Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
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Las Vegas SUN
November 20, 2006
Editorial: Arrogant as ever
U.S. Energy Department's refusal to disclose trucking routes underscores public's distrust
The U.S. Energy Department never ceases to amaze us with its convoluted logic, poor judgment and arrogance.
It is no secret that the department has been trucking low-level nuclear waste - clothing and other material used in nuclear work - to the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But what is secret is the trucks' schedules, and it's a tightly held secret. Even local officials, who would have to scramble fire, police and rescue crews should there be an accident, don't know.
It's because the Energy Department doesn't have to, so it doesn't.
"Is there a reason that we should?" Test Site spokesman Darwin Morgan asked in a story in Friday's Las Vegas Sun by Mark Hansel.
Morgan noted that hazardous waste comes through town on marked trucks all the time and authorities aren't notified.
"The trucks (carrying nuclear waste) are marked," he said.
If that came from any other source but the Energy Department, it would be surprising in its brazen show of arrogance. But this is an agency that wants to put 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste, the deadliest stuff on Earth, on trucks and trains to Nevada and then stuff it into Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The fact that federal officials don't see a reason to cooperate with local authorities is a perfect example of why many Nevadans don't trust the Energy Department. If the department won't cooperate on these low-level waste shipments, what will it do if the high-level waste ever comes through?
The Energy Department could build some trust with the community, which it sorely lacks, by sharing basic information with local officials that could help in an accident. Not doing so - because they don't have to - is arrogant, short-sighted and dismissive of the hazards.
Of 362 low-level waste shipments over a three-month period, 313 trucks went up Interstate 15 to State Route 160, the highly congested and still-under-construction Blue Diamond Road. What could go wrong?
Do we have to tell you?
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Las Vegas SUN
November 20, 2006
Heller walks into a brave new world
By Lisa Mascaro <lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
WASHINGTON - This is what happens when you're a new member of Congress: Your phone doesn't stop ringing, you don't know half the people who are calling and you can't possibly make all the events they invite you to attend.
Welcome to Dean Heller's new world.
Heller, the Republican representative-elect from Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, flew into town for Welcome Week, the Capitol Hill tradition that falls somewhere between corporate retreat and book-and-locker-day at high school.
He joined about 50 new lawmakers fresh off election victories for a few days of orientation punctuated by decision-making that will stay with him throughout his career - from votes for party leadership to choosing a new office.
After serving as Nevada secretary of state for more than a decade, he couldn't help but feel like "a freshman all over again." The week, he added, was shaping up to be kind of "like drinking from a fire hose." And it was only Tuesday.
As a freshman in the minority party, Heller knows the limits of his position. As much as he believes Republicans need to return to fiscal conservatism and ethics after the thumping they took in the midterm elections, he won't be leading that charge. As a newcomer, he says repeatedly, his role is to listen and ask questions.
He is reaching across the aisle to Nevada's Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, and they have talked about having the state's three-member House delegation host weekly constituent breakfasts - something that had been a partisan affair under his predecessor, Republican Jim Gibbons, now the governor-elect.
Berkley warned that the new congressman will face resistance from his party on key Nevada issues such as stopping the plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain and keeping the proceeds from federal land sales in Nevada. The Bush administration wants both Yucca and the land funds.
Heller and fellow Republican Rep. Jon Porter will be "swimming upstream, and that's going to be a tough situation," she said.
Still, Berkley said with Heller's warm and open personality, Nevada's delegation will "get on much better."
On Monday night Heller rode a charter bus to the White House, where President Bush had invited all the new members and their spouses to dinner. He couldn't help but notice the heavy police activity on the streets - until he realized that the flashing lights were for him, because he was being escorted in a police motorcade.
There were tours of the Oval Office and the Rose Garden. Bush chatted with guests. Heller's wife, Lynne, couldn't pass up the chance to make a quick can-you-believe-where-I-am phone call to her sister.
The next morning was a class photo on the Capitol steps and by midday, he had made friends. "This guy," he said pointing to the empty seat next to him where Republican Congressman-elect Kevin McCarthy of California had been sitting. "And Heath," he added, nodding down the row where NFL-quarterback-turned-Democratic-Congressman-elect Heath Shuler of North Carolina had been.
He knew these were the days when party labels didn't matter as much as figuring out which way to the House floor.
"This is the most friendly time it'll ever be," he said.
That night he got a phone call from Karl Rove. The political mastermind of the Bush administration invited him to breakfast the next morning for a post-mortem on the elections with a handful of other Republican lawmakers.
By the time he got back on the Hill, the cliques had formed. No longer did the freshmen hang out as a group, but split into Ds and Rs to start the party leadership elections. Heller had been preparing for this. He knew "you better choose right" or face a career in the doghouse.
By Friday he was casting his vote for House Majority-turned-Minority Leader John Boehner. Boehner won easily, and Heller had passed his first test.
Next up: Where would he spend his workdays for the next two years?
His first office choice got picked in the Friday afternoon lottery by a congresswoman-elect from New York. Darn Democrats. The second choice, Longworth 1023, was his. He had never seen the place, but his aide told him it was a keeper.
When he and his wife went to check it out, they found a typical, cramped 1,000-square-foot Capitol Hill office. A friendly Democratic staffer displayed carpet swatches and paint samples for renovations. Later he could choose drapes.
Heller stepped into the suite that would become his office, and looked out the window on a bright Washington afternoon.
"That's not bad," he said, even as he noted the smokestacks in the view. "This is OK."
---Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
November 19, 2006
Train accident raises concerns about waste
Re train derailment, in Sierra Nevada near Baxter:
Is this the same track that is proposed to carry nuclear waste? Which demands higher safety standards, nuclear waste or passenger trains carrying live passengers?
The twisted pile of burning rubble attests to the degree of safety here.
Robert Greenhalgh
Sparks
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Lincoln County News
November 21, 2006
Nuclear Waste Plan Poses Wiscasset Site Impact
By Greg Foster
A U.S. Senate proposal for 31 “interim” nuclear waste storage facilities like the one at Maine Yankee in Wiscasset has met opposition from Gov. John Baldacci, whose stand is in keeping with Maine Yankee’s goal.
“This proposal takes away a state’s ability to reject a storage site within its borders,” Baldacci said.
The measure particularly concerns Maine because of the potential designation of the current Maine Yankee nuclear waste storage installation as one of them.
Baldacci considers it a step backward in the federal policy to establish a permanent national repository and joins 16 other governors in an effort to block the passage of the bill that would divert funds meant for that purpose.
“Maine Yankee has not taken a stand on that piece of legislation, but we share a common goal,” said company spokesman Eric Howes.
Howes and other company officials have been relentless in their criticism of the federal government for not fulfilling its promise to provide a permanent facility by 1998. The U.S. Court of Claims in September awarded Maine Yankee $76 million in its suit against the federal Dept. of Energy for its failure.
Howes said that the company is a member of the Nuclear Waster Storage Coalition as well as the State of Maine, which is pursuing a permanent facility, such as the one the federal Dept. of Energy has proposed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The big fear that Baldacci and the other governors have expressed is that the temporary site could well become, in effect, a permanent site and one permanent national facility would fall by the wayside. It is possible that Maine Yankee’s site could be designated as one of the federal regional sites.
“Leaving high level nuclear waste in 31 states is not a viable option,” Baldacci said last Thursday. “Temporary nuclear waste storage facilities pose significant safety and security issues in Maine and other states that have or have had commercial nuclear power plants.”
Baldacci said that ratepayers have been assessed payments for the federal Nuclear Waster Funds intended to fulfill the federal government’s mandate to safely remove spent nuclear fuel and other high level nuclear waste from current sites throughout the United States. He opposes the diverting of the funds intended for a national facility.
In July, Baldacci wrote to Sen. Peter Dominici, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development stating his opposition to any such plan to temporarily store the waste at current and decommissioned facilities like Maine Yankee. Currently Maine Yankee has a storage site where there are 64 concrete canisters, 60 of them containing spent nuclear fuel and the rest containing greater than class C level nuclear waste from the decommissioned plant.
“In today’s world, the security concerns of Americans are not well served by having thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste left in facilities in 31 states,” Baldacci wrote in his letter to Dominici. “Our best interests will be served by consolidating these materials in a facility selected for its remoteness and for its ability to be secured.”
Baldacci was adamant about the necessity of the federal government to hold to its own mandate to move nuclear waste from Maine and other states to a permanent national repository.
“The interim storage facility provision in the current U.S. Senate appropriations bill runs counter to that goal,” he said.
Baldacci signed a letter with 16 other governors that voiced strong opposition to the appropriations measure as stated specifically in Section 313 of the U.S. Senate-reported version of the fiscal year 2007 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, which, they said, proposes use of ratepayer monies for the creation of new federal interim storage sites throughout the United States.
The letter states, “…providing the Dept. of Energy with new, expansive authority to create numerous nuclear waste storage sites represents a stark retreat from the language and spirit of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and its establishment of a centralized repository.”
The governors fear that it would harm disposal efforts irreparably and result in the so-called temporary facilities becoming de facto final resting places for nuclear waste.
“Furthermore, Section 313 would direct the DOE to establish new state and regional waste storage sites without the consent and over the potential objections of governors,” the letter states. “This is wholly unacceptable to our constituents and us.”
They also cite that Section 313 does not live up to the requirement for success of any federal proposal addressing nuclear waste for the states to be full and equal partners in the process. It also appears to violate the standard contract that the states’ utilities entered into with the federal government of permanent disposal of nuclear waste, they said.
They point out that the use of the Nuclear Waste Fund is statutorily and contractually limited to paying for activities related to permanent disposal of nuclear waste.
“By seeking to use the fund for interim storage activities that are authorized neither by statute nor contract, this Section 313 raises the prospect of substantial litigation by stakeholders concerned about the diversion of ratepayer monies for unauthorized purposes,” the governors said.
The governors’ letter states their contention that the legislation represents a giant step backward for ratepayers and others who have contributed more than $14 million into the Nuclear Waste Fund.
They also noted that the DOE itself, as well as the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission have stated their serious concern with the proposal.
“They are rightly troubled with the safety, security, environmental, transportation, infrastructure, and cost challenges associated with developing and maintaining multiple federal nuclear waste storage sites across the nation will undermine already lagging efforts to establish a permanent repository,” they wrote.
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Sydney Morning Herald
November 21, 2006
Waste site a long way down the track
Stephanie Peatling
There is no shortage of suitable areas to store the waste from nuclear reactors built in Australia, the Federal Government's nuclear report has found, but says they will not need to be selected for decades.
The criteria for waste storage areas included that they be away from communities, and on geologically stable ground with no history of water movement through the earth, the report said.
"The country structure is such that just about every regional part of the continent satisfies these criteria," said the taskforce's chairman, Ziggy Switkowski.
Should the Federal Government choose to explore nuclear power the problem of waste storage could prove to be extremely difficult.
It has not found a site to store the small amounts of low- to medium-level nuclear waste produced from research and medical institutions. It abandoned plans to store waste in South Australia after sustained public opposition.
There are currently plans to name a site in the Northern Territory, possibly on land now managed by indigenous people.
State Labor governments remain vehemently opposed to having nuclear waste dumps on their land, a situation that is unlikely to change.
The report acknowledged that although many countries had plans for the storage of radioactive waste, "no country has yet implemented permanent underground disposal of high-level radioactive waste".
Dr Switkowski also stressed the need for communities to be consulted on any plans for nuclear waste storage, citing the continuing battle by the United States Government to store waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. It has spent billions of dollars over 20 years, and no decision has been reached.
Waste needs to be stored in two stages: as it is treated to make it safe for future storage, and again when it is permanently stored.
Dr Switkowski said Australia could avoid discussion of the location of waste dump sites for several years even after plants began operating.
"Once it comes out of the reactor it might need to be treated for tens of years before being stored for hundreds of years," Dr Switkowski said. Burying it more than one kilometre underground was the most likely system of storage, he said.
The afterlife of a nuclear power plant is also a serious consideration. Other countries typically allocate between 15 and 20 per cent of the initial cost of a reactor to safely decommissioning it at the end of its life. The average plant is used for 40 to 60 years.
The safety of nuclear plants is also a big concern, and the taskforce visited the sites of nuclear accidents at Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Three Mile Island in the US as part of its work.
The report stressed that the kind of reactor that had been built at Chernobyl was never used in developed countries and had been superseded.
The report suggested the risk to people's health from being exposed to the background radiation produced by a nuclear power plant was significantly lower than smoking 20 cigarettes a day, driving, owning firearms or a lightning strike, but higher than being bitten by a snake or shark.
If Australia did build the 25 reactors suggested by one scenario set out in the report, the taskforce calculated there would be a risk of "one serious core-damaging incident per 4000 years of operations and a one in 40,000 years event that might see off-site release of radioactive material".
Complying with a stricter international safety code would further reduce the risk, the report said.
"Humans continually expose themselves to, or have imposed on them, the risk of injury or fatality," the report said.
"Perceptions are important in determining whether risks for hazardous facilities are acceptable. Risks of greatest concern are ones borne involuntarily, especially human activities (rather than natural events) that could have potentially catastrophic consequences. Nuclear accidents are in this category."
But the report stressed there was "every reason to be confident of Australia's health and safety systems and the continued good performance in an expanded uranium mining industry and the nuclear fuel cycle".
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 20, 2006
Yucca rail line divides towns
One against proposal, but others hoping for economic revival
By Ed Vogel
Review-Journal Capital Bureau
SILVER SPRINGS -- June Mick fled to this rural Lyon County community six months ago to get away from the crime and high costs of south Florida.
She and her husband paid $230,000 for a manufactured home and 4.7 acres of jackrabbits and sagebrush near an infrequently used railroad track about 40 miles east of Carson City. Only last week did Mick learn the track in her backyard is under study as the rail line on which Department of Energy trains would carry high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.
"I don't want that stuff," she said. "What if there is an accident? There is no telling what could happen."
Her thoughts are shared by neighbors a few blocks away. Retired Navy veteran Robert Brittain moved to his track-side Silver Springs home last year. Ruth Curtis purchased her mobile home beside the track 16 years ago.
"I'm pro-military. But I don't care for Yucca Mountain. Ammunition is different. It's for national security," Brittain said.
"Nuclear waste?" Curtis questioned, then answered herself: "Oh, no."
Ninety percent of homeowners interviewed last week in Silver Springs oppose the proposal to haul nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain through their inexpensive but rapidly growing community.
They've found peace and quiet in Silver Springs' wide-open spaces. They knew trains have occasionally carried bombs past their homes to the Army Ammunition Depot at Hawthorne since the 1930s.
But they were not aware that the DOE is looking at using the same tracks to carry waste to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, from commercial nuclear power plants across the country.
State laws require county planning departments to notify homeowners when new developments are planned in their neighborhoods, but the federal government isn't obliged to notify people when it wants to haul radioactive waste through their backyards.
The DOE placed advertisements in the Fallon newspaper about a hearing last Wednesday at which residents could discuss the railroad plan, but in Silver Springs, news travels largely by word of mouth.
Whether hauling 77,000 tons of radioactive waste within a few yards of Silver Springs' bedrooms poses any danger depends on whom you ask.
Bob Loux, the executive director for the state Agency for Nuclear Projects, said a terrorist with a shoulder-held, anti-tank missile launcher could put a hole in a cask containing nuclear waste.
"If 1 percent of the cargo escaped, it would contaminate a 42 square-mile area and take a couple of decades and $8 billion to $10 billion to clean up," Loux said. "DOE maps have shown up on terrorist Web sites, we are told by the FBI."
It is not just Silver Springs residents who have reason for concern, he added. Trains from power plants will move along the main Union Pacific line paralleling Interstate 80 from the east and west. Nuclear waste would be hauled through downtown Reno, where a hearing on the rail line proposal has been scheduled for Nov. 27.
The nuclear trains would veer off the Union Pacific line north of Fallon and head more than 300 miles south to Yucca Mountain along a route near U.S. Highway 95 that goes through Silver Springs and close to the rural communities of Schurz, Hawthorne, Mina, Tonopah and Goldfield.
Costs of constructing this "Mina Corridor" route, including laying 209 miles of track from Hawthorne to Yucca Mountain, have been estimated at more than $1 billion.
Allen Benson, director of external affairs for the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, does not share Loux's alarm.
He noted the federal government has been hauling nuclear waste by truck for 50 years with no problems, including making more than 4,000 shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in New Mexico.
"The safety record is quite remarkable," Benson said. "I am not aware of any release harmful to the public. We are quite confident."
Benson noted the waste going to Yucca Mountain would be in solid, not liquid, form. If a cask were penetrated, some pellets might fall onto the ground, but a hazardous materials team would be sent out "to clean it up and move on," he said.
Security officers will accompany the trains, according to Benson, and the DOE "is not going to advertise" when shipments will be moved to Yucca Mountain. He anticipates about two trains a week will haul waste over a 24-year period.
"There is no such thing as a 100 percent safety guarantee," Benson said. "But this is definitely not Chernobyl. People have this fear of nuclear. We understand that. But nuclear is medicine. Nuclear is electricity."
The public reaction to the word nuclear is far different further south in economically depressed rural Nevada. Of 25 people interviewed last week in Goldfield, Hawthorne, Tonopah, Schurz and Mina, 22 expressed support for the DOE's new rail line.
Hawthorne businessman Rex Mills epitomized their views during a hearing Tuesday in Hawthorne. He said rural Nevadans want the DOE to share its Yucca Mountain track with commercial trains.
"If they put the railroad here, it will be great," Mills said. "It will give an incentive for companies nationwide to move into a lower-taxed area. The waste is going into Yucca Mountain, whether we like it or not."
So far the DOE has spent $9 billion on the project. Costs could top $58 billion, based on an estimate made in 2001.
On a windy morning last week, Postmistress Theora Janis and resident Dollie Murillo stood in front of the Mina Post Office and discussed the desperate need for an economic revival in their community.
The town's population has dropped to about 100 people, most of them senior citizens. Many homes and businesses are abandoned. The elementary school was closed five years ago. The train tracks were pulled out 10 years ago.
"They already carry (hazardous) waste through here by trucks," Janis said. "We need jobs. A railroad would help us."
Whether the DOE allows private business to share its Yucca Mountain line has not been determined.
"The rail line could be open to commercial use, but that is a decision that remains to be made," Benson said.
Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant for the Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the DOE has been trying to win favor for the new rail line by suggesting to community leaders that the line will be shared with commercial trains.
Loux doubts a new rail line would provide any upside to rural Nevada. About the only benefit would be selling lunches or dinners to workers building the line, he said.
"They had a rail line to Mina for 50 years and it didn't do anything for them," Loux said. "Every rail line there in the past has been torn out."
The only reason the DOE can contemplate construction of the Mina route is because of a change in thinking by the Walker Lake Paiute Indian Tribe, Loux said.
The tribal council in 1991 had rejected a move by the DOE to study moving waste through the reservation by rail. But last April, council members agreed to let the government study the issue.
Ammunition bound for the Hawthorne depot now is carried by rail past tribal headquarters, homes and a school in the town of Schurz. Under the DOE study plan, the rail line would be relocated about four miles outside of town.
Chairwoman Genia Williams refused to answer questions about the change in position when visited by a reporter last week. Instead, she handed out a prepared statement saying the council opposes the new rail line unless the DOE addresses all safety issues and agrees to ban shipments of nuclear waste by truck on Highway 95.
"Historically our tribe has been a victim of federal government decisions," Williams said. "I do not like the idea of Nevada being a dumping ground for nuclear waste, but this may be a chance to make my tribal community safer from nuclear waste that may come through our community on a highway," she added.
Williams also refused to discuss whether the DOE has offered any financial incentives to win the tribe's support for the route. A source familiar with the tribe, however, said the DOE mentioned rewarding the tribe with $100 million if it agreed to the rail plan.
Back in Silver Springs, Brittain walks beside the tracks and wonders if the hoopla about the nuclear trains is meaningless.
"I can't believe Harry Reid will let Yucca Mountain happen," he said.
Reid, D-Nev., said as the new Senate majority leader he controls what comes up on the Senate floor and he will continue his opposition to Yucca Mountain.
Loux figures the project is dead and the hearings to discuss a new rail line through rural Nevada are something of a sham.
"All of this is a big morass that DOE can't get through," Loux said. "There is no chance of federal legislation. Reid and company are in a position to move to zeroing out their budget and just shutting it down."
Benson recognized Reid's influence during a hearing Monday in Goldfield.
But until federal law changes, he said his agency will continue on its objective to open a Yucca Mountain nuclear repository by 2017. That date, he added, can be met "assuming we can get the budgets we need" from Congress.
"Creating Yucca Mountain as the repository is the law of the land," Benson said. "If Congress changes the law, we will follow it."
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Reno Gazette-Journal
November 20, 2006
Reid answers questions from RGJ readers
Diana Marrero
dmarrero@gns.gannett.com
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Harry Reid will run the show in the Senate next year. But he says he has not forgotten who he works for -- his constituents in Nevada.
"It's important that I have everyone understand I'm the senator from Nevada," Reid said.
As Senate majority leader, Reid will focus on the nation's most pressing concerns when a new Congress convenes in Washington next year, but he vowed to continue working hard for his home state.
Since his peers officially selected Reid to lead them in the Senate last week, he has faced dozens of questions from news reporters.
He also agreed to answer eight questions submitted recently by Reno Gazette-Journal readers. Reid answered the first two in an interview and the rest by e-mail.
Question: What is your assessment on the situation in Iraq? Do you believe the Democrats are more equipped to give Americans what they have been asking for: to bring troops home?
Answer: We have a plan. First of all, there should be a redeployment of troops. This doesn't mean pull everybody out tomorrow. But what it does mean, we have to re-deploy. We have to change the mission of troops in Iraq to counterinsurgency, force protection. What has gone on in the past has not worked. We must revitalize our reconstruction efforts. This government, such as it is in Iraq, has to understand that this matter can only be resolved diplomatically.
Q: Will the people of Nevada and all Americans soon see real federal tax reform?
A: Realistically, with President Bush present, we have to get things signed by him. I believe the federal income tax system is broken and needs to be repaired. I believe that. I've been saying that for 20 years.
I think we need to look at some of the obvious places to go. Exxon made about $40 billion last year. I can't believe that's a place where we need to keep giving subsidies. I think there's significant things we can do with the collection of taxes, not new taxes, just collect taxes. Our goal is to lessen the burden on the middle class.
Q: What quality, as a native Nevadan, serves you best being a U.S. senator and now the majority leader?
A: Nevada has a culture of strength, independence, and humility -- all qualities I try to take with me to Washington as I work on behalf of the state. We are very independent, but Nevadans know you can't do it alone, and teamwork is vital to getting things done. This is especially important to remember as we prepare for the 110th Congress.
Q: What do you think we should do about nuclear waste if the Yucca Mountain project is killed?
A: On-site storage is the best solution; it's safe now for years and years to come, and as the industry innovates, on-site storage will become even safer.
Q: What are you doing to improve the greater Reno economy and bring quality jobs in for the citizens so they can afford to still live here?
A: As the incoming majority leader of the U.S. Senate, I will push legislation that will not only help to create jobs, but also lower the cost of health care and make college more affordable for Nevada families. One way to create Nevada jobs would be to invest in alternative energy sources -- geothermal, wind and solar. Estimates show if we did that, more than 3,000 jobs would be created in our state, and mostly in rural areas.
Q: What are the Democrats going to do about securing our border?
A: Comprehensive immigration reform is the solution. The bipartisan bill that the Senate passed this year is tough on lawbreakers, fair to taxpayers and practical. I'll work toward its passage.
Q: What specifically are some of your plans to lower the cost of higher education?
A: Every child who grows up in Nevada should have access to a great education. To help families afford the cost, I'll work to make college tuition tax deductible. Expanding Pell Grants and cutting the interest rates of student loans will help as well.
Q: What do the Democrats plan on doing for affordable health care in this country?
A: At the top of the list, we must fix the Medicare prescription drug program and negotiate for lower prescription drug prices, end wasteful giveaways to drug companies and HMOs and promote stem cell research that offers real hope to millions of American families who suffer from devastating illnesses.
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Lansing State Journal
November 20, 2006
Palisades sale raises concerns on waste
Deal could allow nuclear material to be stored at site
Associated Press
COVERT TWP. - The pending $380 million sale of the Palisades Nuclear Plant raises the possibility that high-level nuclear waste from the former Big Rock Point Nuclear Plant near Charlevoix could be moved to Palisades.
State law prohibits the transfer of nuclear waste from one plant site to another, but sale documents refer to the possibility.
New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. has agreed to purchase the 798-megawatt plant from CMS Energy Corp., of Jackson. The plant is near Lake Michigan in Van Buren County's Covert Township.
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The sale is expected to close early next year, pending the approval of several regulatory agencies, including the Michigan Public Safety Commission and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The new owner also would be responsible for the nuclear waste stored in eight casks at the Big Rock Point site, which CMS Energy owns. That plant was closed in 1997.
CMS Energy's offering memorandum on the Palisades plant from January says, in part, "Big Rock spent fuel may be moved to Palisades or an out-of-state licensed storage facility at the buyer's expense, if all appropriate approvals are obtained."
Both Entergy and CMS Energy have said they do not intend to seek a change in the state law that would allow nuclear waste to be transferred.
Palisades spokesman Mark Savage said the waste at Big Rock Point is likely to remain where it is until the proposed repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is operating - no sooner than 2018.
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The State
November 20, 2006
State has had radioactive recycling plant before
Associated Press
SNELLING, S.C. - South Carolina is on the short list for a plant to create nuclear reactor fuel out of radioactive waste.
It's not the first time the state has tried to create a nuclear recycling operation.
In Barnwell County in the 1970s, a $350 million industrial complex was built to recycle radioactive fuel from nuclear reactors. When the facility known as "Agnes" was ready to open, the federal government shut it down.
There were worries that the recycled fuel could be turned into bombs.
Now, part of the impetus behind the push to recycle radioactive material is to keep all that nuclear waste out of the hands of people who would hope to make a bomb.
But as Agnes could see new life under the mixed-oxide fuel plan - the nearby Savannah River Site where the government once made nuclear warheads is another potential site - the dangers of banking on nuclear technology is highlighted.
If the Energy Department's new recycling plan takes off, a community somewhere in the United States stands to land 10,000 new construction jobs and 5,000 permanent ones, state development officials say.
Federal officials could announce soon which sites deserve up to $5 million for in-depth studies.
And Danny Black, head of the Southern Carolina Regional Development Alliance, thinks Barnwell County should be considered.
The alliance is a nonprofit organization created to bring industry to Allendale, Barnwell, Bamberg and Hampton counties.
The group bought the Agnes plant and its 1,600 acres for $3 million in 2001. The previous owners included Allied-General, Chevron and Shell Oil. The complex sits just outside the gates of SRS.
"We were left out of the boom in the 1980s," Black said of Barnwell. That all could have been different had the Agnes plant actually gone into operation.
"We could have been another Aiken or Idaho," he said of two of the nuclear industry's success stories. "It would have transformed us."
The plant, officially called AGNS for Allied-General Nuclear Service, was to remove the plutonium and other radioactive materials generated during nuclear reactions.
"We looked at it as a laundry to clean it up and get the good stuff out," said Georgia Fields, who arrived at the site in 1971 as an assistant to the director.
But the program was closed in 1977 because the recycling process created plutonium that could be used in weapons. President Carter put tight restrictions on processing and exporting nuclear technology.
"Even though that happened, we still thought it would go forward," Fields said of Agnes.
But then came 1979 and a radioactive release at Three Mile Island that renewed fears about nuclear power's safety.
Four years later, the Reagan administration announced that reprocessing wasn't economically feasible and shut down Agnes for good and put about 350 people out of work.
"It was a sad time," Fields said. "People had invested a lot in it. They were proud of it and to see it all come to nothing People thought, 'What a shame that this was built and never used.' "
It was more than 10 years later when Black and other officials formed the Southern Carolina alliance to combat layoffs at SRS and elsewhere in Barnwell, Allendale and Bamberg counties.
When the Bush administration announced a plan to reduce the amount of spent fuel from commercial reactors by reprocessing them, Black's group teamed up with a joint venture called EnergySolutions. The group includes Duratek, the operator of the Chem-Nuclear waste dump in Barnwell.
Another consortium includes The Washington Group, operator of the Savannah River Site.
But all is not smooth sailing for the new program.
Arjun Makhijani runs the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a group near Washington, D.C., that has challenged nuclear industry for years.
He said he did a report 25 years ago or so about the Barnwell plant's potential problems.
"Agnes is symbolic because it was such a lemon," Makhijani said.
He also is concerned about the renewed recycling effort that he says is the result of the failed attempt to build a nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
--Information from: The Post and Courier, http://www.charleston.net
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Wilmington Morning Star
November 20, 2006
Progress Energy again turns to outdoor waste storage
The Associated Press
WILMINGTON, N.C. | Progress Energy is turning to an outdoor storage facility for its nuclear waste as the company awaits a long-term federal government solution to deal with disposed fuel.
Site work is scheduled to begin in early 2007 at the Brunswick Nuclear Plant property near Southport. Progress Energy will store the fuel assemblies in "dry cask" canisters made up of steal and concrete.
"They are in thick steel-reinforced vaults," said Mike McCracken, a spokesman for the utility company. "The canisters (where) the fuel itself is placed into have a thick layer of protection, and it will be in the security area of the plant. It will be guarded."
Critics have long suggested that outdoor storage of nuclear waste only makes the region vulnerable to terrorist attack.
"We want them to bunker those canisters and protect them from line-of-sight attacks at the fence line," said Jim Warren, executive director of the Durham-based North Carolina Waste Awareness & Reduction Network.
Progress Energy already uses dry-cask storage at its Robinson Nuclear Plant in Hartsville, S.C., where the company began storing waste outside in 2005. McCracken said the Brunswick site likely won't begin holding used fuel until 2010.
Until then, the company waits for a federal government solution.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, President Bush and Congress have approved a large repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., but the project faces resistance in Nevada. Industry observers don't expect the project to begin receiving nuclear waste until 2016 or 2017.
In the meantime, Progress Energy will continue to ship its Brunswick waste to the company's Shearon Harris plant in southwestern Wake County where material is stored in spent fuel pools.
Ken Clark, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Progress Energy's plans at the Brunswick plant are in line with what other utilities are doing to accommodate spent fuel.
---Information from: The Star-News, http://starnewsonline.com
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Wilmington Morning Star
November 20, 2006
Nuclear fuel to be stored at Brunswick
Work to begin on casks to hold spent fuel on-site
By Ken Little
Staff Writer
With other options for storing spent nuclear fuel disappearing, site work will begin early in 2007 for the outdoor storage of spent nuclear fuel on Progress Energy's Brunswick Nuclear Plant property near Southport.
Fuel assemblies containing rods filled with radioactive uranium-enriched pellets will be stored in "dry cask" canisters made of steel and concrete. Critics of the practice say outside storage of the fuel assemblies opens up the possibility of attack by terrorists.
"They are in thick steel-reinforced vaults. The canisters the fuel itself is placed into have a thick layer of protection, and it will be in the security area of the plant. It will be guarded," said Mike McCracken, a spokesman for plant operator Progress Energy.
Progress Energy uses the same dry-cask technology at its Robinson Nuclear Plant in Hartsville, S.C., where outside storage of spent nuclear fuel began in 2005. Actual on-site storage at the Brunswick plant won't begin until 2010, McCracken said. By then, Progress Energy officials hope the federal government arrives at a long-term solution to the question of where to dispose of used fuel from the nation's 103 commercial nuclear reactors and high-level radioactive waste generated by the military.
Although a federal site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., has been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, President Bush and Congress, resistance to the repository remains strong in Nevada. The earliest the underground disposal site would begin accepting spent nuclear fuel is 2010, with more realistic projections of 2016 or 2017, industry observers said.
The Brunswick Nuclear Plant continues to transport fuel assemblies in sealed canisters by train to Shearon Harris, a Progress Energy nuclear plant in southwestern Wake County.
The material is stored there in spent fuel pools.
The NRC-issued license to ship the canisters by rail to the Shearon Harris plant will expire in 2008, McCracken said. There is enough capacity in the two spent fuel pools at the Brunswick plant to store the radioactive material until on-site dry storage is available, McCracken said.
The pools inside the Brunswick reactor buildings are about 40 feet deep. The 14-foot assemblies housing the rods containing spent fuel emit radiation and must be cooled in water for five years until they lose some of their radioactivity and can be placed in dry cask storage.
Safety questions
Critics of the nuclear industry have raised questions about the safety of transporting spent fuel and using spent fuel pools to store radioactive material. They acknowledge that the dry cask storage method may be the lesser of what they perceive as three evils.
"The Nevada thing has just fallen apart. Technically, the project is still alive but it's on life support. We're left with the issue of storing it as safely as possible where it is," said Jim Warren, executive director of the Durham-based North Carolina Waste Awareness & Reduction Network.
NC WARN has specific recommendations for the nuclear industry.
"We want them to bunker those canisters and protect them from line-of-sight attacks at the fence line," Warren said. "Our main concern is those high-density pools. This is the greatest risk at these nuclear plants, the way they're storing their spent fuel."
McCracken said the concerns of NC WARN are not warranted.
"We see industry engineering studies that both wet storage and dry storage are equally safe," he said.
NRC spokesman Ken Clark said Progress Energy's plans at the Brunswick plant are in line with what other utilities are doing to accommodate spent fuel.
"A spent fuel pool only has a certain capacity," Clark said. "They'd like to save a little space in a pool to unload one core if necessary."
McCracken said used nuclear fuel cannot explode or burn. The fuel can be recycled, or enriched, to be used in a reactor again. The dry cask storage option "should be very safe for your employees and very safe for the public," he said.
Southport City Manager Rob Gandy said he and other town officials have been aware for several years of Progress Energy's plans to store spent fuel on the grounds of the Brunswick plant.
"I knew that this has been in the works for some time. It's unfortunate that the federal government can't come up with a site," Gandy said. "They went through all the safety features of those containers and I don't know of any particular concerns on our part."
The storage canisters to be used at the Brunswick property will be placed horizontally. Twenty of the modules, with a storage capacity of four to five years, will be on site by 2010. The canisters will be located about 200 yards north of the plant, near an access road running parallel to the plant's intake canal, McCracken said.
The storage site won't be visible from the road or Cape Fear River.
"Once the fuel is in there, it would be part of the security protected area of the plant," McCracken said.
--Ken Little: 343-2389, ken.little@starnewsonline.com
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 19, 2006
GEOFF SCHUMACHER: Reid won't be all about Nevada, but he'll protect state's interests
What does it mean that Harry Reid will be the U.S. Senate's majority leader? More specifically, what does it mean for Nevada?
First of all, it's a historic achievement. Reid is ascending to the highest political position a Nevadan has ever held, eclipsing the peaks reached by legends such as Pat McCarran and Paul Laxalt.
McCarran, for whom our airport is named, was an extremely powerful senator from 1933 to 1954. He chaired the Judiciary Committee, which he used to conduct witch hunts of alleged communists.
"But he also used the position to make presidents and fellow senators give him what he wanted for Nevada," says Michael Green, a history professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada.
McCarran was instrumental in the reopening of the military facility that became Nellis Air Force Base after World War II. He also played a key role in the building of McCarran International Airport and he killed anti-gambling legislation.
"He took care of his state," Green says. "He was a power back in Washington, but he also worried about the farmer who'd broken his arm and couldn't get in the winter firewood. He put a lot of Nevada kids through law school."
Those young scholars, nicknamed the "McCarran Boys," included Alan Bible, who became a U.S. senator, and Grant Sawyer, who became a two-term Nevada governor.
Laxalt served in the Senate from 1974 to 1987. Unlike McCarran, Laxalt was not a legislative powerhouse. He gained his considerable influence from his friendship with President Ronald Reagan.
"He served on important committees, but in the minority, and I would guess that even he would say he wasn't a legislative details man," Green says. "Laxalt had power because he could come back from the White House and say to his fellow senators, 'We really ought to do this.' And the other senators knew very well who he had been talking to."
Laxalt was important, Green says, because he made Nevada "look less sleazy."
"He wore his Western cowboy boots and talked about his Basque upbringing while wearing expensive suits. He was incredibly telegenic. It was a great combination."
So, Reid is making history, but the question remains: In this powerful new position, what can he do for his state?
Squeezing the life out of the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain certainly will be among his top priorities.
In recent years, Reid has taken the lead in fighting the Yucca Mountain Project, and despite being in the minority party, he has had considerable success. What's the latest projected opening date, 2017? Remember when the thing was supposed to open in 1998?
Now that Reid is the top dog in the majority, the radioactive dump project seems destined for severe malnutrition, if not death.
But that's a relatively easy one. More important, perhaps, will be Reid's efforts to quash any and all anti-gambling measures that cross his desk. Members of Congress are forever dreaming up new ways to limit or regulate gambling, and Reid will be in a position to protect Nevada's dominant industry.
Most recently, Congress passed an Internet gambling ban, a setback for Nevada's casino industry, which is interested in tapping into the growing online gambling market.
David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gambling Research at UNLV, says the industry would like to reopen the congressional debate over Internet gambling. He suggests convening a commission to study options to regulate and tax online bets.
Obviously, Reid could lead such an effort, as well as squelch persistent attempts by the likes of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to ban college sports betting.
Reid will be tempted to bring home the bacon for Nevada, but he'll have to be prudent. With reporters and political watchdogs constantly on his tail, he'll need to justify his actions before a national audience.
Already, Reid has run into some trouble in this regard. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that Reid helped secure federal funds for a bridge over the Colorado River that will connect Laughlin and Bullhead City. No big deal, except for the punch line: Reid owns 160 acres of undeveloped land on the Arizona side that will increase in value when the bridge opens.
Of course, the bridge issue might be a blip compared with allegations leveled by imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Last week, ABC News reported that Abramoff claims Reid solicited more than $30,000 in campaign contributions from Abramoff's Indian tribe clients in exchange for help with federal regulation of reservation gambling. Reid has consistently insisted he did nothing illegal or unethical.
Pitfalls aside, Nevada is likely to benefit considerably from Reid's new post. State Sen. Dina Titus, who recently ran unsuccessfully for governor, says Reid has every right to demand more federal dollars for the state.
"Nevada gets back about 74 to 76 cents on every dollar of federal taxes that we pay," says Titus, noting that some other states get back more than a dollar in federal expenditures for every buck they send to Washington. "I think Harry can make a big difference to ensure we get more of our share back."
Additional highway projects, veterans program funding, university research grants -- and perhaps a superspeed train from Las Vegas to Southern California -- could come Nevada's way, Titus suggests.
On a more progressive front, Reid could work to further expand research and development of renewable energy resources in Nevada -- a win-win-win for the state, nation and planet.
However, Reid will have to balance his Nevada wish list with the Democrats' national agenda, which is preaching legislative moderation. With a Republican president and election results signaling the voting public's preference for centrist policies, Democrats would be suicidal to go on a spending spree.
And much of the time, Nevada issues will get back-burner treatment on Reid's itinerary. The majority leader will face a formidable task in simply maintaining majority status. With two independents in the Democratic Party's 51-vote majority, it's always possible one of them could jump ship on a specific bill, putting a deciding vote in the hands of Vice President Dick Cheney. Even more daunting: Reid will need to bring nine Republicans to his side in order to reach the 60 votes needed to accomplish anything substantial in the Senate.
That said, if there's anyone in the Senate who knows how to play the vote-counting game, it's Reid.
Beyond the legislative minutiae, Reid has the formidable task of representing Nevada on a stage with very bright lights. Green believes he's a good fit for the role.
"Reid doesn't fit the stereotype that many people have of Nevada, and that has helped him a great deal," Green says. "Bush's infamous line also applies to Harry Reid: He's been misunderestimated."
--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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Asheville Citizen-Times
November 19, 2006
China's challenges
As China continues to emerge as a dominant power in the world economy and in world politics, greater understanding of Chinese people and culture is important for Americans. Following is an edited interview with China specialist G. Eugene Martin, a retired Foreign Service officer and former deputy chief of mission in Beijing. Martin talked with the Citizen-Times about the challenges facing China, about Chinese/American relations and a number of other issues related to China in October when he was in Asheville to speak at a forum on China co-sponsored by the World Affairs Council and the Asheville Citizen-Times. Martin is currently Executive Director, Philippines Facilitation Project, Center for Mediation and Conflict Resolution, United State Institute for Peace.
AC-T: If you were asked what forms the foundation of the American value system, you would probably answer the Christian-Judaic ethic, the country’s founding documents, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the capitalist economic system. What forms the foundation of the value system of most Chinese people?
Martin: I think the Chinese value system is based upon traditional Confucian values which, even though since the Communists took over in 1949 Confucianism has “been on the outs,” the value system remains the bedrock of Chinese civilization and culture. It still has an influence on Chinese behavior. Confucianism is not a religion. It's really a social roadmap, or guideline, for how to organize society. Confucius is quoted as saying, “How can one know about the afterlife, if you don't know how to organize the present life?” Confucianism is not otherworldly, it is not spiritual in a sense. It focuses primarily on how to order society.
Now, this has all been changed since the Communist Party took over in 1949. But it's very illuminating when you go back, you see a revival of the traditional beliefs and traditional system. I think a lot of the social structuring of Confucius still organizes society. The relationships between various levels of society have been changed, because now everybody is technically more or less egalitarian. Since 1978, when China initiated the economic reforms, the people have been able to move toward capitalism and entrepreneurship. While I think society is in a state of transition, the bedrock cultural foundation still depends on the traditional values of China, which are based on Confucius’ philosophy.
AC-T: In our own changing culture the values get confused and the values sometimes aren’t getting passed on in some cases in the way they once were in the past. Is that happening in China? When you look at young people and they’re caught up in the all the stuff that comes with our more Western way of life and you’ve got the traditionalists. Is there a disconnect there?
Martin: There is. There is a disconnect and it's not unusual of any developing country or any county going through significant change. We see it in this country; we see it in Europe, certainly. In China, there is a lot of concern, particularly by older generations who are more traditional, who find that the economic reforms have changed the character of society. China is now going through a difficult period because there is tremendous inequality. The wealth distribution is a serious problem. And the government really doesn't know how to handle this. China reportedly became the most unequally distributed wealth country in the world, replacing Zimbabwe of all places. The problem is that people who have money are becoming wealthier, and becoming much more modern, or western. The majority of the people in China still live in rural areas, are poor, and they do not have the wealth of the urban, eastern areas, which most westerners who visit China see. So you end up with a great inequality of wealth.
People feel there is not the same traditional respect for elders. There isn’t the same identification with the community as before, people tend to be much more individualistic. Many Chinese feel that this is a loss to their culture and society. Previously, people told me nobody locked their doors. Many didn’t even close their doors because they knew everybody in their neighborhood and community. Now, with two, three or six locks and chains on your door, people are afraid of thieves. Of course there’s a downside on both sides. Previously nobody had anything to steal, so there was no need to lock the door; now that they have material goods, they lock the door because there is social inequality and people steal things from people who have more then they do. So it's hard to evaluate which is better. In many ways, I think it's perhaps better now, despite the crime rates, despite the fear of being robbed because people feel that their life is getting better. And even those who don’t have much confidence that life is getting better for themselves, they believe the future will be better for their children. I think this is very important.
AC-T: In the education system, in the more affluent areas vs. the more rural areas, is there some sort of equality of education or is the education for some children much better than for other children?
Martin: There is a tremendous inequality here as well. Again, money talks. Previously it was all pretty much one standard, not very good I might say. Traditional education is essentially rote learning. You memorize it. Those who learn to read and write have to memorize the Chinese characters. It's the same system they use for information as well. That has changed tremendously in the sense that those in urban areas who have money now can send their kids to private school. They can start English lessons at kindergarten. Parenthetically, a friend of mine is saying that China' is about to become the largest English-speaking nation in the world because “everybody,” particularly in the urban areas, seems to be studying English. In fact, they expect to have over 300 million people who have some familiarity with English. I wouldn't say they are fluent speakers, but they have some familiarity. The problem in rural areas is that the central government no longer funds elementary education; the local governments have to fund them. In the rural areas, most of the governments are quite poor, and many are corrupt. So they end up with a very hardscrabble education in the poor areas. Even though education is technically free (and mandatory) through the ninth grade, many people in rural areas cannot afford the ancillary costs – books and uniforms, transportation, school fees. So many children drop out of school. Education in the rest of the country is also uneven. Industrial cities, particularly in the Northeast where many firms are inefficient and often bankrupt state owned enterprises (SOEs), the quality of education is poor. The growing middle class has better schools but many others are being left behind.
AC-T: India is apparently putting a huge focus on education in some areas and pushing for technology, high technology engineers, that kind of thing. Is China doing the same sort of thing? Is there an effort to push forward some number of students who become their engineers and do they send them to foreign universities or are they keeping them in the country?
Martin: All of the above. Let me step back a step and say that Chinese culture is an education culture. Again, going back to our earlier conversation, under Confucianism, one got ahead through education. The Chinese developed the first civil service exam over 2000 years ago. It was the foundation upon which the political system was founded. One became an official through the national examination system. The last person to pass the examination, last held in 1910, died in the mid-1970s. That 2,500-year tradition shows the respect given to education. The system remains very much of an education-oriented society. There are two education-oriented societies –the Chinese and the Jewish tradition. When you look at children from Confucian-based societies – Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, when they come to the United States, they often perform very well in our schools. They become the valedictorians; they become the ones who do very well academically and professionally, mainly because of the emphasis on education. This is something that we can learn from the Asian societies to improve our own educational system. But to answer your question, yes, China is trying to increase the number of universities it has. There are still far too few for all those who want to go to university, because university education is now seen as a means for advancement and social mobility.
AC-T: China is the most populous nation in the world and has been trying for decades to control its population by limiting the number of children per household. Can you reflect on how that has affected the Chinese culture and whether it has been good or bad overall for the country. And was it essential?
Martin: I think it was essential. It was not a matter of choice. The problem is the way they went about it. They used draconian methods of forcing the people to have abortions, to have sterilization. It was really very messy, a tragedy in terms of human rights. I think, however, that controls were needed because the population was growing so fast there was no way the government could have continued to provide food, housing, education or employment for an unlimited number of people. They now have 1.3 billion people. No previous system of government in the history of the world has tried to manage or govern that number of people at one time. India’s population is catching up quickly. They will probably surpass China's population within 20 or 30 years. But the Chinese now are finding themselves with a worrisome dilemma – an aging population with a diminishing number of young people working to support them. When you have one-child families, one child for two parents, four grandparents, that's a big burden on the child to support. And the social security system in China has not been developed to the point where people have alternate means of providing for themselves. So the tradition of falling back on your children for support is still the primary way of supporting people in their old age.
I think the problem is to find a way to balance the population. You asked whether the one-child family plan is a good or a bad system. I think one of the most deleterious sides of the policy, is that it has increased the number of infanticides, particularly of female fetuses, because of a traditional view that male children are preferable. As a result, when they have a female baby, parents often either abandon her to an orphanage or leave her at the side of the road because they want to have a male heir. Some say if families had been able to have two children, there would have been less of a problem. Now, when two people from single-child families marry, they are allowed to have two children.
The government is finding, however, that as in Korea and Japan, the urbanized educated, middle class don’t want to have two children. Many of them don't want any children. So the government faces a long-term dilemma,
AC-T: And has there been a dilemma of too many boys for the number of girls when it comes to marriage?
Martin: The gender imbalance is becoming a serious issue. One figure I saw was 120 to 100 – one hundred and twenty males for a hundred females. That is going to be a real problem when these children grow up to marrying age. Most of the children that are adopted from China – I'd say 99.9 percent – are female. Occasionally, one can adopt a male, but they would have to be physically handicapped. The imbalance can lead to internal criminal organizations kidnapping women to force them into marriage in rural areas where men cannot find women. When I was in Guangzhou in southern China, our consulate issued all of the visas for people immigrating to the United States. We had what I call "baby central." All the adoptive parents brought their new children, their new daughters, to our consulate in Guangzhou to get the visa to the States. And it was exciting to see these parents, most of whom had no children, come in with a new bundle of joy. The new father didn’t know what to do but was loaded down with two or three diaper bags, a stroller, etc. When I was in Beijing, I talked to an official in the Civil Affairs Ministry in charge of the adoption process. The Chinese stopped all adoptions for six months at one point to regularize the procedures, to make sure that was no fraud and corruption involved in the system. I think they did a pretty good job. Concerns periodically still pop up about stealing, or buying and selling children, and problems with the orphanages, but generally, the government has regularized it pretty well. When I met with the official, he laughed and said “I am sending 4,000 spies to the U.S. every year.” I said, "No, Mr. Minister, you're sending 4,000 ambassadors,” because I see the young children becoming a cultural bridge between the U.S. and China." Many of them will want to go back to China and find their roots. I think these girls will be a big factor in building future understanding between the U.S. and China. I think that will be essential in this century. But I don’t think they will help rectify the gender imbalance, which will have to be met in other ways.
AC-T: I want to change the subject to the economy. As an emerging economic power China is sort of the elephant in the room that nobody can ignore. I’d like to ask several questions related to that. First, for years, China’s currency was pegged to the dollar, which meant the dollar couldn’t weaken in relationship to the renminbi and that drives up our trade deficit. It’s now pegged to a basket of currencies. Can you reflect on the economic relations between the U.S. and China in this regard and how that’s affecting our relationship with China?
Martin: Currency is one aspect of our economic relationship that has received a lot of attention recently. I think it's an issue but not as bad an issue as some people make it out to be. The Chinese are particularly concerned about floating their currency because they saw what happened in Southeast Asia in 1997 when countries that floated their currencies had a crash and a financial crisis. That had a big impact on Chinese financial planners. What they do need to do is to relax the exchange rate, to broaden the spread in which renminbi can move. I think they are hoping to do that in the future. They are concerned about speculation, about runs on their currency. Gradually they need to move ahead. Secretary of the Treasury Paulson has done a good job encouraging this. He has good contacts and good experience in China and I think he will work hard during the remainder of the administration’s term to bring about some change in this regard.
AC-T: This is a comment from a guy named Dick Foster. He was quoted in Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat.” He said “China and India and other Asian countries will not be successful in innovation until they have successful capital markets and they will not have successful capital markets until they have rule of law which protects minority interests under conditions of risk. We in the U.S. are the lucky beneficiaries of centuries of economic experimentation and we are the experiment that worked.” I think his point is, given that they don’t have those centuries of experimentation, can they move into an innovative, capitalistic, entrepreneurial economy? I wonder if you can reflect on that?
Martin: I think they have moved into a capitalistic economy but have not developed their own products. You’ve touched on the reasons – the lack of a rule of law and the lack of security for intellectual property. This is probably the most serious concern that we have in our economic relationship with China, the lack of protection for intellectual property rights. The problem is, from 1950 until the end of the 1970s, China was isolated by most of the world. It had restrictions on trade, on buying products and technologies from abroad. As a result, during that period, the research and development departments (R&D) of China’s state owned companies resorted to begging, borrowing and stealing whatever they could from abroad because they had no other ways of modernizing. One would have thought that they would have tried to do some innovation and experimentation of their own, but at that point, they didn't have resources or the capabilities to do so, so they tried to borrow whatever they could from abroad or steal it. Subsequently, since economic reforms were launched in 1978, China has become much more open to foreign companies investing in China. What they have tried to do is to get what they call "transfer technology" so that if you invest in China you have to share some of your trade secrets with your partner. This is a serious problem because many American companies find their trade secrets are going out the back door and are being developed by local companies, which they don’t control. So we have is a situation where without the rule of law, without protection of intellectual property, Chinese entrepreneurs are not going to become as innovative as they could. I think that's coming; more people are saying, "We need to protect our own IPR and by extension, IPR from abroad. It’s a slow process, but I think they’re beginning to do that.
The other thing I would say is that the communist ideology during the first 28-29 years of the Peoples Republic, when Marxist theory was the dominant economic factor in China, the idea of private property was not accepted. Everything belonged to the state. So there is no such thing as intellectual property, you couldn’t control your own intellectual property because it all belonged to the state. So when they opened up to the outside, they had to adjust. They are still adjusting to the fact that IPR is not public property and is important to innovators.
AC-T: And maybe not really a very nice thing to do to try to make money off of something that…
Martin: …should be community property. I went to a Chinese soft drink manufacturer factory once when I was in southern China. In their boardroom, they had two big display cabinets filled with all the products, that they made. It's like going to a Coca-Cola factory and seeing all the brands they produce – Coke, Sprite, Fanta, etc. Pointing to one cabinet, they said, "These are all of our products." I said, “Why do you duplicate your products over there?" They said, "No, those in the other cabinet are all counterfeit.” Counterfeiters were copying every product they made. And this was a state-owned company, a Chinese company. They said it was very difficult to operate because somebody copied every product they made.
AC-T: And then they sell it for less….
Martin: They sell it for less and often ruin the market. One Western company heavily invested in China made shampoo. They found people were taking empty bottles of their shampoo, filling them with their own concoction, maybe putting about a quarter of an inch of the real product on top and selling it as the genuine product. The first time you used it on your hair it’s fine. The second time you use it, your hair falls out because who knows what they put in it. And that became not only a problem for the person who bought the counterfeit product, but also for the shampoo company itself because people said, "I don't know if this is a counterfeit product or not, so I am not going to buy this brand because one never knows.
AC-T: In Russia, it seems that it’s hard for new businesses to develop, for small business, entrepreneurial efforts to happen because there’s not availability of capital, there’s such a heavy regulatory, permitting process that is often corrupt and you have to pay high fees and that’s really been a discouragement for business there. Is there the same kind of corruption, the same kind of heavy regulatory arm in China?
Martin: To a degree. Basically permits are given by local governments rather than the central government. People often think of China as a communist country, which is centralized, authoritarian, everything controlled by Beijing. This is not the case. Economically, particularly and even politically, local governments, the provinces and municipalities, have a great deal of latitude, particularly on economic issues. Within certain limits, they are able to have their own regulations. It varies considerably from one part of China to another. Many companies, particularly the south, where economic reform began, have become quite streamlined in terms of investment opportunities. There is bureaucracy of course since China is one of the inventors of bureaucracy. There is corruption, certainly. This can be a difficult situation. Many American companies who have been there for some time have been able to operate quite profitably, others run into difficulty. Again, when I was in Guangzhou, an American soft drink manufacturer, which I won’t name, told me, “We're going to open a joint venture here in Guangzhou and we’re going to produce X soft drink.” I said, “That’s great, who’s your joint venture partner?” … He said, “The Chinese Air Force." I said, “Why would you want a joint venture with them?” He replied, "Because they have a great distribution system. They can fly products all around the country.” Distribution nationwide was a problem because provinces protected their own products against similar products from other provinces. I said, “This is crazy, because the Air Force has no authority to do business with you.” And as it turned out, they didn't. It was an off-the-record, backroom deal, which did not work out in the end. One had to pick a partner very carefully.
AC-T: I don’t have a really good concept of how the Chinese political system works now. Is there very much empowerment of the people or is it still pretty top-down, centralized system? It sounds like there’s some distribution of power to the provinces, but does that go on down to the people? Do they get to vote?
Martin: No, there are no free elections per se. They have township level elections, at the lowest level of governmental structure. I would say there is some progress there in terms of giving people an actual choice, but for the most part, things are fairly well controlled. In China, you have what I would call a parallel structure, government and the Communist Party. It goes from the top all the way to the bottom. Many if not most government officials are party members, but when they hold a government position, they have a partner, or a co-official who is a party member. That parallel Communist Party structure, and the security services, are very good at maintaining control. One example: The U.S. government and businesses have complained about IPR violations. And the Chinese usual answer is, "Oh, we have a hard time doing this, with a lot of local governments and local officials are have invested into the local companies that make DVDs or CDs and we really can't control it and they don't enforce the IPR laws and so forth because they have financial interests.” In 2008, Beijing is hosting the Olympics. They have an Olympic symbol, as all Olympics have, a little mascot or caricature that symbolizes the ’08 games. Nobody counterfeits that symbol. If they do, they are instantly caught and punished. Now, how come they can do that for the Olympic symbol, but they can't do it for other intellectual property issues, whether it's movies or DVDs, or Microsoft software? It goes to show where their priorities are.
It's very telling, because it shows they have the means of control if they want. The security services are quite pervasive. Less so than before, in the sense that, in terms of economic issues, people have what I would call more “personal space.” I don't say “personal freedoms,” I don't say “personal rights,” as in constitutional rights, but “space.” During the Cultural Revolution, during the Mao era, you had no personal life, because the party, the neighborhood association, your neighbors knew everything about you. You couldn't talk to your family because you never quite knew whether your children were going to report you, or whether your parents were going to report you. People were really stressed because they were self-contained and had no one they could talk to. Just think about that - if you couldn't talk to your spouse, or you couldn't talk to your children, or parents, it becomes very isolating and you're much more controllable by the government, by the authority.
Since then, the space has opened up considerably. People now can say pretty much whatever they want about certain things. You can't delve into politics and you can't organize. That's the one thing the government is most attentive to – any kind of organization that might threaten their monopoly on power. The Falun Gong, the spiritual movement, which they have banned in China, was banned mainly because it was organized and a threat. Former President Jiang Zemin woke up one morning to find 10,000 Falun Gong people sitting quietly, meditating outside his personal compound. When he asked his security chief “Where did they come from?” the security people said, “We don't know, but they've organized without us knowing it.” That was really scary to the Communist Party. That is one of the reasons that Falun Gong was banned, not because it was a wicked cult or an evil cult that was killing people, but it had shown that they could organize people from all over the country and bring 10,000 people together in the middle of Beijing without the security services knowing it. When you are the Communist Party that likes a monopoly on power, that's worrisome.
AC-T: And so all the government leaders from top to bottom are pretty much chosen by the Communist Party?
Martin: There is a semblance of being chosen by the people. The people do have meetings in which they select their representatives, but I would say 99 percent of them are Communist Party members. And if they are not, they are enticed to become members. It works both ways. It can be a good thing for individuals to do; it's sort of like joining Rotary or the right club to get ahead, or a particular political party, if you want to advance economically, socially or politically.
AC-T: I want to go back to what is basically an economic problem and that is to talk about energy. There’s a limited supply of oil. The Chinese people are driving more cars; they’re going to become huge consumers. Can you reflect on where you see that taking the country and how that’s going to affect the United States and other industrialized countries?
Martin: There is a recent publication of the World Watch Institute (an environmental group in Washington) that focuses on India and China. It said that it is impossible for this planet to accommodate another nearly 3 billion people who wish to develop the same way the West developed. They would need a planet to themselves. There are not enough resources to allow India and China to have the same type of living standard, or same type of life, as we in the West do. So something needs to be changed, some new way of resolving this, either through different energy sources or through different styles of living. It doesn't have to be a lower standard of living; it just has to be different. We have to somehow find renewable sources of energy, sustainable development and ways of helping billions and billions of people to attain a good life without killing the planet. And that's what's happening. The U.S. is still the worst polluter in the world, but China is catching up rapidly and India is right behind them. It is becoming a serious problem in terms of the environment. At the same time, use of raw materials and energy resources is causing much of this pollution. We can't continue to use petroleum as the basis for our energy. Or coal. Coal is plentiful both in China and the United States, but it also the most polluting. We have to find a way of either transforming the use of coal into non-polluting means of making energy, or find other ways of producing the energy. Recently a senior Chinese energy official stated that he hoped the U.S., the West and China could cooperate on energy issues. This is very important. It is a major step by an official of high rank, and a proposal I think we should accept. We should take him up on it and try to work with China, because we can't compete with each other. China has been accused of trying to lock up energy markets and resources, rather than sharing them. I don’t think China or anyone else will be able to monopolize energy resources because our global society now is too interrelated. Rather than competing, we need to find ways of cooperating, not only on finding and using resources, but also finding alternative means of energy development.
AC-T: Do you see any innovation going on in China that might produce an alternative source, or anywhere else for that matter, but particularly in China?
Martin: I don't see any at this particular juncture. They are working on various things. I've not heard anything specific, but I think they are looking obviously at other means of renewable energy. When I was in China, I met an American who was working on electric automobiles. I don't know what's happened on that, but he hadn't gotten very far. They were not successful, at least. The Chinese have higher standards for mileage per gallon than we do in this country. They are now telling Buick and the other American companies and foreign companies invested in China that their cars have to meet certain higher mileage standards. I think these are all good, and they're going in the right direction. The problem is that they are well down the road of the automobile era, and I think this is a big mistake. I told them, "You're not going to be able to trade in two billion bicycles for automobiles, because you wouldn't be able to move." That's what they are finding now in the major cities. The traffic jams are just horrendous and pollution is too, as a result. China needs to find other ways of moving people, of providing transportation for people, both in urban areas and interurban areas. They are building tremendous numbers of highways and freeways around the country. If they can find alternate means of transportation – electric cars or hydrogen cars or fuel-cell cars or whatever – that will certainly help the pollution. But it won't help the traffic jams. In fact, recently I have read that they've now come up with the idea of the electric bicycle, which is sort of a nice alternative. Use a bicycle, but electric power to aid you in pumping or pedaling.
AC-T: Do you see nuclear as a solution for China?
Martin: I think in some ways, nuclear could be a solution. I don't particularly like nuclear power because you then have the problem of what do you do with the waste? This is a problem and what we're doing out in Yucca Mountain in Nevada is maybe the best solution we can live with at this point. I have always thought that maybe once we get reliable space rockets, missiles, we ought to package the nuclear waste and shoot it into the sun or somewhere. Obviously, if the rocket fails then you end up with real problems. People have talked for years about the fusion reactor, which re-uses the nuclear fuel and creates new nuclear fuel without a waste, but that hasn't been successful thus far. I frankly think that we need to find other ways of providing living standards that people all around the world want in a non-environmentally damaging way.
AC-T: And you’re thinking in terms of solar and geothermal?
Martin: Solar, wind, geothermal, individual fuel cells in homes so people have their own system are all potentially valuable approaches. I know in the Philippines, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has worked with remote villages on the islands with solar panels. They initially put big solar panels for a whole village but found that common property is not well cared for. So they now put in small, two feet square solar panels on individual houses. Those are well cared for, because that's "personal." And that makes a big difference. It's called "private property," and you find that people take much better care of things that they depend on for their own livelihood than if it is communal, which is unfortunate.
AC-T: Now that North Korea has apparently tested a nuclear device and China has been a North Korean ally, how do you see China’s role in dealing with the international implications of North Korea being a nuclear power?
Martin: That's a tough question and something that people who get paid a lot more than I do to worry about every day. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill has been spending most of his time on this issue for the last several years, dealing with the six party talks, dealing with each of the different parties involved. There is no easy answer. I think China is in an awkward position if I look at it from their perspective. They have always been concerned about "unfriendly" or hostile countries on their borders, whether it's Russia, Japan, India, or minorities in Central Asia. North Korea plays the role of "buffer state" between what they saw initially as a U.S. ally in South Korea and their northern border. The problem they have now is they want to maintain that buffer state. I don't think they really would be very strongly in support of unifying Korea. But they don't want a nuclear Korea, either. My personal view is, if they had to choose between the survival of a nuclear-armed North Korea versus a non-nuclear, collapsed North Korean regime, they would take the former. Stability and control is better than chaos on their borders. Because they already have several million Koreans in the northeast part of China, they are very concerned about an imploding North Korean regime, which would cause all sorts of instability.
AC-T: Is there, do you think, any thought on their part that economic sanctions or even more drastic action on the part of the U.S., which might be fearful that North Korea, if it became a true nuclear power would sell that technology to terrorists, that the U.S. might take some action that would completely upset the world economy or possibly upset the balance of power around the world. Do you think the Chinese might look at that as a prospect and think that they might want to take some action to forestall that? Is there any action they could take?
Martin: Every body talks about how much influence China has over North Korea. They do have influence, and they could cause North Korea to collapse. They could cut off oil supplies, cut off food supplies and they could seal off the border and I think the North Korean regime would either collapse or would go up in a big bang. I think its going up in a big bang is what the Chinese (and everyone) worry about. Because one never quite knows what they are going to do. People talk about Kim Jung Il being crazy. He is not crazy. He is very crafty, he is very smart, and he is doing what I would guess I would probably do if I were in his place. He wanted an insurance policy and that is what his nuclear weapon is for. He is concerned that the U.S. is going to invade. He has always felt that way. He was very unhappy with the Chinese when they normalized relations with South Korea and I think he feels that he is on his own and he is going to have to survive however he can. A nuclear weapon is the best insurance policy he can find.
AC-T: So you think he’s not inclined maybe to use it as much as to have it for insurance?
Martin: Right. I would hope not. One never knows, but I don't think he's crazy. I don't think that he's a madman. I think that he is primarily concerned about maintaining his regime and his power.
AC-T: What do you think the prospects are that he would actually sell that technology?
Martin: I'm not terribly confident he will not. Doctor Khan, in Pakistan, had no problem, either selling it to the Koreans, to the Iranians, to whoever would pay. He passed all sorts of nuclear technology but Pakistan is an ally of ours. President Musharraf has pardoned Dr. Khan and he is not in jail, he is not under investigation or anything. He has probably been the most dangerous person in terms of nuclear technology in the world in the last couple of decades. We don't know what the North Koreans are going to do if they're economically in desperate straits. They now counterfeit money with great facility and great accuracy, I might add. I think this would be mainly what China is concerned about, because who knows? If he gives nuclear technology and tools to al Qaeda, there are also minority groups in western China that might get some too.
AC-T: The Uighers?
Martin: Yes, the Uighers. Ninety nine point nine percent of the Uighers are peaceful; they just want to protect their own culture and their own religion, but I think that there are a few that would like to use other means of opposing the Chinese domination of western China. Same thing with the Tibetans in a sense. Ninety nine percent go along with the Dalai Llama, who I think is a moderate, willing to work out a peaceful resolution with Beijing. Beijing, I think, is making a big mistake by saying “we're going to outlast him.” He's getting older, when he dies, it will solve the problem.” I am not so sure. Once the moderate figurehead is dead, will his successor have the same authority over all Tibetans, or will there be others who are more radical stand up and say, “Let's find a different way of fighting against the Chinese domination.”
AC-T: The Chinese are connected in a lot of sort of international dramas, one of them being Taiwan…
Martin: They wouldn't consider that an international drama.
AC-T: Maybe the wrong choice of words. Do you think we are moving toward a new world of nuclear stand off? Are we moving toward some new version of the Cold War?
Martin: You mean in terms of new nuclear powers, Iran and Korea? Possibly. But I think Korea is not going to be able to threaten us like the Soviet Union did for many decades. They may have a missile or two, but in terms of any kind of total war, I think that's a long way down the road. I hope they don't have the capability to do so, either economic or technologically. Iran is a different matter because they have a tremendous amount of oil wealth they can use. Even though they are Islamic, they are Shiias, and the Sunnis are probably almost as concerned as we are about a Shiia nuclear weapon. These are really the unanswered questions of this century or for the next half a century.
AC-T: Just to briefly touch on Taiwan. Do you see a long-term solution to that situation?
Martin: I do, basically because – and this is not an original thought of mine – Taiwan cannot be unhooked and floated out to sea. It's always going to be 90 miles from the coast of the mainland. They have to somehow reach an accommodation with the mainland, one way or the other. I hope it will be possible for Taiwan to maintain an autonomous status of some sort and a way to maintain their own style of life. Democracy's the big issue, because we support democracy and I think it's very important that they maintain democracy as well as stand as a model. So often, people have said, "The Chinese have no tradition of democracy, so they need to have a different system. They don't want democracy, don't need that." But they do. I think the more China develops, the more they understand that they need some of the foundations of democracy that Taiwan is developing on the mainland – the rule of law, free press, representative government. In Taiwan, the representative government is chaotic, because often disagreements end up with fistfights on the floor of the legislature. They are showing that there is no contradiction between Chinese culture and Chinese way and life and democracy. I think this is a very important lesson that Taiwan can show not only to the mainland, but also to other countries in the region. Vietnam is a Confucian society traditionally because of the Chinese occupation for over a thousand years. Korea is another example…. So I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that growing economic ties will defuse the political issues, that Beijing will relax. In a sense, time is on their side. They are by far the dominant power in the area. A little bit more grace, if I can use that term, accommodation by Beijing, for Taiwan, would get them far more brownie points, far more credibility in Taiwan than threats. If they allowed Taiwan to have some representation – unofficially – in the World Health Organization or an international presence on an unofficial basis, I think tensions would be alleviated. The problem is, President Chen Shui-Bian of the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan, the DPP, has been the burr under Beijing’s saddle because he has made it clear that his goal is independence for Taiwan. The U.S. government and China have difficulty making sure he does not exacerbate tensions in the Taiwan Strait. He has two years left in his term of office and somebody else will be elected as president in March of '08.
Let me give you a little bit of background on the Institute for Peace for whom I work now?
AC-T: Yes, please.
Martin: It’s a unique organization, which seems to have more work than it can handle at the moment. Congress founded us in 1984. President Reagan signed the bill. The Institute was founded to focus on three mission areas: conflict prevention, conflict resolution and post-conflict rehabilitation and stabilization. We continue to do so. We started out as an educational organization in which we gave grants and fellowships to academics to do research on peace studies, ways of resolving conflict, preventing conflict. Subsequently, about 12 to 15 years ago, as Yugoslavia was falling apart in the Balkans, the Institute was asked to become involved in the Balkans to train and support efforts to resolve the conflict. The Institute has done a tremendous amount of training of military, diplomats, government officials on how to resolve conflict, how to prevent conflict, and so forth. We also have an active rule-of-law program in which we work with governments around the world on legal issues. If you have a conflict, how do you put in a transitional justice system when you have a change in political relationships? We work to put in new legal systems that address the problems people have in post-conflict situations. We have a very active educational program, which has an annual peace essay contest for secondary students. We select one essay from each state and 50 students come to Washington. They meet with their congressional representatives, Executive branch experts and Institute practitioners. Three of the 50 are chosen as finalists. The winner gets a college scholarship of $10,000 and the other two get something less.
The particular project that I’ve been working on for almost three and a half years now is facilitating the peace talks in the Philippines between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which has been going on for, take your pick, either 30 years or 370 years. It’s basically the problem of how do you address a Muslim minority in a country that is primarily Catholic. They are concerned mainly about preserving their culture, their way of life and their religion. Our role is to try to help them find ways around the obstacles that are in the way of a peace agreement. That means working with both the MILF and the government to help them think of alternative ways. They know each other, they know the issues, they know what needs to be done, but they don’t have a way of addressing the issues. They keep banging their heads against the same old problem over and over again, so we try to bring in practitioners from other countries that have addressed similar issues. Maybe there are some lessons learned from other people that might apply to what they’re trying to do.
The concern, very frankly, is that if they can’t resolve this in a peaceful, negotiated way, there are elements in the region that would be willing to step forward and take more extremist measures, linking up with al-Qaeda or other extremist groups to try to do it through bombs and terrorism. This is what we are trying to prevent.
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New Haven Register
November 18, 2006
Rell rejects plan to store nuke waste
Luther Turmelle, North Bureau Chief
HARTFORD — Gov. M. Jodi Rell is one of 18 governors protesting proposed legislation to use money from utility ratepayers to create temporary sites around the country where spent nuclear fuel would be stored until a national repository can be built.
Rell and the 17 other governors sent a letter Thursday to chairmen and ranking members of the U.S. House and Senate Appropriations Committees opposing a version of a fiscal 2007 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act.
The letter comes three months after Rell and other governors wrote to congressional leaders expressing concern that legislation being considered by federal lawmakers could force Connecticut and other states where spent nuclear fuel is stored to automatically become temporary sites.
"This is something that the governor wants to make sure is kept on the front burner," said Adam Liegeot, a Rell spokesman. Rell and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine spearheaded the letter-writing effort, he said.
The real fear of officials in Connecticut and other states is that the temporary sites will ultimately become permanent storage locations, he said.
Spent nuclear fuel is stored on the site of the former Connecticut Yankee Nuclear plant in Haddam and at Millstone Nuclear Power plant in Waterford.
"The bottom line is, Governor Rell is not going to sit idly by and allow these temporary facilities to become de facto final resting places for nuclear waste," Liegeot said.
The letter from the governors criticizes the appropriations legislation for "providing the Department of Energy with new, expansive authority to create numerous nuclear waste storage sites that represents a retreat from language of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and its establishment of a centralized repository."
"Shifting the federal program’s focus away from a repository to the construction, licensing and operation of many interim storage sites across the country could harm disposal efforts irreparably," the letter says.
"Furthermore, Section 313 (of the Appropriations Act) would direct the department to establish new state and regional waste storage sites without the consent and over the potential objections of governors. This is wholly unacceptable to our constituents and to us," the letter continues.
The Connecticut Yankee plant, which was closed in 1996, has 40 steel and concrete casks, known as dry storage. Millstone has dry storage and wet storage, the latter being a building in which super-hot bundles of spent nuclear fuel rods are stored in water for five to seven years before being moved to dry storage.
The federal government in the early 1980s established a fund to build a centralized, permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.
But the project has seen numerous construction delays and isn’t expected to be completed until 2017.
That resulted in a number of lawsuits by a variety of nuclear power plant operators — including the consortium that operated Connecticut Yankee — claiming federal energy officials broke a contractual promise to have a centralized storage site in operation by 1998.
Liegeot said the governor sees the appropriations bill as a "plan that has been hatched without any state input."
--Luther Turmelle can be reached at lturmelle@nhregister.com or 269-1496.
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Las Vegas SUN
November 17, 2006
No notice over hauling of radioactive waste worries city
Sprawl makes inroads into route used by truckers
By Mark Hansel
Las Vegas Sun
Motorists traveling along Interstate 15 near Blue Diamond Road might want to give that tractor-trailer in the next lane a little extra room. Especially if they notice it sporting a diamond-shaped placard saying "Radioactive 7."
There's a good chance it's hauling one of the roughly 1,200 annual shipments of low-level radioactive waste that travels near, and occasionally through, the Las Vegas metropolitan area.
Although low-level waste in the past was generated from nuclear weapons production and testing, more recently it has originated primarily from cleanup activities at sites throughout the country. Much of the waste that has passed through Nevada in recent years has come from plants nearly 2,000 miles away, at facilities in Ohio and Kentucky.
"It typically consists of personal protective clothing, dirt and debris," said Darwin Morgan, public affairs director at the Nevada Test Site.
Tons of it, all contaminated to some degree, come through the valley on a regular basis on its way to disposal at the Test Site, about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The trucks typically cross into Nevada on I-15, then head west on State Route 160 (a portion of which is known as Blue Diamond Road) southwest of Las Vegas and travel that road north to the Test Site.
Although an accident damaging the contaminants' sealed containers is not considered life threatening, there are risks, says Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects.
"You would likely have to come in direct contact with it or hold it," Loux said. "That's not to say there aren't dangers from prolonged exposure. If it got in the air, there could be safety issues."
City, county and state officials, while acknowledging the shipments' inevitability, would like to at least know in advance when a truckload is headed through the valley.
They don't, however.
Only the Energy Department and trucking companies know the shipments' schedule. The reason they don't pass along the information to local or regional officials is not a matter of national security or because of a potential terrorist threat. It's simply because they don't have to.
Morgan points out that companies transporting other hazardous materials that routinely pass through the valley are not required to submit schedules.
"Is there a reason that we should?" Morgan said. "The trucks are marked."
That answer displeases Las Vegas officials.
"I have a hard time swallowing that," Councilman Steven Ross said. "I feel like we're in a battle with another country and it's the DOE."
Since 1973, there have been only four accidents across the country that resulted in the release of radioactive material during the transport of low-level waste, according to the Energy Department. None of the accidents resulted in death or serious injury, federal officials said.
That, however, is of little comfort to Las Vegas leaders, who stress that when it comes to accidents involving radioactive waste, even one can be too many.
"This is an accident waiting to happen," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said, arguing that the city is entitled at a minimum to know of the shipments in advance.
Energy Department officials' reluctance to provide information about low-level shipments at a time when they are lobbying to bring more dangerous waste into the state for disposal at Yucca Mountain - a plan that, even if it wins congressional approval, is at least a decade away - disturbs many.
"Frequently the DOE is its own worst enemy in these things," Loux said.
The advantages of advanced notification, Loux said, include being able to provide emergency personnel with routing information and the ability to independently monitor drivers to ensure route compliance.
Currently the only monitoring is done by Nevada Highway Patrol troopers, who sometimes call the Agency for Nuclear Projects if they see a truck coming through, Loux said.
Energy Department officials said the last time a truck strayed from the preferred route was 2004, when three trucks carrying oversized loads came through the Spaghetti Bowl, the I-15 and U.S. 95 interchange. In that instance, the trucks had received permission to change routes.
Loux, however, said the Highway Patrol spots about three trucks a year traveling on I-15 beyond State Route 160.
Drivers are required to keep logs and fill out forms listing the route traveled when they arrive at the Test Site.
Kevin Rohrer, a Test Site spokesman, admits that officials basically take drivers at their word. While the Energy Department requests that drivers use the preferred routes, interstate commerce laws prohibit making that mandatory.
Officials at trucking companies that haul the waste either refused to comment on the shipments or did not return calls to the Sun.
Global positioning systems could easily and relatively inexpensively track the shipments. But Rohrer, again citing interstate commerce laws, said that the Energy Department would have difficulty requiring trucking companies to use GPS tracking.
Even if every shipment followed preferred routes, the Energy Department still could run afoul of its own standards because of the region's growth.
With public safety being the department's top priority in handling low-level waste, its primary strategy for achieving that goal is to avoid heavily populated or congested areas in Nevada.
Local officials say that while preferred routes established in the late 1990s aimed at avoiding the Spaghetti Bowl and Hoover Dam may have achieved that goal for a time, the region's rapid growth has changed the situation. Today, the area around State Route 160 is heavily populated and the road itself is congested.
"That is a legitimate argument," Rohrer said.
But apparently not good enough to make the Energy Department alter its routes.
Of 362 low-level waste shipments to the Nevada Test Site in the third quarter of this year, 313 used State Route 160, according to Energy Department figures. Of the remaining shipments, 24 originated north of the Test Site and 25 came from California.
There is a Energy Department-preferred route that would avoid Clark County, one that involves taking California State Route 127 from I-15 north to the Test Site.
Rohrer, though, said the route is not a viable alternative because it is a remote location and cannot accommodate the increased truck volume. In addition, it would be difficult to get medical personnel to the area in the event of an accident, he said.
That leaves all involved pondering this irony: An agency that for safety reasons wants to keep potentially dangerous shipments away from densely populated areas eschews a less populated route - because it is too remote.
And because of that, the shipments will continue to brush against a city where hope of beating the odds is nothing new.
--Mark Hansel can be reached at 259-4085 or at hansel@lasvegassun.com.
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Lahontan Valley News
November 17, 2006
Residents comment on proposed Yucca Mountain rail route
Viktoria Pearson
vpearson@lahontanvalleynews.com
Nearly 40 local Churchill County residents attended a public scoping meeting at the Fallon Convention Center Wednesday night regarding a proposed rail route to Yucca Mountain that could allow shipments of nuclear waste to pass through Churchill County.
Several residents said they did not have an opinion about the new route, but were there to get information. Others said they were completely against the Yucca Mountain project altogether and were standing by state and federal officials who continue to fight the project.
After a new agreement with the Walker River Paiute Tribe, the Department of Energy (DOE) is conducting an environmental impact study on another railroad route to Yucca Mountain, known as the Mina corridor. The 280-mile route would run from Lyon County to Yucca Mountain.
The other rail route under consideration is the Caliente corridor, located in Southern Nevada.
The Mina route would be less expensive and a shorter route to complete, said Bill Garfield, transportation program manager for Bechtel National, Inc., and Science Applications International Corporation.
Garfield said the Walker River tribe is only asking that the rail line be relocated to the northern portion of the reservation to eliminate high level explosives or nuclear waste from being transported through Schurz to Hawthorne or Yucca Mountain.
The tribe has only agreed to allow the DOE to do an environmental impact study, according to a letter from the tribe to DOE in May.
"No one has ever approached the Fallon City Council," said Mayor Ken Tedford, who attended the scoping meeting. "It's not about financial gain for Fallon, it's about safety."
Tedford said the city of Fallon would not compromise its residents for monetary gain, no matter what the price.
County resident Susan Savala said she is opposed to the Yucca Mountain project.
"We don't want Nevada to be the wasteland for the world," she said. "I want to know where our state representatives have been."
She implored local leaders to oppose the route.
"Fallon's motto is 'family first,'" she said. "Our county commissioners should be watching out for the health, safety and welfare of Churchill County, not Clark County."
People should take a deeper look into the costs being proposed by DOE, said Bob Halstead, a Wisconsin-based transportation advisor to the state of Nevada, Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Garfield said there is a savings of roughly $400 million to build the Mina route. The cost to build the Mina route has not yet been confirmed, he said. He said the environmental impact study should be completed by October 2007.
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Lahontan Valley News
November 17, 2006
Letter: Democrats in Power Should Enact Their Pet Policies
Congrats to the Dems for taking over the House and the Senate. Now here's what I expect from the Dems:
1. Funding for Yucca Mountain will be eliminated except for closing the facility and filling in the hole.
2. The unconstitutional "Patriot Act" will be repealed.
3. The "domestic spying" (President Bush) and "Echelon program" (President Clinton) will immediately cease.
4. Minimum wage will be raised to a "livable" level (about $12 per hour by my calculations).
5. Increased taxes on the rich (those earning over $36,000 a year).
6. Free health care!
7. Troops out of Iraq!
I could go on, but this is what the Dems have been screaming about for the past two to 10 years. Now let's see it happen!
Tony Giove
Fallon
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Michigan News
November 17, 2006
Palisades sale raises concerns about incoming nuclear waste
The Associated Press
COVERT TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — The pending $380 million sale of the Palisades Nuclear Plant raises the possibility that highlevel nuclear waste from the former Big Rock Point Nuclear Plant near Charlevoix could be moved to Palisades.
State law prohibits the transfer of nuclear waste from one plant site to another, but sale documents refer to the possibility of such a transfer.
New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. has agreed to purchase the 798-megawatt plant from CMS Energy Corp., of Jackson. The plant is near Lake Michigan in Van Buren County's Covert Township, about 55 miles southwest of Grand Rapids.
The sale is expected to close early next year, pending the approval of several regulatory agencies, including the Michigan Public Safety Commission and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The new owner also would be responsible for the nuclear waste stored in eight casks at the Big Rock Point site, which CMS Energy owns. That plant was closed in 1997 and the decommissioning process was concluded this year.
CMS Energy's offering memorandum on the Palisades plant from January says, in part, "Big Rock spent fuel may be moved to Palisades or an out-of-state licensed storage facility at the buyer's expense, if all appropriate approvals are obtained."
Both Entergy and CMS Energy have said they do not intend to seek a change in the state law that would allow nuclear waste to be transferred.
Dick Reid, a lawyer working on Palisades sale issues on behalf of a consortium of Van Buren County taxing entities, said he told the utility holding companies that if that is true, he would like to see it in writing.
"We told them, 'If you think you're prohibited by state statutes, then amend your agreement — put it in writing,'" Reid told The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph for a story published this week.
Palisades spokesman Mark Savage said the waste at Big Rock Point is likely to remain where it is until the proposed central repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is operating.
Once expected to open in 2010, the Yucca Mountain site has yet to received a federal license and is not likely to be completed — if licensed — until at least 2018.
Reid said the concern among the government units he represents is that if the radioactive waste is moved to Palisades and then the federal government reneges on its promise to develop a national repository, the Big Rock Point waste could end up staying at Palisades for a long time.
Savage said he does not think there is the political will in the state to change the law.
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WCSH-TV
November 17, 2006
Maine Joins Fight Against Nuclear Waste Storage Plan
Maine has joined in the effort to stop the federal government from setting-up a series of temporary nuclear waste storage sites around the country. 17 governors, including Governor John Baldacci and New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, signed a letter against it.
The letter was sent to the leaders of the house and senate appropriations committees, asking them to reject the plan.
The governors say the high level nuclear waste should be going to the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada, as the federal government promised many years ago.
Construction of the facility there is way behind schedule, so now the government wants to store the waste at several interim sites.
Maine is considered a potential target for one of the sites because some low-level waste is already being stored at the old Maine Yankee plant in Wiscasset.
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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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