Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, October 20, 2006
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Business Wire
October 20, 2006
Nevada Calls for DOE to Withdraw Notice for New Railroad to Yucca Mountain, Allow More Time for Review
CARSON CITY, Nev.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In a letter sent Friday to the U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada officials called for DOE to withdraw and re-issue notices for public meetings and comment on its latest plans to evaluate a new rail route for carrying nuclear waste through some of the most populated and well-traveled parts of northern and western Nevada.
Nevada opposes the federal government’s plans to store high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The state also opposes DOE’s latest transportation proposals, according to the Oct. 20 letter from Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects.
“First of all, Nevada does not favor any proposed rail route. There’s no good way to get nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain,” Loux said. “That being said, DOE’s latest plan to transport waste through the so-called Mina corridor actually impacts more Nevada cities and towns than any other route they could have selected.”
For instance, Loux said DOE’s proposed “Mina corridor” route would move waste on existing railroad lines running parallel with Interstate 80 from the California border on the west and the Utah border on the east, carrying high-level nuclear waste through downtown Reno and its new below-grade railroad “trench.” Waste trains from the east would come through Elko, he added.
Under the “Mina corridor” proposal, DOE proposes to ship waste across Northern Nevada along Union Pacific Railroad tracks, turning southeast around Fernley, then crossing west of Fallon through the Walker River Indian Reservation to Hawthorne.
From there, DOE would build or renovate a rail line to a point near the town of Mina in Mineral County, Nev. The line would then run mostly south toward Tonopah and Goldfield, along the west side of the Nellis Air Force Range to Yucca Mountain.
On Oct. 13, DOE issued a formal notice of intent that it will prepare an environmental impact statement covering a roughly 280-mile swath of Nevada being considered for a railroad to transport high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. DOE also issued a separate notice of intent related to its plans to redesign a proposed nuclear waste handling complex on the surface of the Yucca Mountain ridge.
In his letter, Loux urged DOE to give Nevadans more time and more chances to comment on these plans. He called on DOE to extend the comment period from the existing 45 days to at least 90 days and to have detailed maps ready to show the public. He also suggested that DOE hold meetings in other communities that will be impacted by these plans, including Reno, Elko, Battle Mountain, Winnemucca, Lovelock and Yerington, Nev., as well as in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Sacramento, Calif.
“The notices of October 13, 2006, are yet another example of DOE burdening Nevadans with short time limits and inadequate information for meaningful participation,” Loux wrote in his letter to Edward Sproat, director of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
DOE announced last week that it plans to hold the following public meetings:
* In Amargosa Valley at the Longstreet on state Route 373 from 4-7 p.m. Nov. 1.
* In Caliente at the Caliente Youth Center on U.S. Highway 93 North from 6-8 p.m. on Nov. 8.
* In Goldfield at the Goldfield School Gymnasium from 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 13.
* In Hawthorne at the Hawthorne Convention Center, 932 E St., from 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 14.
* In Fallon at the Fallon Convention Center, 100 Campus Way, from 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 15.
* Meetings on DOE’s proposed changes to above-ground aspects of the proposed nuclear waste repository will be held:
* In Amargosa Valley at the Longstreet from 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 1.
* In Las Vegas at Cashman Center, 850 Las Vegas Blvd. North, from 4-7 p.m. on Nov. 2.
For a copy of the letter, visit www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/whatsnew or call (702) 853-7334.
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NEI Nuclear Notes
October 20, 2006
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell Urges Passage of Yucca Mountain Bill
In an October 16, 2006, letter (PDF) to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said he is a "strong advocate for the creation of a national repository of spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada" and urges the senator to "take whatever action is necessary to ensure that construction of the final repository proceeds." In particular, he states his support for S.3692, the legislation proposed by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) Sept. 27.
Pennsylvania has nine nuclear power plants on five sites. Due to the lack of a permanent SNF [spent nuclear fuel] repository, the commonwealth has now accumulated one of the largest inventories of SNF in the nation. Unfortunately, many of the spent fuel pools in Pennsylvania are filled to or near capacity. As a result, those sites in Pennsylvania have been forced to add on-site dry storage capacity. These facilities are expensive to build and maintain, and they obviously are not capable of addressing long-term storage needs for spent fuel and again present serious security concerns for which no state is prepared to address in perpetuity.
While I believe that S.3692 moves things in the right direction, I urge the Senate to take whatever action is necessary to ensure that construction of the final repository proceeds. To this end, Congress should enable full funding and continued development of a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain for the nation's high-level radioactive waste and SNF.
Janice Cane
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Energy Central
October 19, 2006
EnergyBiz Insider
Letters from Readers
Where to Store Spent Nuclear Fuel - October 13, 2006
Has anyone looked seriously at an aggressive re-processing scenario for the high-level waste? Have options for concentration and re-processing of medium or low level wastes been evaluated? We should look to recycle as much of the spent nuclear material as possible and then store what cannot be reprocessed. This may require a renewed look at fast-breeder reactors and changes to US nuclear policy that was implemented in the 1970's / 1980's.
This issue needs to be approached with an "open mind" to what is technically and environmentally feasible and then establish regulations to implement; instead of first setting regulations and then seeing if technology can fit the regulations.
Bo Buchynsky
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I feel confident concerning the transportation that includes the entire Nuclear Fuel Cycle. The companies that are allowed to transport these products are well qualified to do so.
The product(s) (Radiation) containment has proven to be substantially safe. The testing that the packaging goes through is extremely intense.
One of the main problems regarding the transportation of Nuclear Materials is that the public has never been properly educated. This, however, seems to be improving.
If everyone would just realize there are products being transported today that are much more dangerous to the public.
Nuclear Materials have been moved across this country by our company for the past 55 years (min). The release into the environment or an incident that put the public in harms way has never taken place. This is due to the care taken by all concerned.
The most economical and secure method of transportation of the Nuclear Materials to a temporary storage area would be by truck. There are so many security issues that can be avoided by using this method of transportation. i.e. in the event of a local incident en route, weather, threat... a truck can immediately modify its direction of travel therefore avoiding the area of concern.
Dave Lambert
Vice President, Compliance
Tri-State Motor Transit CO.
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The key to this issue is to recycle these nuclear materials so that they can:
1. Produce even more energy than already has been produced.
2. Reduce the total amount of actual waste - that is nuclear materials with no further energy content that cannot be recycled.
Those against nuclear power plants like to refer to the spent fuel as "nuclear waste" because it creates the image they want to portray of a profligate wasteful industry discarding nuclear materials and resources in an unregulated manner. The complete opposite of course is true in that this material is the most heavily regulated controlled and protected industrial by-product in the world - bar none.
So waste it most definitely is not. Less than 2.5% of the available energy has been extracted from this used fuel so the recycling opportunities are enormous.
Think about it. The US has operated 100 reactors for about 25 years using only 2.5% of the energy in the already mined and processed fuel. That means the energy in the existing fuel sitting at nuclear plants across America is enough to operate 40 times that number of reactors for 25 years without ever mining another ounce of Uranium.
Sure it will take some energy to reprocess and maybe we could not get 100% of the available energy out but even if we got 25% of the available energy out it would still be well worth the effort.
Surely that is the recycling opportunity of a lifetime. Discarding it in Yucca is both expensive and totally unnecessary and the technology for reprocessing the spent fuel into new fuel is already developed and available.
Burying it or otherwise making this energy source inaccessible to future generations is about as dumb an idea as I could imagine. Who in their right mind would shutdown an oil well with only 97.5% of the available fuel still in the ground? But the anti nukes have convinced us that this stuff is so dangerous that we need to bury it for a million years. It is not that dangerous (the risks are greatly exaggerated) and it is a vast fuel source for producing emissions free electricity for many years.
Malcolm Rawlingson
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Public Citizen's statement that Yucca Mtn. could never meet an "acceptable" standard of risk is patently absurd. Nuclear's waste stream, and its associated risks, is inherently superior to that of other energy sources and industries, due to its tiny volume and dispersion-resistant form. No matter how or where they end up buried, the risks from nuclear's wastes will be negligible compared to fossil plant wastes/emissions. Even FutureGen plant wastes (CO2 & toxic sludge) will pose a greater long-term risk than nuclear waste, due to their far greater volume and much more dispersible form.
A tiny risk that a handful of people may receive additional exposures well within the range of natural background, at some point in the distant future, is not a significant environmental problem, especially when compared to fossil fuel emissions, which cause ~25,000 deaths every single year, along with global warming. Public Citizen is more interested in blocking nuclear power than protecting public health. Yucca Mtn. would take away anti-nukes' best argument against nuclear. That's the real reason it's being opposed.
Nobody should worry about multiple repositories down the road. Yucca's real engineering limitations allow sufficient capacity to accommodate all existing reactors, through the end of their 60+ year lives. By the time future reactors need disposal services (~2050 or later) we will have reprocessing methods (UREX+) that will increase Yucca Mtn's capacity by an order of magnitude.
James E. Hopf
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Nuclear waste is a 'hot' subject to many people. The real fear is not what might happen in 10,000 years, but what might happen in 10 years of less if some terrorist group sets off a bomb. Unfortunately, there is no practical way to make the nuclear reactor for power system 100% safe from accidents or theft of enriched fuel necessary for the present slow neutron (heavy water moderated) reactors.
A really permanent and geologically safe (forever) disposal site is the deep ocean trench off Puerto-Rico--the Mirinas Trench. At some 27,000 feet deep, the bottom is out of reach of any possible recovery by terrorists. A torpedo shaped spent fuel casket dropped in the trench would immediately penetrate hundreds of feet into the soft sediment, and in a few years be under many more hundreds of feet of sediment. (Just such a 'torpedo' shape has been tested for anchoring offshore drilling and production facilities and found highly penetrating.)
The delivery vessel would survive for a few hundred years as it was being 'recycled' into the magma of the earth. Disintegration of the casket, and then the fuel rod cladding in a thousand years or so would be a non-event--nothing larger than a few microorganisms with very limited mobility in the mud, ample high thermal conductivity of the water saturated mud to dissipate any heat generation, and a certain eons long recycling into the earths molten core. Gone, Forever.
The present economics of recycling spent fuel are such that 'experts' say of the French program-"it works, but the recycled fuel is 100 times more costly than making it from new ore."
Deep ocean trench disposal could be low cost, safe, environmentally benign, and permanent. Since the root process of subduction is driven by continental drift, as far as man's ultimate existence lifetime is concerned, disposal in the trench IS forever.
Keith E Bowers
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Your article quotes Michele Boyd of Public Citizen saying that Yucca Mountain "is not a site that can be licensed given reasonable standards for health and public safety." The EPA safety standard for Yucca Mountain requires that the groundwater in the neighboring Armagosa Valley be protected for the next one million years. This is an amazingly protective standard, that is vastly more stringent than any other EPA requirement for the disposal of any other type hazardous material.
The Dominici/Craig legislation takes the correct steps to amend U.S. nuclear waste policy. It removes the statutory cap on the amount of material that could be sent to Yucca Mountain, so that the site capacity is limited only by the requirement to meet the one-million year EPA safety standard. Recent estimates have concluded that in addition to the 120,000 metric tons of spent fuel that current U.S. reactors would generate during 60-year life spans, the site could accommodate another 120,000 to 500,000 metric tons. The legislation would also accelerate the transfer of defense wastes to Yucca Mountain, so that the federal government will start moving these materials to Yucca Mountain immediately after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission review of the DOE license application concludes that the site can meet the one-million-year EPA safety standard, and NRC issues a construction license, potentially as early as 2011 or 2012. Early transfer of defense wastes will allow the federal government to demonstrate its capability to transport these materials.
But the most important change that the Domenici/Craig legislation introduces to U.S. nuclear waste policy is that, before commercial spent fuel is shipped to Yucca Mountain the Secretary of Energy reach a determination "that there will not be a recycling option available for that fuel within a reasonable period of time." This key provision delays any large scale transfer of spent fuel to Nevada, while local communities where the spent fuel is stored can remain assured that the federal government has the legal and technical capability to send spent fuel to Yucca Mountain in the future, if it should be required. But this provision prevents money that electricity consumers have paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund from being spent to build what might very end up being the wrong repository design for the fuel cycle the U.S. eventually adopts, and it gives time and assures stable political support for a reasonable and well designed program of research and development for economical advanced fuel cycle technologies that would recycle and transmute most of the long-lived elements in commercial spent fuel.
Per F. Peterson
Professor
Department of Nuclear Engineering
University of California
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I monitor international radwaste management as part of my work, and manage the Virtual Repository website (http://www.enviros.com/vrepository/). I was interested in where you obtained this information.
It is my understanding that no HLW or spent fuel is currently buried underground in France. Spent fuel from EDF's commercial reactors is stored on site and that from CEA's research facilities in Marcoule is placed in the CASCAD facility. HLW is currently in store at the reprocessing site in northern France, admittedly in air-cooled wells, but contained within a building. I think the phrase 'buries it underground in storage' is misleading. No country has yet instituted an underground storage facility for HLW or spent fuel, although research does continue regarding this option as an interim stage prior to deep disposal (and was proposed by NWMO in Canada as a possible interim option).
The only waste that France disposes of is LLW (US Class A, B and C), at the engineered vault facility at Soulaines.
The radioactive waste management issue is extremely complex, and it is important that the public and interested observers have access to clear information. For too long the industry has suggested that everyone else has solved the problem Unfortunately, this is still far from true.
Phil Richardson
Galson Sciences Ltd.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 18, 2006
Bill Roberts: 'Do you want the paddle or the belt?'
Rural Nevada finds itself in the position of the youngster who has been told time after time, "Don't play ball in the house or you're gonna get a whuppin.' " Despite his father's warning, he played ball in the house one too many times, and his most recent toss broke Mom's favorite figurine. Now comes Dad, saying, "I promised you a whuppin', so do you want the paddle or the belt?"
Not unlike the virtually innocent babe, rural Nevadans soon might have to decide between the paddle and the belt.
The paddle is the east-to-west-to-southeast route of the rail corridor proposed to transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. The belt is the recently rejuvenated Mina route, which would bring the waste almost directly southeast from Hawthorne to the planned repository.
In case you missed it, the U.S. Department of Energy last week made it official that it will consider both routes as potential haul lines, tacking the Mina route onto its previously favored Caliente corridor because of environmental considerations.
From where I stand, the belt is much preferred over the paddle for a number of reasons, not the least of which is a trade-off that might spotlight how one group can trade something bad for something good.
Going back about 15 years, the Walker River Paiute Tribe refused to let the rail route go through its reservation. According to the Review-Journal and national news stories this year, the tribe said it would flip-flop and allow its land to be used for nuclear waste transportation if "shipments of spent fuel and also high-explosive ordnance from the Hawthorne Army Ammunition Depot would be diverted away from the town of Schurz" and the Energy Department promises to "truck shipments of nuclear waste on U.S. 95 that bisects the reservation as it proceeds south to the proposed" repository.
If you live along U.S. Highway 95 in Tonopah, Goldfield or Beatty, and if the route is used by trucks, they will be coming right down Main Street near your homes, churches and schools. If the tribe's requirements are observed, you only need worry about railroad transportation, which would come within several miles of your town. Some waste could travel on U.S. Highway 6, but that is another matter.
The Caliente route would involve construction of an all-new line. The Mina route would involve a lot of old railroad lines, including:
-- Familiar tracks from Hawthorne to Mina that were in use not that long ago.
-- Perhaps the route of the Carson and Colorado Railroad, which covered this path and turned south at Sodaville, still on the map and along Las Vegans' route to Reno. This is where mining pioneers transferred in the early 20th century to make their way to Tonopah.
-- Perhaps a portion of the Tonopah Railroad route from Mina to Tonopah, which was completed in 1904 and finally died out with the Tonopah mines.
-- Any portion of either the standard gauge Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad near the west edge of Rhodes Marsh, which turned south to Tonopah, or the narrow gauge Carson and Colorado, which continued west toward Montgomery Pass.
-- Other portions of the Tonopah Railroad, which merged with the Goldfield Railroad in 1905 and formed the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad (the familiar T & G) and served the central Nevada mining district associated with those towns until 1946.
-- Perhaps parts of the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad or the Death Valley Narrow Gauge, which also served from the early days of the 20th century.
-- Any of the routes of the trains of the Bullfrog District, which ran in and around Gold Center, Beatty, Springdale or on up the line to Bonnie Clare, Wagner and Goldfield.
Should the Energy Department really want to be creative, it could use the old tracks of the Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad, bypassing Yucca Mountain completely. Thus, the nuclear waste could roll right into Sin City to be greeted by the Martini Mayor himself.
Of course, that is facetious. Even if Nevada were forced to accept the waste, shipments certainly would stop on one of the rail routes well out of eyesight of Las Vegans.
But for the rest of us, it may be coming by paddle or by belt.
The Energy Department has announced that Environmental Impact Statement hearings are planned for coming weeks to decide the route it would prefer and recommend. Nevada officials will protest like the young ballplayer: "Please, Daddy, I don't want either."
Some might suggest we join tribal chairwoman Genia Williams to lay down our requirements -- and accept the lesser of two evils.
Bill Roberts is a veteran journalist in Tonopah. His column appears Wednesday. Contact him at broberts@reviewjournal.com. Thanks to the Central Nevada Historical Society and its various sources on Nevada railroads for information included here.
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Wichita Eagle
October 17, 2006
Nuclear plant seeks extension
A 20-year license extension would let the Wolf Creek plant operate until 2045 and could guard against rising electricity rates.
By Dion Lefler
The Wichita Eagle
The Wolf Creek nuclear power plant near Burlington has applied for a 20-year extension of its operating license, a move that consumer advocates say will help keep southern Kansas' electricity rates down.
The plant provides most of the electricity used by customers in Wichita and other areas served by Westar Energy's southern division, formerly known as KGE.
Several years ago, state officials reduced electric rates in anticipation of Wolf Creek's service life being extended, said Niki Christopher, a lawyer for the Citizens' Utility Ratepayer Board.
Christopher said CURB, the state agency representing residential and
small-business utility customers, favors the extension.
Rejection would probably mean higher power bills, because the $3 billion cost of building the plant would have to be paid off in 40 years rather than 60, she said.
And, because of the rising cost of fossil fuels, nuclear power is becoming increasingly more economical compared with the coal-fired generation that provides most of the electricity to Westar's northern division, she said.
"Wolf Creek was expensive in the short run, but in the long run, I think it's going to turn out to be pretty good," Christopher said. "Every minute we are getting out of that plant is money in the bank."
Wolf Creek spokeswoman Jenny Hageman said the proposed extension would push back the plant's retirement date from 2025 to 2045.
It may seem odd to apply for an extension with 19 years left on the current permit, but it makes sense because Wolf Creek is part of an alliance of six similar plants around the country that are all seeking renewals, she said.
Applying at the same time means they can share some of the exhaustive technical work that is part of the renewal process.
"We try to work jointly, if at all possible," she said.
The application process is expected to take 20 to 22 months, said Hageman and Scott Burnell of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses reactors across the country.
NRC inspections show that Wolf Creek is operating well in all performance areas measured, and the NRC Web site lists no significant violations since 1997.
In the renewal process, the agency will mainly be evaluating Wolf Creek's plans and procedures to ensure that aging of the plant won't compromise safety 20 to 40 years from now, Burnell said.
One issue that won't be considered during the renewal process is the storage of spent reactor fuel, he said.
Wolf Creek now has only enough space in its waste storage pool for the fuel it will use through 2025, when its current permit expires.
But operators are hopeful -- and the NRC assumes -- there will be a national site for nuclear waste before then, Hageman and Burnell said.
A proposal for a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., has been stalled for years by environmental groups and Nevada officials, including influential U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
If no repository exists for high-level nuclear waste when Wolf Creek runs out of storage space, the plant could switch to dry-cask storage and keep the spent fuel on site indefinitely, Burnell said.
In a dry-cask system, spent fuel is bundled and placed inside sealed steel containers filled with an inert gas. The containers are then placed in concrete bunkers to provide radiation shielding.
Across the country, 44 nuclear plants have sought license renewal. None have been rejected, Hageman said.
--Reach Dion Lefler at 316-268-6527.
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Janesville Gazette
October 16, 2006
Workers begin to dismantle closed Genoa nuke plant
Associated Press
GENOA, Wis. - Nineteen years after a nuclear power plant last produced electricity, workers are preparing for a big job - dismantling the reactor of the plant near this Mississippi River community about 15 miles south of La Crosse.
Since the Dairyland Power Cooperative shut down the plant in 1987, the utility has worked on plans for decommissioning it, which involves taking it apart and disposing of the radioactive parts.
The biggest part is the reactor pressure vessel. The large steel container is where nuclear rods caused water to boil, creating steam to power the 50-megawatt generator.
"It's a huge project because it's such a large item," plant manager Roger Christians said.
The entire nuclear reactor facility at Genoa will eventually be torn down, he said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has estimated the cost of decommissioning the plant at $79.5 million.
Plans now call for moving the reactor vessel, which is considered low-level radioactive waste, to South Carolina to be buried in a nuclear waste facility.
Christians said workers in the plant have filled the vessel with concrete grout, which increased its weight to about 200 tons.
The next step, now visible from outside, is cutting a hole in the building wall so that the reactor vessel can be removed. It's no easy task, considering that the building's walls are a little more than 10 inches thick, with nine inches of concrete and just over an inch of metal.
As planned, a crane will lift the vessel and slide it out of the building and into a steel container that will be filled with concrete grout and sealed shut, raising the weight to about 360 tons.
The vessel then is to be placed on two special railroad cars with 20 axles and shipped to South Carolina in mid-May.
Christians said there was no risk of releasing radioactivity.
"There's nothing to leak," he said. "This is a low-level waste shipment, just a bigger one."
But Gail Vaughn, an anti-nuclear activist who lives near Genoa in Vernon County, said she was concerned that parts of South Carolina will have to be written off as a "dead zone" because of the nuclear waste disposal site.
For that reason, she said she would feel better if Dairyland did not ship the reactor vessel.
But she said it was even more important that spent fuel rods from the plant not be shipped to Utah as a consortium of utilities had wanted.
Recent federal government rulings have all but killed plans to store the spent fuel rods temporarily at Utah's Goshute Indian Reservation.
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 has not completed development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, which once was expected to open in 2010 but has yet to get a federal license and is not likely to be completed until 2018 at the earliest.
Christians said a consultant is evaluating what would be the best spot on the Genoa site for storing the casks. The same casks could be used for shipping.
The Dairyland plant opened in 1969.
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Connecticut Business News Journal
October 16, 2006
Editorial: The Fly in the Energy Ointment
Business New Haven
More proof that in real estate it's location, location, location comes from the $34.1 million payment a court has ordered the federal government to pay Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power. The "rent" is for storage of radioactive material including more than 1,000 spent nuclear fuel rods on site at the Haddam Neck power plant.
The judge acted to enforce a contract the federal government signed in 1983 to remove the waste and ordered the payment to cover the 2001-to-2002 time frame. Additional payments may very well be forthcoming.
Connecticut Yankee has said it wants the government to live up to the contract and remove the radioactive waste. The problem, not surprisingly, is that no one wants it. The federal government's proposed site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., 100 miles north of Las Vegas, is still being hotly contested and has yet to be licensed.
Even if approved, the first waste shipments wouldn't arrive before 2017.
Connecticut Yankee's radioactive storage problems underscores an important difficulty for those who would expand nuclear power - the safe disposal of waste that has a shelf life measured in many thousands of years.
Ironically, some environmentalists' obsession with carbon dioxide emissions are causing them to forget the concern over nuclear waste and embrace the building of new nuclear power-plants.
Jim Motivalli, a longtime contributor to the New Haven Advocate and editor of the environmental journal, e magazine, recently revealed this change of heart by some environmentalists to readers of his weekly "Wheels" column in the Advocate.
We can't see how a safe and affordable energy future in Connecticut can realistically include new nuclear power plants. Only an expansion of pipeline natural gas, LNG and coal gasification can realistically solve Connecticut's major power needs while improving air and water quality.
However, progress on all fronts continues to be stalled by those who brandish the environmentalist "brand" as some kind of sword of righteousness intimidating state officials and making them unwilling to lead in the face of this nearly religious zeal.
Opponents in Branford have delayed the arrival of clean-burning natural gas via pipeline with the Islander East project. Others across New England are battling proposed LNG terminals in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine and are now gearing up to fight NRG's replacement of a dirty power plant with a $1 billion investment in a new clean-burning coal gasification plant.
New gas pipelines bringing gas from eastern Canada, LNG terminals opening up a nearly unlimited and untapped world supply of natural gas and the new technology for gasifying coal are the only real options for a secure and affordable energy supply for Connecticut that also contribute to an improving environment.
Environmentalists and elected officials have to get on board and start offering real solutions, not just platitudes about conservation - or admit to Connecticut residents that their real solution is new nuclear power plants.
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West Australian
October 16, 2006
PM, Downer support nuclear power
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has backed the use of nuclear power in Australia.
Mr Downer visited two plants during a recent trip to Finland and said he was impressed with what he saw.
"I was enormously impressed with two things - one how a relatively small facility can generate so much electricity, but secondly, how it does so without any pollution at all," he told Sky News.
"It's an extraordinary thing and I think the scare campaign that's been run against nuclear power reactors has been very much to the detriment of the environment."
Prime Minister John Howard has been talking up the benefits of nuclear power ahead of receiving a draft copy of an expert report next month, which is examining the issue.
Mr Howard now says nuclear power has to be considered if Australia is serious about tackling the problem of climate change.
Mr Downer supported that view.
"If you want to address the climate change issues then it's very important you address the issue of CO2 emissions from power stations - in the short term wind mills and solar power are not going to provide you with a base load power in any country on earth that you need," he said.
"Nuclear power is a very real option, it works well in a lot of parts of the world and it's entirely clean."
The Wilderness Society fears an Australian nuclear industry will see Australia become a nuclear waste dump.
Protesters on Monday gathered outside the Sydney's Hilton Hotel, where Industry and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane told the Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference that Australia could start planning to build its first nuclear power station within ten years.
Wilderness Society national campaign director Alec Marr says that after 50 years of nuclear technology there is still no safe, long-term solution for nuclear waste, and any move towards a nuclear industry in Australia will have negative repercussions.
"The prime minister (John Howard) says he wants to develop a nuclear industry," Mr Marr said.
"But what he isn't saying is that Australia is being lined up to become the world's nuclear waste dump."
Mr Marr said the government's plan for a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory could be a disaster, citing problems with other waste dump facilities overseas.
He said a proposed high-level nuclear waste dump in the US at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, has stalled, with environmental safety standards being challenged in court.
"The State of Nevada is successfully blocking the [Yucca Mountain] project due to environmental problems, and so far $US9 billion has been spent on a failed waste dump," he said.
In the UK, the Nuclear Decomissioning Authority had recently estimated the costs of decomissioning the country's nuclear facilities at $A170 billion.
Mr Marr said the cost of nuclear industry meant it only survived with heavy government subsidies.
He said burdens of this magnitude are not what Australia needs and urged the government to find other ways to meet the nation's energy requirements.
"We need long lasting and economically viable solutions to climate change - solutions that are not going to leave a toxic nuclear legacy for 250,000 years," he said.
--AAP
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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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