 1990s but shelved after the Walker River Paiute Indians refused access to their reservation. The tribe reconsidered this year.
The Energy Department has said it favored plans to build a 319-mile east-west rail line from Caliente, near the Utah border, across rural Nevada to the nuclear dump site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The so-called Caliente Corridor route could cost $2 billion.
Department officials notified state and local leaders and members of Congress that the plan to take another look at the Mina route would be published Friday in the Federal Register in Washington, D.C.
"The Mina corridor appears to offer potential advantages to the extent it would cross fewer mountain ranges, utilize existing rail bed and also be a shorter distance," the department said in a draft notice obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"These potential advantages would simplify design and construction," the report said.
The Mina route would be 280 miles long and include an existing rail line between the towns of Wabuska and Hawthorne. A cost estimate has not been made public.
The Energy Department plans to continue preparing an environmental impact statement on the Caliente corridor, with informational meetings about the rail plans planned in November in several Nevada towns.
Draft versions of both studies would be released by the summer, department and Yucca Mountain project spokesman Allen Benson said in Las Vegas.
Walker River Indian tribal leaders reversed policy and agreed in May to let the government map a new rail line through their reservation. The tribal chairwoman said the tribe was reserving a final decision on allowing nuclear waste shipments.
The state of Nevada opposes the repository plan. However, Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant for the state, said a north-south corridor appeared to make more sense and could cost less than the Caliente route.
The Energy Department also was set to announce plans for an environmental impact statement of a redesigned industrial complex where nuclear waste would arrive and be managed at Yucca Mountain before being placed underground.
There currently is no rail line to the Yucca site, which Congress and the Bush administration picked in 2002 as the place to entomb 77,000 tons of radioactive waste now being stored at nuclear reactors in 39 states. The project has been stalled by funding shortfalls and questions about quality control work during site selection.
--Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
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Las Vegas SUN
October 12, 2006
Berkley on easy street
Challenger has little hope against charismatic incumbent
By Michael J. Mishak
Las Vegas Sun
Like the Las Vegas-area district she represents, Shelley Berkley is electric.
On Monday, at a candidates' fair in Bally's grand ballroom, Berkley, a Democratic congresswoman seeking a fifth term in the House, attracted attention like a neon sign.
Dressed in a bright red suit and wearing a pair of stars-and-stripes high heels, complete with matching handbag, Berkley demonstrated the fine art of schmooze, working a perpetual circle of supporters for the better part of an hour.
It was an easy task for the one-time cocktail waitress and keno runner turned lawyer.
She shook hands, exchanged hugs, posed for photographs and traded words on everything from the Nevada Test Site to dog purses - that is to say, purses shaped like dogs.
"All politics is personal," Berkley said, taking a break. "I always run my races as if they were the most difficult of my career - no matter who's on the other side."
Still, it doesn't take a political scientist to see that Berkley is coasting to re-election on the power of incumbency, which brings with it big money and big name recognition, two things that her Republican challenger, Kenneth Wegner, clearly doesn't have.
In fact, despite her protests to the contrary, this may be the easiest campaign of Berkley's career.
First, there's her financial advantage.
As of July 26, the end of the last federal campaign finance reporting period, she had more than $1.3 million in cash on hand, much of it coming from Nevada's gaming industry and labor unions.
Wegner, on the other hand, has refused contributions from political action committees and special-interest groups, instead bankrolling the bulk of his campaign with his own money, as a matter of principle. He said he has taken out a second mortgage on his home and expects to spend an additional $20,000 in personal savings, plus whatever he gets from selling his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Then, there's the demographics.
Nevada's 1st Congressional District is the very definition of safe. Democrats hold a 48 percent to 33 percent registration edge - 38,000 more possible voters - over Republicans. Those numbers help explain why both the national and state Republican parties have all but abandoned Wegner's candidacy.
Narrowly elected to the House in 1998, when Republican John Ensign gave up the seat to run for the Senate, Berkley has since fended off two strong challenges, the first of which came in 2000 from then-state Sen. Jon Porter. She won by 8 percentage points that year, and her margin of victory has grown in the last two election cycles. In 2004, she cruised to a fourth term with 66 percent of the vote.
"I'm not anticipating a certain percentage this year," she said in an interview. "I'm going to wake up Nov. 8 knowing I worked as hard as I can."
In the nearly four weeks before Election Day, Berkley's political work - limited though it is, with fewer than a dozen events on her public schedule during that period - will involve campaigning on her legislative record, often as it relates to a number of incendiary issues this election cycle.
Immigration has taken center stage in this campaign, if for no reason other than Wegner has put it there, taking to the airwaves with radio ads that attack Berkley for supporting "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.
Berkley voted against last year's tough House bill to tighten the borders and to make felons of anyone living in this country illegally or any U.S. citizen who helps an illegal immigrant here. She faulted Republicans, including her Nevada colleagues, Republican Reps. Jim Gibbons and Porter (who rebounded from his 2000 loss to Berkley to join her in Congress in 2003 from Nevada's new 3rd Congressional District), charging that their support for the legislation showed a lack of leadership.
Berkley said that while she favors a comprehensive approach to immigration - one that includes both a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for those living here illegally - the GOP leadership in the House has stymied discussion, advancing only piecemeal legislation.
Nevertheless, she voted for a House bill last month that authorizes the building of a 700-mile fence along the border. "There's no sovereign nation on the planet that could survive if they didn't have control of their border," she said afterward.
Berkley also has pushed to enforce existing immigration laws, supported hiring more Border Patrol agents and fought - without success - to toughen the country's visa program.
"I don't think you can be tougher than I have been," Berkley said. "If (Wegner's) got a problem with the proposal in Congress he ought to talk to his own party and the president (who) proposed it."
As in other campaigns across the country, the war in Iraq also is a central issue in the 1st District race.
A hawk on defense, Berkley has called for the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and says Congress was misled by the Bush administration when it asked for authority to use military force against Iraq in 2002.
The war in Iraq, she said, has been a "deadly diversion" from the global war on terrorism, siphoning critical resources from Afghanistan.
Breaking with prominent Democrats, Berkley, who sits on the House International Relations Committee, opposes the idea of setting a timetable for troop withdrawal. The best way to correct the nation's course in Iraq, she argues, would be for voters to elect Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate next month.
"The Bush administration has got to level with the American people," she said. "We deserve an honest assessment of where things stand on the ground. How many lives will it take to be victorious? And what is the definition of victorious?"
Until recently, Democrats have failed in their responsibility to hold the administration accountable, Berkley said. "I think the Democratic Party has found its voice," she said. "And the timing couldn't be better."
If Democrats retake Congress, Berkley said lawmakers would aggressively pursue an agenda that has been blocked by the Republican leadership.
Among their priorities: increasing the minimum wage, fully implementing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, giving the government authority to negotiate prices for the new Medicare prescription drug program and repealing last year's energy bill.
For Berkley, the energy legislation, which awarded billions in oil and gas subsidies as those industries recorded record profits, is a sticking point.
"With an oil man sitting in the White House and a Republican Congress that doesn't know how to say anything but 'Yes, sir,' we're never going to have energy independence in this country," she said.
She introduced her own energy bill in August that would eliminate tax credits to the nuclear and fossil-fuel industries, instead directing those resources to the research and development of renewable energy sources, including solar, wind and geothermal power. The legislation also would raise average fuel economy standards, from the current 27 miles to the gallon to 33 mpg by 2015.
Then there's Nevada's perennial issue - Yucca Mountain.
Berkley has been perhaps the loudest opponent of the proposed nuclear waste repository about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Unable to convince her House colleagues to vote against funding for the project, she pledged to put her own life on the line to block the project earlier this year.
"I will lie in front of any train that attempts to send nuclear waste to Nevada," Berkley said from the House floor. "Nuclear waste will come to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, over my dead body, I promise you that."
Important as those issues are, however, at the end of the day, Berkley said, political success depends on constituent service.
"It takes more than money," Berkley said. "Legislation is important. And votes can be forgiven. But not returning that phone call can lose you an election."
As of July, the Greenspun family, owners of the Sun, and Greenspun Corporation executives had contributed $18,100 to Berkley's campaign.
Michael J. Mishak can be reached at 259-2347 or at michael.mishak@lasvegassun.com.
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Pahrump Valley Times
October 12, 2006
$2m microwave link to bridge gaps
By Mark Waite
PVT
Communication breakdowns between the Nye County sheriff's personnel in the north and south county could be a thing of the past after county commissioners approved a new $2 million shortwave communications system with little discussion last week.
Assistant Sheriff Rick Marshall said $1.48 million is being funded through an appropriation secured by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., following a request by Nye County Washington D.C. lobbyist Rick Spees.
Nye County will be on the hook for the remaining $555,042, of which $450,000 has already been set aside from the Payment Equal to Taxes the county receives from the U.S. Department of Energy for the land value of the Yucca Mountain project.
During a contentious discussion between Sheriff Tony DeMeo and Commissioner Candice Trummell back in July, the sheriff said the new system would allow all of the sheriff's telephone and Internet communication to be broadcast on the new network instead of using telephone lines. Other county departments could also piggyback onto the system, which Marshall said will have the bandwidth of 26 T-1 lines.
The system would provide a backup, DeMeo said, as telephone lines have gone dead before, including one occasion when 911 service was down in Tonopah.
Back in July DeMeo told commissioners, "We don't have any redundancy in the system. If Tonopah is down, Tonopah is down."
The sheriff recalled one instance during a power outage in Las Vegas when Nye County sheriff's dispatchers had to relay a message from Pahrump to Beatty using a solar-powered antenna. Beatty dispatchers then relayed the information to Tonopah.
Trummell's only concern Oct. 3 was about the payment schedule: 20 percent on award of the contract, 50 percent upon shipment, leaving the county only the remainder of the money to make sure the system is acceptable.
The county would use existing microwave dishes and repeater towers on Sawtooth Mountain, Gold Point and Brock Mountain to connect Pahrump, Beatty and Tonopah, with a spur to Warm Springs. Another repeater tower would be constructed on Robs Peak for better service to Amargosa Valley.
Commissioner Gary Hollis was meeting with Pahrump officials over the lease of Pahrump Fire Station No. 2 on Bell Vista Road to house the communications building. Trummell was leery about signing a 10-year lease agreement over concerns the town will charge a lot of rent money after that expires.
"They would not give a guarantee ... and that was a concern I had as well," Marshall said. He estimated the county could spend $100,000 to build the addition.
A five-year memorandum of understanding was also approved with the Southern Nevada Area Communications Council for $60 per radio, for 300 radios, or $18,000, to link up Nye County sheriff's deputies to Clark County law enforcement agencies via the Clark County microwave system.
Besides being able to share information with Las Vegas Metro, the regional communication network would be used for regional Homeland Security, the sheriff's department states in the funding request.
A $34,233 annual service contract was also approved with Motorola for the new system.
Trummell was still fuming over a recommendation by the sheriff's department that it contract with a consultant in Florida for $60,000 to acquire additional frequencies, which didn't fit. But Mary Walsh, Motorola representative, addressed Trummell's concerns about delays in acquiring frequencies, saying these type of projects can take up to two years.
"Some of the things we recently completed include things that will help with the frequency issues that Nye County has confronted lately. A lot of these things are unforeseeable, especially in the field of VHR band," she said.
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Augusta Chronicle
October 12, 2006
Stabilized waste leaves SRS
By Josh Gelinas
South Carolina Bureau Chief
AIKEN - The Department of Energy has successfully stabilized thousands of gallons of radioactive liquid at Savannah River Site, "achieving a major safety milestone," officials announced Wednesday.
In all, the federal agency and its private contractor, Washington Savannah River Co., have satisfied more than 50 recommendations from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board issued between 1994 and 2000, according to a dual statement from the organizations.
Among accomplished goals officials listed:
- About 100,000 gallons of plutonium solution: About 80 percent was stabilized and will eventually be turned into fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. The remainder was mixed with glass and will eventually be shipped to a geological repository, presumably Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
- 3,700 containers of plutonium residue: Some was placed in storage containers to eventually be turned into nuclear reactor fuel; some was mixed with glass to be shipped out of state; and less radioactive quantities already were shipped to an out-of-state burial ground.
- 3,800 gallons americium/curium: Mixed with glass and placed in canisters that will be shipped away.
"The important thing here is that a large fraction of this stuff is leaving Savannah River Site and leaving South Carolina," John Dickenson, Washington Savannah River Co.'s deputy chief engineer for management and operations, said in a telephone interview.
The DOE and Washington Savannah River Co. also announced Wednesday that 20,000 drums of transuranic waste - solid materials that came in contact with radioactive substances but that are less harmful - have been shipped out of SRS.
SRS has disposed of about 5,500 cubic meters of the original 11,800-cubic meters of waste it was dealing with. Officials said that at the current rate, the site will get rid of the remaining quantities by 2012, a dozen years sooner than originally estimated.
Reach Josh Gelinas at (803) 648-1395, ext. 110, or josh.gelinas@augustachronicle.com.
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Lincoln County News
October 11, 2006
Maine Yankee Awarded Damages in Federal Lawsuit
By Greg Foster
Maine Yankee has been awarded $75.8 million in damages in its legal battle with the federal government over its failure to remove used nuclear fuel from the Wiscasset plant site as promised by 1998.
“While the court’s decision will need to be reviewed and evaluated, the Yankee companies’ initial reaction to the monetary award is very positive,” said Michael Thomas, company vice president and chief financial officer.
Judge James Merow of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims made the favorable decision Sept. 30 for Maine Yankee as well as two other Yankee nuclear power plants, Connecticut Yankee and Yankee Atomic Electric Co. in Rowe, Mass. for a total $142.8 million in claims against the federal government.
Two federal courts, including the Court of Federal Claims, found that the government did breach its contract with the three companies and other utilities. Thus in 2004, a trial was conducted in the Court of Federal Claims to determine the amount of damages owed each company.
“However, the ruling does not solve the problem of use nuclear fuel remaining at the plant sites, and the federal government is urged to remove the material promptly,” Thomas said. “We hope this ruling will spur the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) to begin fulfilling its obligation.”
Currently there are 64 concrete storage containers at a storage facility on the former plant site holding spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste in steel canisters. The storage installation is the only physical part of Maine Yankee left on the site since it completed its decommissioning work last year and has been there since its construction two or three years ago.
“The monetary award does not eliminate the government’s contractual obligation to remove used nuclear fuel from the three sites,” Thomas said. “And the real solution is for the government to permanently remove the used fuel and high-level waste.”
The award means that electric customers will benefit eventually from the award, and could affect rates, which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission determines, according to Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes. “It is up to FERC to decide on how it is to be applied, but it can only be good news for ratepayers it we get it.”
The final figure falls short of the total $176.5 million in damages sought for all three Yankee plants and the $78.1 million for Maine Yankee specifically.
However, Maine Yankee will have the opportunity in the future to file other suits for damages after 2002 and until the spent fuel and waste is removed, since the decision is only for cost damages from 1998 through 2002.
Maine Yankee and the other Yankee companies will not be able to have the awards credited anytime soon to the companies respective electric ratepayer funded decommissioning or spent fuel funds because the federal government is expected to appeal the Sept. 30 decision. Ratepayers have been paying one-tenth of every cent of rates charged them for the decommissioning and storage of the fuel and waste, Howes said.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act stipulates that people who benefit from electricity produced by nuclear power plants have to pay for the disposal of the fuel the plants generate through payments to the federal Nuclear Waste Fund.
In return, the federal government has the obligation to remove it from plant sites and dispose of it in a federal repository. Although electric customers have met their obligation to pay for the removal and disposal of the fuel, the federal government has failed to remove the fuel or open a facility for its storage, Maine Yankee officials pointed out.
Howes said that Maine Yankee plans to continue to working with the State of Maine and the Congressional delegation to pressure the DOE to follow through on its promises of providing a national repository for its spent nuclear fuel and high level nuclear waste.
There have been plans for a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the DOE continues to set the deadline for beginning storage there. It is unknown when the federal government will fulfill its obligations.
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State of Nevada
October 10, 2006
Governor Kenny C. Guinn
No Confidence in Yucca Mountain
On September 8th, the Secretary of the Interior vetoed the Private Fuel Storage (PFS) facility for storing radioactive spent nuclear fuel in Utah after PFS had already received a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct the facility on the Goshute Indian reservation in western Utah. There are many lessons here for people on all sides of the radioactive waste debate.
PFS pursued the license application over the strong objections of the people in Utah and their congressional representatives. In the federal scheme for nuclear power, the feelings of the citizens of Utah, or of any other state, don’t matter because the federal government preempts all authority in this area. Opponents’ arguments may drag things out, but the NRC has never seen an application it wouldn’t license. So, after a nine-year licensing process, the NRC granted PFS a license in spite of almost unanimous opposition to the project within the state of Utah.
The difference this time was that the Secretary of the Interior is the legally-designated trustee for federal and Indian lands, and he had to decide whether an interim storage site for radioactive spent (used) nuclear fuel would be a prudent use of these lands. He concluded it was not.
The lesson for those who would ride roughshod over state and public concerns about nuclear waste is that relying on federal preemption to gain approvals is not a secure foundation for a project. Spending millions on an NRC license application process, as PFS did, is not a good investment if the state and its people do not want the project. The law may not require it, but project developers had better meet the state’s concerns, and not only those of the five NRC commissioners sitting in Washington.
There is another especially interesting aspect to this decision—the reason why the Secretary said it was imprudent to proceed with PFS. The facility was to store “dry” casks containing radioactive spent fuel on an “interim” basis with the fuel ultimately to bet shipped to the federal waste repository the Department of Energy wants to put at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Interior Secretary concluded, among other things, that he was not confident the Yucca Mountain repository would ever open.
Of course, the Secretary is just facing up to the facts about Yucca Mountain. In 2002, when Congress gave DOE the green light to proceed to an NRC license application, DOE promised to file such an application in 2004 and to open the facility in 2010. Today, four years later, DOE’s application date has slipped to 2008 with the projected opening to after, perhaps many years after, 2017 – if that facility opens at all.
The new head of the DOE waste office, Ward Sproat, admitted in a recent Senate hearing that the delays were mainly due to DOE’s own management problems - problems that stem ultimately from the difficulty in rationalizing an almost uniquely bad and unsafe site and the impossibility of covering up fundamentally fatal flaws at Yucca Mountain.
The Secretary’s finding is extraordinary because the Bush administration has put opening Yucca Mountain at the center of its nuclear policy and is constantly putting an optimistic face on the project. This was the first time a federal official (and certainly one as high-up as a cabinet secretary) acting in a fiduciary capacity, had to make a decision on the prudence of relying on DOE promises.
Just as important as the Interior Secretary’s finding on PFS are the recent remarks of the president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, retired Admiral Frank “Skip” Bowman, who told members of the House energy and water subcommittee that spent nuclear fuel is perfectly safe being stored at commercial nuclear power plants, and that the need for a Yucca Mountain repository is more for “public perception of confidence in where we are going.” Bowman went on the say that, as a contingency, interim storage sites should be set up, but not using the same method used to choose Yucca Mountain. "No more picking a state and forcing it down somebody's throat," said Bowman.
Nevada should take heart from the fact that the State’s assessment of Yucca Mountain’s dim prospects are shared by top federal and industry officials who know in their hearts that Nevada is right even if they don’t always admit it. We should also take heart from the fact that there are top-level officials willing to say the emperor has no clothes.
If the nuclear crowd wants to reduce public hostility and foster an atmosphere of broad public acceptance for nuclear facilities, they should start by leveling with the public and accepting that such facilities ought not and cannot be shoved down people’s throats.
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Summit Daily News
October 08, 2006
Two weeks in the West: an update on environmental issues
High Country News Staff Report
Take that nuke waste and shove it. "We wanted to put a spike right through the heart of this project and this does it," said Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, R, praising the Interior Department's Sept. 7 rejection of the Skull Valley Goshute Tribe's plan to store spent nuclear fuel rods on its reservation. The site, southwest of Salt Lake City, would have temporarily housed up to 44,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste on its way to the proposed federal repository in Yucca Mountain - likely providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue for the tribe. Critics argue that the plan involves unacceptable safety and security risks, and some say the troubled Yucca Mountain site may never be built, leaving the Goshutes holding the bag.
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Boston Globe
October 07, 2006
Promise and challenge for Democrats
By Derrick Z. Jackson
At a Casino bowling alley at the crossroads of town, two fathers were on separate lanes, spending after-school time with their daughters. Mike Baldridge, 38, is a realtor and a registered Republican. He said he is drawn to the Republican rhetoric of personal responsibility. ‘‘The Democratic Party puts the government above the family,’’ he said.
That said, he is increasingly troubled by Republican policies. A Catholic, he believes in the ‘‘complete’’ separation of church and state and said ‘‘the conservative wing is pushing people too far in the other direction.’’ He said he cares about the environment, which Republicans have often ignored. He is concerned about children being turned into test-taking robots.
‘‘Bush’s big program is called No Child Left Behind,’’ Baldridge said. ‘‘I call it No Child Gets Ahead. There are too many kids who can do better who are being held back and too many that could do better not being pushed. They’re not letting kids be taught at their own pace. We need more vocational programs for students. If it keeps going, No Child Left Behind will be the downfall of the education system.’’
The other father, Jim Northcutt, 45, a printing press installer, works without health insurance. ‘‘Luckily, my kids have never been sick,’’ said the father of four children. ‘‘I don’t have $3,000 to find out what’s wrong with me.’’ He too fears the erosion of public education, especially for the 10-year-old daughter he was bowling with. ‘‘That’s what made America great — good public schools, free education,’’ he said. He said he is a Democrat who voted in 2004 for John Kerry, but said he would consider Republican John McCain if the Democrats do not come up with a strong candidate. ‘‘The Republicans know how to play hardball,’’ he said. ‘‘The Democrats haven’t shown that yet.’’
Baldridge and Northcutt are two reasons that Nevada poses both promise and a stiff challenge to the Democrats when they come here with the new, second-in-the-nation presidential caucus in 2008. There are swing voters to be had in this swing state on what have been core issues for Democrats — education, the environment, and healthcare. But they are tired of Democrats whose values seem to swing in the breeze. They also want to see if the Democrats can tailor a message for a vast desert state different from that designed to appeal to Iowa and New Hampshire.
‘‘Voters here are going to want to hear some meaningful things and straight answers on things like immigration, public lands, water, alternative energy, military installations, economic security, and healthcare for seniors,’’ said Laurayne Murray, 58, a member of the Pahrump town board who is running for state assembly. Yucca Mountain, the controversial proposed nuclear waste site, is not far away. She said the toughest issue might be immigration. ‘‘I think the social compassion is there, but people want a tough policy, a concrete policy. If the Democrats try to sidestep it, that’s a killer.’’
If they cannot figure out the message in Pahrump, an hour out of Las Vegas in the sixth-fastest-growing county in the United States, Nye County, they will have trouble everywhere. Balancing toughness and compassion in an immigration platform will be tricky because Pahrump is 11 percent Latino and the state is a quarter Latino.
Waiting for the final bell and for their children outside an elementary school, immigrants Yolanda Garcia, 36, and Amalia DeLeon, 45, said that they want a fair system of temporary worker permits instead of 700 miles of fences along the US-Mexico border. Garcia originally came here from Mexico to help a family construction business.
They said the United States would be better off giving undocumented people who are already here a chance by providing more education opportunities. ‘‘I want him to finish the war,’’ Garcia said, through her 13-year-old daughter. ‘‘It’s not helping the people here.’’
Back at the bowling alley, Jim Northcutt’s wife, Delia, 41, arrived in the middle of a game. She is a registered Republican but likes 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards and Illinois Senator Barack Obama on education. ‘‘I’m divided,’’ she said. ‘‘If Edwards runs, I might go for it and vote for him.’’
On the other lane, Baldridge said he is open to a Democrat because ‘‘the Iraq war has been a waste of resources. If the Republicans keep doing such a bad job, I will consider a Democrat in 2008.’’
Derrick Z. Jackson’s e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.
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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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